Here is a new (at least to me) and amazing and harrowing tsunami video:
Or it is not the end of the world. You decide.
Mark Morford has his own thoughts on the issue that are well worth a read.
Excerpt:
Reports are flooding in from around the world that the Fukushima meltdown was one of the worst disasters in mankind’s short history, a game-changing horror of unimaginable scope and psychological timbre that will wreak emotional and environmental havoc for years, decades and even millennia to come, spreading radioactive particles over thousands of square miles of Japan and beyond.
What’s more, none of that is really true, the disaster isn’t really all that bad, the radiation levels are relatively low and Japan is feeling much better already, thanks for asking.
The Fukushima meltdown is easily as terrible as 1979′s Three Mile Island, which, it turns out, wasn’t all that bad, depending on who you don’t care enough to ask. Fukushima is probably the second worst disaster of its kind in history, even though no one really knows how to measure the full extent of these things so that’s probably false as well, although we do know it’s not as bad as Chernobyl because nothing could ever really be that devastating ever again, except for the fact that it totally could.
Here is an excellent review of events and impacts flowing from the massive Japanese earthquake and tsunami, written by Evan Osnos in the current issue of the New Yorker. Worth a full read.
A row of six aging nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had lost their cooling systems, as well as their “backup backup” protections, in the words of one nuclear expert. The prospect of radiation introduced a threat all its own, as invisible as the tsunami was vivid, and throbbing with history. Initially, the Japanese government downplayed the possibility that the ailing plants could leak any significant radiation, but survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—the revered generation known as hibakusha—stepped forward to plead for “more sense of crisis.’’ Prime Minister Naoto Kan declared the crisis the worst since the end of the Second World War, and Emperor Akihito delivered his first televised address, an event so unusual that it was compared to the radio broadcast given by his father, Hirohito, announcing the country’s surrender, on August 15, 1945. Hirohito had called upon his people to “endure the unendurable, bear the unbearable.” On Wednesday morning, the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper, carried a story on symptoms of radiation sickness (“damage to lymph tissue, the intestinal tract, and bone marrow, among other organs”) and an article headlined “FAQS ON RADIOACTIVITY EXPOSURE, SAFETY,” which included advice on what to do in the event that you were separated from a shelter by an area contaminated with radiation (“Wear a hat and cover your nose and mouth with a wet towel or a mask”). Tokyo is a hundred and forty miles from the damaged plants. By nightfall, Britain, France, Italy, and Australia had urged their citizens who weren’t required to stay in the capital to get out.
The carnage seemed likely to be greater than any loss of Japanese life since the atom bombs. The economic loss was estimated to amount to three per cent of a full year’s production by the world’s third-largest economy. And yet to be in Japan in the days after the wave, to watch a nation realize the devastation of that instant, was to glimpse a people torn between the instinct for calm and the cry of alarm. For all the tragedies––immediate and myriad on the day of the quake—and the looming sense of nuclear dread that persisted, it was remarkable to observe firsthand, and through the Japanese media, the almost complete sense of national coöperation and purpose: little observable looting or undue panic, and almost no acts of political exploitation. The one distinct exception came on Monday, when the extravagantly nationalist governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, said that the quake was an event of tembatsu––divine punishment. But Ishihara had said many foolish things in the past, and no one was surprised. (He apologized the next day.)
It is pretty clear from what is going on at the crippled nuclear generating station in Japan, that one of the biggest risks is the on-site, relatively insecure storage of spent fuel rods. This risk was also noted by Elizabeth Kolbert, writing in the New Yorker, in 2003, about the risks of a terrorist attack at the Indian Point nuclear reactor 35 miles from Manhattan.
For more than three decades now, the federal government has been planning to construct a repository for spent uranium, with limited success. (The repository now under construction at Yucca Mountain, in the Nevada desert, will not be open until at least 2010, if it opens at all.) In the meantime, like every other reactor in the country, Indian Point has been obliged to store its spent fuel on-site. By now, Indian Point 3 has collected six hundred and twenty-four tons of the stuff, and Indian Point 2 has amassed eight hundred and eight tons. Although the fuel is of no use in generating electricity, it is still highly radioactive and produces a great deal of heat, which is why it must always be kept submerged. Two years ago, after much prodding from groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists, the N.R.C. released a study looking at the risks of a spent-fuel fire. While the commission concluded that the risk of such a fire was low—the fuel would have to be left out of water for several hours—it acknowledged that the consequences “could be comparable to those for a severe reactor accident.” This finding is frequently cited by critics of Indian Point, who note that the spent fuel is housed outside the containment domes, in buildings that are comparatively vulnerable, and that it contains a host of extremely dangerous “fission products,” including radioactive iodine, radioactive cesium, and strontium. Gazing down into the pool, I couldn’t help wondering—even though I realized that this was not the issue—what would happen if someone fell into it. There was a lot of noise from water rushing around, and a sign that said, “Do Not Linger.” Before turning in our dosimeters, we all had to have full-body radiation scans, a process that involved climbing into a closetlike structure, first frontward and then backward. I set off an alarm during mine but was assured that it didn’t mean anything.
It is far past time that Yucca Mountain is opened. The reduction in risk as compared to the current storage would be huge. Perhaps the situation in Japan will give the additional needed motivation to get this job done. More from Elizabeth Kolbert on the current situation is available via the first related article link below.
This video shows six Japanese television networks and how quickly they switched to earthquake coverage and warnings in real time. NHK was almost immediate. But the others seem woefully slow, given that the earthquake occurred in mid-afternoon local time. (via Colin Peters)
I have no reason to believe that this scenario is likely to occur.
Ominous reports are leaking past the BP Gulf salvage operation news blackout that the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico may be about to reach biblical proportions.
251 million years ago a mammoth undersea methane bubble caused massive explosions, poisoned the atmosphere and destroyed more than 96 percent of all life on Earth. Experts agree that what is known as the Permian extinction event was the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the world.
55 million years later another methane bubble ruptured causing more mass extinctions during the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM).
The LPTM lasted 100,000 years.
Those subterranean seas of methane virtually reshaped the planet when they explosively blew from deep beneath the waters of what is today called the Gulf of Mexico.
Now, worried scientists are increasingly concerned the same series of catastrophic events that led to worldwide death back then may be happening again-and no known technology can stop it.
The bottom line: BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling operation may have triggered an irreversible, cascading geological Apocalypse that will culminate with the first mass extinction of life on Earth in many millions of years.
But it has happened before.
Updated July 13: Well, there definitely is another side to this story. It is likely bunk.
No, not the federal budget deficit. A real sinkhole. Its here in Guatemala City. Not a photoshop image. (More detail via BoingBoing)
(via Video Cool)
From Standish, Michigan (see the previous post) to Los Angeles. I have lived in Northern Michigan and also in LA. The Station Fire in Los Angeles is amazing and far larger and closer to heavily populated areas than any I saw when I lived there. Amazing pictures of the blaze are available, as usual, from The Big Picture. Thank God, Los Angeles wasn’t facing El Nino winds at the same time.
