Bob

yeah, doesn't sound good if they have to vent the vapour....impressed that 11 stations have gone back online out of 15 though.

A follow up quake of 6.6 has hit, from a different location.

taffie77

Yep, just seen that on the BBC website. It's central Japan, but no fresh damage reported.

meauxna

China had a big one yesterday (quake) and Bali had a 6.6 yesterday but our people there were checking on us at 2am; they are all ok.

kimilseung

The videos I have seen remind me of my impressions when the twin towers were struck. My emotions are split between empathy for those involved and shock but also awestruck at the power of physics when it impacts in unusual ways.

Bluegrass Lass

This. As I sit watching this, my brain just can't wrap around it the scale of destruction. Same feeling I had back in '04 when the Indonesian tsunami hit.

I think the other thing that should make people think is that Japan has built walls and other infrastructure to minimize damage from tsunamis, and this one was just so huge it made their prevention methods look like matchsticks or something.

cosmicjunkie

One of mother nature's ways of reminding us that we are not at powerful as we like to think we are......

Bob

http://japan.person-finder.appspot.com/

Google people finder app

Noorah101

Wow, that's an awesome link Bob!

I've been looking at some news videos on CNN today here at work. Amazing.

Rene

Bob

what's kind of depressing on the main people finder page is the other disasters that they have a people watch out for, about 6 of them

Scouse Express

4 Bullet Trains and 1 Cruise Ship are "Missing" acording to Transportation Officials via CNN.


Jim.

Michael

The tsunami did hit north of Eureka in Crescent City and down south at Santa Cruz. Both places had significant damage (about $15 million each) to their harbor and boats. Santa Cruz had about 30 boats sink but I don't know how many sank in Crescent City.

CAdreaming

thanks for the update I read this a little while ago! As far as I know Eureka was bypassed

Michael

If Japan didn't already have enough problems, now there was an explosion at the nuclear power plant that appears to have blown the roof off the containment building.

From my understanding, the problem started when they tried to shut the plant down because of the earthquake. Normally when the plant is operating, power to operate the water pumps, plant controls, and the plants other electrical needs are provided by the power generated by the nuclear plant but when they start to shut the plant down, they need power from an external source which will be needed for about 2 days until the plant is completely shut down. Without power, the core can't be cooled down.

Normally the external source is provided by power lines from other power plants but that was disrupted by the earthquake. The backup diesel generators then kicked in to provide the power but the tsunami flooded the generators completely knocking them out of commission with water, mud, and debris.

Then the battery backup kicked in but can only provide limited power (apparently not enough power to run all the water pumps and controls) for a limited period of time. I suspect this design assumed that the battery backup would provide enough power to keep the plant stabilized for several hours and that external power from another power plant or the generators would again become available within that time.

If they only knew that they were going to have problems with both external power as well as the generators, they would not have shut the plant down and would likely not have had any problems. I guess it would have made more sense to put the generators along with the fuel tanks on the roof or inside the containment building with venting through the roof so that a tsunami couldn't flood or destroy them.

robin1234

This makes me think that the event was much more powerful & destructive than the Japanese nuclear power authorities planned for, because they must have built in safety features and redundancies that apparently were not sufficient; I realise that Japan is more invested in nuclear power than almost any other country. Interesting to see what the effect of this unfolding nuclear problem will be on Europe and the US, where it seems the boosters have been talking up a renascence in nuclear power development as a "clean energy" solution for the future.

(To clarify, "the event" in the first sentence refers to the earthquake/tsunami.)

Manc

I call BS on this map..........
Can anyone clarify whether or not this is fake......