Japanese Quake and tsunami

"...on a boat already and a warning came out about an imminent tsunami, would the best strategy be to head for deep water ASAP? How would you go about improving your chances?" - I tried to address this in very human terms for people that aren't much on the sea, thus have occasion to think of this (post 37)... but yes, get out of port.
I guess I should have just said "it's important to get out of port, folks" and left it at that.
Oh, and 'twas not I to make this comment (This is the difference between the highly conservative mindset in Japan and the infectious liberalism in other countries.
This is not to mention a second factor which weighs just as heavily (but generally parallels with conservative ideals) and that includes a VERY strong sense of personal responsibility, pride and humility... the latter being mostly absent in western culture even among the more conservative.) in response to this article: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100079703/why-is-there-no-looting-in-japan/#dsq-content

 

Looting is not a feature of this disaster as it has been elsewhere, the wealth gap between rich and poor in Japan being not as great as most countries probably helps.

 

I might have missed something but in what phase (from G to W?) should the roof fly of etc. Not trying to be a smart a** , but anyway...

 

I believe it is not so much about the wealth gap, but about a deep sense of respect and responsability the Japanese have inside by tradition and by education. Something our greedy and egocentric western society has forgotten several generations ago.

The more I am watching the calm dignity and civility the Japanese people are showing in this terrible tragedy, the more I feel a most sincere respect for them.

 

Tom, that is an interesting and informative account. It has a somewhat defensive tone however. Technical errors in the media are inevitable, and news people do not sell advertising space by down-playing the significance of news, but folk in the nuclear power business can equally be guilty of be down-playing the situation.

I want to make it clear that I am pro-nuclear not anti, but I am even more strongly pro-truth. The odds of a serious release of nuclear material is still low, but it is not zero.

Zirconium is similar to Aluminum in some ways despite its much higher melting point but less reactive; both can burn in air in powder form; both form a protective oxide layer. Melt either one and that protection vanishes. Together with Niobium - which is more reactive - it is used for its low neutron cross-section. Most metals with capture oxygen from water, leaving hydrogen, when hot enough. At high temperatures, above about 1800 K, water vapor (steam) begins to dissociate into a mixture of H2, O2, H2O, O, H and OH. Hydrogen was initially manufactured by passing steam over iron filings; this process takes place at much lower temperatures.

However hydrogen heads up once formed so any explosion tends to be above the fuel-contaiing regions. What I continue to worry about is if the very hot fuel capsules contacts water outside the containment and gets launched into the air: when it hits something the weakened container can split. Some already have by that account.

 

What a fcukup

Cannot agree more.

Then just don't use a phosphor watch, it is probably more dangerous than what was emitted. The media likes to blow these things totally out of proprtion, mostly because they don't have a clue what radio activity really is - especially after doing their own 5 min 'research'.


I can only think what a disaster something like this would be in SA.

 

I'm also what I would consider to be pro-nuclear and am at least not anti-oil, only anti-giving-money-to-people-who-hate-me.

I'm incredibly pro-truth though, and pro-enforcement-of-existing-laws. For some reason, this sort of thing (this nuclear event, and the BP spill as examples) inevitably causes the passing of highly restrictive laws and for some reason people seem to think that's all that needs to happen. Well that probably wasn't what caused the issue in the first place.

The laws are usually already on the books. In the case of BP and I suspect this nuclear event will turn out to be the same, Somebody High Up threw around a whole lot of cash, and Some Inspector looked the other way, and however many layers of bureaucratic redundancy failed due to unexpectedly high cash flow into their personal overseas account.

IMO the only thing that needs to happen is to ensure that the laws are actually enforced, and maybe a re-examination to make sure that the law is reasonable for the situation. By which I mean that it's even possible to implement all the checks, and that every reasonable precaution is in place. If you didn't get that, then here it is in another way: Figure out who was involved in the payoff on BOTH sides, seize ALL their assets to help pay for the damage they did, and then make sure they spend at least 20 years breaking rocks with a hammer while chained to whoever else was involved. Preferably in some way where they face the real consequences of their greed every day.

There's no reason for a whole industry or a whole country to pay for the dishonesty of a handful of people.

 

Hear, hear.

 

The heroism of the power station workers who have stuck to their job in the face of what must be perilous conditions ( even excluding the radiation, the fires and explosions were bad enough ) is impressive and maybe not getting the recognition it deserves.

 

Sounds good, but that to my mind is largely a by-product of a more inclusive society than ours, here a lot of people feel alienated by over-competitiveness and our winners-and-losers mentality where exclusivity is seen as a virtue, and is a term used frequently in advertising. The ultimate put-down nowadays is to be told you are a "loser", but wherever there's a winner, there has to be many losers. A better balance of competition and co-operation is needed for a more civil society, rather than the pyramid scheme where inevitably most will never be far off the bottom of the pile.

 

The lying corporate psychopaths TEPCO haven't been getting the recognition they deserve, either. That might change soon though.

 

I disagree with the notion that it was bureaucracy that caused the failure, based on the causes named thus far - that it was the compounding failure of the backup cooling. This was "unforseen"....just like the California reactors are meant to withstand a ~7 magnitude quake. When i lived in socal I went through a 7.2 quake. Great. A nuclear gamble in the name of cheep energy.

 

Laws and regulations can only do so much. These power plants would have met and exceeded the relevant codes in existence at the time they were designed and built, in the 1960's and 70's I believe.

They survived the initial quake and seem to have came through the tsunami largely intact, but the ancillary systems for providing power in the event of a loss of power from the grid did not run long enough. It sounds like it wouldn't have taken much more for them to have kept going longer, but nobody forsaw this string of events, or their magnitude.

 

I don't think the bureaucracy causes the failures, I think it exacerbates them.

Looking at the gulf oil spill of BP since it's basically over with and yet fresh in everyone's memory, the bureaucracy didn't cause the well to fail, they simply bypassed a bunch of safety procedures which ensured that once something broke EVERYTHING broke. There were falsified ecological studies, the equipment was not up to the task, the inspections were inadequate, and most importantly the warnings that did show up were IGNORED!

I find it extremely difficult to believe that 4 reactors at the same site failed days apart if everything was working correctly. We already know that the company which owns the reactors has a shady reputation, and every interview of any sort of third party expert reveals how information is being withheld which should not be withheld.

Even if nothing were wrong with the reactor before the earthquake, something is very definitely wrong with how things are handled afterward. If nothing else, they should have started asking for help right away, and asked for evacuations further out. The route they are taking now minimizes the risk and therefore will cause the most possible damage once something goes even more seriously wrong.

 

One thing I've been wondering about - the news reports the initial cooling problems were due to the diesel generators being destroyed by flooding + loss of off site power. But not plumbing pipe damage. How much power is required to move the water through plants like this?