Massive earthquake in Japan-tsunami warning

[SteveNU]

I spent 18 years in the control room operating a nuke plant. The guys there are dealing with consequences of multiple events that are outside the realm of what anybody thought was probable The good news is that even when you are out in uncharted territory there are still processes, procedures and a world full of expertise to draw on. It is a very serious situation and I pray that they are able to keep the reactor pressure vessel intact.

Billions of dollars of power plant becoming scrap metal right now.

 

[samclem]

I've been disappointed, but not too surprised, at the lack of good technical reporting about what is going on at the reactors.

Thanks for the previous links to more detailed reports.

This site was also useful to me. The author obviously is sympathetic to the nuclear power industry, but I don't think it detracts from the technical aspects of the report.

This event is going to set us back years in reestablishing safe nuclear power in the US. It doesn't matter that other designs (pebble-bed, etc) are "walk-away safe", or that this mess might actually prove how good the containment designs are. The number of people killed mining coal and the environmental damage caused by any power generation will be swept aside by emotion, I'm afraid.

 

[youbet]

This event is going to set us back years in reestablishing safe nuclear power in the US. It doesn't matter that other designs (pebble-bed, etc) are "walk-away safe", or that this mess might actually prove how good the containment designs are. The number of people killed mining coal and the environmental damage caused by any power generation will be swept aside by emotion, I'm afraid.

There ya go.......

Yep, sensationalistic journalism coupled with emotional reaction leads us to most of our decisions regarding public policy.

One airplane crashes and 150 folks are killed. Big deal. Investigate. Make changes. Etc.

400+ folks die in auto crash fatalities on a holiday weekend, many due to drunk driving. Yawn.

 

[JOHNNIE36]

Received the following letter from a friend of ours with experience in the nuke industry. Not that it erased all my concerns because we could run into something completely new in this disaster. Here's his letter to us today:

"With over 32 years of experience in operations and maintenance in the nuclear power business, including the cleanup of Three Mile Island, this is being way overblown, thanks to the media as usual. In this connection, the total amnount of radiation released from TMI amounted to one x-ray per person and that was after a significant meltdown from decay heat only hours after shutdown. In Japan, the longer they prevent meltdown from occurring, the lower the decay heat. I don't mean to minimize the dangers they face over there but taking Iodine pills on the Pacific coast is way off the deep end".

Even this letter doesn't release all the fears for me. We may be far removed, but what about the people in Japan? They will have consequences for years to come.

 

[Shawn]

And remember that the Richter scale is logarithmic - a 9.0 is ten times more powerful than an 8.0, one-hundred times more powerful than a 7.0, and so on.

Just to nitpick ...

A magnitude difference of 1 on the "Richter Scale" actually translates to a difference of about 32 (10^1.5) in total earthquake energy or power. So for example, the 2011 Sendai earthquake (M8.9) was 1000 times more powerful than the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (M6.9).

The original Richter scale was developed by Charles Richter and Beno Gutenberg using relatively small earthquakes from southern California. This was based on measuring the amplitude of ground shaking as a function of distance from earthquakes. Using this scale, often referred to as the local magnitude scale, the amplitude of ground shaking for a magnitude 5 earthquake is 10 times larger than that for a magnitude 4 earthquake.

But the amplitude of shaking doesn't increase much for larger earthquakes (say, greater than magnitude 6). Other magnitude scales were developed to assess the size of larger earthquakes, sometimes using different types of seismic waves such as waves traveling along the surface of the earth. But these methods also had drawbacks.

