Earthquake and Tsunami - Japan 2011

14 March 2011 Last updated at 15:12 GMT
How the quake has moved Japan
By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News

Japan's coastline may have shifted by as much as 4m (13ft) to the east following Friday's 8.9 Magnitude earthquake, according to experts.

Data from the country's Geonet network of around 1,200 GPS monitoring stations suggest a large displacement following the massive quake.

Dr Roger Musson from the British Geological Survey (BGS) told BBC News the movement observed following the quake was "in line with what you get when you have an earthquake this big".

The quake probably shifted Earth on its axis by about 6.5 inches (16.5cm) and caused the planet to rotate somewhat faster, shortening the length of the day by about 1.8 millionths of a second.

Japan's meteorological agency has proposed updating the magnitude of the earthquake to 9.0.

This would make it the joint fifth biggest quake since instrumental records began, but other agencies have not yet followed suit.

Japan lies on the infamous "Ring of Fire", the line of frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions that encircles virtually the entire Pacific Rim.

The dense rock making up the Pacific Ocean's floor is being pulled down (subducted) underneath Japan as it moves westwards towards Eurasia.

Dr Brian Baptie, also from the BGS, explained that the quake occurred on the subduction zone along two tectonic plates, the Pacific plate to the east and another plate to the west, which many geologists regard as a continuation of the North American plate.
Infographic

As the Pacific plate moves westwards underneath Japan, it drags the North American plate downwards and westwards with it.

As an earthquake occurs, the upper plate lurches upwards and eastwards, releasing strain built up as the two plates grind against one another.

In the most recent case, this movement gave a kick to the seabed, displacing a large amount of water and leading to the tsunami waves which devastated coastal areas in the Sendai region.

"The Pacific plate has moved a maximum of 20m westwards, but the amount of movement will vary even within the fault," said Dr Musson.

"That doesn't mean the whole country has shifted by that amount because the actual displacement will decay further from the fault."

Geonet is operated by Japan's Geographical Survey Institute (GSI). Work on the array began in 1993, and it has now grown into the largest GPS network in the world, according to the GSI.

Its data show a movement eastwards of up to 4m in coastal areas of Japan.

Dr Ken Hudnut, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey (USGS) in Pasadena, California, told MSNBC that information resources linking GPS readings to maps, such as driving directions and property records, would have to be changed as a result of the shift.

"Their national network for property boundary definitions has been warped," he explained. "For ships, the nautical charts will need revision due to changed water depths, too (of about 3ft). Much of the coastline dropped by a few feet, too, we gather."

Link - BBC News - How the quake has moved Japan

Sharing a report from The New York Times regarding the impact of Tsunami on the whaling industry. It seems the whales will have some respite as there wont be any whaling operations in the April season.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

Japanese Town Mulls Future Without Whaling Industry


Published: March 24, 2011
AYUKAWAHAMA, Japan — At first glance, it seemed like just one more flattened building in a seaside town where a tsunami had leveled hundreds of homes. But survivors gathered at this one to stand and brood.

They came to what had been the headquarters of Ayukawa Whaling, one of only a handful of companies left in japan that still hunted large whales. Those who gathered on a chilly recent Thursday spoke as if the company’s destruction two weeks ago had robbed the town of its soul.

“There is no Ayukawawithout whaling,” said Hiroyuki Akimoto, 27, a fisherman and an occasional crewman on the whaling boats, referring to the town by its popular shorthand.

Japan’s tsunami seems to have succeeded — where years of boycotts, protests and high-seas chases by Western environmentalists had failed — in knocking out a pillar of the nation’s whaling industry. Ayukawahama was one of only four communities in Japan that defiantly carried on whaling and eating whales as a part of the local culture, even as the rest of the nation lost interest in whale meat.

So central is whaling to the local identity that many here see the fate of the town and the industry as inextricably linked. “This could be the final blow to whaling here,” said Makoto Takeda, a 70-year-old retired whaler. “So goes whaling, so goes the town.”

