[Qualarrizab]

Japan tsunami damage follows 8.8 earthquake

March 11, 2011 - 5:35PM

The Sydney Morning Harold


The location of the earthquake.

Japanese television has shown major tsunami damage in northern Japan, following an earthquake that has been upgraded to 8.8.
Public broadcaster NHK showed cars, trucks, houses and buildings being swept away by the tsunami in Onahama city in Fukushima prefecture.
Scores of cars were seen floating in Iwate prefecture harbour, local TV said.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Click for more photos Earthquake strikes Japan

A screen grab of images taken from Japanese television showing a tsunami swamping a city in northern Japan.

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Japan earlier issued its top tsunami warning in response to the major offshore earthquake, which strongly swayed buildings 400 kilometres away in Tokyo and sent people fleeing onto the streets.
The meteorological agency issued its top-level evacuation alerts for the entire Japanese coast, Russia and the Mariana Islands, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said.
The quake was initially measured as a magnitude 7.9 but was upgraded.
It warned of a tsunami of up to six metres. Smaller tsunamis of up to 50cm reached some coastal communities, the agency said.
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The quake struck about 382km northeast of Tokyo, offshore, the US Geological Survey reported.
Smoke could be seen rising from a building in Tokyo port.
Shinkansen bullet trains stopped when the quake struck, while Tokyo port has shut all 19 of its water gates as it prepares for the tsunami.
Japan’s Coast Guard is halting ships on their way to entering Tokyo’s port,said Takashi Mifune, spokesman for the Bureau of Port and Harbor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
Japan’s meteorological agency said the quake struck at 2.46pm (4.46pm AEDST) local time at a depth of 10km, 125km off the eastern coast.
Footage on national broadcaster NHK from their Sendai office showed employees stumbling around and books and papers crashing from desks.
Police and coast guard officials said they were assessing possible damage from the quake.
The yen tumbled against the dollar after the quake, falling to 83.30 against the dollar from 82.81 before the quake struck.
Several quakes had hit the same region in recent days, including a 7.3 magnitude one on Wednesday.
The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre said there was no tsunami threat to Australia.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/ja...ml?from=smh_sb

[Agitoligflise]

Tsunami follows quake in northern Japan The Associated Press

Posted: Mar 11, 2011 1:27 AM ET

Last Updated: Mar 11, 2011 1:57 AM ET


Japan was struck by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake off its northeastern coast Friday, triggering a four metre tsunami that washed away cars and tore away buildings along the coast near the epicentre.

In various locations along Japan's coast, TV footage showed severe flooding, with dozens of cars, boats and even buildings being carried along by waters. A large ship swept away by the tsunami rammed directly into a breakwater in Kesennuma city in Miyagi prefecture, according to footage on public broadcaster NHK.
Officials were trying to assess possible damage from the quake but had no immediate details.
The quake that struck at 2:46 p.m. local time was followed by a series of aftershocks, including a 7.4-magnitude one about 30 minutes later. The U.S. Geological Survey upgraded the strength of the first quake to a magnitude 8.8.
read the rest:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2...e-tsunami.html

[Aztegjpl]

upgraded:


Magnitude 8.9 - NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

2011 March 11 05:46:23 UTC

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquak...11/usc0001xgp/

[lkastonidwedsrer]

10X more powerful than the San Francisco EQ of 1906.... (estimate)

Scary stuff.

[BruceCroucshs]

^^^ Too much !...
No comments !!!
What a tragedy to everyone in Pacific Zone !

[q9h9pPne]

They're lucky it was situated offshore.

[Frdsdx26]

^
Yes and no. If the earthquake was under land, chances are there would have been more direct earthquake damage. However, there would not have been a tsunami, which seems to have cause a lot of damage on its own (and over a larger area).

[benderkoz]

The tsunami will turn out to have killed many more unsuspecting folks near the coast (and caused far more long lasting damage) than the quake itself.

Watching it all live last night on the TV was horrifying. The mass of water + debris overtaking roadways & cars & houses was jaw dropping.

