Japan Quake Damage Mounts; Reactor Watched

[Guest053011]

Tens of thousands of Self-Defense Forces searched desperately for survivors in earthquake-ravaged northern Japan on Saturday as rescue and relief efforts went into full force, even as concerns rose that a radiation leak may have occurred at a nuclear power facility in the country.


More than 200,000 Japanese were ferried to relief shelters and millions of homes were left without power and water after the country's most powerful quake ever struck on Friday.


Rescue efforts accelerated as police, fire department and defense forces deployed to severely affected areas. Low-flying government rescue helicopters, including Japanese Self Defense Force Blackhawks, hovered low over houses with roof tiles ripped asunder, looking for survivors.



Further up the coast toward Sendai, entire roads and bridges were washed away. A few cars could be seen carefully navigating twisted and sand-strewn roads in an apparent attempt to flee, or survey the damage to their communities. No more than a handful of pedestrians could be seen for hundreds of miles up the coast.



An estimated 3,400 buildings have been partially or completely destroyed. In Sukagawa, a small town located in Fukushima Prefecture, about 200 people stood in line to receive water supplies through the night at an emergency distribution center, and water was rationed to a maximum of 10 liters per household. A team of rescue workers from Singapore arrived in Tokyo on Saturday afternoon, bound for Fukushima Prefectutre, Japan's foreign ministry said.


"Power is cut in some parts of town, but what we need is water and food," said Dai Iwaya, a 37-year old city project and fiscal planning officer. Homes are in various states of disrepair, with fallen roof shingles and concrete blocks strewn about.

Northeast Japan was a wasteland Saturday morning after the country's earthquake triggered a 30-foot tsunami. The cascade of destruction killed hundreds, forced tens of thousands of people from their homes and raised fears of a radioactive release from damaged nuclear power reactors.


Sendai, a city of one million people, was among the hardest-hit areas of the nation. An aerial tour by helicopter Saturday morning near the local airport here showed a dead zone of small planes, helicopters and cars strewn half-submerged in green-brown water.



Along the coast north of the airport, oil-storage tanks burned brightly, sending a funnel of pitch-black smoke nearly a mile into the sky. Fires also burned in industrial parks ringing the area, nearly 24 hours after Friday's 8.9-magnitude earthquake, one of the world's five strongest over the past century, ground life across the country to a halt.


Japan's northeast appeared to have been subject to the most severe damage, as powerful waves swallowed warehouses and fishing boats and swept across neighborhoods and rice paddies. Damage and disruption was aggravated by more than 100 powerful aftershocks in the hours after the first jolt.


As of 5 p.m. Saturday, Japan's official toll stood at 605 dead, 654 missing, according to police, with more than 1,000 injured.



A building at a troubled Japanese nuclear power facility collapsed Saturday afternoon with smoke billowing out, and officials responded by expanding the evacuation perimeter to a 20-kilometer radius and saying they were preparing to stockpile iodine supplies "just in case."


Officials declined, however, to say whether the explosion had occurred specifically at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear reactor, or to confirm media reports that a sharp increase in radiation outside the site had been detected.


Other stuff:
Japan Tries to Cool Unstable Reactor, Avert ‘Three Mile Island’
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-12/japan-tries-to-cool-unstable-reactor-avert-three-mile-island-.html



Japan quake causes emergencies at 5 nuke reactors

[pjorourke]

Sadly, this is going to set nuclear power back a decade. Although I can't imagine how they could have handled it any better in light of the fact that an 8.9 quake is a massive freak of nature.

[charlestudor2005]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

Sadly, this is going to set nuclear power back a decade. Although I can't imagine how they could have handled it any better in light of the fact that an 8.9 quake is a massive freak of nature.

Yeah, when it comes to disasters, catastrophic ones tend to make people stupid. After Katrina there was a lot of "why didn't the gov do this" or "why weren't they prepared for that." Well, all that preparation costs money, and if you prepare for a super catastrophic disaster, it's going to cost a boat load. Much more than Legislators/Congress are going to want to allow. There's a tipping point of the cost of disaster preparation. So when the biggest ones come, it appears the government isn't prepared at all. That is not the truth. Governments are prepared, but the preparation is geared to major disasters, not catastrophic disasters. We will always be at the mercy of catastrophic disasters. We just have to understand the dynamics and modify our thinking to prepare.

