Now it's Japan's turn

[JAS]

The site is now rated as level 5 on the 7-step International Nuclear and Radiological Events scale ... apparently the same rating as the Three Mile Island incident in 1979.

Chenobyl was a 7 rating.

This has all been somewhat relegated on the news here after we effectively declared war on Libya last night at the UN but they did mention at the end of the bulletin that it's also on a par with the Windscale fire in '57...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire

Regards
JAS

[Bully]

Yes all the talk is about Libya or william visiting australia. Personally i couldnt give a rats if the prince visited here...whats he ever done for me, but the focus has gone off the nuclear issues some what here now.

They saying that some of the reactors the rods are just exposed to the clear daylight with no cover? Surely this is more of an issue then some prince visiting us here is australia!

[JAS]

The media have at least taken the time to give some coverage and credit to the poor brave buggers who are on what is, to all intents and purposes, a suicide mission at the plant.

Interesting article on the BBC news site...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12785274

Japan nuclear threat: The tsunami is the bigger tragedy
By David Spiegelhalter Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, Cambridge University

...."Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk"... who knew?

Regards
JAS

[fish]

Nuclear rescue making gains

Engineers have enjoyed some success in their mission to stop disaster at Japan's stricken power plant, although minor radiation leaks have highlighted perils from the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

Three hundred technicians have been battling inside a danger zone to salvage the six-reactor Fukushima plant since it was hit by an earthquake and tsunami that also killed 7,508 people and left 11,700 more missing in north-east Japan.

[fish]

Tokyo nuclear operator seeks French help

Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), operator of Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, is seeking help from France to tackle the "critical" situation, [French] Industry Minister Eric Besson said today.

"TEPCO, for the first time, I'm pleased to say... has asked for help from French industrial concerns," the minister told RTL radio, specifying French energy giant EDF, nuclear group Areva and CEA, the atomic energy commission.

Neither EDF (Electricite de France) nor Areva confirmed the news when contacted by AFP.

Besson said that the current situation at Fukushima, where highly radioactive water has leaked from a reactor turbine building following the March 11 earthquake, was "extremely critical"...

...The number of people confirmed dead or listed as missing following the 9.0-magnitude quake and monster wave climbed above 28,000 today, with 10,901 confirmed dead.

[JAS]

Don't know if you guys ever get to see a BBC science based tv series called Horizon over there. They had a very interesting special last night on the Japan earthquake. I'm sure there will be plenty of 'specials' in the coming months but this one is worth keeping an eye out for imho. I've watched a couple of Iain Stewarts tv series on geology before and thought they were very good...this is no exception.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0101nq2

Japan Earthquake: A Horizon Special with Iain Stewart

Professor Iain Stewart examines the powerful geological forces that unleashed the devastating Japanese earthquake, and explores how the release of this power of the planet brought Japan to the brink of a nuclear meltdown.

He follows moment by moment how the earthquake was generated under the Pacific Ocean, travelled to the Japanese mainland, and the rare conditions that unleashed a tsunami.

He also reveals the latest science behind earthquakes - from why we can't predict them, to what causes some of them to reach such power.

Iain shows why our civilisation has developed such a dangerous relationship with earthquakes, and why millions of us continue to live in earthquake zones across the world.

Regards
JAS

[therisingblues]

I was speaking with my father-in-law last night regarding the predicted Kanto Earthquake. He reckons it is still on its way, and the one we just had was the Tokai Earthquake, which involves the movement of a different plate. He explained that when "the big one" finally hits, it is forecast that Tokyo City is just going to slip off the face off the Earth, not in to the sea, but actually under a plate.
Why do people live there? Was the obvious question.
Because it happens so rarely you'd have to be pretty unlucky for it just to hit in your lifetime.

Did Iain Stewart mention anything about that JAS?

[Brucetiki]

Channel 10 have joined several other overseas stations in pulling several episodes of The Simpsons that make jokes about nuclear radiation and meltdowns

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/entertain ... 6030391643

IMO a bit of an overreaction

[JAS]

I was speaking with my father-in-law last night regarding the predicted Kanto Earthquake. He reckons it is still on its way, and the one we just had was the Tokai Earthquake, which involves the movement of a different plate. He explained that when "the big one" finally hits, it is forecast that Tokyo City is just going to slip off the face off the Earth, not in to the sea, but actually under a plate.
Why do people live there? Was the obvious question.
Because it happens so rarely you'd have to be pretty unlucky for it just to hit in your lifetime.

Did Iain Stewart mention anything about that JAS?

Hi theri...hope things are still ok in your area.

I don't remember him mentioning the term 'Kanto' but he did cover the theory of what I've heard called an 'earthquake storm' before ie that earthquakes releasing pressure in one part of a fault line can increase the pressure further down the line and trigger earthquakes there. I know from other documentaries that's something they're very concerned about happening in Istanbul cos the archaeology shows it happened before across Turkey.

He did talk about how Japan sits on the crossing point of about 4 different fault lines (I think...might have been more) and he also talked to another scientist who is studying eartquakes in Japan (from Uni of Ulster iirc) about the possibility of a 'big one' under Tokyo some time in the future but didn't go quite as far as saying it could slip under the plate.