Being on the ground and seeing something like that coming at you -- unimaginable what that must be like.

[Stasher11]

I'm hoping they can get that nuclear reactor under control. Everything else can be rebuilt, but if that thing melts down... ugh.

[BriKevin]

March 11, a date cursed for our civilization...
7 years ago about 200 people were killed in the terrorist attack in Madrid (Atocha Railway Station), it was another bloody March 11 !...

[bypeTeenehalT]

Video: Dramatic footage of quake & tsunami damage



During a presidential press conference re: Libya & our dependence on foreign oil, it was reported that we were on our way to Japan with coolant for the nuclear reactor. Very frightening.

[Info-phone]

3 nuclear reactors in trouble after Japan quake
Cooling systems fail; radiation seeps outside one; thousands evacuated


Kyodo via Reuters
The Fukushima nuclear plant, the site of a coolant failure after Friday's quake, is pictured in a 2008 file


NBC, msnbc.com and news services
updated 1 hour 19 minutes ago 2011-03-11T23:28:27

TOKYO — 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.
Fukushima Daini station is the second nuclear power plant the company has in Fukushima prefecture in northeastern Japan, where the troubled Fukushima Daiichi plant is located.
Tepco said at about 2:46 p.m. local time three of its six reactors shut following the earthquake. All are boiling water reactors.
Tepco said the reactors shut due to the loss of offsite power due to the malfunction of one of two off-site power systems. That triggered emergency diesel generators to startup and provide backup power for plant systems.
About an hour after the plant shut down, however, the emergency diesel generators stopped, leaving the units with no power for important cooling functions.
Nuclear plants need power to operate motors, valves and instruments that control the systems that provide cooling water to the radioactive core.
Earlier, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said, "Residents are safe after those within a 3-kilometer (1.8-mile) radius were evacuated and those within a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) radius are staying indoors, so we want people to be calm."
The country's nuclear safety agency said pressure inside one of six boiling water reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant near Onahama, some 170 miles northeast of Tokyo, had risen to 1.5 times the level considered normal.


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.
Edano said the amount of radioactive element in the vapor would be "very small" and would not affect the environment or human health. "With evacuation in place and the ocean-bound wind, we can ensure the safety," he said at a televised news conference.

U.S. President Barack Obama said he spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan earlier Friday, and that the Japanese leader told him there were no radiation leaks from Japan's nuclear power plants.
"Right now our Department of Energy folks are in direct contact with their counterparts in Japan and are closely monitoring the situation," a senior administration official who handles nuclear issues told NBC News. "So far the government of Japan has not asked for any specific assistance with regard to the nuclear plant, but DOE and other U.S. government agencies are assessing the role they could play in any response and stand by to assist if asked."
Japan has a "tremendous amount of technical capability and resources" to respond to the issue themselves for now, sources told NBC News.
Meanwhile, new power supply cars to provide emergency electricity for systems that failed at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant have arrived there, the World Nuclear Association said.
"The World Nuclear Association understands that three to four power supply cars have arrived and that additional power modules are being prepared for connection to provide power for the energy cooling system," said Jeremy Gordon, analyst at the London-based WNA.
The cables were being set up to supply emergency power. Other power modules were in transit by air, WNA added on its website.

'Stages away from Three Mile Island'
The cooling problems at the Japanese plant raised fears of a repeat of 1979's Three Mile Island accident, the most serious in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry. Experts, however, said the situation was, so far, less serious.
Equipment malfunctions, design problems and human error led to a partial meltdown of the reactor core at the Three Mile Island plant, but only minute amounts of dangerous radioactive gases were released.
"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.
Toshiaki Sakai, director of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum International Cooperation Center, said nuclear power companies around the globe have since implemented over 53 safety improvements to avert a repeat.
The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that around 20 percent of nuclear reactors around the world are currently operating in areas of significant seismic activity.

msnbc.com

The IAEA said the sector began putting more emphasis on external hazards after an earthquake hit TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in July 2007, until then the largest to ever affect a nuclear facility.
When the earthquake hit the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, four reactors shut down automatically. Water containing radioactive material was released into the sea, but without an adverse effect on human health or the environment, it said.