In 1979, Thomas Hanks and Hiroo Kanamori developed what is known as the Moment Magnitude Scale (often called Mw). It is a true measure of the size or energy of an earthquake. The 8.9 (or 9.0) magnitude of the recent earthquake in Japan is based on this scale (this earthquake might have a magnitude of only 6.5 or 7 using the original Richter scale). The specific equation from Hanks and Kanamori is

Mw = Log(Mo)/1.5 - 10.3

where Mo is the "moment" of the earthquake in units of dyne-cm (energy). The moment or total energy is computed by multiplying the area of fault rupture times the slip (distance one side of the fault moves relative to the other side) times the rigidity (strength of the rock along the fault). Mw is still tied to the Richter scale, although it has different implications from the original Richter scale (e.g., 32 factor difference in total energy, not 10, for a difference of 1 in magnitude). Probably more than anyone wants to know.

A key point, though, is that the ground shaking for a very large earthquake (M8.9) is not necessarily stronger than the ground shaking for a more moderate event (M6.9) (although the shaking tends to last longer for the larger event). For the most part, a M8.9 earthquake is larger because it occurs over a greater geographical area (in addition to other factors, such as type of earthquake).

 

[Gumby]

I've been disappointed, but not too surprised, at the lack of good technical reporting about what is going on at the reactors.

Thanks for the previous links to more detailed reports.

This site was also useful to me. The author obviously is sympathetic to the nuclear power industry, but I don't think it detracts from the technical aspects of the report.

This event is going to set us back years in reestablishing safe nuclear power in the US. It doesn't matter that other designs (pebble-bed, etc) are "walk-away safe", or that this mess might actually prove how good the containment designs are. The number of people killed mining coal and the environmental damage caused by any power generation will be swept aside by emotion, I'm afraid.

Thanks for the link Samclem. As I think I may have previously mentioned here, before I went to law school in 1989, I was an engineer at a nuclear plant. I certified as a Senior Reactor Operator on the General Electric BWR-6 boiling water reactor, which is an upgraded version of the Japanese plant having the problems now. Prior to that I was a Navy nuke (submarines).

The report you linked to is excellently written for a general, non-technical audience. Based on what I have read, it appears that the zirconium cladding was breached at the Japanese plant, since the fission product cesium was detected. As the author notes, however, the zirconium alloy cladding melts at a lower temperature than the fuel itself, so the fuel may or may not have melted. In any event, it does not appear the reactor vessel has been breached. If they have been able to inject water (seawater or otherwise) and can keep injecting, it is unlikely that the situation will get any worse as far as fuel melt goes.

To place things in perspective, in the Three Mile Island accident, the fuel actually did melt down, although it did not breach the reactor vessel. There was a comparable small atmospheric release. As far as I know, there were no immediate or long term health effects suffered by even the people who were located immediately downwind in Pennsylvania.

 

[ERD50]

Just to nitpick ...

A magnitude difference of 1 on the "Richter Scale" actually translates to a difference of about 32 (10^1.5) in total earthquake energy or power. So for example, the 2011 Sendai earthquake (M8.9) was 1000 times more powerful than the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (M6.9). ...

Thanks for the correction and full explanation. I should have looked it up, I was just going by my recollection of general comments that it was logarithmic.

On nuclear safety in general - I do find it hard to imagine how you would build such a large plant to withstand these kinds of disasters. I did re-read a bit on the pebble-bed reactors, I feel much better with something like that since it tends to shut down on its own if you lose power. But there seem to be faults that can occur with the construction of the 'pebbles' themselves (described as the size of a tennis ball). The coatings can get breached or damaged in other ways. But that was just a quick skim of some articles on wiki - probably no more accurate than my description of the Richter scale! But something like that.

-ERD50

 

[NW Landlady]

We have found this station provides a more detailed and less US/biased viewpoint of this disaster:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/r/movie/

NHK news
it's a japanese/english news station

 

[samclem]

A key point, though, is that the ground shaking for a very large earthquake (M8.9) is not necessarily stronger than the ground shaking for a more moderate event (M6.9) (although the shaking tends to last longer for the larger event). For the most part, a M8.9 earthquake is larger because it occurs over a greater geographical area (in addition to other factors, such as type of earthquake).