I think one of the main points of his programme was that because of Japan's earthquake technology and preparedness the earthquake actually did very little damage at all...it was the tsunami that caused the devestation and loss of life. On the whole I thought it was a very interesting programme that took a levelheaded, geology based look at what happened and why and the possibility of being able to predict earthquakes in the future.

Regards
JAS

[fish]

Crews 'facing 100-year battle' at Fukushima

A nuclear expert has warned that it might be 100 years before melting fuel rods can be safely removed from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant.

The warning came as levels of radioactive iodine flushed into the sea near the plant spiked to a new high and the Wall Street Journal said it had obtained disaster response blueprints which said the plant's operators were woefully unprepared for the scale of the disaster.

Water is still being poured into the damaged reactors to cool melting fuel rods.

But one expert says the radiation leaks will be ongoing and it could take 50 to 100 years before the nuclear fuel rods have completely cooled and been removed...

[JAS]

Thought this was quite impressive...can just imagine what a pig's ear our highway's agency would make of it if they were faced with the same problem...



Regards
JAS

[woodublieve12]

it would take adelaide at least 15 years to fix that... im not even joking...

[White Line Fever]

it would take adelaide at least 15 years to fix that... im not even joking...

It'd take them 15 years to talk about if they should fix it or not.

Because it's unique it'd become heritage listed.

[JK]

Lmao .. Nice one WLF

[woodublieve12]

it would take adelaide at least 15 years to fix that... im not even joking...

It'd take them 15 years to talk about if they should fix it or not.

Because it's unique it'd become heritage listed.

check mate....
very true...

[therisingblues]

That picture is amazing JAS.
One of the things that I love about Japan is how quickly the infrastructure changes. Trainstations get completely revamped in a matter of months, drab little towns out in the sticks suddenly get a highway entrance, housing complex with posh street lighting and a massive shopping mall rivalling the QE2 in size in a couple of years, bridges get whacked up over rivers and suddenly halve your comute time, bullet train routes are constantly being extended and there is always a new road, a new by-pass or a new tunnel or whatever that you are waiting for them to finish to make getting places that much easier. New buildings get constructed so quickly that if you don't visit an area for a month or two you come back to discover some ugly rotting factory has been demolished and replaced with a nice shiny building half encased in glass, complete with cute women in short skirts and dainty little neckerchiefs bowing to you at every doorway.
I think there is just so much engineering work over here that the amount of machinery and organisation on hand at any time cna accomplish these feats as surely as a 9 year old building a lego tower. Some of the stuff they come up with also looks as though it has come from a 9 year old letting his imagination run rampant with his lego set.

[fish]

Japan stops water leaks from nuclear plant

The operators of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant say they have finally managed to stop a leak of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean, a breakthrough in the battle to contain the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

For days thousands of tonnes of contaminated water have been gushing through the 20-centimetre crack in a concrete pit near reactor No. 2.

Emergency crews have tried repeatedly without success to plug the leak, even trying a mixture of sawdust, shredded newspaper and an absorbent polymer.

Water pouring from the crack was contaminated with radioactive iodine 4,000 times the legal limit and most of it was ending up in the Pacific.

In the end, the plant's operator TEPCO used sodium silicate, a chemical agent also known as water glass, to solidify soil near the crack and stop the leak.

However TEPCO still needs to pump contaminated water into the sea because of a lack of storage space at the facility.

The company also says it has detected radioactive iodine at 7.5 million times above the legal limit in seawater near the facility, adding to fears contaminants had spread far beyond the disaster zone...

[White Line Fever]

That picture is amazing JAS.
One of the things that I love about Japan is how quickly the infrastructure changes. Trainstations get completely revamped in a matter of months, drab little towns out in the sticks suddenly get a highway entrance, housing complex with posh street lighting and a massive shopping mall rivalling the QE2 in size in a couple of years, bridges get whacked up over rivers and suddenly halve your comute time, bullet train routes are constantly being extended and there is always a new road, a new by-pass or a new tunnel or whatever that you are waiting for them to finish to make getting places that much easier. New buildings get constructed so quickly that if you don't visit an area for a month or two you come back to discover some ugly rotting factory has been demolished and replaced with a nice shiny building half encased in glass, complete with cute women in short skirts and dainty little neckerchiefs bowing to you at every doorway.
I think there is just so much engineering work over here that the amount of machinery and organisation on hand at any time cna accomplish these feats as surely as a 9 year old building a lego tower. Some of the stuff they come up with also looks as though it has come from a 9 year old letting his imagination run rampant with his lego set.

It is amazing.
good post.

[RustyCage]

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/978 ... tap-water/

Radioactive caesium has been found in tap water in Japan's capital city for the first time in more than two months.

Radioactive caesium has a half life of 30 years, making it extremely toxic.

Traces of radioactive caesium-137 were found in tap water sampled in Tokyo's Shinjuku ward over the weekend, but authorities say it is well below the maximum safety limit.