[LarryG1978]

Japan quake, tsunami take dire toll on economy

(AP) – 5 hours ago

TOKYO (AP) — The Bank of Japan stood ready to prop up the financial system amid fears the Tokyo stock market will nosedive when trading opens Monday following the disasters that killed thousands and devastated the country's northeast.

Preliminary estimates put repair costs from the earthquake and tsunami in the tens of billions of dollars — a huge blow for an economy that lost its place as the world's No. 2 to China last year, and was already in a fragile state.

Japan' economy has been ailing for 20 years, barely managing to eke out weak growth between slowdowns, saddled by a massive public debt that, at 200 percent of gross domestic product, is the biggest among industrialized nations.

"In the short term, the market will almost surely suffer and stocks will plunge. People might see an already weakened Japan, overshadowed by a growing China, getting dealt the finishing blow from this quake," said Koetsu Aizawa, economics professor at Saitama University.

The nation's big-three automakers, meanwhile, said they would halt all production in Japan due to widespread damage to both suppliers and transport networks in the region.

The Bank of Japan pledged to pump more money into financial markets when it holds a policy board meeting Monday. There is not much left for the central bank to do regarding interest rates, which are already close to zero.

Tens of billions of dollars are expected to be needed to rebuild homes, roads and other infrastructure — requiring public spending that will add to the national debt.

"The impact on Japan's economy will be devastating," said Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank. "The long-term economic blow to a country already struggling to lower its budget deficit ... will be significant."

Noting the 1995 earthquake in Kobe cost $132 billion and was the world's most expensive natural disaster, she said it was too early to say whether the losses from Friday's disaster would be on that massive a scale.

Four nuclear plants were damaged in the temblors, causing widespread power outages. In a frantic effort to prevent meltdowns, nuclear plant operators ruined at least two reactors by pumping sea water into them.

In an unprecedented move for tech-savvy Japan in recent decades, Tokyo Electric Power Co. rolled out blackouts of three hours per day to parts of suburban Tokyo and other cities, starting Monday.

And Tokyo trains, which usually run like clockwork but stopped for nearly the entire day after the quake, will be on a reduced schedule starting Monday, to conserve electricity.

"It looks like we are going to be running on reduced electricity for a long time. That is a definite risk to industrial production," said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at New York-based researcher High Frequency Economics.

"For Japan, a nation that lives by the sea, food comes in by the sea, energy comes in by the sea, exports go out by the sea. Everything stops if a quarter of the coastline has been wiped out," said Weinberg who teaches at New York University.

Profits at both Tokyo Electric and Tohoku Power utility are likely to plummet because of recovery costs for the nuclear power plants damaged by the quake, according to Shigeki Matsumoto, analyst at Nomura Securities Co.

Toyota Motor Corp., the world's top automaker, as well as Nissan Motor Co. and Honda suspended production at all their auto plants in Japan, starting Monday.

When production will resume is uncertain. The area hit by the quake is a major center for car production, complete with a myriad of parts suppliers and a network of roads and ports for efficient shipments.

"There is no way to get our products out, even if we make them, with the roads and distribution system damaged," said Honda Motor Co. spokeswoman Natsuno Asanuma.

Honda said the production halt will cost it about 4,000 vehicles a day.

Nissan said the tsunami damaged 1,300 vehicles bound for the U.S., including its Infiniti luxury brand, at Hitachi port in Ibaraki state in the northeast, and 1,000 vehicles stored at another center.

Among the plants being shut down is one Toyota had just opened in Miyagi prefecture, within the region hardest hit by the quake.

The factory, Toyota's first new Japan plant in 18 years, had been proudly shown to reporters last month as a welcome development in an otherwise stagnant Japanese auto market. It was set to start producing the Corolla for both the Japanese and North American markets in April.

Electronics plants in the northeast were also temporarily closed, including those owned by Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp.

But Aizawa, the economics professor, warned against too much pessimism.

A giant disaster can get Japan to pull together and even provide opportunities for construction and jobs as the recovery gets under way, he said.