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

We just have to understand the dynamics and modify our thinking to prepare.

Or modify our expectations. Life isn't a prime-time TV show where everything gets wrapped up neatly in 42 minutes (plus commercials) by a star that barely gets their hair ruffled.

[discreetgent]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

Sadly, this is going to set nuclear power back a decade. Although I can't imagine how they could have handled it any better in light of the fact that an 8.9 quake is a massive freak of nature.

And if the core melts then any notion of new nuclear plants - especially in the US - is doomed.

[TexTushHog]

You say it's a "freak of nature" but it happens several times a decade. The power plants need to be built so that they can withstand this sort of event or they are not an attractive option. And I am a cautious proponent of nuclear power.

[TexTushHog]

Apparently things are going from bad to worse at one of the reactors:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/wo...13nuclear.html

[Melissa Nash]

My brother lives in Japan. Thank god he was able to call our parents right away to let us know he and his wife are okay.

[Guest083011]

I've had family members live in Tokyo for nearly seven years. Their close friend was able to get the following Friday:

Just heard from her, all ok, she had to walk home from work took her 3.5 hours. She said it was like SF quake 20 years ago so scary of course. Phones not working but internet is a bit.

And then this posted from a listserv a few minutes ago:

Begin forwarded message:
From: Rodney Van Meter
Subject: lengthy diary from the last couple of days in Japan
Dave, others:

This is a collection of notes, lightly edited, compiled over the last
two days, so the voice and time line move around a bit. Apologies.

OK, first impressions:

1. The earthquake was by far the biggest I've ever been in (or hope to
be in), but the building we are in is brand new and very well built,
so it swayed a lot but never felt dangerous.
2. Being a refugee is both stressful and boring at the same time, even
when you're with friends in a place you know is safe. The biggest
thing, of course, is the lack of reliable information; several
people around me have 1seg keitai which give a *very* poor TV image,
enough to be scary but not provide a lot of detail.

Observations:

1. It's a rule of mine not to leave the house without clothing warm
enough for the possiblity of being stuck outside for hours; I think
I'll keep that rule.
2. I carry millions of transistors in my pocket, billions in my
backpack. One would be enough for an AM radio, but no one around me
seemed to have one.

Rolling back to 14:45 Friday...

"Earthquake," I said quietly. Nobody noticed, Kei-san kept on
talking. Even I wasn't completely sure at first, and I'm pretty quick
to pick up on them.

"Earthquake, we're having an earthquake," I said, a little louder.

Kei-san said, "Earthquake?...You're right..."

Osamu-san said, "Earthquake? Really?"

By this time, it had already been swaying for several seconds.

"It's getting bigger," someone said.

Kusumoto-san got up and walked across the room and peeked through the
blinds. "Electric poles are swaying," he said. I got up and walked
across the room to join him.

"It's getting even worse," someone said. "Better get away from the
windows."

"Wow, it's big...this is far away and big..."

Comments like that continued for what seemed like two minutes, before
it calmed down. The electricity went out.

Shortly, the announcement came to evacuate the building, so we grabbed
our jackets and went out. Several of us helped a man in an electric
wheelchair, lifting him down the stairs.

This building includes a gym and pool; dozens of kids in speedos and
googles were forced out into the cold. I handed out a shirt and
fleece I was carrying (which haven't come back, but if that's my
biggest loss, I'm fine).

While we were outside, I got email on my cell phone (DoCoMo mail)
from my wife, letting me know that she was okay, had one of our
daughters, and was getting the other. It would be fifteen hours
before we would be able to connect via voice or SMS, but DoCoMo mail
and their 3G packet service operated sporadically from the beginning.
I was able to access Gmail, Facebook and Twitter, enough to get a
message to friends who relayed it to my parents.

Eventually, they announced that they would inspect the building top to
bottom, starting on the 7th floor, before we were allowed back in the
building. A few minutes later, it started to rain, and a stream of
people went back into the building -- with permission or without, I
don't know.

With power out, we had some emergency lights; our local blackout
continued until 11pm, eight hours after the first shock (but when it
got dark, we could tell that surrounding areas still had power). We
grabbed our stuff, and were herded into a few rooms on the lower
floors, where sat on classroom chairs or stretched out on the floor.
Decks of cards and various drinks, including Dad's Root Beer (which
some student literally mistook for a type of beer -- to her disgust
and my delight) and some sort of avowedly foul Korean liquor, and
snacks materialized, and the students and younger folks quickly
settled into a social mood. I'm fighting either allergies or a bit of
a cold, so I stretched out on the floor to rest.

