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Further update. I had some free time so checked out a travel agents. People here are panicking because of the word meltdown. It is hellishly busy at the travel agents, people want to leave tomorrow at any cost. This is in the Osaka region. I dont think the media is helping people calm down.
EDIT: Sitting here in the travel agents and so many people are walking in and asking for flights for anywhere leaving tomorrow. Is there something I don't know???
Last edited by sleepyhead; 14-03-2011 at 05:52 AM.
Sorry to read that Sleepyhead, you've only got access to the same info (and probably more) than the rest of us. Sounds to me like people are indeed panicking.
I'm waiting to see if there is some sort of co-ordinated charity / agency service set up to donate to, as i'm not sure what to prioritise right now - food, water, medicines, search & rescue etc. I guess like a lot of people i'd like to do something, but not quite sure what.
I like the idea of M.S.F. - anyone else any ideas?
Edit: Until something more co-ordinated comes along, i've donated a little something to the Red Cross:
http://www.redcross.org.uk/Donate-No...Tsunami-Appeal
I suppose that it's important to allow for people to be able to maintain privacy over whether you donate or not, and if so how much, but i'd encourage all of us to ask ourselves to do something meaningful.
Last edited by MSIC; 14-03-2011 at 07:50 AM.
- Another poster, from another forum.I'm commenting on an internet forum. Your facts hold no sway over me.
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I've been preferring to watch NHK World - the Japanese news in English. They have been very informative without the sensationalism of western media and their "experts" and hype.
Sleepyhead - thanks for taking the time to post in what must be very difficult circumstances. I wish you all the best.
"Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be." Frank Zappa. ----------- "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." Huang Po.----------- "A drowsy line of wasted time bathes my open mind", - Ride.
For those unaware (which is probably zero), another explosion at the Fukushima nuclear powerplant, this time reactor number 3.
From bad to worse.
It's quite surreal seeing people here generally go on about their normal day-to-day business whilst 600 odd miles north is absolute chaos.
Not that I'm aware of, and I suspect it reflects the valid concerns about radiation as being something insidious, invisible and really nasty. But it's hard to say the reaction of those wanting the first flight anywhere is simply panic, when I'm sitting comfortably several thousand miles from the problem. I can react calmly and dispassionately as my butt is not at risk, but I doubt I could be so calm if it was.Originally Posted by sleepyhead
If, and I repeat IF, the information we're being given is accurate, and IF the "experts" are correct, then there's nothing yet to suggest any real, large scale threat. All the experts I've seen have been suggesting that serious or large-scale health risk is unlikely.
But, it's still a developing situation, and I guess those wanting the first flight out have at least one eye on the possibility that that "unlikely" could change.
I did see one report (BBC) that a US aircraft carrier had detected low level radiation levels 100 offshore, which is not a comforting sign, if true, but it DID say "low level". Also, I've not seen that confirmed anywhere else yet.
Yup. It's attributed to a hydrogen build-up. 11 hurt, apparently.
Oh, and reports are also that the actual reactors are still intact. And if they've withstood the earthquake, the tsunami and the explosions, it says quite a lot about their resilience. Any radiation leakage is supposed to be from a small amount of venting of coolant steam. Just what level of risk this poses, I've no idea but experts seem to be downplaying it.
Part of the problem is that unless those with actual information (such as the authorities) give regular, reasonably detailed and entirely accurate information, we rapidly reach the conclusion that we don't know if we can trust what they say, and many nation's authorities have a track record when it comes to being a bit economical with the truth of risk levels. As a result, we end up with "experts", some of whom actually are, giving assessments on the TV based on generalities and what might or might not be accurate information releases.
In short, we really don't know what's really happening. We may well be being told the complete and utter truth, as far as it's known. Or we might not.
Certainly, were it me, while I hope I wouldn't panic about it, I'd sure not be staying near the reactor sites if I had a reasonable option to leave.
My friend in Fukushima was 90Kms from the nuclear reactor but he still got evacuated. Not sure where he is at the moment, Aizu I think he said but he's volunteered to help with the relief effort. I wish him the best and that he stays safe. Still some pretty strong shocks in the Tokyo region.
On a different note there are some pictures of the Ebisu racing circuit and the cars that live there and what the quake has done to that area.
http://kumakubo.seesaa.net/
The land where the garage was just sunk away...
[EDIT]This is kind of a release for me...if that makes sense, so my posts may or may not be fully coherent.
I entirely understand. If it works, it works, so release away.
And they are coherent, by the way.
sleepyhead (14-03-2011)
ARGH!!! Just read the most idiotic message so far.
A shop posted up on Facebook that they are OK and their suppliers are OK (all based in Tokyo) but that deliveries will be..well...non-existent (for obvious reasons). The first reply was "I hope my CDs are not delayed too long".
WHAT PLANET ARE YOU ON, YOU FREAKING MORON???!!?!?!?!?!!
Sorry. Just had to scream that out.
Platinum (14-03-2011)
A classic example of the myopia of distance .... and ignorance.
At the moment, we're all still shocked by the live video feeds of the devastation, and of the nuclear concerns, but it certainly appears that, slowly, a wider picture is starting to emerge.
One aspect of that is that, severe though the damage is, and horrific though the loss of life appears to be, it's a fraction of what might have been expected if we look at recent similar incidents, where the fatalities weren't measured in a few thousands, but hundreds of thousands.
That this happened so close the mainland and that things aren't an order of magnitude or more worse than they are is a stunning testament both to Japanese building standards and technology, and to the quality of their human training, preparation and response to this situation.
Nonetheless, this is still a major blow to a major economic power, with an economy that's been, to put it politely, a bit delicate for some years, and that comes on top of the economic shocks from what's currently going on in the Middle East and North Africa (most notably Libya).