The damage was particularly heavy here because Ayukawahama sits on the tip of a peninsula that was the closest land to the huge undersea earthquake 13 days ago. The resulting tsunami tore through the tiny fishing towns on the mountainous coastline, reducing Ayukawahama to an expanse of splintered wood and twisted cars. Three out of four homes were destroyed, forcing half of the town’s 1,400 residents into makeshift shelters.

At the offices of Ayukawa Whaling, only a light green harpoon gun — which once proudly decorated the entrance — and an uprooted pine tree were left standing. Across a parking lot stood the skeletal frame of the factory where whale meat was processed. A beached fishing boat and crumpled fire truck lay on the raised platform where the whales were hoisted ashore to be butchered.

The company’s three boats, which had been sucked out to sea, washed up miles down the coast with remarkably little damage. But they remain grounded there.
Ayukawa Whaling’s chairman, Minoru Ito, said he was in the office when the earthquake struck, shattering windows and toppling furniture. He led the employees to higher ground.

All 28 of them survived, he said, though he later had to lay them off. He said he fully intended to rebuild, hopefully in time for an autumn hunt off the northern island of Hokkaido, though he acknowledged the recovery might take more time. He said the most costly part would be getting the whaling ships back in the water, an undertaking that the company cannot afford without government help.

Once the ships are ready, he wants to hire back the employees. However, he admitted that the waves might have scared some employees away, from both whaling and Ayukawahama.

“If we can fix the ships, then we’re back in business,” said Mr. Ito, 74, whose father was also a whaler. “They should not be afraid, because another tsunami like that won’t come for another 100 years.”
Other residents were similarly undaunted. Mr. Akimoto, the occasional whaler, who came with a friend to see the ruined company, said the town needed to resume whaling as soon as possible to lift its spirits.
He said the year would be a sad one because the town would miss the April hunting season, during which coastal whalers like Ayukawa Whaling are allowed to take 50 minke whales under Japan’s controversial whaling program, which is ostensibly for research.

Ayukawahama and the other three whaling communities — among them Taiji, made infamousby the movie “The Cove” — hunt only in coastal waters. Japan’s better-known whaling in the Antarctic is conducted by the government.

Mr. Akimoto said April was usually the town’s most festive month, especially when large whales were brought ashore. He said he would miss that feeling this year.
Added his friend, Tatsuya Sato, 20, “We are so hungry that if they brought a whale ashore now, the whole town would rush down to eat it.”

The source article can be found here: Japanese Town Tsunami Destroyed Contemplates a Future Without Whaling - NYTimes.com

The nuclear fallout from the Fukushima nuclear power plants is growing bigger everyday. Sharing a news article published in The Sydney Morning Herald.
Sabyasachi

Radiation spike in sea near nuke plant
Huw Griffith
March 27, 2011 - 12:29AM
AFP

Radiation levels have surged in seawater near a tsunami-stricken nuclear power station in Japan, as engineers battle to stabilise the plant in hazardous conditions.

Urgent efforts are under way to drain pools of highly radioactive water near the reactors, after several workers sustained radiation burns while installing cables as part of efforts to restore the critical cooling systems.

The new safety worries have further complicated efforts to bring the ageing facility under control, and raised fears that the fuel rod vessels or their valves and pipes are leaking.

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"It is becoming very important to get rid of the puddles quickly," an official at the nuclear safety agency, Hidehiko Nishiyama, said on Saturday.

One of the worst-case scenarios at reactor three would be that the fuel inside the reactor core -- a volatile uranium-plutonium mix -- has already started to burn its way through its steel pressure vessel.

"Highly radioactive water is flowing inside the buildings and then into the sea, which is worrying for fish and marine vegetation," said Olivier Isnard, an expert at France's Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety.

"One hypothesis is that the reactor vessel is breached and highly radioactive corium is coming out," he told AFP.

Fire engines have hosed thousands of tonnes of seawater onto the plant in a bid to keep the fuel rods inside reactor cores and pools from being exposed to the air, where they could reach critical stage and go into full meltdown.