About a half a dozen faculty were in the early part of an overnight
retreat, here on Keio's Hiyoshi Campus rather than at SFC, so I had
extra shirts and some bread and cheese on hand.

Most of the other faculty that I came with have gone home to check on
their own families, moving via car, but none were going in my
direction, so I elected to stay here. Some of the faculty and staff
and a fair number of students from this campus remain; some live close
enough to walk, but have no power or simply prefer to be with friends
here.

Fighting a cold and stress, and with nothing but emergency lights,
didn't feel like reading. Little information coming in; we were safe,
with nothing particular to do. No one around needed immediate help,
and simply adding people to the streets and stations was clearly a bad
idea. I now understand the empty look on the faces you see in refugee
camps.

Eventually, the campus security and general affairs folks came around
and handed out canned water, crackers, and rather musty blankets.

Some people had keitai (cell phones) with one-seg (1seg) receivers,
very low-bandwidth digital TV. The images we could see were
appalling, with fires burning across broad areas, in the dark.

About 10pm, the Toyoko Line reopened to Shibuya, and people began
filtering out. I stuck with my resolution to stay put until morning,
or JR began running again. (I later heard that some faculty took more
than ten hours to get home; those of us who stayed warm, fed and
comfortable certainly didn't regret that decision the next morning.)

Overnight there were a number of aftershocks, and the second major
quake in Nagano, which they asserted was not related.

I was beside myself with worry about the possibility of tsunami coming
to Kamakura. Our house sits 800 meters from the beach. A couple of
years ago, they handed out a community disaster handbook that included
a tsunami map, which suggested that 7m is a high enough altitude.
Friday's events clearly show that to be false. Our house sits right
on the isoline at 7m, but clearly would have been swept away.

The lights came back on at 11pm. About 1am, I laid down to sleep for
a while; when I woke up at 2:30, many of the students had gone.

More earthquakes, more worries, watching NHK on a big projector screen
until 430am, then slept until 6.

When they announced the reopening of some of the JR lines at 700, I
left. Getting to Yokohama was easy, from there was slow as they kept
trains running at 35km/hr and stopping at every intersection. The
platforms and trains were crowded, but not intolerably so.

From Kamakura Station, it's a ten-minute walk home. I detoured
through the area I think my family should use as an escape route in
the event of a tsunami. The official map recommends that we make our
way to one of the nearby junior high schools, on higher ground, but
their recommended route passes through a stretch of very low ground
several hundred meters long, and crosses the river. I'm revising ours
to what I think is a less-exposed route, though we have to cross a
branch of the river somewhere and there's still one low stretch in
it.

That takes us up to the start of the nuclear reactor concerns, which
will have to be a separate post. I'm struggling with the technical
explanations in Japanese, anyway, so those reading the
English-language press may be better informed.

Over time, as the information flow peaks, my posts will probably lack
originality and insight, but I hope this gives you some idea of what
it's like here on the ground, for a typical family in the Kanto area,
well away from the most seriously hit areas.

Will mine my FB posts and tweets for further material at some point.

Comments and reassurances always welcome; if I seem abrupt via email,
it's just trying to handle the flood of check-in emails from both
people here locally and those from outside asking about us.

We *definitely* appreciate the concerns! Keep us in mind not just
today but over the coming months; recovery here is going to take time.

--Rod

P.S. You can still find me on Facebook and Twitter, though my posting rate will decline.

[pjorourke]

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

You say it's a "freak of nature" but it happens several times a decade. The power plants need to be built so that they can withstand this sort of event or they are not an attractive option. And I am a cautious proponent of nuclear power.

They are built to withstand disasters -- but this one (8.9 Richter) is like the 3rd worst in history.

If you make the thing 100% safe (against any conceivable disaster), it would cost so much that it is no longer practical as an energy source. Life is trade-offs, some are worse than others. Deal with it.

[Mazomaniac]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

If you make the thing 100% safe (against any conceivable disaster), it would cost so much that it is no longer practical as an energy source. Life is trade-offs, some are worse than others. Deal with it.

It's a pretty big trade off with nuclear power.

