8.8 earthquake hits Japan

Fox News found a nuclear power plant in Tokyo that no one knew about. As long as people don't party to hard, it should be safe.

I doubt Japan has any lumber mills, no need for them as they don't really have the forests or lumber industry. They get a lot of wood from Canada and the US amoung other countries. Some of the reclaimed wood might be able to be reused, however, wood for construction must be kiln dried, straight and milled properly. I'm not sure what effect sea water soaking old wood would have. I would assume it would most likely warp it, making it useless for building purposes. I would probably easier to burn it than try and reclaim it for wide scale rebuilding. As for paper, again, salt water could pooch that process as well.
Metal could be resmelted, if the sea water didn't cause too much corrosion. I'm not sure if Japan has that capability either. I think again, they get most of the metal from foreign countries as well.
China has the industrly to recycle most of this stuff, the recycle vast quantities of our unusable stuff too.
The concrete could probably broken down and reused. Japan can probably do that themselves.
It's the sorting of all this broken stuff that will be time consuming and tedious, I'd imagine.

I'm not sure what makes you think Japan doesn't have all storts of steel capacity. Their auto industry and heavy machinery inudustries are tops in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Steel

Japan has a capability for recycling that is almost unparalleled. They built most of their WWII war machine from scrap metals and Burmese copper lead and tin.

Didnt the Japanese invent that bamboo wooden tile that is populqr fopr flooring?

Thanks for responding to that everyone. I fleshed out my ideas a bit further and sent them off to some folks in the Congress and the media last night. Haven't heard back from anyone yet but noticed that some of the media is now starting to take up discussions of what to do with all the debris.

I hope a lot of it can be reused or recycled in some way. That will help create local jobs for them if it can be done there, and if it needs to be shipped to the States or elsewhere, will create more jobs here too.

HAte to be on the dark side, but one of the reasons that the CAlifornia economy had been booming in the past is because they are expert at building and rebuilding infrastructure , all thanks to seismicity.

New fire at the spent-fuel pool:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/us-japan-quake-fire-idUSTRE72E90T20110315

Fire may already be out:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/us-jpan-quake-reactor-idUSTRE72E9J020110315

Plans to drop fire retardant from helicopters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/us-japan-earthquake-plant-idUSTRE72E9O820110315

I read somewhere recently that sometime about 300 years ago Japan had another large earthquake and about 30 days later, Mt. Fuji erupted.

We already have that volcano in southern Japan that erupted a few days ago. I wonder if these new quakes south of Tokyo are indications of a Fuji eruption. Have you seen any recent geological reports for it? I think it had a minor swarm of activity a couple years ago and then went back to sleep.

From what some guy on CNN was saying this evening, dropping ANYTHING on it from helicopters is the absolute wrong thing to do. He said something about the rods requiring a certain distance from each other while in the pool and that dropping water or anything else on it from a helicopter could nudge the rods together and possibly start a nuclear reaction.

I'll see if I can find any links on it.

Here's the video of it. The comment starts at about 1 minute.

His name is Arnie Gundersen. The term he used was "nuclear criticality, it could cause a nuclear chain reaction to occur."

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2011/03/15/jk.arnie.gundersen.cnn?iref=allsearch

Yeah, sorry. I was thinking they would have to mix it with some raw materials, if it was too corroded. I didn't put that across too clearly. I meant to go back and flesh out the idea and forgot.
Anyhow, you and farmer are absolutly correct.

All cable networks saying the officials say workers are unable to continue at plant due to radiation risk.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_JAPAN_EARTHQUAKE?SITE=OKOKL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-03-15-22-35-46

Mar 15, 10:35 PM EDT

Japan abandons stricken nuke plant over radiation

By ERIC TALMADGE and SHINO YUASA

FUKUSHIMA, Japan (AP) -- Japan suspended operations to prevent a stricken nuclear plant from melting down Wednesday after a surge in radiation made it too dangerous for workers to remain at the facility.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said work on dousing reactors with water was disrupted by the need to withdraw.

