8.9 Earthquake (upgraded to 9.0) and Tsunami hits Japan

Post by **River** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 3:49 am

The trouble with seawater is it is much more corrosive than fresh. If anything electronic is getting bathed in it, unless it's sealed up water tight, it's done for. Seawater's also a slightly poorer coolant than freshwater, and, even though we're talking about a <10% difference, that might add up to enough of a difference. Or it might not. The corrosiveness is probably the bigger issue.

Mon Mar 14, 2011 3:57 am

vison wrote:You know, I had the EXACT opposite reaction to the word "unshakeable". I thought it was apt, and still do. I thought it made clever use of the word and was absolutely perfect under the circumstances.

I agree, vison.

Post by **Lalaith** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 4:17 am

Those pictures are appalling, Nin.

And I've heard reports that there's been another hydrogen gas explosion at the plant. ??

Post by **Alatar** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 11:31 am

I assume you were referring to my post on FB V. It wasn't intended as a criticism of Obama, anyone can mis-speak, but this was a prepared speech one presumes? If so, I find that sort of pun misjudged. As I said on FB.

Post by **Hachimitsu** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 11:47 am

I just heard about that too Lalaith.

But it seems that at the very least, the nuclear problems will not have a Chernobyl like effect and that is sort of comforting.

I was thinking that saltwater wasn't a good idea because of corrosion. But they are using what they got and I am all for that!!

In a slightly more uplifting story Cat Island (Tashirojima) seems to have survived.

Cat Island is a small island of the Northern Japanese coast and at least when looking on a map, is close to the epicentre of the earth quake and would get a severe hit from the Tsunami. I actually feared the entire island was washed away as it seems that happened to some small towns and villages. But it didn't.

Tosh I am glad your friends are ok.

I keep having to remind myself it is winter so with the lack of power heating is going to become an issue. Especially since survivors may have had an emergency stock of supplies but the tsunami may have taken that. At least the Red cross and other relief efforts seem to be able to get in and help the survivors.

Edit: cross-posted with Alatar

Post by **Lalaith** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 2:51 pm

Wilma, I didn't know about Cat Island. (That second article was funny!) I'm glad it survived.

(And, as much as I love cats, I'm even happier to hear that the elderly people who live there have survived. Now I just hope they can get the aid they need.)

Post by **vison** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 3:30 pm

When it comes to Mr. Obama's speech, don't forget that almost everyone in Japan will hear or read it in translation. Who knows how that word will be translated?

Post by **Hachimitsu** » Tue Mar 15, 2011 6:43 am

HLI thought I wold post a link to NHK world English Streaming.
linky

I found it pretty helpful since I am not sure on how even the covrage is on the nuclear aspect of this disaster. People have commented that US channels are freaking out over nuclear meltdown possibility and Canadian channels are quite low key. (BBC is kind of medium on this front.)
NHK seems more straight forward and even say radiation is being released.
Looking and CBC news and NHK it's most likely meltdowns are occurring it's just they don't know how much has been released into the environment. I know they are trying to prevent panicking, but this is pretty bad. This sucks.

Post by **Maria** » Tue Mar 15, 2011 10:28 pm

Before and after satellite pics, with slider bars.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011 ... unami.html

Post by **River** » Wed Mar 16, 2011 5:56 am

Over the years, the Japanese government and people have been incredibly generous to Serbia. They've donated buses, built schools, and done dozens of other things and asked for nothing in return. No debts to repay, no special favors. The Serbs recognize it...and are getting furiously angry with their government over its slow response to the quake. So they're getting organized. They don't have PayPal or other electronic means of sending money and wiring it is expensive enough that most Serbs can't do it, so B92 is going to cover the wire fees. On the solidarity end of things, people are planning to rally in Belgrade tomorrow to fold paper cranes. Other gestures of support are in the works. I'd link, but the relevant blogs are in Serbian. However, we've made our (virtual) contribution:

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 6:18 pm

At the threadstarter's request, I split off the discussion of romanticizing Japanese and other cultures to this thread.