Three Mile Island cost around $2.4B

Chernobyl will end up costing around $300B.

In Japan there are reports of Cesium-137 and Iodine-131 outside the plant. You don't get those elements in the environment unless the fuel rods have already melted and the containment has been breached. If the reports are true then this accident is already worse than Three Mile Island. Thankfully the reactor design in Japan makes the chance of a Chernobyl-scale incident rather low, but it's still going to be a big, big accident even if they get it under control right away. In just economic terms you're already looking at $3B+ for that one.

And since they're pumping sea water into that reactor you can kiss it goodbye. There's no way to bring it back now. It will have to be decommissioned, disassembled, and disposed of at the cost of another god-knows-how-much even if the core wasn't damaged.

In tort law there's a concept known as the calculus of risk. It basically says that the cost of safety measures should be equal to or greater the chance of a catastrophe multiplied by the cost of the disaster. When it comes to nuclear power the last factor of that equation can be enormous. Even small accidents produce half-billion dollar cleanup jobs.

Right now we're averaging one critical reactor failure every ten years. The average for serious radiation release incidents is twice that high.

Given the amount of money that's getting spent on accidents don't you think "making the thing 100% safe" would be a decent idea just in economic terms?

FYI #1 - Mazo's got no problem with nuclear power per se. He started out life in high energy physics before switching to the Dark Side and getting a law degree. He's 100% comfortable with the concept of nuclear power. What Mazo doesn't trust is people - particularly people who run nuclear power plants for profit. Such people (including those who run the plants in Japan) have demonstrated time and again that they are willing to fuck up the safety system in the name of greater profits. That's why Mazo doesn't like nuclear power as we have it today.

FYI #2 - Having a hydrogen explosion at a nuke plant is a TOTAL fuck up. There are (supposed to be) automatic safety systems layered ten deep to prevent that from happening. Something went big time wrong over there. It will be interesting to see exactly what happened. I'm guessing that the plant operator may have been skimping a little on safety and inspection. Hydrogen explosions should never, ever, ever happen under any circumstance at a nuke plant.

FYI #3 - And before somebody brings it up - and I know somebody will - the Thorium Cycle is not the great panacea that you've heard it is on the net. There are fewer issues with Thorium fuel, but the potential costs for the ones that it does have are just as great as with Uranium.

Cheers,
Mazo.

[Guest083011]

----------------------------------------
Breaking News Alert: Partial meltdown likely under way, AP reports
March 12, 2011 10:16:08 PM
----------------------------------------
Japan’s top government spokesman says a partial meltdown is likely under way at a damaged nuclear reactor, the AP reports.

[pjorourke]

I agree its going to be an expensive mess Mazo. I was referring to your calculus of risk. Say for the sake of argument that a fuck up costs $5B and that there is a .1% annual chance of it occurring -- that's an expected annual cleanup cost of $5 million. If it would cost $50 million to engineer out that .1% chance, thats 10x the expected cost. Multiply that by enough reactors and you have a pretty compelling case to not make the fix.

[TexTushHog]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

They are built to withstand disasters -- but this one (8.9 Richter) is like the 3rd worst in history.

If you make the thing 100% safe (against any conceivable disaster), it would cost so much that it is no longer practical as an energy source. Life is trade-offs, some are worse than others. Deal with it.

I don't know about history, but this is the third one we've had like this or larger since 2004 -- Sumatra, Chile, and now Japan. It's clearly something that is likely to happen in the lifecycle of a reactor. And even if the probability of it happening is low, as Mazo points out the exponentially huge potential cost of a disaster at a nuclear plant, as opposed to say a natural gas plant, makes it essential to plan for even a once in a life time of a plant (or rarer event).

By the way, the reactor is now described as in "partial meltdown" by Japanese officials.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_835002.html

No idea what that is, but it doesn't sound very good.

[discreetgent]

Originally Posted by pjorourke

I agree its going to be an expensive mess Mazo. I was referring to your calculus of risk. Say for the sake of argument that a fuck up costs $5B and that there is a .1% annual chance of it occurring -- that's an expected annual cleanup cost of $5 million. If it would cost $50 million to engineer out that .1% chance, thats 10x the expected cost. Multiply that by enough reactors and you have a pretty compelling case to not make the fix.

I don't think that includes the potential injuries and fatalities that radiation leaks or a meltdown would cost.