That's why the public characterizations of structural earthquake safety always seem lacking to me. When they say that this dam/hospital/school/nuclear site has been built to withstand an earthquake of X on the Richter scale, it doesn't tell us much. How far away? I'm sure the actual engineering accounts for various types of lateral/vertical acceleration and displacement over a stated period, and maybe that can be roughly associated with a quake size/type at a certain distance, but we never hear about that.

People are already saying the problems at the Japanese reactor are proving the design was inadequate. I don't see it that way. It has certainly shown where some improvements might be made (more redundancy in provision of core cooling) but has the containment been breached?

A cement truck plows into a car. The crumple zones compress in a controlled manner, the hood-hooks stop the hood from coming into the passenger compartment, the shoulder harness tensioners keep the occupant in place, the airbags inflate to reduce the acceleration of the occupants, the electrical system deactivates to reduce risk of fire, etc. The entire "defense in depth" works. Do we say the car engineering failed because the car is totaled and the driver is bruised?

 

[Gumby]

It has certainly shown where some improvements might be made (more redundancy in provision of core cooling) but has the containment been breached?

Those improvements have been made. The BWR-6 design, one of which you have right there in Ohio, is a substantial improvement with respect to emergency core cooling and containment. Don't forget that Fukishima #1 is a 40+ year old plant.

 

[Meadbh]

This article from Reuters anticipates that Japanese investors will repatriate many of their overseas investments ASAP, to help rebuilding. I think we can expect turbulence in the bond and equity markets tomorrow.

Japan brings money home to rebuild | Reuters

 

[LOL!]

This article from Reuters anticipates that Japanese investors will repatriate many of their overseas investments ASAP, to help rebuilding. I think we can expect turbulence in the bond and equity markets tomorrow.

Japan brings money home to rebuild | Reuters

Except the last sentence in the article is practically a "Never mind": The Kobe earthquake did not have all this stuff happen even though damages were $100 billion. This Sendai earthquake though surely has much high damage costs.

It also highlights that the Japanese should not invest only in Japan. To make the point: It is better to invest only in Sendai companies or globally?

 

[M Paquette]

People are already saying the problems at the Japanese reactor are proving the design was inadequate. I don't see it that way. It has certainly shown where some improvements might be made (more redundancy in provision of core cooling) but has the containment been breached?

The design was fine for what was known in the late 1960s, in terms of seismic hazards, materials science, and so on. The design would not be fine now, because we've got another 40 years of science and engineering under our belts. We wouldn't build such a plant today, but that doesn't mean that the old plant is inherently unsafe.

What we are seeing today is an unprecedented disaster. It is a frightening thing.

I really wish that folks would not focus on problems at a power plant that pose little immediate or long term risk. There are a half million people who have had to flee their homes. Four passenger trains running in the coastal areas of Miyagi and Iwate prefectures are unaccounted for. Miyagi police report that a ship carrying more than 100 people was washed away.

Tsunami aid and relief: How you can help – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs

 

[BigNick]

For all Japanese friends... as a suggestion and if you have not already done so....please see if you are able to get your hands on some iodine tablets or liquid iodine pharmaceutical grade. It will protect your thyroid...preventing or limiting any radiation uptake.

I imagine that if this were valid prophylactic advice, there would have been an official announcement by now.

Disclaimer: Please talk to your doctor or medical personnel about this prior to taking... regarding dosing and timing.

... or indeed, regarding whether self-medication for an undetermined environmental threat is a good idea in any circumstances (clue: no).

In the event you can not get your hands on any...eat as much fish and shell fish as possible as the iodine in it...will also help.

Well, you don't normally have to tell Japanese people to eat seafood... but if you thought that a nuclear reactor had leaked large amounts of radiation which had blown out to sea, would you really be looking to increase your consumption of food from that same sea?

 

[LOL!]

Japan will have 3-hour rolling daytime blackouts with so much electricity generating capacity offline.