Several hundred metres offshore in the Pacific Ocean, levels of iodine-131 about 1250 times the legal limit were detected on Saturday, a ten-fold increase from just days earlier, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said.

Drinking a half-litre bottle of fresh water with the same concentration would expose a person to their annual safe dose, Nishiyama said, but he ruled out an immediate threat to aquatic life and seafood safety.

"Generally speaking, radioactive material released into the sea will spread due to tides, so you need much more for seaweed and sea life to absorb it," he said.

Because iodine-131 decays relatively quickly with a half-life of eight days, "by the time people eat the sea products, its amount is likely to have diminished significantly", he said.

However, TEPCO also reported levels of caesium-137 -- which has a longer half life of about 30 years -- almost 80 times the legal maximum. Scientists say both radioactive substances can cause cancer if absorbed by humans.

The government's assurances did little to lift the gloom that has hung over Japan since a 9.0-magnitude quake struck on March 11 and sent a huge tsunami crashing into the northeast coast in the country's worst post-war disaster.

The wave easily overwhelmed the world's biggest sea defences and swallowed entire communities. The confirmed death toll stood at 10,418 on Saturday, with little hope seen for most of the 17,072 listed as missing.

The tsunami knocked out the cooling systems for the six reactors of the Fukushima plant, leading to suspected partial meltdowns in three of them. Hydrogen explosions and fires that have also ripped through the facility.

For more...check the source article here: Radiation spike in sea near nuke plant

Radiation from Japan n-plant reaches Britain
London, March 29 (IANS)

Faint traces of radiation from Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant have been traced to the Scottish city of Glasgow, officials said.

The radiation was, however, "extremely low" and the Scottish government said there was no threat to public health, Sky News reported.

Traces of radioactive iodine 131 were picked up by an air sampler in the city, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency said, adding that the value of the sample was low and similar to those detected in other European countries like Iceland and Switzerland.

James Gemmill, the radioactive substances manager of the agency, said: "The concentration of iodine detected is not of concern for the public or the environment."

Britain is now collecting samples from 92 monitoring sites around the country. Air samples are checked every hour and the data is then checked by the Met Office in London for any abnormal radiation readings.

Three reactors of the Fukushima nuclear power plant blew up after the March 11 earthquake while a fourth reactor caught fire.

Link - Radiation from Japan n-plant reaches Britain

Its like a pandora's box. Once the nuclear reactor is breached, the radiation levels can't be contained. It is not just a problem of a country or geography. The radiation from Japan has reached Britain and it is likely to reach many other countries.

Japan is an exporter of lot of electronic items, components etc. The components can easily carry the radiation. Many countries have started scanning the imports from Japan for radiation. However, the process is not stringently followed in all countries. What about India? In many ports, one is not sure about the checking protocol. It is tough.

I hope we learn from this incident and stop all Nuclear power plants. We just can't take this enormous risk.

New Arms in Reactor Fight: Mega-Barge, Sticky Resin
By ANDREW MORSE and MITSURU OBE

TOKYO—In its battle to control radiation and toxic runoff at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Japan is set to incorporate two unorthodox weapons—a giant sport-fishing platform and 60,000 liters of sticky resin.

Aerial views show damage at the disaster-hit Fukushima nuclear plant's No. 4 reactor. Video courtesy of AFP.

On Friday, the government said it will start spraying a synthetic resin over debris on plant grounds. Authorities hope that coating the area with the sticky resin will prevent contamination, present on debris that was spread in explosions to reactor buildings, from being blown to surrounding regions.

Prime Minister Kan, addressing media Friday, braced for a 'long battle.'

A separate plan emerged Friday to find a place for the untold gallons of contaminated water that have flooded parts of the complex following reactor-cooling operations—hampering repair work and opening the risk that contaminated water could run to the nearby sea.