Earlier officials said 70 percent of fuel rods at one of the six reactors at the plant were significantly damaged in the aftermath of Friday's calamitous earthquake and tsunami.

News reports said 33 percent of fuel rods were also damaged at another reactor. Officials said they would use helicopters and fire trucks to spray water in a desperate effort to prevent further radiation leaks and to cool down the reactors.

The nuclear crisis has triggered international alarm and partly overshadowed the human tragedy caused by Friday's double disaster, which pulverized Japan's northeastern coastline, killing an estimated 10,000 people.

Authorities have tried frantically since last Friday's earthquake and tsunami to avert an environmental catastrophe at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex in northeastern Japan, 170 miles (270 kilometers) north Tokyo.

The government has ordered some 140,000 people in the vicinity to stay indoors. A little radiation was also detected in Tokyo, 150 miles (240 kilometers) to the south and triggered panic buying of food and water.

There are six reactors at the plant, and three that were operating at the time have been rocked by explosions. The one still on fire was offline at the time of the magnitude 9.0 quake, Japan's most powerful on record.

The Nuclear Industrial and Safety Agency estimated that 70 percent of the rods have been damaged at the No. 1 reactor.

Japan's national news agency, Kyodo, said that 33 percent of the fuel rods at the No. 2 reactor were damaged and that the cores of both reactors were believed to have partially melted.

"We don't know the nature of the damage," said Minoru Ohgoda, spokesman for the country's Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency. "It could be either melting, or there might be some holes in them."

Meanwhile, the outer housing of the containment vessel at the No. 4 unit erupted in flames early Wednesday, said Hajimi Motujuku, a spokesman for the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Japan's nuclear safety agency said fire and smoke could no longer be seen at Unit 4, but that it was unable to confirm that the blaze had been put out.

---

Yuasa reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writers Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo and David Stringer in Ofunato contributed to this report.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_JAPAN_EARTHQUAKE_FOREIGNERS_LEAVE?SITE=OKOKL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-03-15-16-14-14

TOKYO (AP) -- China became the first government to organize a mass evacuation of its citizens from Japan's northeast on Tuesday, while other foreigners left the country following radiation leaks at an earthquake-damaged nuclear power plant.

Austria said it is moving its embassy from Tokyo to Osaka, 250 miles (400 kilometers) away, due to radiation concerns. France recommended that its citizens leave the Japanese capital, while the U.S. government advised Americans to avoid travel to Japan.

China's announcement came as Japan's nuclear crisis took a dramatic turn for the worse following an explosion and a fire at reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex. Japanese authorities said the fire caused radiation to spew into the air and told people living nearby to stay indoors.

The Chinese Embassy in Tokyo said on its website that it was preparing to send buses to remove its nationals from Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki and Iwate prefectures, the hardest-hit provinces.

The embassy said the evacuation was necessary "due to the seriousness of and uncertainty surrounding the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant at present."

...

NHK TV has a news banner flashing saying that TEPCO has released a photo of No 4 with an 8 meter square hole in the building between the 4th and 5th floors near where the spent rod storage pool is located.

Japan govt: Talking to U.S. military about possible direct help to cool Daiichi reactors
by Reuters_TonyTharakan at 3/16/2011 2:39:32 AM8:39 PM

we can always see that patterns of seismic waves preceding a volcano, they produce "harmonic seismic waves". These are longer period and equal amplitude (the scribbles are about all the ame length for many many secinds" A harmonic microseism is a good indicator of vulcanism a coming. I dont recall seeing harmonics in the Sendai complex.
Course I havent been inspecting seismographs.
Look up the earthquake designation and add +harmonics

What fudgewit is zeroing butrflynet's extremely useful posts?

B, I don't know what to say, this is all horrendo. Thank you for your posts.

what are you kvetching about ?? I just answered Bfly, shes not below the level of interest. ANytime you answer, I believe, you cancel out the thumb.

Not sure, but I think this is the photo. Found it on the Reuter's blog. Can't find anything on NHK or TEPCO sites.