Anyone in Japan? Tsunami alert - any more news ? PLEASE

[RatherBeOnThePiste]

DH who gets these things has had a tsunami alert for Japan. Does anyone have any more info? Itsjust breaking news about the massive earthquake at the moment.

sky news says the fire at nuclear plant is NOT in reactor area. implication is that it is not a major worry in terms of nuclear safety.

horrid watching the debris-filled water rushing across the land like that. Looks so malevolent.

meditrina - the turbine hall is where the electric is generated using steam created by the reactor. The reactor is elsewhere.

I think the 'nuclear emergency' is not really an emergency but just saying that the Japanese authorities have instigated the emergency protocols that they have put in place to guard against a potential accident in an earthquake.

BeenBeta - thanks: I wondered if that would be the case (and you'll see I've posted twice above about the IAEA statement on the safe nuclear shutdown).

okay, thanks

I have just been reassured by my friend that they have put NZ on a marine alert, which means strong currents at sea in estuaries and rivers. It is unlikely that it will come to shore. So current news says.

I have no words to say for the terror and loss that has been suffered in Japan.

The BBC footage of the cars driving away from the wave is so harrowing God. Its incomprehensible that we can sit here watching it as those people are running for their lives.

are there powercuts, unreliable internet connections, etc?

I am assuming that if people go quiet at some point that will be the most likely explanation.

Not relevant but as a nuclear physicist I have to say that Chernobyl categorically was not a meltdown.

The turbine hall in power reactors is adjacent to the reactor core vessel. However, effectively the respective locations bear no relation to fire spreading due to the stringent fire mitigation systems that are built in, unless there was catastrophic structural damage a la Chernobyl. Nuclear plants are impressively seismically qualified & are required to undergo practice emergency situations regularly in order to keep operating. They build them in such locations due to energy demand of the population as competing technologies are not as efficient or "green".

There is no point in trying to cover up a leak as if there is anything airborne it will be picked up by other places (we found out about Chernobyl via monitoring in Norway).

I have heard that there is an issue with providing cooling water to a shutdown core. Worst case with this is a meltdown, ie the fuel can melt through the core containment vessel. This would not be an instantaneous event & wouldn't necessarily cause environmental damage unless the material escaped from further levels of containment protection.

Overall the risk is minimal compared to eg local gas explosions, debris,sanitation issues etc

thank you elvisgirl.
A lot of the things you're talking about on here are not being shown in japan. Maybe they're being reported briefly but the images you're mentioning are not being shown. I suppose they don't want to cause a panic.

My Ds2's best friend is in Japan with his family visiting a sick relative. He's only 5 adn so lovely. I hope to God they're OK. I hate to think of him and his sister scared or worse. The email I sent go returned unable to deliver.

whereabouts are they Marge2?

margez, I've just spoken to DH and he said that most places in Japan are absolutely fine, but the place that's been hit has been hit hard, so there's a huge chance your DSs best friend is fine

pixiestix that's what I thought too.

It just seems so wrong.

We have it live on Australian news just now - the footage is unbelievably awful, not just the water, but footage of offices in the quakes as well, ceilings coming down, things just flying around everywhere - it's terrifying just watching it, how godawful it must be to be anywhere near it.

DH is in flipping Phuket at the moment - I'm assuming he's safe and that it's not going that way but still scary.

Sendai is a disaster area, terrible. And the Sendai nuclear reactor is in a state of emergency but they aren't saying exactly what that means.

elvisgirl - any idea what sort of nuclear power plants they are?

Never mind - just googled. PWR's.

Not too sure where they are to be honest. Tokyo I THINK.. Trying to call the Foreign office helpline but busy all the time. I feel a bt guilty about calling when people could be wanting to know about actual rels rather than just friends.

Oh, I looked on Wiki & it said they were BWRs, boiling water reactors. I do know that the latest generation of BWRs being marketed by GE for new nuclear build have natural inbuilt cooling (conduction & convection by water circulation) but am not sure on these Japanese designs.

To supplement the normal cooling system a plant has both diesel & battery (independent of each other & the grid power supply) power for the cooling system (independent of each other & the grid power supply). It is most strange that neither of these would be functioning, as it would normally be a condition that regular operation could not proceed if both these systems were not available (& shutdown should occur if they went offline whilst operating).

For anyone interested in reading a little more about nuclear power plants and earthquakes. This document is quite interesting and maybe give a little insight into what is happening.

You may well be right n that elvis - seems that they have a mix
fraid my nuclear knowledge is limited to a-level physics (a long tome ago) and a phase of reading books about chernobyl.

Probably not fair of me to speculate really atm.

a quake just shook our house about 10 mins ago, but I didn't feel the quake the first time round

Oh crap.

From BBC:
Japanese authorities are urging some 2,000 residents living within a 2km radius of a nuclear plant in Fukushima to evacuate, the AFP reports. The plant has been shut down after its cooling system failed.

OMG

Sakura - I wish I could give you a cup of tea or something. Thinking of you.