land of rising steam blowing off nippon

ofcourse the earthquake is a very sad event, and moreso the tsunami that was and remains rather lethal. all in all even assuming chronical and substantial underreporting that could have all been much worse, strict building requirements and a population prepared for tsunami alarm saved some of the day.



talking tsunamis, in the wake of this disaster, kobe earthquake has underpassed this event in deathtoll. i read there have been a calculated nr of up to 3 (now 4) such tsunamis in 3000 years, in japan.



personally i think it was rather more then less then that, but that not all of these 9-11 mtr high waves struck likewise big areas. in any case i was not surprised a second by reports of 10m high waves, they were just what i thought was to be expected with a severe earthquake near japan.



i also think that is the japanese geological assesment, it may sound vague, but hadn't such a wave been assumed beforehand damages and especially deathtoll would have been much higher still.





what occured to me is that the fears for an oceanwide tsunami appeared so exagerated.

that was also the case in chili, now fear after the south asian tsunami, that left almost 500000 people dead is understandable, so perhaps it is just well that every major quake in the pacific triggers those warnings, but i will still make the point of how i do think it really works.



in the case of chili at first i believed there would not at all be a tsunami over 3 mtrs anywhere,

it happened that there was one up to 6 m.

however it struck very locally, the vast majority of reulting deaths in only one port if i am not mistaken, catastrophical deaths are not my hobby so i could be a town or two (and than 3k victims) off.



however that has nothing to do with the mechanics. for me it is plainly obvious that any earthquake close to a major continental mass will not trigger a ocean wide tsunami of very dangerous proportions, allthough it will nearly allways at the nearest coasts.



some of the reasons for that are obvious, others are simple, and perhaps there is a complicated one i dont even think off, but i will try to explain how that is.



no matter japan is an island, it is big, and part , or at least almost part, of the eurasian landmass.

so when an earthquake more in the middle of an ocean would run out its energy in changing the floorlevel of an oceanic plate, much of the energy of a near land(continent) quake gets absorbed by a landmass, not only much less water gets displaced, (lifted in most cases so far) but it also gets displaced in way less homogeneous manners.



i think that is the main reason, also near coasts the ocean bottom is never flat, and allthough called 'continental flats', such seafloors are actually allways more or less gently sloped, an alltogether inferior circumstance for a superlarge tsunami (not to say they need be lower on the nearby coasts).



next, allthough that was much less for chili, the seabottom east of japan is very irregular and accidented, it has great depths, underwater mountains and vulcanoes(i assume) and the usual sloping. but a very pronounced one.



i think such circumstance is also much less conductive for large surface tsunamis, simply because the displacement of the watercolumn is to irregular to create such a massive waterdisplacement as a flat oceansbottom would allow.



(after this event the aforementioned 'hypotheses' have already been promoted to "science",

yet i am still the first to my knowledge to deduce this. (after i said it a couple of times it's a bit less admirable someone else comes up with the same from my pov., and with chili i also said this even before the fear of tsunamis in chili proper relinguished)



so much for tsunamis, the earthquake itself is a rather unique one, for one thing the nr of aftershocks is double or more the usually to be expected for japan. the area was not thought to even be conductive to an earthquake this scale, a 9richterscale earthquake, had been expected in japan at some point(thats why they build so well), but not here.



i didnt study the seismic or geological detail like i might have if there had been no nuclleair incidents, been to bussy trying to help prevail the worst , and trying to get a picture of what really went and goes on at the nucleair plants.



one good thing is that the other reactor park that appeared to get in trouble (some 10 or so km north of fukushima) has been stabilised as of yesterday, or so they said after i raised the question(..).

it has not been easy to get a clear picture, the resulting image is not comforting. tepco, the electricity corp that does the dirty job for the post ww2 usian investors, has been reluctant and almost greedy to share information, also at several points tepco utterly failed to effectuate the necessary measures and actions.

