8.8 magnitude earthquake off Japanese Coast

[cruisin]

^^ Thank goodness for that.

A concern for the west coast of North America. Debris from the tsunami was expected to hit the west coast of NA sometime next year. However, it is starting to show up now. There is real concern for how much debris will actually wind up on western shores.

[tralfamadorian]

Right, it sounds so very reassuring that the reactors are in "cold shutdown", it's just too bad that it's all a lie. It means very little that the reactors are "cold" when the fuel is not inside anymore...

Watch this report of the "cold shutdown" from NHK news (in English): http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/engli...112082000.html or here's part of the summary of the same vid: http://enenews.com/nhk-plant-operato...the-rest-video

NHK host:
- The fuel inside 3 reactors has melted through the bottoms of their furnaces
- Plant operators try to identify where all the fuel has gone
- Analysts estimate all of the fuel has melted through the furnace, much of it into the containment vessel

Noriyuki Mizuno, NHK Science Commentator (Transcript Summary):

- Above all, we need to know the temperature of the fuel
- No thermometer is in place to let us know
- Gov’t has set two conditions for declaring that the reactors are actually in cold shutdown:
- First is that the temperatures at the bottom of the reactors below 100°C
- The other is to have greatly reduced emissions of radioactive substances
(more at link)

For real news on the Fukushima situation I very much recommend http://enenews.com/ or another great blog site is http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/ which has lots of English translations of articles in the Japanese media that are otherwise not available.

[barbk]

Agree with Tralfamadorian...this is posturing by the Japanese government rather than real cold shutdown. The Christian Science Monitor had a good story on some of the skeptics.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Globa...eactors-stable

IEEE, which has had a lot of coverage, mostly behind paywalls, has republished a blog by the lead robotics operator a the Fukushima plant with some very interesting details for those who might be interested. The blog was taken down, but IEEE had grabbed a copy and decided to translate and republish. It is available without an IEEE account. (IEEE is the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers.)
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/r...erator-diaries

[allezfred]

Here is an article from this month's Vanity Fair about Dr. Robert Gale, an expert in radiation who was one of the few non-Soviet physicians involved in treating victims in Chernobyl, and the workers cleaning up the disaster in Fukushima.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/01/japan-201201