I’m curious. Does anyone know how long after the earthquake happened the tsunami hit the coast of Japan? Was there time for people to get to higher ground?
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I’m curious. Does anyone know how long after the earthquake happened the tsunami hit the coast of Japan? Was there time for people to get to higher ground?
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Cat Lady
I heard that it took 20 minutes for the tsunami to hit Sendai after the earthquake. :-(
ETA: The tsunami estimated to travel 300 mph.
scav
Can’t speak to the time, but I did just see a few bits on NHK that showed people did have enough time to evacuate. Undoubtedly varied by location to some degree, how far to high enough ground, wave stuff, etc.
Mnemosyne
As I understand it, it really depends on the underwater geography. I think the worst-hit places only had 3 or 4 minutes between the earthquake and the tsunami.
Nemo_N
I saw the Tsunami live on CNN (one of them? how many were there?) so I suppose it took some time.
JGabriel
The 8.9 quake was at 2:46pm Tokyo time, 12:46am EST. Maybe someone else can tell us when the waves hit Sendai? Obviously the tsunami would have hit the coasts at different times, depending on distance, but I thnk Sendai was the closest city to the epicenter.
And with that said, I guess we should note that there was yet another >6 magnitude aftershock about 1.5 hours ago near the eastern Honshu coast, magnitude 6.3.
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CharlesS
The failure of the diesel generators was most likely due to the arrival of the tsunami, which caused flooding in the area. The earthquake was centered 240 kilometers from Japan, and it would have taken the tsunami approximately an hour to reach the Japanese islands. (from Union of Concerned Scientists: http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/nuclear-crisis-in-japan-fukushima-0518.html
Sko Hayes
I wanted to share this diary from GOS, about the Kilauea volcano and the heightened activity going on there (some very cool videos at the link of a “fissure eruption”):
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/07/953607/-New-Kilauea-Fissure-Eruption!-MoviesImages
JGabriel
If the clock on this video is correct, then the tsunamai hit Sendai airport at 15:57, about 70 minutes after the quake. If the clock was on daylight time for some reason, then the tsunami hit about 12 minutes after the quake. Or the clock could be randomly wrong in some other way.
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mattH
When they were talking about the tsunami warning system on NPR, they said that with the delays inherent in it, some places only had 15 minutes to evacuate.
Corner Stone
@CharlesS:
Concerned Scientists are concerned.
scav
Bother, the time field in this data isn’t filled and the data’s sparse for JP anyway.
NOAA Tsunami Events data. Should work.
Corner Stone
Picture from WI from a twitter feed:
100 thousand+
MTiffany
NHK reports lead times of 10 to 20 minutes for areas close to the epicenter.
scav
Try again.
Maude
@JGabriel:
I went to school with someone who would answer questions like this. I used to wait for him to be called on.
mclaren
The earthquake hit Japan at 2:46 pm local time according to this HelL.A. Times story.
According to this aerial helicopter footage on YouTube, the tsunami hit at 4:12 pm local time.
New Yorker
I can’t be the only one who is sitting on pins and needles wondering what the fuck is going on with those Japanese nuclear reactors, right?
I know it’s possible to have a meltdown without the containment unit being breached and thus negligible radiation released(Three Mile Island), and I know the lack of such a containment vessel is what made the Chernobyl disaster so horrendous, but I’m still nervous….
Mr Stagger Lee
One thing I would be interested, would be the reactions of pets or animals in the area of the earthquakes, I heard some of the people who survived the Tsunami of 2004, did because of the reactions of the animals in the region.
Larkspur
Can you even imagine hearing the sirens and having twenty minutes? First, you have to hear them, which means that if you’re lucky, you don’t have your headphones on with the volume up. And to be honest, if I heard the sirens while I was all soapy and shampoo-y in the shower, chances are I’d rinse off, dry off, and throw on some clothes – just in time to die. And you have to get grandma into her chair, or you love your pets so much that of course you’re going to crawl under the bed to find the cat…all those normal human things that you’re going to do, unable to imagine that there won’t be time.
Apparently Japan has one of the most sophisticated emergency preparedness systems in the world, which is partly why we’ve seen the various videos of the tsunami: many people were able to get to higher ground.
MTiffany
@Larkspur:
Actually, I would think the gigantic shaking might be one’s first hint that something was amiss.
MikeJ
@New Yorker: They’re going to vent #3 now to avoid an explosion like #1 had.
geg6
I saw on CNN that they only had about 20-30 minutes in Sendai from when they got the warning.
