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Japanese, Russian and Indonesian Volcanoes Erupt ... 5 Japanese Nuclear Reactors In Danger ... 1 Is Leaking and May Melt Down Within 24 Hours
Update: It's possible that a meltdown may already have occurred at one nuclear power plant. As AP wrote 4 minutes ago:
An
official with Japan's nuclear safety commission says that a meltdown
at nuclear power plant affected by the country's massive earthquake is
possible.Ryohei Shiomi said Saturday that officials were checking whether a meltdown had taken place at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, which had lost cooling ability in the aftermath of Friday's powerful earthquake.
Reuters reports:
Japanese nuclear authorities said that
there was a high possibility that nuclear fuel rods at a reactor
at Tokyo Electric Power's Daiichi plant may be melting
or have melted, Jiji news agency reported.
Experts have
said that if the fuel rods have been damaged, it means that it could
develop into a breach of the nuclear reactor vessel and the question
then becomes one of how strong the containment structure around the
vessel is and whether it has been undermined by the earthquake.
Volcanoes have reportedly erupted in Japan, Indonesia, and Kamchatka Russia today, presumably due to the massive Japanese earthquake. There have been no reports of damage from the eruptions.
In addition, there are problems at three Japanese nuclear power plants.
The Fukushima plant is leaking radiation, and a nuclear expert says that things are getting worse, and "Fukushima has 24 hours to avoid a core meltdown scenario". (See Tyler Durden's report).
MSNBC reports:
"The
situation is still several stages away from Three Mile Island when the
reactor container ceased to function as it should," said Tomoko
Murakami, leader of the nuclear energy group at Japan's Institute of
Energy Economics
Two other Japanese nuclear reactors are now in trouble as well. Two other Japanese nuclear reactors are now in trouble as well [UPDATE: It is now up to 5 nuclear reactors].
As MSNBC notes:
Coolant
systems failed at three quake-stricken Japanese nuclear reactors
Saturday, sending radiation seeping outside one and temperatures rising
out of control at two others.
Radiation
surged to around 1,000 times the normal level in the control room of
the No. 1 reactor of the Fukushima Daichi plant, Japan's Nuclear and
Industrial Safety Agency said. Radiation — it was not clear how much —
had also seeped outside, prompting widening of an evacuation area to a
six-mile radius from a two-mile radius around the plant. Earlier, 3,000
people had been urged to leave their homes.
Tokyo Electric
Power Co. said Saturday that the temperatures of its No.1 and No.2
reactors at its Fukushima Daini nuclear power station were rising, and
it had lost control over pressure in the reactors.
***
About
an hour after the plant shut down, however, the emergency diesel
generators stopped, leaving the units with no power for important
cooling functions.
***
Hours after the evacuation order,
the government announced that the plant will release slightly
radioactive vapor from the unit to lower the pressure in an effort to
protect it from a possible meltdown.
Good luck to the Japanese scientists bravely trying to avert catastrophe. As MSNBC notes:
Japan has a "tremendous amount of technical capability and resources" to respond to the issue ....
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"Q"...which way does the wind blow over Sendai? East? or West?
So where in the Hell am I gonna to get a new Honda if we have to start printing NEW maps without Japan on them? Just askin.
And the big island on Hawaii.
Potassuim iodide, anyone?
This is fucked up.
Panic in the year 0. Black and white movie about living after a nuke in L A. Was on less than a year ago. Interesting.
On the Beach
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_%281959_film%29
And I trhought Godzilla was bad........
thank zeus for the inverse square law. if you don't understand how this affects the destructive radius of an explosion, look it up.
at least there is a limit to feasible self-destruction when considering singular nuclear blasts.
Yes, I know... that's why we use multiple smaller warheads.
the funnies on this site are the priceless
Who needs radiation when you have aspartame, Roundup, caramel color, melamine, mercury and arsenic in your food?
Gotta have the radiation. Chickens love it and it allows the H1N1 to morph into H2N2. I can see the mistake here. They didn't think that THIS could happen. The nice thing is that Honolulu will save a ton of money on electricity. The hotels won't need any lamps when the Japanese come to visit.
funny.
Imagine a modern multi warhead nuclear missle going off on the ground...
...on the pacific trade current...
...where 70% of what you eat, drink, bathe in...
...is radioactive for 5600 years...
---times around 10,000---
Modern nukes are meant for a quick strike over a target to allow a balloon of heat, energy and radioactivity to vapourize anything organic and an occupying force to take a city with idodine shots and lightly lead lined clothing.
This however is a pulsing radioactive pit that you would have to use robots to clean up if they didn't melt down before moving a containment core into place. Slowly bleeding everything in every direction. No human that had a wish to live past the same day would walk in there.
Before people talk about the Enola Gay and the 1 mega tonne bombs dropped and the residual background radiation of those nukes almost being non-existent. A modern nuke plant is around 14 kilotonnes of power in a controlled environment held back by roughly twenty measures to keep the shit together from killing everything in a 1000 km radius. But it's a brokered peace. The assumption is there is back up power sources to compensation, with three plants down, it means brown outs.
Brown outs mean a lack of power to back up the containment efforts and maintain cooling. Those US ships that arrive will become floating graveyards of around 20k people if they time it wrong. Because exothermic chain reactions and how systems break down quickly.