Japan may have taken the brunt of the seismic shock wave, but the economic shock waves are likely to be felt around the world for quite a long time. "Late CDs" are the least of the problems, even outside of the obvious devastation.
That is most likely an overseas buyer who doesn't have a brain.
Sleepyhead - yeah, I saw that on the news, they were reporting it around the time I went to bed (4 ish). It was unclear whether it was the same building, although having seen the video, the smoke plume is obviously different (I initially assumed they were talking about the first one).
With regards to the carrier detecting radiation levels offshore, that's not particularly surprising if there's a Westerly wind. The reactors have been venting steam that's mildly radioactive (not to mention the explosion - most of the reactor housing will have a higher than normal background count) and:
"The maximum potential radiation dose received by any ship's force personnel aboard the ship when it passed through the area was less than the radiation exposure received from about one month of exposure to natural background radiation from sources such as rocks, soil, and the sun.
If anything, be glad the prevailing wind is blowing it out to sea rather than inland.
Once again, it's a shame this has been reported because now everyone's going to panic at the thought of radioactive dust. To put this into perspective, this is nowhere near as bad as Windscale http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7030281.stm.
Worth noting is a similar explosion happened at 3-Mile Island. In this case, however, the tops of the cores had been exposed for about 11-12 hours before they started pumping coolant over them.
Decay heat as a fraction of reactor power, against time - after a SCRAM. They need to keep cooling it for about a week, to be safe.
It also had a run-away chain reaction, newer plants are designed with a negative void coefficient - meaning that as the coolant boils, the reaction slows down. Saying that, it doesn't help when some idiot designs a graphite tipped control rod.
Last edited by Whiternoise; 14-03-2011 at 11:57 AM.
Indeed. There is, or should be, a duty on news organisations to put some competently-expressed context on news. The remark on the BBC was
Perhaps, to someone who understands it, "low level" has a meaning. and that meaning may be "no real risk". But then, why are the US moving a carrier, if indeed they are? Perhaps as a precaution? Perhaps because it's interfering with sensitive equipment?Japanese officials are playing down any health risk, but the US said it had moved one of its aircraft carriers from the area after detecting low-level radiation 100 miles (160km) offshore.
But a lot of people will see that and think "if the US is moving a carrier because of radiation, then how low level is low level, and hos much of a risk is it?"
I saw one expert the other day point out that some types of radiation that would likely be present in vented steam would decay within seconds (alpha??). The clear inference was that, if that was the case, outside of the immediate vicinity, any released radiation of that type would be harmless by the time it had had a chance to travel any distance, and that therefore it represented no general health risk.
This type of situation gives the authorities a problem. If they announce a radiation leak, probably regardless of whatever caveats they put on it like the above, it's going to cause concern and worry, and perhaps some panic. But if they don't announce it, and it later comes out, it looks like they were downplaying a real danger.
And if they don't announce it, it's only a matter of time (and probably not much time) before some journalist asks if there has been any radiation leakage. At that point, the authorities are going to look bad whatever they do. If they say "no" and it later comes out they lied (and it inevitably would), the have destroyed trust. And that has happened in the past. And if they say "yes", then the next question is "why didn't you announce it" and again, trust has been destroyed because they were clearly holding back.
Really, all they can do for a sensible long-term strategy is to be open and honest, and try like hell to impart the context of any risk along with the truth of the leaks, and hope to hell it doesn't cause panic. Otherwise, the price of preventing panic right now is that they won't be trusted in the future, and that, sadly, is why they aren't trusted now. because of past evasions and distortions.
On another subject, that's why I'm so angry at Tony Blair over the dodgy Iraq dossier. I didn't, perhaps naively, believe that a British Prime Minister would so outrageously misrepresent the real state of the intelligence as he did in that dossier, and especially the foreword. I can certainly accept that there's a lot they don't tell us, and often (though by no means always) it's for good and valid reasons. But, having read subsequent reports about what Blair knew and when, and then looking at how he presented that to us, I can't help but reach the conclusion that either he's an utter moron that was utterly incapable of interpreting what he was being told, or he set out to, at the very least, completely deceive us. Whether it's an outright lie is a complex argument, but I see no alternative to it being outright deceit, short of the "utter moron" option.
The result, my apparent naivety about the extent to which a British PM would misrepresent the truth over a topic so fundamental as going to war has been permanently removed. Never again will I trust ANY politician to be telling the truth simply because it's so important a matter. Perhaps a Blair did me a favour by puncturing that naive belief, but at least for me, he's done it so that not only do I not take any single utterance he's come out with ever since at face value, but now knowing that one PM can be so utterly manipulative, I now know it's possible any others are, including Brown, Cameron and anyone yet to come in my lifetime.
And in my view, that's at least partly why the press are currently speculating so much on what's really going on in Japan - because both here and abroad, we've had too many examples of politicians lying to us, even if just to protect us, to be able to take anything they say as necessarily being the simple, unadulterated truth. In other words, we don't trust them, and with damn good reason.
The press often get a bad rap for the way they interrogate or interview politicians, but I invite anyone reading this to consider that they are cynical about what politicians say for historically excellent reasons.
There's a good article on The Register regarding the reactors - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03...iima_analysis/
Definitely less sensational than the other reporting on the issues, but it does put a lot of fears to rest
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This is bunny and friends. He is fed up waiting for everyone to help him out, and decided to help himself instead!
Considering some of the reactors are the better part of 40 years old it is quite impressive TBH that the damage was not worse.
Of course the anti-nuclear crowd are having a field day about this but I wonder if many people have thought about the effect an 8.9 magnitude earthquake would have on any power generating faculty?
Something like a dam would probably of more immediate concern TBH.
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