Just want to let everyone know that my friend and her sons are safe but very, very shaken up. They left their home off base and are now staying at the Masawi AFB. Got word from my ex, who is good friends with her ex. May the FSM wrap it’s noodly arms around them and all the Japanese people, especially those near the nuke. Living less than 7 miles from a nuke myself, I tremble for them.
MTiffany
NHK now reporting partial core meltdown at Fukushima #1
tkogrumpy
What’s wrong here. The quake happened at one fixed location. The resulting tsunami traveled at a fixed speed away from the epicenter. The obvious answer is that it depends……….do I have to continue? Here’s a hint, it took six fucking hours to reach the U.S.
JGabriel
John Cole, The Mainichi Daily News confirms the ~3:55pm time for the wave hitting Sendai airport, so: it took about 70 minutes for the tsunami to hit Sendai.
Probably some areas of the coast were closer to the epicenter and got hit a little sooner.
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Mr Stagger Lee
The BBC has some good videos from the earthquake. American MSM, take notes.
JGabriel
Google Earth shows the epicenter as little as 17 miles from the shore at Naraha, while Sendai is reportedly about 80 miles away. That would mean Naraha may have been hit with the tsunami as little as 15 minutes after the quake.
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JGabriel
@Mr Stagger Lee:
I suspect we will hear more about that in the coming days, particularly as coverage begins to go beyond the cities and hits some of the more rural areas of the coast — where people might be more likely to notice the actions of animals and take their cues from them.
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Ekim
It mostly depends on how far away the high ground is. In some places the tsunami went six miles inland…that sort of indicates that there wasn’t much high ground around to escape to.
On most of the Washington coast, the hills rise dramatically only a few yards or scores of yards from the water–much easier to reach high ground quickly. In a place like Seattle, much of it is on high ground and safe, but the waterfront and some industrial areas are right at sea level…
MikeJ
@Ekim: South of Seattle there’s a ridge that runs from Alki all the way to Tacoma that rises from sea level to 200-300 feet. However, the Green River enters Elliot bay at the port and with a big enough wave the whole valley behind the ridge could in theory be in trouble.
Seanly
Also keep in mind that the earthquake waves would have to travel the same distance as the tsunami. There’s P-waves, S-waves, Love waves & Rayleigh waves. While there are pretty fast, they are only moderately faster than tsunami waves. So while the time of the actual seismic event may be a long time before the tsunami hit, there may only end up being a few minutes from the seismic waves arriving to the tsunami arriving. EQ’s can’t be predicted so the best response is preparedness and seismic-resistant construction.
Cermet
@mclaren: Impossible – the wave can not be that slow – less than 70 mph. Something makes no sense here.
JGabriel
@Cermet:
Nonetheless, 60 – 70 mph is what I’m seeing what I’m seeing too. Perhaps a tsunami moves slower in shallow water?
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Steeplejack
God, it’s come to this: my first free Saturday night in months, and I have been reduced to seriously considering the possibility of watching MacGruber on HBO. FML.
trollhattan
Watching the elapsed time clock in this animation it seems to hit the nearest shore within mere minutes. And I agree that in the spots where the water traveled several miles inland, it seems likely a lot of folks would be swept up, trying to escape.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PBZGH3yieLc
Larkspur
@MTiffany:
Eep. Very good point, MTiffany. Anyway, taking off your headphones, yelling “Do you feel that?” and then getting your shoes and your grandma and your cat is a lot to do in twenty minutes. I have a tendency to panic, also. Fortunately for my immediate household, I have neither a cat nor grandparents.
New Yorker
@Steeplejack:
Netflix. Get it. No more watching shitty movies on HBO. Right now, I’m debating between “Idiocracy” (I love Mike Judge), “Triumph of the Will” (for the educational value as opposed to the “entertainment” value) and “Exit Through the Gift Shop” for tonight.
MTiffany
@tkogrumpy:
Actually, no. Earthquakes occur along stretches of a fault, not at a single fixed point. Both the Japanese Meteorological Agency and the USGS are estimating that the earthquake occurred along a stretch of fault 240 to 150 miles long and 120 to 50 miles wide.
Japan Met Office http://www.jiji.com/jc/c?g=soc&k=2011031100807&j1
English translation
From NPR
scav
@JGabriel: Friction from the rising ocean bottom would slow it down, no? Open oceans got to be different.
freelancer (itouch)
@Steeplejack:
Dude, at least you have HBO.
henqiguai
@New Yorker (#17):
Nervous about what ? Nervous for the consequences to the people in Japan in the event of a major radioactive steam release or material scattering explosion, or are we talking fears of a China Syndrome scenario ? One is hyperactive empathy, the other is bad (non)science fiction.
scav
@Larkspur: Practice helps. After the first evacuation for wildfire (which even then we managed in half an hour or so) my family started keeping important things in designated boxes and the second evac. was very smooth and we even managed the grandmother and the (3-legged) cat. Course, we abandoned them and snuck back up the hill asap but that’s a different issue.