Post by **Hachimitsu** » Sun Mar 20, 2011 6:48 pm

Thank you kindly. Prim

Last I heard on the sheltered survivors front, there seems to be food shortages in the shelters. On BBC they even showed one shelter where each person got half a rice ball.

That is like 2 or 3 bites of rice. A few days ago NHK even reported medicine shortage causing the death of 2 people. (This could get much worse as Japan has a high elderly population).

Post by **River** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 2:50 am

Are the shortages a result of not enough food and medicine in Japan or difficulties establishing a supply chain?

Post by **Holbytla** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 2:58 am

Just a wild guess, but I would think that transportation would be a big issue. Not to mention the fact that a good portion of the country is still probably at a standstill and production has fallen off due to businesses being closed and workers finding it hard to get anywhere or resume some semblance of normal life.

The disruption in the everday routine must be enormous.

Not to mention the fact that emergency workers have been going at it for 10 days or so now, so I guess I don't find it surprising they are having issues with basic needs.

Post by **Hachimitsu** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 3:04 am

I think it's a supply chain, although now with radioactive materials spreading. That could become a problem.

Just seeing them hand out the rice balls and know one ball was for 2 people was pretty sad. I notice BBC goes for the depressing down beat when they report on the disaster.

(I think it's wonderful, that Serbs are reaching out btw, it's quite moving.)

EDIT: In response to Holby's post, from what I have heard (through some podcasts and some Japanese sellers I check out), several other parts of Japan are working pretty ok, and I don't understand, why they can't do directed food drops.

Post by **River** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 5:04 pm

Radiation in perspective. Yes, it is a cartoon. But it's a cartoon with a bibliography and that makes it informative.

Post by **axordil** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 5:25 pm

I have some bones to pick with the chart, which while accurate is incomplete. Not all exposure is created equal. External exposure to gamma rays, which is really what the chart is all about, is one thing; ingestion or inhalation of isotopes is another entirely. It doesn't take a whole lot of isotopes of any chemical used by the body, or in the case of something like strontium, chemical analogs, to cause health issues.

When I worked in a lab that routinely used tracer isotopes, we let one tech go when she got careless and picked up a little too much exposure, and it wasn't nearly at the levels described in the xkcd comic--but it was exposure to I-125, I-131, P-32, and (ick) St-90. The NRC was informed. She couldn't get a job in any lab using isotopes for some time, as I understand it.

The hot zone around the Japanese reactors isn't likely to flash fry anyone, but the creation and spread of bioactive isotopes is a lot more hazardous in the long run unless there's a Chernobyl-scale incident.

Post by **River** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 7:25 pm

Well, it's not as if the creator didn't include caveats.

What kind of lab were you working in Ax?

I used to work with P-32 on a regular basis and I'm not sure I could have hit the 5 rem limit even if I wanted to. However, I did learn the hard way that if you run your dosimeter through the laundry it'll read high. Not high enough to get me in trouble as the US radiation worker limit did apply to me at the time, but it did read higher than the dose your ordinary Joe is allowed to take and I got a little "We're watching you" note from Health Physics. But I knew it was an artifact because I hadn't been doing a lot of work with labels that quarter.

Post by **axordil** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 7:33 pm

We did a lot of work with rat tissue to test uptake by organs and glands of marked proteins. Rat glands are pretty tiny, so data tended to get overwhelmed by background noise. We addressed this by using more and more high-energy tags and by, um, getting creative with our choices of statistical tests.

Supposedly it was diabetes research, but down deep I suspected it was more about finding the most efficient way of turning grant money into radioactive rat bits.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Mon Mar 21, 2011 7:57 pm

I somehow never learned that you did lab work, Ax. We did tissue uptake with isotopes, too, in brain and in schistosomes (tiny parasitic worms). We used tritiated water to correct for diffusion, carbon-labeled drug or other test substance, and indium-111m (screaming hot but with a half-life of a couple of hours) to correct for vascular space. Nothing as nasty as P-32, which Mr. Prim was using all the time in his work. Of course, he was more concerned about the various neurotoxins and osmium tetroxide and such. It is kind of a credit to safety precautions and training that the death rate isn't higher among science lab techs and grad students.