"There can be a blessing even in misfortune," he said. "Recovery is about regaining a livelihood for people. No one is going to blame Japan or lower its debt ratings for working on a recovery. This is about lives."

Ship out of water

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press

[Roferurse]

New explosion at Fukushima nuclear plant

[Skete]

Wind to blow south at quake-hit plant, unlikely to reach

TOKYO | Mon Mar 14, 2011 4:41am EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) - The wind over a quake-damaged nuclear complex in northeast Japan, where low levels of radiation have been released, will blow south later on Monday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said, but is not expected to affect Tokyo.
It will blow in the general direction of the capital, but will be slow and the direction typically changes at slow speeds.
The Fukushima Daiichi plant, run by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), is about 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo on the country's northeast coast.
Engineers were battling to avert a meltdown at three stricken reactors in the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, triggered by Friday's quake and tsunami.
Low-level radiation has been detected outside the plant but at very low levels. These levels would need to rise something like a thousand times before real fears of contamination are justified, experts say.
A 20-km (12-mile) evacuation zone has been set up around the plant.
An explosion at a reactor at the plant on Monday is unlikely to have led to a large escape of radioactivity, the government said.
Japan's nuclear safety agency, quoting a report from the facility's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, said radiation near the No. 3 reactor about 40 minutes after the explosion was about one-50th of that considered critical to human health.
(Reporting by Junko Fujita; Editing by Nick Macfie and Sanjeev Miglani)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...72D25U20110314

[KeettyGlots]

It is horrible to think that one act like this would be, no matter how catestrophic, enough to push the entire nation over the brink into financial chaos.....


I really hope this is not the case. Japan worked so hard to rebuild itself after WWII, to be delt this blow and have it scare away enough investment to leave them high and (no pun) dry on their financial landscape is sad and scary.


How many others will suffer from this that were nowhere NEAR the quake?

[spineeupsenry]

Rebuilding can actually stimulate an economy, but it may take years to bear fruit.

[ChyFDjfed]

What the Media Doesn't Get About Meltdowns
By Cristine Russell

The nuclear power emergency in northeast Japan grows more treacherous and uncertain, as plant operators struggle to contain escalating dangers at several nuclear reactors in hopes of preventing a disastrous release of radioactivity into the environment.

The unfolding crisis in Japan continues to draw comparisons with the world's previous nuclear power accidents. The big question is the degree to which Japan's current nuclear power emergency resembles the more contained 1979 U.S. Three Mile Island accident, or the worst in history, the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe in the Ukraine.

"I covered Chernobyl and I covered Three Mile Island," NBC's chief science and health correspondent Robert Bazell said today. "So far it's not anything like Chernobyl. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it will continue to stay that way." A jet-lagged Bazell, who had just arrived in Tokyo, stressed, "the situation here is still not under control." He emphasized that "it is a race against time" to prevent a serious breach of the containment structures housing the nuclear fuel cores in at least two reactors at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, as well as potential dangers at several other plants in the region.

Indeed it is also a race to find reliable, real-time public information about the rapidly changing Japan nuclear power emergency, amidst a sea of confusing, conflicting and often limited information emanating from sources across the world. Dealing with the aftermath of the monstrous earthquake and tsunami, as well as the nuclear crisis, has clearly stretched Japanese government and company officials to the breaking point, and their communication has frequently failed to keep up with the story. At the same time, the media covering the Japan's nuclear power situation, on the ground and around the globe, face a challenging array of often-unconfirmed information and speculation.

Of immediate concern is the prospect of a so-called "meltdown" at one or more of the Japanese reactors. But part of the problem in understanding the potential dangers is continued indiscriminate use, by experts and the media, of this inherently frightening term without explanation or perspective. There are varying degrees of melting or meltdown of the nuclear fuel rods in a given reactor; but there are also multiple safety systems, or containment barriers, in a given plant's design that are intended to keep radioactive materials from escaping into the general environment in the event of a partial or complete meltdown of the reactor core. Finally, there are the steps taken by a plant's operators to try to bring the nuclear emergency under control before these containment barriers are breached.