Larkspur
So I checked to see what was on the exact other side of the world from Sendai, Japan, and it’s a spot in the South Atlantic, far off the coast of Argentina and Uruguay, smack in the middle of the South American plate, so I guess we’ve got a potential South Atlantic Syndrome.
freelancer (itouch)
@New Yorker:
Seconded. And go with Exit, it’s a puzzler.
New Yorker
@henqiguai:
Option one. The Japanese could use a break right now.
JGabriel
@scav: Yeah, I was thinking friction also, but there may be other factors of wave dynamics that could be slowing it down — such as increasing water pressure as more and more water is squeezed between the oncoming wave and the approaching land barrier.
That’s just speculation. I’m sure there are other possible wave dynamic factors too.
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scav
@JGabriel: other waves splashing back at it from the sides, undertow, should be a right mess and locally variable.
Mr Stagger Lee
@MikeJ: Parts of Seattle are built on landfill, I think the Alaskan Way viaduct is on it.
Nice of Seattle and the State of Washington are dilly-dallying on how to replace it or any other alternative, pray that Mother Earth doesn’t make the decision during a afternoon commute during the summer.
JGabriel
@New Yorker:
Exit Through The Gift Shop gets my vote, if you haven’t seen it yet. It’s like one long shaggy dog story, with a hilarious 10-20 minutes of punchlines at the end, in the form of documentary.
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MTiffany
@New Yorker: It might make you feel better to watch those YouTube videos of those swaying skyscrapers and consider that the Japanese don’t fuck around with earthquake building codes. Unlike the US they have not, after all, been afflicted with Republicans and their theory of The Invisible Hand of The Free Market Makes Everything Perfect. A meltdown might not be the disaster that anti-nuclear asshole hack Joseph Cirincione is so obviously hoping it will be.
Steeplejack
@New Yorker:
I have Netflix, and I have 200 hours of worthy stuff on my DVR. And I have Chungking Express just purchased on DVD. But I’m experiencing one of those times when I want to see something “live,” sort of like how sometimes you just want to listen to the radio instead of playing CDs. It’s hard to explain, but you know it’s happening when you’re going down the list of saved items on the DVR and thinking, “Yeah, that’s great, but just not right now.”
Maybe it’s the “surprise” factor and I just want something unexpected right now.
trollhattan
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Harbor Island is semi-famously built entirely of fill, partly from Seattle’s now missing hill. (Yeah, they left a bunch.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbor_Island_%28Seattle%29
I’m not aware of a residential area the equivalent of SF’s Marina District (mostly fill and badly damaged in Loma Prieta) but a lot of Seattle’s housing is very old and built on lots not prepped to today’s standards.
Woodrowfan
@Steeplejack: I just watched “Dazed and Confused’ and am feeling my age… 8-(
Maude
@MTiffany:
The people that get on tv and try to scare everyone will be out in droves.
In a town in Japan near a volcano, can’t spell, the kids wear football helmets walking to school.
The Republicans have no sense of unity. It’s all for them. I think they are going to crack and go down the drain.
lllphd
i ran across several independent sources that said the first surge of the tsunami hit about 15 minutes after the quake. in fact, one source pointed out that some tsunamis can hit as quickly as five minutes after a quake, depending on the relative locations of the epicenter and shores, as well as the depth of the epicenter, the contour of the ocean floor, water depth, etc. because this epicenter was so close to the shoreline, there was not much time at all. but then, i don’t know if they count the onset of the tsunami from the withdrawal of the tide or the wave’s onslaught.
MTiffany
If you can’t stand American ‘News’ sources, try NHK WORLD English.
bkny
@Mr Stagger Lee: this video is creepy as hell; it’s a guy apparently walking his dog when the quake hit and he’s describing the opening fissures in the sidewalk and along the pathway. and then the pools of water bubbling up. oh yeah, he mentions that area is ‘reclaimed from tokyo bay’…
the dogspeak is saying ‘get me the fuck out of here’ …
http://jezebel.com/#!5781331/unnerving-footage-of-ground-opening-during-japan-quake
JGabriel
And here we go again, another 6.2 aftershock, about half-an-hour ago:
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sukabi
the Vancouver Sun has some interesting info about the quake … apparently the earth has shifted 10 inches on it’s axis… and a 180 mile long x 50 mile wide rip was torn earth’s crust
Chris
@New Yorker:
It’s not so much “lack of such a containment vessel” as a whole host of things about Chernobyl that went wrong.
