Disaster in Japan.

The place for anything at all...
Post Reply
User avatar
Uniform Two Six
Legendary
Legendary
Posts: 1142
Joined: Wed Sep 06, 2006 8:56 pm
Location: Hayward, CA

Disaster in Japan.

Post by Uniform Two Six »

Jeez. This is like some kind of f***ed up disaster movie. It's like you look at the news every day and think that it can't possibly get any worse... and then it just keeps getting worse. I remember a day when "Three-Mile-Island" was a catchphrase for nuclear disaster. That was a partial-meltdown with almost no radiation leakage, and yet the ghost of Three-Mile-Island has kept the United States from developing even a single nuclear power station for over thirty years. Japan just had a full meltdown, two partial-meltdowns, and there's supposedly five more reactors that could go the same route here in the next few days. This is so scary. PG&E's San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant back home is roughly the same age as the Dai-Ichi Station, has almost identical plant structure (the Japanese built their reactors under license from Westinghouse), and it sits almost on top of the San Andreas Fault. Oh, yeah. It is also situated right on the coast, just like its Japanese brethren.

And none of this has anything to do with the fact that the Prefectural Police Chief in Sendai just acknowledged that something north of 8,000 bodies have washed up on shore. This is frightening and unimaginably sad.
User avatar
FoxKnight
Legendary
Legendary
Posts: 212
Joined: Sun Oct 24, 2010 7:31 am
Additional Details: Account in stasis
Mood: Indifferent

Re: Disaster in Japan.

Post by FoxKnight »

Not to metion the earthquake and aftershocks, and tsunami that hit already. Japan is going to need much international help to help recover from all of this.

The last I heard, which was last night, was that so far three reactors have had explosions due to overheating, which was caused by the lack of electricity to the cooling system. Not meltdowns. Though the explosions have caused some leaking of radioactive gases, which, hopefully, will just be pushed by the winds over the Pacific where it can disperse instead of the gases heading south to much of the population there.

So far, Japanese officials have been saying after each of the three reactor explosions that they can handle it but it does not seem so when there are still more reactors at risk of exploding also. I've also heard there are still some workers there that have been there the whole time trying to stop a meltdown who may be exposed to the deadly gases.

This is all I know so far. I sure hope the situation is contained soon...
User avatar
Uniform Two Six
Legendary
Legendary
Posts: 1142
Joined: Wed Sep 06, 2006 8:56 pm
Location: Hayward, CA

Re: Disaster in Japan.

Post by Uniform Two Six »

I just checked in on Reuters and it looks like they have backed off an earlier report that the latest hydrogen explosion had breached the containment structure and caused a full meltdown. Unfortunately, that's just about all the good news from over there. According to their measurements (limited though they may be given that they apparently lost most of their direct gauges during the explosions), it appears that the fuel rods in the three most affected reactors have been partially exposed and have probably partially melted. That would mean that even if they managed to regain primary cooling (somehow), they still wouldn't be able to re-insert the control rods. What a nightmare.
Post Reply