8.8 earthquake hits Japan

@farmerman,

LOL - you and I seem to share a troll marking down our posts. After our idiot "surgeon general" advised precautionary potassium iodide for California residents a senior LA medic got so exasperated he said "I think I would describe it as subclinical panic..". Obviously the case of the local troll Smile

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@High Seas,

Your disdain for our present SUrgeon general is showing. Is your reason the typical GOP mantras against health care or abortion access aroot cause? I cant say Im as familiar with her career as you seem to be so I hadda look her up and , for the life of me, I have problems finding anything that would confer the title "idiot" . She seems to have some strong opinions that arent in accord with the GOP manifesto.

I more remember Dr Carmona who, after quitting the Bush Administration , came out with Dr Koop to testify how science and good medicine had taken a back seat to mantra in the Bush Administration. CArmona had cojones and it didnt seem to hurt him (hes a land magnate now-he quit the public service altogether)

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@High Seas,

Quote:

Living creatures (other than us) must sense whatever acoustic waves precede tsunamis -

Those are called "earthquakes", LtCol Flagg.

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@High Seas,

Quote:

even jellyfish leave coastal waters and head for the open ocean

Now that's what I call an early-warning system!

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@McTag,

The monitoring of the JApanese nuke plants and the jet stream streaming to the W US predicted that radiation would have reached us yesterday. There were a sizeable number of monitor stations that reported nada. I think they will keep monitoring cause chem diffusion is the next potential pulse and that may take weeks. SO far so good.

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@farmerman,

That's not quite right. Minute traces reached early warning monitors near the Bering Strait couple of days ago, West Coast soon thereafter, exactly as predicted - see jet stream map I posted some pages back. Barely detectable above usual background levels though, so maybe not yet widely reported.

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@High Seas,

SO the news is getting it all wrong again??? This report was a summary of monitoring stations on the Weather channel. Im amazed that they perjured themselves , all their jet stream and on and off -shore low level winds showed everything going to null background by mid ocean and , for low level winds, the curving of the plume is directly toward Tokyo and environs.
So they are fudging data??

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@farmerman,

I've no idea what the TV channels are saying; they were telling people on the West Coast to move to higher ground while waiting for the tsunami, right? Maybe they got so ridiculed after that warning they're playing it safe this time - or they don't want to encourage more panic buying of potassium iodide. Or - most probably - their instruments aren't sensitive enough to detect the trace amounts involved; as I said they're barely above background radiation.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Your disdain for our present SUrgeon general is showing.

With good reason, given her idiotic comments about preventive potassium iodide. There's no radiation danger to us, there never was, and she should resign for panicking people with no factual basis whatsoever. Meanwhile TEPCO says all reactor temperatures stabilized but not at what level; if temp stayed much above 2,000 K and containment already damaged corium may sink through. Too many unknowns to calculate probability of that now, but it's a concern.

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@High Seas,

I think, from your past history wrt political opinions, you are of the school that says "ANYTHING DEM IS BAD". I would try to get over that, especially since you are in the sciences and should be a practitioner of evidence based outcomes.

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@farmerman,

Irrelevant - her comments caused panic in people regardless of political affiliation. Can you get back to the topic here, pls: the Japanese have already said there was partial core meltdown in at least one reactor and they suspect steel containment damage in two. How likely is corium to get through the concrete?

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@High Seas,

oops typo, wrote 2,000 K when obviously meant 2,000 C (Celsius); sorry.

PS As there are lots of hits on this page and I don't want anyone to worry without reason there's no added danger so far from any corium (messy melt inside the reactor) that may have formed, and temperatures / radiation levels are monitored from above no matter what Tepco is doing on the ground.

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@High Seas,

High Seas wrote:

Irrelevant - her comments caused panic in people regardless of political affiliation. Can you get back to the topic here, pls: the Japanese have already said there was partial core meltdown in at least one reactor and they suspect steel containment damage in two. How likely is corium to get through the concrete?

I'd personally be very surprised if there was a significant breach of containment for any of the reactors.

My big worry is the spent fuel rods, which seem to have had no real containment to begin with. If they overheat and catch fire like they did briefly earlier in the week, that's going to some pretty radioactive smoke drifting downwind.

Once they get the spent fuel under control, the whole meltdown thing is still going to be a headache to deal with, but the possibility of a huge radiation release should be past.