First, there’s basic reactor design.
All reactors share a few common items: they contain material that will, under some conditions, emit neutrons (and/or other energetic particles, but neutrons are usually the interesting part here), in the process of undergoing fission and other nuclear transformations. They contain material that will, under some conditions, absorb neutrons (and/or other energetic particles). They contain some kind of “moderation” system by which neutron flow can be controlled. Finally, they contain some kind of heat delivery system, so that the heat produced in the fissioning pile can be put to use. But here’s where things start to differ, and where the first major problem with the Chernobyl reactor occurs: not everything uses the same kinds of fuels, moderators, and coolant systems.
The Chernobyl reactor was an “RBMK” type, which uses graphite as a moderator. (Graphite, as you may know, is a form of carbon. You can buy it in a liquid form for lubricating locks. It also comes in a sort of solid brick or block form, which is what is used in these reactors.)
The Japanese reactor in question, by contrast, is a “BWR” reactor (specifically a “BWR-1”). These use water as one moderator and cadmium (or similar) control rods as another.
There are yet more reactor designs, with more acronyms, many of which are substantially better from a safety point of view, but let me try to stop here as this comment is already pretty long. :-) I just want to add one more item here, about “positive” vs “negative” “void coefficients”: in both the RBMK and BWR reactor, you have a “positive void coefficient”, in that if things are going badly wrong, the moderator(s) lose effectiveness—in the BWR case, for instance, the water simply boils away—and you end up with a “void”: space between the fissionable material. In a reactor with a positive void coefficient, when the “void” is created, the nuclear reaction “runs away” (or at least, increases in intensity). Some designs have a “negative void coefficient”, which means that the reactor can’t “run away”: instead of the moderator fluids slowing down the reaction, they speed it up, and if you drive off the fluids through excessive heating, the reactor cools down instead of heating up further. But neither of these has that.
Anyway, so, suppose something terrible happens (earthquake, drunk Russians, whatever :-) ). In the Japanese BWR, the setup is such that gravity is supposed to—and almost certainly did—yank the metal cadmium moderator rods all the way back down into the reactor, stopping the reaction from running away even if/when the water boils off. Unfortunately, the pile is so hot at that point that if/when the boiling water boils off, the core can still melt down.
In the RBMK reactor, by contrast, what happens is: the graphite catches fire.
Remember that the thing about carbon is, it’s what coal is. It burns really well.
As it burns, it drags radioactive particles (bits of reactor-stuff) with it into the air, which is then carried about by the wind. Meanwhile, the fact that the carbon is burning away leaves the rest of the pile unmoderated, which causes it to react faster and hotter, which burns off yet more carbon, which makes the reaction run away even more, and so on.
Add in the lack of a decent set of containment vessels, and you get what amounts to a “dirty bomb” going off. It spreads as much radioactive material as widely as possible.
This simply cannot happen in the BWR design. True, the water that has boiled will eventually break down into hydrogen and oxygen, which will chemically react with whatever they can (the oxygen helps things burn, and hydrogen forms acids that eat metals; the two can of course react with each other to make water again, in a rather explosive way, hydrogen gas being pretty good at going “boom”). But it goes through a lot of “using up energy” process first (this is good), and if the core does melt, it melts into stuff that (a) won’t run away (the cadmium “poisons” the nuclear reactions) and (b) is much less likely to be carried off if the pressure vessel breaks open. (If it does break, you still have a mess, it’s just substantially less widespread than with the RBMK reactor.)
LosGatosCA
From the NY Times:
“NAKAMINATO, Japan — Takako Koguchi turned 78 on Thursday. On Friday, hours before a planned birthday celebration, she saw a wave of black water coursing through the streets of this small fishing town, heading toward her.
Just 15 minutes had passed since a devastating earthquake rocked Nakaminato and a broad stretch of Japan’s northeastern coast.”
Comrade Mary
Found in that huge Metafilter thread I linked the other day: The American Nuclear Society has sent out this message to all members, giving a good description of the sequence of events and some background information. As mentioned in the message, they will be posting updates at http://ansnuclearcafe.org/.
[ANS message starts]
Dear ANS Members:
I’m sure you are aware of the rapidly developing situation in Japan. The ANS is working on multiple fronts to collect credible information on the incident, and distribute that information through mainstream and social media outlets.
We have communicated with our counterparts at the Atomic Energy Society of Japan to offer any technical or other assistance which may be of help.