 

[Tigger]

I imagine that if this were valid prophylactic advice, there would have been an official announcement by now.

Here you go:

Japan may hand out iodine near nuclear plants: IAEA

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/ki.asp

Wikipedia - Potassium iodide - Thyroid protection due to nuclear accidents and emergencies

World Health Organisation - Guidelines for Iodine Prophylaxis following Nuclear Accidents

 

[sheehs1]

I imagine that if this were valid prophylactic advice, there would have been an official announcement by now.

... or indeed, regarding whether self-medication for an undetermined environmental threat is a good idea in any circumstances (clue: no).

Well, you don't normally have to tell Japanese people to eat seafood... but if you thought that a nuclear reactor had leaked large amounts of radiation which had blown out to sea, would you really be looking to increase your consumption of food from that same sea?

Well...the intention of my post ....was if possible...which it may not be...was to try to "have some iodine on hand"...."if needed". I said nothing about taking it or self medicating and believe I indicated...basically to do it under medical supervision.

Not sure I would want to wait for the government ...that is horrendously innundated...to dole it out...if needed.

Certainly no harm in being prepared...which is all my post intended.

 

[Meadbh]

I imagine that if this were valid prophylactic advice, there would have been an official announcement by now.

The government is already distributing iodine tablets.

 

[sheehs1]

The government is already distributing iodine tablets.

Good to know Meaddbh...because I know if I were there...I certainly would want them!
Glad the government is being proactive...on this.

 

[Purron]

The images of the destruction and suffering are overwhelming. I keep thinking about people trapped. It's almost unbearable when you consider the reality of what's going on this very moment for so many people.

 

[antmary]

Good to know Meaddbh...because I know if I were there...I certainly would want them!
Glad the government is being proactive...on this.

We keep some iodine in our emergency supply kit, along with food, water, bandages, medication, etc.

 

[Tigger]

We keep some iodine in our emergency supply kit, along with food, water, bandages, medication, etc.

Potassium Iodide pills are easy to buy in the US. Many websites offer them, but most won't ship to Europe.

After a lot of searching, I got mine from LEF Europe. Warning: potassium iodide pills don't last forever, they have an expiry date, so they're a recurrent expense.

The odds that I'll ever need them are very low. They're supposed to rarely be needed by adults over 40 years (low risk of thyroid cancer, increased risk of side effects). But I work close to several potential military and terrorist targets, so I keep some in my office and at home just in case.

 

[BigNick]

Well...the intention of my post ....was if possible...which it may not be...was to try to "have some iodine on hand"...."if needed". I said nothing about taking it or self medicating and believe I indicated...basically to do it under medical supervision.

Not sure I would want to wait for the government ...that is horrendously innundated...to dole it out...if needed.

Certainly no harm in being prepared...which is all my post intended.

Sorry if my reply was a bit snarky. I see too much "helpful health advice" on the Internet, much of it probably actively harmful. I'm glad to see that the authorities are on top of it (although I suspect their action is more about reassurance and "being seen to do something" than anything else).

In other news, I saw that Japan moved 8 feet.

 

[samclem]

What we are seeing today is an unprecedented disaster. It is a frightening thing.

The casualty estimates keep climbing: this WashPo article says the number killed may exceed 20,000. Terrible.

A wealthy country with good preparedness and a society structured to deal with trauma, yet still the numbers and the hardship are sobering.

Geography means a lot.

 

[TromboneAl]

Things I've noticed:

1. Very few people in the images of the tsunami compared with images from Thailand. I guess it means that many moved to higher ground?? Or fewer people were in the streets to begin with??

2. Death toll in Thailand was 230,000, so I'm guessing that this toll will indeed exceed 20,000.

3. So many Japanese wear surgical masks, apparently when they have a cold, or don't want to catch one from others.

4. News reports grossly misrepresented what was happening in Northern California in the name of sensationalism. That's something I've noticed whenever I am near a news event.