Japan Quake and Tsunami for USA West Coast

^== when the bay starts sucking out, that REALLY is the time to be taking a scenic drive in the mountains.

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The problems at that nuclear plant appear to be more severe than I originally thought. Definately, not a non-event. While there does not appear to be "human error" playing a role as yet -> we certainly have lots of contradictory information in the press. It will be "interesting" to see how this plays out.

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You know it's bad when there are 7.0 mag for-shocks and 6.3 mag aftershocks. Those are large earthquakes all by themselves.
 
We actually have marinas on the Pacific that have had some docks torn loose and boats are floating out in the ocean from what the news says. Crescent City up North got hit pretty good.
 
I'm glad you are ok Ken!!!! How is your boat?

We actually have marinas on the Pacific that have had some docks torn loose and boats are floating out in the ocean from what the news says. Crescent City up North got hit pretty good.
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Hopefully everyone in the CA area that had a boat in the water survived this OK. We're screwed if we ever experience anything like what Japan just experienced.
 
We are in mexico on sea of cortez. We were concerd and the information posted was of help. We did not get effected. Thanks for infomation.
 
Kinda interesting how that overturned power boat bounced off of three different blow boats on his way out.:wow:
 
Nehalennia said:
I just receiveed this EMail from a friend that runs a fishing operation in AK.:

According to emergency personnel and a couple of fishermen, Crescent City has 35 boats sinking or upside down. The next surge is expected to reach into the City streets. Humboldt Bay is sucking out right now. Can’t get down there to see damages. 101 closed all over the place. Ocean has breached the highways. Most all of our fishing vessels got out of Crescent City and are sitting off shore but it sounds like there will be nothing to come back to.

This is in CA not AK, BTW>
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We were in Crescent City and Brookings last weekend. Stayed in the hotel at Chetco Harbor! Reminds me of 1964 but no way as bad! I posted some pics and video links in another thread:

http://clubsearay.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40749
 
Regarding this Nuclear Power Plant thing. . .these words come to mind:

"The truth is out there".

Darned if I can see it, however. Reading the "news" is certainly unenlightening. Everyone is quoting and in some cases mis-quoting each other.

This is one of the better news stories:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/11/japan-issues-emergency-nuke-plant-leak/

From what I read, 11 of Japan's 55 nuclear reactors automatically shutdown at the time of the quake (they have sensors that say if the ground is rocking; best to make power tomorrow, and not today). An automatic shutdown due to one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history (this is number #5) is a motherhood and apple pie sort of thing that everyone expects and wants to happen.

Of those 11 reactors, 5 reactors on two different sites are having major issues with the post-shutdown cooling systems. That is not good. Having one plant get into trouble will cause lots of hand wringing and eventual modifications to equipment and procedures across the industry. Having multiple plants get into trouble is a HUGE deal.

In one case, everything was fine until the sea flooded a building housing diesel driven generators (there was probably more than one generator in there). . . . Don't know the story on the others. We may not know the story for a few years (literally). It is definately not clear to me that the situation in these plants have stabilized.

Hopefully, the situation improves in the next few hours. It does not sound like we are talking about any Chernobyl style events (the Japanese are smart enough to have containment domes); but we may have one or two Three Mile Island type situations (way overblown from a public safety perspective: But the plant is *finished* from a power generation perspective and you won't be going into the containment dome for a long time)
 
Paulkarlsven said:
I quite liked the way that one boat stern parked itself on a free berth at that marina. Damn they should market that feature.
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I was amazed at that also! It parked itself better than most people...lol I also liked how those people ran over and tried to secure it:smt038
 
Paulkarlsven said:
Well the latest explosion at one of the stricken Nuclear power plants is a bit worrying.

Story Here
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Indeed. The evacuation zone was increased to 12 miles.

Frankly, living next a nuclear power plant does not bother me. But If I learned of a post containment coolant failure at a plant within 25 miles of me, I would take a short vacation to someplace further away. I would bring pets and certain critical personal belongings would be with me.

At the Daiichi, a problem with a steam turbine caused an explosion that has compromised the containment building. Hmmm. A compromised containment building at a plant having cooling problems. Yes. . that is definately a good reason to not be in the area.

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There will be more than a little Monday morning quarterbacking on this. Losing cooling like what is described at 5 units in the region would be enough to force a redesign of portions of the safety systems without serious prompting from outside the industry. Failure of the containment building, if true, will also be cause for redesign.

I may be wrong, but the overall situation sounds much more serious that three mile island was in 1979.

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Update: Been reading something about the operators flooding the reactor with seawater. If that is true. . .and I don't know that it is true. . .things are quite dire. Of course, if an external blast knocks down the walls of a containment building -> that would qualify as dire. It can't be helping that the area is being hit with "aftershocks" that are large enough to be considered major earthquakes in their own right.

What I do know is that there is a key cooldown period for nuclear reactors, after which external cooling is no longer required. Risks of something truely serious decline as you go through that period. We should be more than halfway through that critical cooldown period now.

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The quality of the news reporting is poor, as one would expect.

There are a variety of problems

1) Technical problem happening in a non-English speaking country. I am seeing consistent confusion of basic terms like "plant", "facility", "containment building", "Reactor container".

2) Of course, the people who actually know things (the power plant operators) are probably deliberately minimizing the amount of negative information released to avoid panic.

3) The reporters obviously don't have a clue regarding the technology, and are trying to write news reports at the 2nd grade reading level.

4) Doesn't help when Foreign officials (A certain North American Secretary of State) make press statements on a situation that they obviously have little clue about. We (the U.S.) did not deliver water to the plant.

5) Let's assume nobody is deliberately lying.
 
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Com,
My wife heard that they were unable to get the control rods down into the core on one of the units but I didn't hear anything directly. If that is the case then there could be a real problem but as you stated, the facts are hard to come by.
 
I think we have a recent new member living in taiwan boating out of cleveland ohio area hope hes doing fine over there,he is a gold sponsor i just went and looked for him.lambrld hey dude are you ok?
 
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320Bob said:
Com,
My wife heard that they were unable to get the control rods down into the core on one of the units but I didn't hear anything directly. If that is the case then there could be a real problem but as you stated, the facts are hard to come by.
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I have not heard that.

I did read that if a unit was at full power at the time of SCRAM (shutdown), the residual heat being generated initially is about 7% of full power. This is why post shutdown coolant flow is so important.

Not sure the mechanism that caused h2 buildup in the steam system - I suspect that does not happen under proper cooling conditions. Regardless, as H2 and O2 build up in the stem system, it eventually exploded; wrecking both the turbine building and (apparently) knocking down the reactor containment building. Besides the obvious loss of containment, I suspect the wrecked turbine really compromised the ability to cool the reactor - hence the rather desperate seawater flood move.
 
I've read that there are 3 plants with cooling problems.
 
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