8.9 quake hits Japan

[res0nat0r]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

News Brief, 3/18/11, 10 AM EDT

Spraying of spent fuel pools at Units 3 and 4 is still underway. Visual inspection of Unit 4’s pool showed water in the pool, and so efforts have been temporarily focused upon Unit 3. While efforts at using helicopters to dump water onto the pools had been largely unsuccessful , army firetrucks used in putting out aircraft fires have been employed with some success. The elite Tokyo Hyper Rescue component of the Tokyo fire department has arrived on scene and is conducting missions of roughly two hours in length, during which they spray the pools for 7-8 minutes, wait for steam to dissipate, and spray again.

A cable has been laid from a TEPCO power line 1.5 km from the facility, which will be used to supply power to emergency cooling systems of the reactors at Units 1 and 2.

Backup diesel generators have been connected to cool the spent fuel pools at Units 5 and 6. As of 4 PM JST, temperatures in those pools have reached 65.5 and and 62 degrees Celsius.

Visual inspections have been conducted of both the central spent fuel pool, which contains 60% of the facility’s fuel, and the dry cask storage area. Water levels at the central pool have been described as “secured”, and the dry casks show “no signs of an abnormal situation”. More detailed checks of these areas are planned for the future.

A Japanese government agency has released the results of radiation measurements at dozens of monitoring posts. See the data here: http://www.mext.go.jp/component/a_me...03727_1716.pdf.

These measurements give doses in excess of background radiation, which is why some may appear low. High measurements at reading point 32 are thought to be the result of a controlled containment venting and a simultaneous fire which carried radioactive particles inland. Over the course of the incident, the general trend has been for weather patterns to sweep radioactive particles out to sea.

As a result of these radiation measurements and the ongoing work, the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency upgraded the event to a 5 on the INES scale. This is the same level as the Three Mile Island accident, and two steps below Chernobyl.

Resources: ANS Nuclear Café’; World Nuclear News,; IAEA; Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).
Note: We earlier reported the temperature of spent fuel pool 6 as 84 degrees C. This was a typographical error. We apologize for the mistake.

http://mitnse.com

[Jenks]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

UPDATE: CNN and the UK Telegraph have both reported that the dogs have been rescued since the footage aired, and are both receiving veterinary care; the more seriously wounded dog is at a clinic in the city of Mito, while the protective spaniel-type dog is receiving care at a shelter in the same town.

[Corven]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

Following video is used to explain the situation in Fukushima to the kids in japan ... it probably does a better job than most of the reports that had been carried by foreign press media

[DIDI]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

Just saw the bit about the dogs being rescued . Much better!!

[DIDI]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

because you have been dehumanized Didi. It is a part of the brainwashing that humans are expendable. I'm not saying it as a negative to you directly but most share your feeling because we have been raised that way.

We have grown up to expect humans dying horrible deaths because we hear it all the time on the news. But we don't expect dogs or lovable animals to die horrible deaths.



I find this Fukushima 50 story quite annoying because it took thousands of people to slow down Chernobyl.

Could you be more wrong !! ??? You may be like that , I assure you most of the people I know aren't !! Obviously a lot of the people here are not "dehumanised" either!! Actually I thought about it after I wrote that , I see animals , particularity dogs, as being dependent on humans to look after them and so often we let them down We put them in the most awful places

[i!!ustrious]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

you're all so very informed. hoyl shit!

[Garrick]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

it's great to hear the dogs were rescued. would have been nicer to hear that they were still together getting care at the same place, although at least they were saved.

[Kamal]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

http://www.autoblog.com/2011/03/18/video-watch-as-japanese-motorists-car-is-engulfed-by-the-tsunami/#continued

[Corven]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

Hours after the first shock waves hit, two of the largest crime groups went into action, opening their offices to those stranded in Tokyo, and shipping food, water, and blankets to the devastated areas in two-ton trucks and whatever vehicles they could get moving.
The day after the earthquake the Inagawa-kai (the third largest organized crime group in Japan which was founded in 194 sent twenty-five four-ton trucks filled with paper diapers, instant ramen, batteries, flashlights, drinks, and the essentials of daily life to the Tohoku region.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/japan...#ixzz1HFVhRped

[DIDI]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

^^^ That is truly amazing. Here they just got organised to loot !!

[runningman]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

radiation levels outside the plant are 1600x normal levels 12 miles away from the plant

http://www.wfrv.com/news/local/United-Nations-radition-is-1600-times-higher-than-normal-at-power-plant-118448424.html

Buckle up world this isn't even close to over

[DancingQueen]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

Apparently there is now radiation in their tap water and they are advising not to give to babies/small children.
I really hope they find a way to stabilize and repair the damaged nuclear stations soon

[runningman]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

Apparently there is now radiation in their tap water and they are advising not to give to babies/small children.
I really hope they find a way to stabilize and repair the damaged nuclear stations soon

this was one of my biggest fears. This probably means that the radiation is melting through the earth and melting down into the aquifers. Leukemia rates and many cancer rates are going to skyrocket over the next couple years in Japan.

http://winnipeg.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110323/japan-fukushima-radiation-contamination-concerns-110323/20110323/?hub=WinnipegHome

You know they are lying about the numbers they are telling just enough truth to not hang. They say the safe levels for adults is 300 and conveniently the levels are 210. Babies and toddlers can only have the level at 100 becquerels/liter

They need to bury this God Damn thing before it is too late for Tokyo

[feather]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Man dives into tsunami to save his wife AND mother.

