Kevin's Watch

Savor Dam wrote:Actual wave height on the Washington coast was only about 18 inches higher than nominal. No damage. This time.

Got email from a coworker in Japan. He's OK, but said getting home from work (opposite side of Tokyo) was an ordeal. Scary stuff.

balon! wrote:I had a friend who postulated these earthquakes in Chile and now Japan are a sign the Ring of Fire is going off...Washington may go soon, and I've been hearing my whole life that Rainier is many years overdue for an eruption...scary stuff.

balon! wrote:

Savor Dam wrote:Actual wave height on the Washington coast was only about 18 inches higher than nominal. No damage. This time.

Got email from a coworker in Japan. He's OK, but said getting home from work (opposite side of Tokyo) was an ordeal. Scary stuff.

I had a friend who postulated these earthquakes in Chile and now Japan are a sign the Ring of Fire is going off...Washington may go soon, and I've been hearing my whole life that Rainier is many years overdue for an eruption...scary stuff.

Japan Races To Avert Multiple Nuclear Meltdowns

Koriyama - Japan's nuclear crisis intensified on Sunday as authorities raced to combat the threat of multiple reactor meltdowns.

Authorities have evacuated more than 170 000 people in the quake- and tsunami-savaged northeastern coast where fears spread over possible radioactive contamination.

Nuclear plant operators were frantically trying to keep temperatures down in a series of nuclear reactors - including one where officials feared a partial meltdown could be happening on Sunday - to prevent the disaster from growing worse.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano also said on Sunday that a hydrogen explosion could occur at Unit 3 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, the latest reactor to face a possible meltdown.

That follows a blast the day before in the power plant's Unit 1 and operators attempted to prevent a meltdown there by injecting sea water into it.

"At the risk of raising further public concern, we cannot rule out the possibility of an explosion," Edano said.

"If there is an explosion, however, there would be no significant impact on human health."

More than 170 000 people had been evacuated as a precaution, though Edano said the radioactivity released into the environment so far was so small it didn't pose any health threats.

He said none of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors was near the point of complete meltdown and he was confident of escaping the worst scenarios.

A complete meltdown - the collapse of a power plant's ability to keep temperatures under control - could release uranium and dangerous contaminants into the environment and pose major, widespread health risks.

Decrease

Up to 160 people, including 60 elderly patients and medical staff who had been waiting for evacuation in the nearby town of Futabe, and 100 others evacuating by bus, might have been exposed to radiation, said Ryo Miyake, a spokesperson from Japan's nuclear agency.

The severity of their exposure, or if it had reached dangerous levels, was not clear. They were being taken to hospitals.

Edano said operators were trying to cool and decrease the pressure in the Unit 3 reactor, just as they had the day before at Unit 1.

"We're taking measures on Unit 3 based on a similar possibility" of a partial meltdown, Edano said.

Japan struggled with the nuclear crisis as it tried to determine the scale of the Friday disasters, when an 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the most powerful in the country's recorded history, was followed by a tsunami that savaged its northeastern coast with breathtaking speed and power.

More than 1 400 people were killed and hundreds more were missing, according to officials, but police in one of the worst-hit areas estimated the toll there alone could eventually top 10 000.

The scale of the multiple disasters appeared to be outpacing the efforts of Japanese authorities to bring the situation under control more than two days after the initial quake.