they brought in generators late, didnt supply them with fuel, didnt update the plants infrastructure after its designed age expired. they had no secure coolingwater reserves or resource, there is a lack of redundancy in several systems, a lack of cameras in many places, possibly the outer containers have been used to house undesigned nucleair projects and experiments, there are apparently no geigertellers at rooftoplevel, tepco kept working with a reactordesign that was recognised as dangerous,

then they provided scarce and incorrect even untrue informations, time and again technical detail was released only to be later drawn into doubt to calm the public, the dangers are downplayed, and attention is actively being drawn away from the mox/plutonium fuel (for wich the old reactor design was not even build btw.)

it went so far that one may wonder if the fire in the "spent fuel" bassin, that is actually not spent at all, but just temporary(maintainance) storage of the still functional fuelrods (all), is a coincedence or one more step to get away with the results of mox fuel future generations will now be facing.

each of the exploding reactors melted, at least partially, that was known as it happened, only since yesterday that is more or less acknowledged mainstream. conflicting and incorrect informations abound, in some cases things that belong to reactor nr2 are said to be with reactor 3, or 1, vv. doesn't seem coincedence.

there are damages to at least 2 of the inner containments, and perhaps 3, but they are now acknowedged for the nr2 (mox) plant mostly only. well that one has been steaming like mad most of the times since so it is hard to anymore deny.

perhaps the other two are only minimally damaged, but damaged they are, even for without that the housings would not have blown.

up to 5% (and perhaps more) of the mox's fuel (wrongly refered to as nr2 in cases) has disappeared, that is an amount of radioactive material twice chernobyl, not acknowledged.

distinct reports tell even different storys, part of the radioactive material would have stopped being radioactive upon arrival in northern america two days ago (hydrogen is light).
that means the mox thing has been running out of control, and allthough some of the radioactivity from the substances immediatly formed may have resided, they will be replaced by other longer term isotopes more often then have been working out.

another interesting detail is how the aircraft carrier out at sea experienced a 3000 times average radiation at 160 km. "for an hour" wich is also impossible, because it means slightly less radiation must have been experienced over at least twice that period.

tokyo was said to be thrice as radioactive when the official reading was 12 cpm, however unoffical geigertellers read the double almost at that point. (so 6 times as much radioactive material) that it is partly dust and not (airborn) gasses showed as a turning wind didnt change that much to it (as i write it is about 30cpm). insides.

however all of this is probably underestimated by me, if i go by indications, like what the chinese say, the french say, and the usians say (that had 17 radioactive cases 2 days ago when japan had only "19" yet) , or that the two missed persons have not been explained(..) that there are 5 confirmed deaths at the plant, but only in one source for now, etc etc etc. it is probably actually even worse then i here described.

what i identify as problematic is the corporations culture in japan, it seems to me management of tepco is more interested in their bolusses and tepcos unwarranted gains (that it seems majorly flow to usia immediatly) then doing the job, they seem to have thought tomorow is another day in several cases, they ran out of fuel(incredibly stupid), had problems supplying generators even after it was recognised they obviously needed many more, and last in that row they delayed the use of helicopters to pour water on top of reactor nr4 (and the rest i suppose) for almost 24 hours, facilitating even one more explosion.

for my part tesco has to be taken off this,(not to say they are allowed to stop working) the usian specialists that have been send 3 days ago, hadnt arrived per yesterday, but where still lauded to be underway,

"specialists" time and again showed their lack of knowledge and their talent for disagreeance and crap.
i didnt even bother to remember, to much to often, and to relatively unimportant.

the strategy for the nucleair disaster should be to do everything possible, as an example the helicopters may serve, when i went to bed they would still be put to use for cooling, however halfheartedly, when i woke up they hadnt used them, only to just have decided to still try it.

thats not the way to do such things, do what we can that might help, and think on between doing should be the motto. we can gladly throw away a couple of billions, just like the deathtoll of chernobyl is severely underreported everywhere since this accident, it is only from first hand accounts i know much better, the effects of this catastrophe will be terribly undereported obviously. nevertheless we are talking 100000s people and many future generations. it all adds up.

all the best of luck and be brave all. more on anything sooner then i'd wish.

hasta la revollution siempre, down with nucleair power, power to the people.