Japanese earthquake

[Tony Baloney]

Are you suggesting there is a possibility of a major earthquake in or around Ireland?

I'm simply saying that we don't actually know: the Atlantic is a big ocean, and we're overdue a sub-Atlantic surface ruction.

The North Atlantic ridge has been extensively mapped so I would be surprised if there is anything more sinister than is already known. However point taken that it is an active area with potential to send a big wave eastwards.

[omagh_gael]

Are you suggesting there is a possibility of a major earthquake in or around Ireland?

I'm simply saying that we don't actually know: the Atlantic is a big ocean, and we're overdue a sub-Atlantic surface ruction.

That sounds like a fight that would take place out in Donegal bay!

[Fear ón Srath Bán]

That sounds like a fight that would take place out in Donegal bay!

Tony B has it about right there.

We're not half as smart as we think we are sometimes (even that incontrovertible nuclear lobby!).

[Tony Baloney]

That sounds like a fight that would take place out in Donegal bay!

Tony B has it about right there.

We're not half as smart as we think we are sometimes (even that incontrovertible nuclear lobby!).

The auld geology degree wasn't a total drinkathon

[Fear ón Srath Bán]

The auld geology degree wasn't a total drinkathon

Good man! I'm glad that what I believe to be science is supported by someone who has the proof (and that would be a degree, not degrees proof)!

[Tony Baloney]

The auld geology degree wasn't a total drinkathon

Good man! I'm glad that what I believe to be science is supported by someone who has the proof (and that would be a degree, not degrees proof)!

Like what you did there with the degrees thing.

[Celt_Man]

Good news at least....

From RTE Live Feed

2357 Jiji news agency is reporting that a ship, thought to have been lost in the tsunami, has been found. All 81 people on board are being airlifted to safety.

[Tony Baloney]

UPDATE 7.39pm: FOUR people have been injured in an explosion that occurred at the No. 1 reactor of the quake-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday.

The explosion was heard at 3.36 pm following large tremors and white smoke was seen at the facility in Fukushima Prefecture, the company said.

The four workers were working to deal with problems caused by a powerful earthquake that hit northeastern Japan on Friday. However there is no word on injured worker's condition,  Jiji news agency says.

Fukushima prefecture says TEPCO'S no.1 reactor ceiling has collapsed, Jiji reports.

Radioactivity at the plant was 20 times over the normal level, and Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission has said it may be experiencing meltdown.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) says explosion may have been hydrogen used to cool Fukushima plant, Kyodo reports.


Related Coverage
Japan earthquake: Latest news and multimedia
Japan quake toll hits 613

TV reports have confirmed the Tokyo fire department is sending special nuclear rescue team to Fukushima.

Pressure has reportedly been growing at the plant, with Japanese officials racing against time to cool the reactors that were disabled by yesterday's massive earthquake and tsunami or face a nuclear meltdown.

TEPCO is racing to cool down the reactor core after a highly unusual "station blackout" - the total loss of power necessary to keep water circulating through the plant to prevent overheating.

Daiichi Units 1, 2 and 3 reactors shut down automatically at 246pm local time yesterday due to the earthquake. But about an hour later, the on-site diesel back-up generators also shut, leaving the reactors without alternating current (AC) power.

That caused TEPCO to declare an emergency and the Government to evacuate thousands of people from near the plant. Such a blackout is "one of the most serious conditions that can affect a nuclear plant," according to experts at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a US based nuclear watchdog group.

"If all AC power is lost, the options to cool the core are limited," the group warned.

TEPCO also said it has lost ability to control pressure at some of the reactors at its Daini plant nearby.

The reactors at Fukushima can operate without AC power because they are steam-driven and therefore do not require electric pumps, but the reactors do require direct current (DC) power from batteries for its valves and controls to function.

If battery power is depleted before AC power is restored, the plant would stop supplying water to the core and the cooling water level in the reactor core could drop.

Radiation release

Officials are now considering releasing some radiation to relieve pressure in the containment at the Daiichi plant and are also considering releasing pressure at Daini, signs that difficulties are mounting. Such a release has only occurred once in US history, at Three Mile Island.

"(It's) a sign that the Japanese are pulling out all the stops they can to prevent this accident from developing into a core melt and also prevent it from causing a breach of the containment (system) from the pressure that is building up inside the core because of excess heat," said Mark Hibbs, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

While the restoration of power through additional generators should allow TEPCO to bring the situation back under control, left unchecked the coolant could boil off within hours. That would cause the core to overheat and damage the fuel, according to nuclear experts familiar with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979.

It could take hours more for the metal surrounding the ceramic uranium fuel pellets in the fuel rods to melt, which is what happened at Three Mile Island. That accident essentially froze the nuclear industry for three decades.

