In the news

I was going to school in Seattle when we had a 6.9 earthquake. We were very fortunate in that it was centred 30 miles below the surface so actual damage was pretty minimal. It was still scary as hell and I'll never forget seeing the street move like water and buildings literally swaying side to side.

Just awful.

That Tweet is so true.. 8.9 is a massive quake and looking at the footage (so far) the buildings have pretty much withstood it.. The building codes are very strict in Japan. I lived there for 8 months and there was always the odd tremor every months or so.. No one thought anything of it.

Catching up with this on the BBC news. You really can't take your eyes off tragedies, and it's understandable. We're staring mortality in the face. In the blink of an eye, life is swept away. We can't understand it, so we keep on looking. It's incomprehensible, and beyond our control - that's what's most frightening of all.

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air.

two friends have witnessed a tsunami at close hand.. same event in 26 dec 2004.. one in phuket thailand he was my site agent on the hospital project, one in sri lanka firefly rider andy carroll's harrowing account captured on camera..

utter devastation. i can't imagaine what they must be feeling right now..

al x

I've been watching rolling news of this all day, and I still keep expecting to see Godzilla coming up through the middle of that freaky whirlpool.

It's terrifying how utterly helpless we are in these situations. I can't imagine what they're going through. Those pictures and videos are just awful.

Huge Explosion at Fukushima nuclear plant

Huge Explosion at Fukushima nuclear plant

Obviously not a good thing, but it is unlikely that it will release nuclear contaminants.

I have a bit of experience in nuclear power as I spent six years in the US Navy working on nuclear power plants. There are a number of different designs, from the inherently unstable breeder reactors like Chernobyl to the ones that we used which would cease to create fissionable reactions in case of any problems.

I have no idea what the design of this reactor is but I would be shocked if it wasn't one that operated on a principle of a negative alpha-T which means as it gets hotter it shuts down due to less neutron attenuation. There are also ridiculously redundant systems that will drive rods down instantly to shut down the core. The concern would be if the primary coolant system were breached.

Given Japan's history of earthquake activity and their strict regulations with construction, I imagine this has been taken into account in the design. The reactor will likely never be run again, but it's doubtful it will release any contamination.

Of course, Mother Nature can be a real bitch, and we aren't able to 100% prepare for any given situation so the potential is there. However, I think it's an extremely small possibility for a nuclear catastrophe to add to the natural one.

couldn't have asked for a better response than that really

Not trying to act like I know what's going on, just have a background in working in that field and am hopefully optimistic.

It was built in the '70's.

The reactors for units 1, 2, and 6 were supplied by General Electric, for units 3 and 5 by Toshiba, and unit 4 by Hitachi. Architectural design for General Electric's units was done by Ebasco. All construction was done by Kajima.[2] From September 2010, unit 3 has been fueled by mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel.[3][4]
Unit 1 is a 439 MW boiling water reactor (BWR3) constructed in July 1967. It commenced commercial electrical production March 26, 1971, and was scheduled for shutdown on March 26, 2011. It was damaged during the 2011 Sendai earthquake and tsunami.[5]

At 15:36 JST (7:36 GMT) on March 12, there was an explosion at the plant and four workers were injured.[37] At 18:43 JST (9:43 GMT), officials confirmed that an explosion had occurred at the nuclear plant. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano indicated -according to a Reuters report of 21:36 JST (7:36 ET), that the concrete outer structure had collapsed as a result of a hydrogen explosion triggered by falling water levels. At 19:37 JST (10:37 GMT) Reuters reported that Mr Ian Hore-Lacy, communications director at the World Nuclear Association, considered the same cause. Edano further indicated that the container of the reactor had remained intact and there had been no large leaks of radioactive material. An increase in radiation levels was confirmed following the explosion. ABC (Australia) reported "According to the Fukushima prefectural government, the hourly radiation from the plant reached 1.015 millisievert [0.1015 rem], an amount equivalent to that allowable for ordinary people in one year." Yaroslov Shtrombakh, a Russian nuclear expert, said he did not believe that a Chernobyl-style disaster will occur, citing the differences between the designs of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. He speculated that any nuclear material released during the incident would likely be confined to the grounds in and around the power plant. American nuclear expert Edwin Lyman told Reuters that although he did not have full information about what had happened, "every indication is that the type of event that has occurred there is one of the most serious things that can happen in a nuclear reactor."
At 21:00 JST (12:00 GMT) TEPCO announced that they planned to cool the leaking reactor with sea water (started at 8:30pm local time), then using boric acid to act as a neutron poison to prevent a criticality accident. The sea water would take five to ten hours to fill the reactor core, after which it would require seawater cooling for around ten days. At 23:00 JST (14:00 GMT) TEPCO announced that due to the quake at 22:15 the filling of the reactor with sea water and boric acid had been stopped.
At 01:17 JST on Sunday 13th March (16:17 GMT), the Japan Atomic Energy Agency announced that it was rating the Fukushima accident at 4 (accident with local consequences) on the 0–7 International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), below the Three Mile Island accident in seriousness.

A bit more background info

It's 30-years old and was about to be shut down so that's a bit of a mixed blessing. Old reactors will obviously be using older technology, but the ones the US Navy uses were designed in the 60s so it doesn't preclude it being a stable design. If they were in the process of decommissioning it then it might well not have been operating at full capacity, a good thing in case of catastrophe.

Filling it with seawater means that it does have a negative alpha-T design as that will prevent fission so that's good. It will also ruin the power plant so it won't be used again, but it was about to be decommissioned.

I'm not a nuclear physicist, just a guy who went in the navy to pay for college and got put in the nuclear power program so take all this for what it's worth. I believe the biggest problem will be in the disposal of the core after this as this is not a planned decommission now. There will be consequences, but this won't be a Chernobyl or Silkwood type event.

IMHO, etc.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/mar/12/electric-shock-school-matthew-israel

I am lost for words.

that is shocking.

The USA never ceases to amaze. Their pursuit of a Stepford Society goes on.

Bloody hell, that is awful. I'm shocked, and that's not trying to pun, that this exists in this day and age in the States. Skinnerism? Electric shocks? Really?

It's absurd that he claims a barbaric treatment is the only one that works simply because other treatments have failed.

The USA never ceases to amaze. Their pursuit of a Stepford Society goes on.

Not to get all flag-waving, but this is hardly representative of the States. Hence the reason I'm so surprised to hear of it. It's a big country with a lot of people and there are fucked up things, but it's not necessarily indicative of the whole.

Perhaps not, but I firmly believe in choosing a side, and I'm not on theirs. Granted there's a lot of bad everywhere, here included, but this is the sort of thing that I read about and then think, to borrow an Americanism, 'well, that figures'. That's how it is for me.

That kind of racism can be conditioned out of you with the correct electrical equipment.

I hate everybody, equally

Fair enough. I spent 30+ years in the States and know a lot of Americans, not a single one would support this. There are aberrations, and because they are aberrations those are the ones that make news and often colour our views of countries and people.

I'm in a no-man's land. Sometimes I feel the need to correct what I think are over-generalisations about the States here and I frequently have to do the same when talking to friends and family back home when they read stories about the UK or Europe. It's all a ball ache and often an exercise in futility.

I'm probably just feeling ornery as it's my turn to make dinner and this steak and kidney pie is fucking me off. It's massively labour intensive in spite of what the recipe claims.

Seriously, how long does it take to reduce a pint of Old Peculiar? Fuck you, BBC recipes.