The models I ran as a baby engineer say this isn't going to end well. The basic information that is known now that the control rooms are unreachable at the RAD levels last recorded a couple of hours ago mean there is some big problems coming this weekend.
I'm off to get really drunk...
Please go get drunk because you have no ducking clue about nukes and nuclear reactors.
The Hiroshima bomb was 13-18 kilotons of TNT equivalent. A one-megaton bomb is 1 million tons of TNT equivalent. Let's hope we never see a 1 megaton bomb being used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy
I will get a high end bottle of sake on saturday, if only to salute the heros.
Wasn't the Hiroshima bomb 50 kiloton? The megaton stuff required fusion, I thought.
I used to go to Hiroshima for business. It seemed pretty habitable, except for the humidity in the summer.
1 megatonne bomb is the equivalent of around 50 kiltons of TnT.
1000 mega tonne = 1 kilotonne blast = 50000 kilotons of TnT.
Hiroshima imported in most of Oregon, California and Washington state to have soil that didn't glow. The amount of soil it required to make sure grass could grow in the area required most of the after war efforts of the US to apologise for a political fuck up. Took twenty years, as baby engineers you are required to learn the history of nuclear power and uses to understand what you might play with someday. After second year and calculating feasible death projections and using my statistics classes to determine morbidity I gave up and switched to systems engineering.
Building stuff is a lot more fun than destroying stuff.
Both Nagasaki and Hiroshima have the highest cancer rates anywhere in the world next to the US cancer alley which is anywhere close to the Mississippi river and delta. Now Florida is going for the Cancer capital of the world.
Basic mechanics of the original bomb that turned people into their shadows*.
kind of neat acutally, energy pushes the people into their shadow and the people become the shadow stain, even leaves heavy genetic trace. Makes you wonder if there are people sitting in that shadow screaming, living in the rock, reliving the moment forever.
Not sure if anyone can find it, but all engineering students I was with in the 80's were required to watch a movie called the "Seven handmaidens of Hiroshima".
It is a detailed documentary on the effects of nuclear radiation on humans on a nuclear strike site. It's around three hours long, comes on three reels and is specifically for doctors, medical personelle and engineering staff to understand the effects. The direct effects are probably the most interesting. Only seen it once and haven't forgotten any of it in 23 years. Watership down and the Plague dogs are disney material in comparison.
Testament was the creepiest nuke movie I ever saw
start at minute three
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xennkC6_og4
I still think there's 1000 kilos in a Mega
Duo, 1 tonne = 1,000 kilograms = 2,200 pounds = 1 long ton or 1.1 tons.
CPL needs to re-work his answer...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield
Started in the rye earlier...typing with a finger and eye and a very fuzzy first year a long time a go.
Im off by millions btw...I do ned to rework the answer.
God is angry.
"God is angry"
Sorry, dont believe in angry
Which translates into "Murphy's having his way."
Do you believe in Murphy?
If not, are you an amurphist or an agnostic?
From the horrible news to the stupid: NY Fed head Dudley compares iPad 2 with grocery shopping. F'in moron. And these bozos are in charge of stuff?
http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/iPad-price-remark-gets-Fed-rsg-41513022...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Memo to central bankers:
Best not to cite the price of the new iPad as an example of why inflation isn't a problem when you head into a working-class neighborhood.
In Queens, New York, on Friday, New York Fed President William Dudley did just that. He got an earful.
After being bombarded with questions about food inflation, Dudley attempted to reassure his audience by putting rising commodity prices into a broader economic context -- but that only made matters worse.
"When was the last time, sir, that you went grocery shopping?" one audience member asked.
Dudley tried to explain how the Fed sees things: Yes, food and energy prices may be rising, but at the same time, other prices are declining.
He then stretched for a real world example. The only problem was he chose the Apple's latest tablet computer that hit stores on Friday, which may be more popular at the New York Fed's headquarters near Wall Street than it is on the gritty streets of Queens.
"Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful," he said."You have to look at the prices of all things."
This prompted guffaws and widespread murmuring from the audience, with one audience member calling the comment "tone deaf."
"I can't eat an iPad," another said.
Queens is a borough of New York perhaps best known internationally for being home to New York City's two airports, the Mets baseball team and its portrayal in the television program "The King of Queens" -- whose main character delivers packages for a living.
Misjudging your audience is hardly unusual for those in positions of power. In 2007, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama asked an Iowa crowd if they had seen what Whole Foods -- an upscale supermarket more popular in big cities than in the Corn Belt -- charges for arugula.
(Reporting by Kristina Cooke; Editing by Jan Paschal)
angry... duhhh
the last innovation to come out of Japan was the walkman
(for those who don't know what a walkman is see this link:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/SONY_WM-D6C.jpg
Wow, a walkman with Dolby C? That was rare back in the day. I had an Aiwa walkman with Dolby C and the sound quality was the closest thing to a Discman back then. :)
I had the original Sony walkman. Also the original Rio. Skipped 8 track and CDs.
The reactor in Japan blew 45 minutes ago.
Oil will be over $200/barrel come Monday morning if they don't stop the Federal Reserve Corporation margin funny money by then.
Some cassettes sound better than some cd's - I still keep a sony am/fm walkman in the garage and I use it when I get bored with the mp3/streaming audio stuff. Nothing like putting in a tape from KROQ-fm and checkin out what early 80's radio was all about. Devolution is real and occuring in real time.
No he's right...I'm biblically pissed off!