In the Three Mile Island accident, a partial core meltdown occurred in one reactor unit but remained largely within the plant's containment barriers and little radiation was released to the environment. The Chernobyl catastrophe, however, resulted in a massive environmental release of radiation following a core meltdown. An important distinction is that the Chernobyl plant lacked crucial containment structures found at the Three Mile Island and Japanese plants.

According to the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, which rates the severity of nuclear power plant incidents on a scale from zero to 7, Chernobyl was rated a 7, the highest level of severity and the only such accident. Three Mile Island was ranked a 5, "an accident with wider consequences." Thus far, the Japanese nuclear emergency at Fukushima Daiichi has been rated a 4, an "accident with local consequences," but this is of course a preliminary estimate.

On CNN's Reliable Sources show Sunday, host Howard Kurtz raised questions about the difficult balance between legitimate concern and fear mongering in the around-the-clock coverage of an evolving emergency. Radio host Callie Crossley criticized the repeated media warnings of possible nuclear meltdown: "Nobody told me what it meant....I thought that was extremely irresponsible." Guest Mike Chinoy, a former CNN Asia correspondent, countered that the media "don't have the luxury of putting something together....This is a scary story."

A key challenge is deciding what sources are the most credible in terms of new information about what is actually happening at Japan's nuclear plants and deciphering how serious the situation really is or might become. It almost requires a checklist to follow where the information is coming from; which nuclear plants are in danger; and who is at greatest risk (which will undoubtedly continue to change in hours and days ahead).

-- Some key sources. In Japan, the primary source of information about the damaged nuclear power plants comes from Japanese government officials, with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano providing regular news briefings; there is also the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency; and local officials, who provide additional, and sometimes, conflicting information. The main utility company operating the damaged nuclear plants is Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). Some of the most reliable information is coming from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to which Japanese authorities must report. Reports involving unnamed "officials," which CNN and others used frequently this weekend, should be handled with caution.

--Breaking news from Japan. Other key sources of real-time information include live USTREAM coverage from Japan on NHK WORLD TV, an English language 24-hour international news and information channel; NHK also has breaking news in English; as does Kyodo News agency. There are numerous threads on Twitter, including #fukushima, #nuclear, #earthquake, and #Japan.

-- The nuclear plants at risk. There are 55 operating nuclear power stations in Japan (see map). Each plant may have multiple reactor units. At this point, the largest concerns involve reactors 1 and 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station (see New York Times graphic). Cooling problems have also been reported at the nearby Fukushima Daini nuclear power station. Preliminary radiation increases were also reported to IAEA from the Onagawa nuclear plant, and news reports have mentioned a fourth possible plant at risk.

-- For a clear backgrounder on how a nuclear power plant works, see the excellent BoingBoing "Nuclear Energy 101" piece by Maggie Koerth-Baker. She said she wrote it in response to a reader who said: "The extent of my knowledge on nuclear power plants is pretty much limited to what I've seen on The Simpsons."

Cristine Russell covered the Three Mile Island accident as a reporter for the Washington Star.

Copyright © 2011 by The Atlantic Monthly Group

[VXHLrsO1]

Before & after satellite photos of stricken areas. Toggle over 'before' image to see 'after' image, no clicking.


http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/ja...eforeafter.htm

[LsrSRVxR]

Japan earthquake size upgrade to 9.0

Ugh. Japan’s earthquake was ever worse than thought. When the earthquake first occured last Thursday (my time), it was reported on Twitter to be a size 7.9 earthquake near the east coast of Honshu, Japan. The local time in Japan was Mar 11 at 2:46pm and the epicenter was 179km E of Sendai. Then the size was upgraded to 8.8 about a half an hour later. About another half an hour later it was upgraded again to 8.9 on the Richter magnitude scale. Today, the magnitude of the quake was upgraded again, to a staggering 9.0. There are reports that anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 might be dead by the time the final tally counted. Horrible!



http://www.fireandreamitchell.com/20...pgrade-to-9-0/