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Here's the raw video of exactly what the SG said and not a small bit of it taken out of context and exaggerated.

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@Butrflynet,

Quote:

A spokeswoman for the U.S. surgeon general has clarified her position on whether people should stock up on potassium iodide as protection against nuclear radiation from Japan.

Click to learn more about the effects of radiation Potassium iodide, or KI, can prevent the thyroid from absorbing radioactive iodine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

During a visit Tuesday to California, U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin appeared to contradict the message from other public health officials that the pills are unnecessary and may have harmful side effects.

"It's a precaution," Benjamin told a Bay Area NBC reporter during a tour of a local hospital.

----------------

Quote:

Benjamin told the reporter she had not heard about panicked California residents stocking up on potassium iodide.

Her comments came as state and local health officials attempted to quell Californians' fears after reports of potassium iodide shortages at pharmacies and vitamin stores. Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, Los Angeles County’s public health chief, issued warnings against taking potassium iodide.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/03/potassium-iodide-concerns-surgeon-general.html

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@High Seas,

Does calling the Surgeon General an "Idiot" add anything substantive? I know your political beliefs(Which, unless you are unaware, does have an effect on your credibility in any discussions that especially begin with the words "relax").
I reiterate, you are not a radiation medical specialist. Ive been around some that I have to employ in field projects and the word'Relax" is not even in their dictionary.
Ive had "codes" called by my medical advisors and monitors for overexposure in things as harmless as carnotite deposit work, or even tritium ground water plumes so Im unwilling to just pass anything off with dismissal and a shrug . I had to put together a"Nest" team to develop the best way to segregate "EXIT" signs at the Ok City bombing. The (tritiated water left an activity of several thousand picocuries in drainage water). The effects were serious in how it was ultimately handled and noone ever used the word "Relax"

Theres nothing she said that was incorrect. Were her words fucked with by the news reporters?. probably.

__________________________________________________________

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Latest from IAEA has a summary of the status of each reactor and the spent fuel pools.

IAEA: Japanese Earthquake Update (20 March 2011, 14:00 UTC)

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http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20_21.html

Dead or missing from tsunami disaster tops 20,000

Police say that over 8,000 people are confirmed dead and more than 12,000 are reportedly missing in the aftermath of the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit northeastern Japan.

The National Police Agency disclosed that as of noon, Sunday, in Miyagi Prefecture alone, 4,882 deaths had been confirmed. Many coastline regions were devastated on March 11th.

Police have also received reports of 2,985 missing within the prefecture, while local municipalities say a greater number remain unaccounted for.

In Ishinomaki City, the extent of the damage is not yet clear, due to communication difficulties. It is believed that the number of the missing will total about 10,000.
In Minami-sanriku Town, the whereabouts of 8,000 people, about half the population, have not been confirmed.

In Onagawa Town, the whereabouts of 5,000 people have not been confirmed.

Sunday, March 20, 2011 16:38 +0900 (JST)

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@dyslexia,

dyslexia wrote:

Quote:

During a visit Tuesday to California, U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin appeared to contradict the message from other public health officials that the pills are unnecessary and may have harmful side effects.

Her comments came as state and local health officials attempted to quell Californians' fears after reports of potassium iodide shortages at pharmacies and vitamin stores. Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, Los Angeles County’s public health chief, issued warnings against taking potassium iodide.

It doesn't matter what the idiot said - nobody with the least understanding of radioactive fallout took her nonsense seriously; but most people have no such grasp, and naturally they panicked, pushing prices for a single bottle of potassium iodide on eBay to over $1,000. She didn't even have the brains to read the damn papers before making yet another of her customary gaffes; if she had, she would know that not only all meteorologists, physicists, chemists, risk modelers, and medical experts worldwide have stated there's NO radiation risk beyond the plant's immediate perimeter. Even Obama said so at length:

Quote:

.....Addressing any Americans considering rushing out to buy medical supplies, Obama said, "the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and public health experts do not recommend that people in the United States take precautionary measures beyond staying informed."

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@Butrflynet,

Given the statistics you cited involving tens of thousands of deaths and whole towns obliterated by an extraordinary geological event, the morbid fascination of the public with a single aspect of this great disaster at Fukushima that hasn't yet either killed anyone or even presented the palpable threat of doing so is truly wierd.

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8.8 earthquake hits Japan

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