The oceanside city of Shizuoka, 100 miles down the coast from the plant, said Friday that it had agreed to lease plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. its 450-foot-long so-called mega-barge, which the town uses as a platform for fishing and taking in views of Mount Fuji.

The barge's flat steel structure allows it to hold 10,000 tons of water, and its shallow draft will let it dock close to the plant, unlike an oil tanker, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior regulator at Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

The Japanese government monitors radiation levels around the country. Track these measurements over time.

Finding places to store water remains the biggest imperative at Fukushima Daiichi, in part because flooding has blocked access to the reactors' disabled cooling pumps.

Those efforts inched forward Friday, as the government moved water that had been stored in a tank outside the building of reactor No. 2 into a vessel even farther away. Having emptied the tank close to the reactor's turbine building, plant operators hope to fill it with the contents of a condenser unit inside the turbine building. Once that vessel is empty, in turn, officials hope to fill it with radioactive runoff water. Similar transfer processes are under way at reactors No. 1 and 3.

Authorities want to switch to regular cooling systems so they can stop using the jury-rigged systems—spraying water at reactors and spent-fuel pools, or injecting water into the vessels that surround the reactor core.

The station's three most troubled reactors—Nos. 1, 2 and 3—were stable on Friday, according to Tepco and the government, measured by pressure and temperature readings. "We have to remove the water and establish a sustainable cooling system as soon as possible," said Mr. Nishiyama. "The status of the reactors is to a certain degree stable, but it still does not allow us to be optimistic."

Mr. Nishiyama's caution was echoed by Prime Minister Naoto Kan. "We are ready to fight a long battle," he said. "But we will surely prevail."

Friday's announcements speak to the degree to which the government and Tepco have had to improvise following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that knocked out cooling systems and led to radioactivity-spewing explosions.

Earlier in the battle to reduce overheating at the reactors, officials called in water-dumping helicopters and a Tokyo fire truck called the Super Pumper.

Though workers succeeded in bringing down the temperatures, the spraying efforts spurred other problems. Authorities are now monitoring three trenches that connect the basements of each unit's turbine building to the outside. The trenches have filled with contaminated water that threatens to overflow into the sea which is roughly 200 feet away. The level of water in the trenches has remained roughly steady over the week.

Link - New Arms in Reactor Fight: Mega-Barge, Sticky Resin - WSJ.com

This is a mammoth task. One solution leads to another problem. The spraying of sea water to cool the reactor led to corrosion and leakage. Now there is lot of water contaminated by radiation, so isolating the water from reaching the sea is tough. Ofcourse, the sea water is found to have radiation as well. And when the sea water is contaminated, especially with Caesium 137 etc which have high half life period, the entire mankind is in trouble, because this is going to reach all the oceans and seas.

Hope they are able to contain it. I wish India Government as well as other countries learn from this harsh lesson and stop the Nuclear plants.

Sabyasachi

Nitrogen Operation Called Successful at Japanese Nuclear Plant

April 07, 2011

Japanese officials say efforts to pump nitrogen into the containment vessel of a damaged nuclear reactor appear to be succeeding, easing fears that a hydrogen build-up in the vessel could cause a dangerous explosion.

Operators of the Fukushima nuclear power plant said Thursday that pressure is rising inside the plant's Number 1 reactor, indicating the stabilizing nitrogen is entering the chamber as planned. They said the operation could last for another five days and may be repeated at the Number 2 and Number 3 reactors.

Technicians with the Tokyo Electric Power Company also are pumping 11,500 tons of contaminated water into the ocean in order to make room in a storage area for water from the basements of the damaged reactors that is 200,000 times more radioactive. Japan's NHK Television said only 2,000 tons remain to be pumped.

On Wednesday, work crews succeeded in sealing a leak that was allowing highly contaminated water from the number two reactor to enter the Pacific Ocean, sending radioactivity in places to millions of times the legal limit. But NHK said Thursday that highly radioactive water is now rising in a tunnel next to the reactor, perhaps because the leaking has stopped, and is within one meter of ground level.

