Yeah, and this is only a second of such finds with dozens of towns devastated...

While the reactor situation may not end up as terrible as some fear, I think the human cost of the tsunami will turn out to be pretty staggering. Not on the scale of the Indian Ocean tsunami, but since even as of today it seems like we know of over 1000 people dead and over 1000 missing, I could easily imagine the final toll being over 10,000 :nope:

Let's not forget that in the first couple of days of the Indian Ocean tsunami, we were hearing several thousand, then 10-20,000. Noone even imagined the final figure of over 200,000 - but that's what it was...

Even more detailed now
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZYs8vnk1q0

Some amazing footage of the tsunami hitting the US West coast hours later.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/national/watch/24498876/

BBC news update:Plans are in place to use seawater to try and cool the reactor down, which sounds really desperate as seawater could further damage the reactor. Sounds like they have given up any hope of this reactor working again once it has been cooled down.

EDIT:

as some of you know, i'm in japan ATM on a study tour. luckily we left tokyo a week ago, and were safely in kyoto at the time of the earthquake/tsunami. didn't feel a thing and didn't see any devastation (yet?). we've just arrived in osaka, so far it there's not much unusual to see but we still have to visit the quarters closer to the sea...

it's a strange and uneasy feeling to see lots of places in tokyo where i walked only a week ago and have often got on pictures now completely devastated:-?

Damn, man, glad you're OK. A lot of folks here worried 'bout you - thanks for easing some minds! BE SAFE.

i wanted to post here sooner but i couldnt find any free wifi. i'll keep you posted if there's anything special happening.



that map is the exact same one they are constantly showing on the japanese tv. so it seems to be a genuine prediction...

Not even Chernobyl dumped that much out at that strength did it? The cloud I agree with...but I'm not so sure of the strength, 3000 rads...but then again I don't know what 3000 rads is in Rem because a dose of over 1500 Rem is invariably fatal. So, if it's a 1:1 Rad to Rem then that reactor will kill off all the population in that red area...which doesn't sound right.

Hopefully now they've decided that the reactor isn't salvagable they'll be able to try more options to bring the temperature down. Although the debris caused by the hydrogen explosion inside the reactor room is going to impede matters somewhat. It's been stated by both NHK and Kyodo that three people evacuated from a town near the NPP have been affected by radiation, so the stuff is out, it's just in what dosage. They say the reactor container is still intact, but to be honest I would be a little loathe to trust all what they are saying now because there's likely to be a lot they are not saying to avoid panic in both Japan and nations around Japan.

EDIT: Looking over Three Mile Island, I note the creation of a hydrogen bubble in the reactor which was removed by a plasma recombiner and also by venting into the atmosphere. Therefore, it would not be unfeasible to consider that the hydrogen buildup in the reactor room was caused by a venting of hydrogen from a bubble in the reactor. With aftershocks continuing all the time there would have been loose wires around which could have sparked and Boom.

This graphic is very suspect.

For one, it uses the term RAD which has been obsolete for many years. Radiation exposure is measured in grey, REM, or Sievert (for those SI folks)

750 Rad is equal to 7.5 grey which, in nuclear terminology, is a cubic buttload of scintillating radiation. Especially when considering that a gray is a measurement of absorbed radiation.

Trying to calculate the effects on humans is a lot more complicated than a simple equation of "X amount of radiation equals death". There are many factors that affect these calculations. But generally speaking, if someone is hit over their entire body with 5 gray of scintillating radiation, it is very bad news.

Generally speaking 1 Rad = 1 Rem. 200-1000 Rem will kill you after a while or make you very very sick. This graphic is predicting 750 Rads which generally speaking is equal to 750 REM. :nope:

So for the prediction to indicate clouds of 7.5 grey of radiation hitting the US about 7,000 miles away would indicate a source, using the Inverse Square Law, of a mega cubic buttload of radiation (sorry for the use of highly technical terms). Far too much for one, or even several power generating reactors going boom. These are not overly huge reactors.

You are just not going to get 7 grey to drift 7,000 miles unless you have one f-ing huge (technical term) radiation source.


I seriously question the data used to generate this graphic. It has every smell as being a media produced fear-invoking "let's make it seem even worse for the news factor" piece of junk science.

I hope that this is just a case where the news media misused the Aussie data and not that the Aussies actually produced this.

At best, this graphic is misleading, at worst it is fear mongering irresponsible science.

I would like to see the data.

The accuracy of information is not determined by how many times it is repeated.

Or when shown on the news for that matter, sometimes it's just biased nonesense to spread these doom scenarios.

HunterICX

I'd wager that some news idiot has stuck the RAD on it. The actual graphic of radiation distribution and speed looks reasonable to me, after all Chernobyl left a real mess over Europe...however that was a Criticality excursion which I don't think the BWR will have. However if the housing is ruptured through a high pressure bubble or at the very very very very worse a China Syndrome, then the possibility of radiation spreading throughout the local area and, at worse into the local water level cannot be ruled out.

A China Syndrome is a real worse case scenario though, and indeed is just a theory. Most likely the reactor will be brought under control now that sea water is being used to cool it. It's been classed as a level four nuclear incident which isn't that high, Three Mile Island was a five. Sellafield/Windscale, Britains most unreliable and accident prone nuclear installation has had five level fours in its operational period, so while it's bad, it's not terrible.
That is, of course, providing the Japanese government is not doing a Soviet Union on us, and deliberately downplaying the seriousness of the situation to prevent a panic...

Watching videos of the tsunami from helos makes me wonder how many more will have been killed. It looks like an a-bomb hit. I'm stunned at how far inland it went. Seems like if you were in any normal structure within a few miles of the coast, you needed to get in the car and drive inland like hell from the moment the quake stopped or you'd be in very grave danger.

I hope most of the missing are simply incommunicado and not in that macerated mass of debris.

What's the prime donation site for this, red cross?

I believe that graphic originated on 2ch, the Japanese predecessor of 4chan :dead: The fact that it got picked up by the media doesn't say much...


Still no good answers here. The official response so far does plausibly explain most of it, except the presence of cesium and iodine. Those being detected are what bothers me - I can't figure out where they would come from except the reactor core itself. Recall that these comprised most of the Chernobyl fallout....

If they were releasing steam directly from the reactor itself would that contain trace elements of the internal elements of the reactor? I'm just pondering if they released steam and hydrogen from inside the reactor to prevent the buildup of a hydrogen bubble and it was the hydrogen released from the reactor that caused the explosion in the reactor hall.
It's either that or the hydrogen is coming out of the reactor through a breach of containment that is small enough not to leak devastating quantities of radiation but big enough to vent the atmospheric contents of the inside of the reactor?

Lot of grasping at straws here, but we'll find out more as this continues. The fact that there has not been any other major incident at the plant would indicate (to me anyway) that the seawater cooling is having some effect.