Seven years later the industry suffered another blow after the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine exploded due to an uncontrolled power surge that damaged the reactor core, releasing a radioactive cloud that blanketed Europe.

The metal on the fuel rods would not melt until temperatures far exceed 1000 degrees F. The ceramic uranium pellets would not melt until temperatures reached about 2000 degrees F, nuclear experts said.

 The Government declared an atomic emergency amid growing international concern over its reactors after an 8.9 magnitude earthquake, the biggest in Japan's history, unleashed tsunamis that swept all before them.

The US Air Force, which has many bases in Japan, delivered coolant to a Japanese nuclear plant, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday, without specifying which plant.

The two nuclear plants affected are the Fukushima No.1 and No.2 plants, both located about 250km northeast of greater Tokyo, an urban area of 30 million people.

Tokyo Electric Power vented radioactive vapour at five reactors between both plants to release building pressure.

"We are not in a situation in which residents face health damage," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters today, according to Jiji.

However, the evacuation area was expanded. A total of 45,000 people living within a 10km radius of the No.1 plant were told to evacuate.

Officials today ordered the evacuation of people living within a 3km-radius of the second plant, with those up to 10km away told to stay indoors.

When Friday's massive quake hit, the plants immediately shut down, along with others in quake-hit parts of Japan, as they are designed to do, but the cooling systems failed, the Government said.

The major fear is that fuel rods, which create heat through a nuclear reaction, could become exposed and release radioactivity.

When reactors shut down, cooling systems must kick in to bring down the very high temperatures. These systems are powered by either the external electricity grid, backup generators or batteries.

This is key to prevent a "nuclear meltdown" and major radioactive release.

Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan early today left on a helicopter to Fukushima to assess the situation at the plants operated by Tokyo Electric Power, and other areas in the disaster zone.

Military personnel have been dispatched to Fukushima, including a chemical corps and an aircraft on a "fact-finding mission".

The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Japanese officials had kept it informed of their efforts to restore power to the cooling systems while monitoring a pressure build-up.

Early in the crisis Prime Minister Kan said no radiation leaks were detected among the country's reactors after the quake.

According to the industry ministry, 11 nuclear reactors automatically shut down at the Onagawa plant, the Fukushima No.1 and No.2 plants and the Tokai No.2 plant after the strongest earthquake ever to hit the country.

[stephenite]

An explosion reported at Fukushima plant, 4 injured. Radiation levels in the vicinity have soared apparently.

[Maguire01]

Shocking event - some 'amazing' photos and video footage. The power fo such acts of nature really is frightening.

[Estimator]

The plate boundary that caused the earthquake in Japan was a destructive plate boundary, where one plate is moving under the other.  These plate boundaries cause the biggest earthquakes and do lead to the tsunami that we've seen. The Mid-Atlantic ridge is a constructive plate boundary where the plates are moving away from each other. This zone is not really associated with tsunami's.

However, with the tectonic activity underneath the Canary Islands there is a school of thought that an earthquake in this region could cause part of one of the island to collapse into the sea causing a tsunami by the landslide. The south coast of Ireland could be affected by the tsunami generated.

[Tony Baloney]

10000 people are missing in a single port town.

A mag 6.0 aftershock has hit Fukushima which won't help the efforts in the power plant.

[laoislad]

Japan's quake shifts earth's axis by 25 cm


Initial results out of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology show that the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that rattled Japan Friday shifted the earth's rotation axis by about 25 centimetres.

INGV's report, which came hours after the devastating incident, is equivalent to "very, very tiny" changes that won't be seen for centuries, though, Canadian geologists say.

Only after centuries would a second be lost as each day is shortened by a millionth of a second, according to University of Toronto geology professor Andrew Miall.

"Ten inches sounds like quite a lot when you hold a ruler in front of you. But if you think of it in terms of the earth as a whole, it's absolutely tiny; it's minute," he said.

"It's going to make minute changes to the length of a day. It could make very, very tiny changes to the tilt of the earth, which affects the seasons, but these effects are so small, it'd take very precise satellite navigation to pick it up."

The earth's rotation will now shift at a different speed because the globe's mass has been redistributed, said Michael Bostock, a University of B.C. earthquake seismology professor.

He used an analogy of a figure skater pulling in his or her arms to spin faster because weight has been reorganized.

"Ultimately, if you change the length of day, you can change the length of time a given point on earth receives sunlight and doesn't receive sunlight," he said. "But will this affect us in our lifetimes? Absolutely not."

The researchers said that while the minuscule change may be completely undetectable, it still illustrates the punch behind the Japan's massive earthquake.

[Aaron Boone]

Tsunami is a bummer of a word to pronounce.

NHK tv channel is available as free app if you have an iPhone.

[Maguire01]

Tsunami is a bummer of a word to pronounce.

Eh? You just leave out the T.