The nuclear accident, caused when a massive earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems at the plant's six reactors on March 11, is considered the second worst in history. The chairman of a U.N. committee that monitors the effects of nuclear radiation said Wednesday the accident is "much more serious" than the one at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 but not so serious as the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine in 1986.

The chairman, Wolfgang Weiss, said traces of radioactive iodine from the Fukushima plant have been detected all around the world, but at much lower levels than after the Chernobyl accident.

Nevertheless, public anxiety is high in several countries, with reports of panic purchases of iodine tablets in the western United States and of salt in China and South Korea. In South Korea Thursday, some schools were closed because of fears that a passing rainfall may be radioactive.

In Japan, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters the government was reviewing the standards under which it determines how large an area needs to be evacuated because of the nuclear emergency. He said the standards were set in anticipation of a sudden, large of radiation, but the government now must consider the effects of lower levels over a much longer time.

He also said the government is working to come up with standards under which residents of homes inside the 20-kilometer exclusion zone might return home for short visits to collect some belongings.

Source article can be found here: Fukushima Plant Operator: Nitrogen Pumping Operation Going Well | East Asia and Pacific | English

Sharing a news from Voice of America.

New Video shows disaster at Fukushima Nuclear Plant; Japan Tightens Regulations

Saturday, April 9th, 2011 at 2:00 pm UTC
Posted 30 minutes ago

Newly released video of Japan's March 11 earthquake and tsunami is giving the world a better look at its devastating impact on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The brief clip put out by the Tokyo Electric Power Company Saturday shows a wall of water slamming into the plant, easily overwhelming the facility's protective seawall.

The release of the video clip comes the same day Japanese officials announced they were requiring the country's nuclear facilities to take additional precautions.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Saturday all nuclear facilities will now have need two emergency back-up generators instead of one.

The March 11 disaster knocked out the Fukushima plant's only back-up power generator, preventing workers from cooling the nuclear reactors.
Other Japanese nuclear power plants also faced problems Thursday after a magnitude 7.1 aftershock hit Japan, temporarily cutting power to those facilities. At one facility – the Onagawa plant in northeast Japan – radioactive water spilled inside the reactors.

The aftershock briefly stopped clean-up and containment efforts at the Fukushima plant, but officials said there did not appear to be any additional damage.
Workers at the plant have been struggling to bring the radiation-leaks at the facility under control since the earthquake and tsunami hit nearly a month ago. The government has imposed a 20-kilometer evacuation cordon around the plant because of concerns about radiation.

The death toll from the quake and tsunami has climbed past 12,700, and 15,000 people are still unaccounted for. Japan's NHK television reports some 150,000 people are still living in temporary shelters.

One can find a recording of the earthquake done through a Hydrophone.

A hydrophone has captured the menacing roar of the quake that hit Japan March 11, plunging the country into unprecedented chaos and devastation.

The cataclysmic mega-quake sent a tsunami ruthlessly bulldozing its way through streets and homes, obliterating towns and settlements and critically damaging the Fukushima nuclear reactors.

Scientists from the Pacific Marine Environmental Lab in Seattle have released an extraordinary recording of the sound of the magnitude-9 earthquake.

Captured by an underwater microphone called a hydrophone positioned 900 miles away from the epicentre in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, the earthquake’s incredible rumbling and roaring is not dissimilar to a train rumbling at high speeds through stations, they said.

The clip, available on YouTube, is sped up 16 times and in the second half the sound becomes almost blurred and muffled as the Earth’s crust readjusts hundreds of miles under the ocean.

The initial burst of noise is the P-wave, which stands for “primary” waves and the second louder noise is the sound of the T-wave, or tertiary waves.

Tertiary waves are created when an earthquake occurs under the sea. They are the slowest waves of the three types of waves and are created when their seismic energy goes upwards into the ocean.

As this happens it converts to sound energy making the T-wave.

The clip comes as the Japanese are trying to get their nation back on track.

Source article can be found here: Hydrophone captures Japan quake roar