For most of us regular folks, this is the sort of shit that would make us throw up our hands, swear loudly, and resign ourselves to a lifetime of hopeless misery.
But Hideaki Akaiwa isn't a regular guy. He's a fucking insane badass, and he wasn't going to sit back and just let his wife die alone, freezing to death in a miserable water-filled tomb. He was going after her. No matter what.



How the fuck Hideaki Akaiwa got a hold of a wetsuit and a set of SCUBA gear is one of the great mysteries of the world. I'm roughly twenty hours into Fallout 3 and I'm lucky to come across a fucking vacuum cleaner in that godforsaken post-apocalyptic wasteland, yet this guy is in the middle of a real-life earth-shaking mecha-disaster and he's coming up with oxygen tanks, waterproof suits, and rebreather systems seemingly out of thin air. I guess when you're a truly unstoppable badass, you, by definition, don't let anything stand in your way. You make shit happen, all the time, no matter what.



Regardless of how he came across this equipment (borrowing, stealing, buying, beating up a Yakuza SCUBA diving demolitions expert, etc.) Hideaki threw on his underwater survival gear, rushed into the goddamned tsunami, and dove beneath the rushing waves, determined to rescue his wife or die trying. I'm not exactly sure whether or not the dude even knew how to operate SCUBA equipment, but according to one version of his story he met his wife while he was surfing (which is awesome, by the way), so it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch to say that he already had a little experience SCUBA diving under a more controlled situation. Of course, even if this dude didn't know how to work the gear I'm certain that wouldn't have stopped him either – Hideaki wasn't going to let a pair of soul-crushing natural disasters deter him from doing awesome shit and saving his family. He dove down into the water, completely submerged in the freezing cold, pitch black rushing current on all sides, and started swimming through the underwater ruins of his former hometown.



Surrounded by incredible hazards on all sides, ranging from obscene currents capable of dislodging houses from their moorings, sharp twisted metal that could easily have punctured his oxygen line (at best) or impaled him (at worst), and with giant fucking cars careening through the water like toys, he pressed on. Past broken glass, past destroyed houses, past downed power lines arcing with electrical current, through undertow that could have dragged him out to sea never to be heard from again, he searched.



Hideaki maintained his composure and navigated his way through the submerged city, finally tracking down his old house. He quickly swam through to find his totally-freaked-out wife, alone and stranded on the upper level of their house, barely keeping her head above water. He grabbed her tight, and presumably sharing his rebreather with her, dragged her out of the wreckage to safety. She survived.



But Hideaki Akaiwa still wasn't done yet.



Now, I'm sure you're wondering what the fuck is more intense than commandeering a wet suit, face-punching a tsunami and dragging your wife of two decades out of the flooded wreckage of your home, but, no shit, it gets even better. You see, Hideaki's mother also lived in Ishinomaki, and she was still unaccounted for. I think you all know where this is going.



First, Hideaki searched around the evacuation shelters and other areas, looking for his mom among the ragtag groups of survivors who had been lucky enough to flee to higher ground. She might have escaped, and he needed to find her. Now. He ran through the city like some post-apocalyptic action hero, desperately trying to track her down, but when a couple of days went by without any sign of her, he knew what he had to do. The water had only receded a few inches by this point, the rescue teams weren't working quickly enough for his tastes, and Hideaki Akaiwa fucking once again took matters into his own hands – rushing back into the waterlogged city looking for his mom.



So, once again Hideaki navigated his way through the Atlantean city, picking his way through crumbling wreckage, splintered wood, and shredded metal to find his elderly mother. After another grueling trek, he tracked her down on the upper levels of a house – she'd been stranded there for four days, and would almost certainly have died without the timely aid of her son. He brought her to safety somehow as well, as you might expect at this point

http://badassoftheweek.com/akaiwa.html

Most people when faced with a disaster of the epic magnitude of the Japanese earthquake and resulting tsunami waves last week, will immediately run for the hills. You know, high land…away from rushing turbulent and riddled with dangerous rubble waters.


Not Hideaki Akaiwa though.


No. This guy realizes that he cannot find his wife, who he met two decades ago surfing a local bay. He freaks out, as any hysterical and desperate spouse would do at the thought that the love of their life was drowning in ten feet of oceanic water less than 24 hours after their world was actually rocked by an 8.9 earthquake that lasted for almost two minutes.


Many people would, at this point, collapse into a sobbing mass, knowing they had lost someone forever. Again, not Hideaki Akaiwa.
Akaiwa instead managed to procure at least a wetsuit (some reports indicate he also used scuba gear, though where he managed to get scuba gear in the middle of a national disaster should probably be included with the Pyramids and Hanging Gardens as a wonder of the world) and began swimming through his city of Ishinomaki, Japan looking for her.


Not being in Japan currently, nor ever experiencing the terror that is a tsunami, I can only trust the stories of what tsunami waves and resulting flooding are like. Frigidly cold water, undercurrents and riptides that threaten at any moment to catch you up and sweep you out to sea, and large objects like cars and houses rushing along at double-digit-mile-per-hour speeds.


Oh, and there’s also all the broken wreckage of society destroyed by the water laying like little landmines under each lapping waves.
Akaiwa managed to find his way to his house, which was now submerged under almost 10 feet of water. Inside, he found his wife gasping for the last remaining remnants of air available in an upper level of the house. Together, they made their way back through the dangerous death-trap water to safety.


AND THEN HE WENT BACK FOR HIS MOTHER.

http://blogs.forbes.com/elisadoucett...and-neighbors/



Someone make an action figure out of this guy.

[Garrick]

Re: 8.9 quake hits Japan

^ that is almost folklore shit! truly truly awesome. loved the dude's writing too. kept it really amusing and intriguing. nice share.