One think that still is unclear for me:

As fart as I have understood it by now, it wasn't the quake itself, that brought down the secondary coolant system, but the tsunami that followed.

So, without the tsunami, the failsafe protocolls in Fukushima would have worked and prevented all the sh*t that is going down right now? Or, at least, kept the mess more controlled...

Is that a correct assumption?

Thats what I've also read from a number of different sources. That the tsunami flooded the backup generators and took down some of the main powergrid which meant the coolant generators didn't have enough power to cool the main reactors. I think thats why they are flooding a number of the reactors with sea water, to keep them cool.

There is another issue, if theyre flooding them with seawater theyre writing off the reactors. Will the loss in energy it provided be made up by other plants or are there going to be blackouts until they build new power plants?

Thats true, but I was under the impression that they hadnt decommissioned them as they were still needed to meet the power usage.

Juss look at these Before-And-After photos man. Naruto (suburb of Sendai) is fucking gone.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/13/world/asia/satellite-photos-japan-before-and-after-tsunami.html?hp

This, definitely!

The BBC is reporting that Japan has withdrawn the emergency staff trying to get the situation at Fukushima under control because radiation levels are too high. Of course, the protection of the staff is very important, but what is the next step if no one can even get close enough to fix the problem?

Apparently the remaining staff at the Fukushima plant have left the facility due to another spike in radiation levels.

Also had another largish quake, although it's currently hard to detect here as strong winds are also rattling the house making it hard to determine if the house is swaying due to a quake, the winds or both.

And of course, we're expecting a power cut within the next 30 mins or so. Was supposed to have one between 6:20 and 10:00 this morning, but that didn't happen.

Interesting read here:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/member/member.html?fl20040523x2.htm

Even if Tokyo is safe we, (me and my wife) will go on a trip south to Japan for a week or so, soon. Her parents live in Kumamoto, this is far enough and we can stay for a month if necessary.
But I guess it will be clear next week if we can return or have to leave the country.

We have no reason to be here if the the shit actually hits the fan.

True.

As long as there is no need to leave, we must remain where we are and not give in to panic, but if the nuclear problem is not manageable anymore I don't know why we should stay. Well, I say "we", but I'm in Osaka, quite far away from the power plants...

Are you japanese getting any clear reports about what the situation actually is regarding the, eh, nuclear issues?

Because the rest of the world sure isn't, and we're itching to find out. All we're hearing is "It's a crisis!" "No it's not!" every three hours.

Well, you know, we have some very good explanations from specialists and the situation is closely monitored by the government. Of course, there's always the possibility they lie, but knowing how japanese officials generally behave once a crisis is clear, I doubt it.

So, so far, the situation is not very good, but there is still no mass radioactive contamination. And I have the strange feeling some western medias are a little bit disappointed to have to wait so long for a "new Chernobyl"... In the french press, each new title is worse than the former one, even if the situation has not evolved a bit.

Unfortunately for us, if we have to leave we're buggered. Can't afford to leave the area to go south, let alone to leave the country. All our friends and the wife's relatives live further north than we do so trying to stay with them would not be that wise.

Also heard today that the house of one of the translators we sometimes use collapsed.

Well, the British Embassy just sent an advisory stating that anyone outside the current 30 km exclusion zone is safe. They state that any radioactive materials expelled in the air would only have been expelled, at most, to a height of 500 m. In comparison, Chernobyl was expelling nuclear material to a height of 30,000 ft and even then, there was no significant changes outside of the 30 km exclusion zone used there either.

As such, the Embassy advises those in the Greater Tokyo area and others area (not in the aforementioned exclusion zone) carry about their daily lives as normal and remain calm.

They are however, still advising against any unnecessary travel to Tokyo and North East Japan due to the damage suffered.

And this quote from Sir John Beddington (the Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government):

Let me now talk about what would be a reasonable worst case scenario. If the Japanese fail to keep the reactors cool and fail to keep the pressure in the containment vessels at an appropriate level, you can get this, you know, the dramatic word “meltdown”. But what does that actually mean? What a meltdown involves is the basic reactor core melts, and as it melts, nuclear material will fall through to the floor of the container. There it will react with concrete and other materials … that is likely… remember this is the reasonable worst case, we don’t think anything worse is going to happen. In this reasonable worst case you get an explosion. You get some radioactive material going up to about 500 metres up into the air. Now, that’s really serious, but it’s serious again for the local area. It’s not serious for elsewhere even if you get a combination of that explosion it would only have nuclear material going in to the air up to about 500 metres. If you then couple that with the worst possible weather situation i.e. prevailing weather taking radioactive material in the direction of Greater Tokyo and you had maybe rainfall which would bring the radioactive material down do we have a problem? The answer is unequivocally no. Absolutely no issue.

The problems are within 30 km of the reactor. And to give you a flavour for that, when Chernobyl had a massive fire at the graphite core, material was going up not just 500 metres but to 30,000 feet. It was lasting not for the odd hour or so but lasted months, and that was putting nuclear radioactive material up into the upper atmosphere for a very long period of time. But even in the case of Chernobyl, the exclusion zone that they had was about 30 kilometres. And in that exclusion zone, outside that, there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate people had problems from the radiation. The problems with Chernobyl were people were continuing to drink the water, continuing to eat vegetables and so on and that was where the problems came from. That’s not going to be the case here. So what I would really re-emphasise is that this is very problematic for the area and the immediate vicinity and one has to have concerns for the people working there. Beyond that 20 or 30 kilometres, it’s really not an issue for health.


I see italics are still borked on the forum.