8.8 Earthquake hits Japan

[darkxshade]

Anyone know if the sea level along the CA coast has receded? Isn't that usually the sign of an incoming tsunami?

 

[Pocatello]

OH SHIT. California is Fucked.

So long you hippies.

 

[rcpratt]

I think the nuke plant will be okay, but they aren't giving many details. Water levels receding in the reactor but they have many hours before fuel rods are exposed.

The ESBWR would have been able to cool down safely without backup diesel generators, just sayin'.

 

[Ninjahedge]

I am unsure that the Richter was actual displacement, I do know it is a logarithmic scale.

I always thought that the scale measured relative acceleration, not displacement.

If it measures displacement, then it is difficult to say what the actual energy is, because that would depend on the frequency of excitation. There is a narrow range of accelerations when you take the analog ground motion and transform it into a spectrological (frequency domain) graph. The lower the frequency, the less energy is needed to get it from one end of its motion to the other.

This does not mean that teh SAME frequency would not be a constant amount different between two different richter scale values, but two different frequencies will have different relatie accelerations.

Add to it the different ground motions. I think they are calle N, P and S (I will have to go back into my texts). Basically they are lateral motion, axial motion, and vertical motion (The earthquake wave travels in one direction, it either shakes you side to side, front to back or up and down relative to its transmission (travel) direction.

The vertical waves were something rarely experienced in significant ways until Northridge, and that is where we saw things like highway overpass columns crunched don on themsleves like crushed aluminum cans...

Now, as for the Tsunami, I have heard +/- 30' waves close to the epicenter, but that energy dissipates as a function of the radius squared... I do not know what that would do to wave height, but I am sure Hawaii might have a nice wash of seawater. The main problem is that this is not a wave, but an actual mass of water. Ig you get 4' coming ashore, it will keep going until it runs out of energy. After being in Waikiki a while back, some of these coastline communities do not have 4' to spare....

Lastly, the buildings. Japan has known about the seismic threat for a while and has designed for it. The beildings are designed to survive through minor quakes, and fail in predictable ways for a major one (rendering the building useless, but still allowing people to get out safely). Ductile failure is generally the mode. They let the building absorb energy (like when you bend a piece of plastic back and forth until you see the color go kind of white....).

But a Tsunami is an impact load. You have problems with undermining of supports, impact from carried flotsam and jetsam, and other issues.

There is almost no way to design against those things besides making layers of breakwater all around the low lying areas......


I saw this all on the news and hope that few were hurt.....

 

[Anubis]

Anyone know if the sea level along the CA coast has receded? Isn't that usually the sign of an incoming tsunami?

yes but it happens pretty close to the point where you are fucked. The Tsunami vid on CNNs page is amazing. watching the wave pulse move through open water is fascinating.

Sucks for the people effected, and i wish them well

 

[sdifox]

Good luck to all affected.

 

[iGas]

Moment of Japan earthquake caught on cameras triggering 10m tsunami

Claimed 200 death.

Have they spot the tsunami out in the open water?
How long will it get to North America coast?
I'm less than 1/2 mile from the ocean, and about 4 feet above sea level.

 

[DangerAardvark]

Reef is showing in Hawaii.

There's somebody standing at the shoreline in the traffic camera.

 

[tk149]

 

[notty22]

This is a 15 min video that shows Tsunami, its disturbing, at first its coming from the ocean across a open air port, later its going over farm lands carrying houses. Nature is the most powerful force.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo6aYYhZUJY

 

[dfuze]

I hope the remaining aftershocks don't create any more tsunamis

 

[Wag]

Holy crap! A nuclear reactor's back-up system has failed in Japan.

 

[Joemonkey]

Reef is showing in Hawaii.

There's somebody standing at the shoreline in the traffic camera.

link?

 

[iGas]

Holy crap! A nuclear reactor's back-up system has failed in Japan.

They claimed that there isn't a problem, but as a precautionary action they advised the 3000 local residents to evacuate.

 

[WaTaGuMp]

Watch out gas prices.

 

[alfa147x]

Sad stuff. Hope everyone's contacts are doing okay.

Can someone bitch slap TridenT?

 

[IceBergSLiM]

my friend is an NCO in hawaii, he opted to goto the gym rather than the evac center. Guess it wasn't that big of a deal if he had a choice.

 

[rcpratt]

They claimed that there isn't a problem, but as a precautionary action they advised the 3000 local residents to evacuate.

There hasn't been any release yet, but if they can't restore power or get the backup diesels running, water levels in the reactor are going to drop below the top of the fuel rods eventually.

We'll have more details soon, I assume.

 

[purbeast0]

wow this is really devastating

 

[slightlyhuman]

Sad stuff. Hope everyone's contacts are doing okay.

Can someone bitch slap TridenT?

Agreed. Fuck trident. Why hasn't be been banned yet?

 

[0roo0roo]

Moment of Japan earthquake caught on cameras triggering 10m tsunami

Claimed 200 death.

Have they spot the tsunami out in the open water?
How long will it get to North America coast?
I'm less than 1/2 mile from the ocean, and about 4 feet above sea level.

yea well not bad considering, the haiti quake was 7.0 and turned that country into dust.

 

[mzkhadir]

Images: http://www.fnn-news.com/

Live webcams: http://www.fnn-news.com/camera/camera4.html
There are more cameras on the same page of tabs.

 

[sdifox]

yea well not bad considering, the haiti quake was 7.0 and turned that country into dust.

Building standards are very stringent in Japan.

 

[alfa147x]

Just heard from a friend who departed for Okinawa not too long ago. He's fine and so far they haven't had any problems. They were set to arrive in Indonesia in a couple days. They have been put on standby and might be turning around to help with things.

Agreed. Fuck trident. Why hasn't be been banned yet?

TFP was banned but TridenT hasn't :hmm:

 

[DrunkenSano]

Holy crap, watching the ABC news stream on yahoo and fires everywhere in Japan.


Also, +1 for banning TridenT.