We have set up a special page on the ANS blog (http://ansnuclearcafe.org) to aggregate media reports and provide additional information when we consider it to be credible.
We are also working to organize television appearances and other media availabilities for our members so that some of the misinformation that has been presented by anti-nuclear groups can be rebutted with facts. Our goal is not necessarily to be the first on the air, but to be the most credible.
Attached you will find some talking points, along with our current analysis of the sequence of events at Fukushima I-1. I encourage you to talk to your social networks to ensure that people have the right facts and the proper perspective on this incident.
Let me know what other actions our Society should be taking during this nuclear incident.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Japan.
Respectfully,
Joe Colvin
The transcription of the talking points memo is as follows:
American Nuclear Society Backgrounder:
Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami; Problems with Nuclear Reactors
3/12/2011 5:22 PM EST
To begin, a sense of perspective is needed… right now, the Japanese earthquake/tsunami is clearly a catastrophe; the situation at impacted nuclear reactors is, in the words of IAEA, an “Accident with Local Consequences.”
The Japanese earthquake and tsunami are natural catastrophes of historic proportions. The death toll is likely to be in the thousands. While the information is still not complete at this time, the tragic loss of life and destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami will likely dwarf the damage caused by the problems associated with the impacted Japanese nuclear plants.
What happened?
Recognizing that information is still not complete due to the destruction of the communication infrastructure, producing reports that are conflicting, here is our best understanding of the sequence of events at the Fukushima I‐1 power station.
* The plant was immediately shut down (scrammed) when the earthquake first hit. The automatic power system worked.
* All external power to the station was lost when the sea water swept away the power lines.
* Diesel generators started to provide backup electrical power to the plant’s backup cooling
system. The backup worked.
* The diesel generators ceased functioning after approximately one hour due to tsunami induced damage, reportedly to their fuel supply.
* An Isolation condenser was used to remove the decay heat from the shutdown reactor.
* Apparently the plant then experienced a small loss of coolant from the reactor.
* Reactor Core Isolation Cooling (RCIC) pumps, which operate on steam from the reactor, were used to replace reactor core water inventory, however, the battery‐supplied control valves lost DC power after the prolonged use.
* DC power from batteries was consumed after approximately 8 hours.
* At that point, the plant experienced a complete blackout (no electric power at all).
* Hours passed as primary water inventory was lost and core degradation occurred (through some combination of zirconium oxidation and clad failure).
* Portable diesel generators were delivered to the plant site.
* AC power was restored allowing for a different backup pumping system to replace inventory in reactor pressure vessel (RPV).
* Pressure in the containment drywell rose as wetwell became hotter.
* The Drywell containment was vented to outside reactor building which surrounds the containment.
* Hydrogen produced from zirconium oxidation was vented from the containment into the reactor building.
* Hydrogen in reactor building exploded causing it to collapse around the containment.
* The containment around the reactor and RPV were reported to be intact.
* The decision was made to inject seawater into the RPV to continue to the cooling process, another backup system that was designed into the plant from inception.
* Radioactivity releases from operator initiated venting appear to be decreasing.
Can it happen here in the US?
* While there are risks associated with operating nuclear plants and other industrial facilities, the chances of an adverse event similar to what happened in Japan occurring in the US is small.
* Since September 11, 2001, additional safeguards and training have been put in place at US nuclear reactors which allow plant operators to cool the reactor core during an extended power outage and/or failure of backup generators – “blackout conditions.”
Is a nuclear reactor “meltdown” a catastrophic event?
* Not necessarily. Nuclear reactors are built with redundant safety systems. Even if the fuel in the reactor melts, the reactor’s containment systems are designed to prevent the spread of radioactivity into the environment. Should an event like this occur, containing the radioactive materials could actually be considered a “success” given the scale of this natural disaster that had not been considered in the original design. The nuclear power industry will learn from this event, and redesign our facilities as needed to make them safer in the future.
What is the ANS doing?
ANS has reached out to The Atomic Energy Society of Japan (AESJ) to offer technical assistance.
ANS has established an incident communications response team.
This team has compiling relevant news reports and other publicly available information on the ANS blog, which can be found at ansnuclearcafe.org.
The team is also fielding media inquiries and providing reporters with background information and technical perspective as the events unfold.
Finally, the ANS is collecting information from publicly available sources, our sources in government agencies, and our sources on the ground in Japan, to better understand the extent and impact of the incident.
[ANS message ends]
Nellcote
A group of researchers led by Professor Takashi Furumura at the University of Tokyo’s Earthquake Research Institute released the findings after analyzing data on major tsunami waves triggered by the quake.
They say the first seismic sea wave reached the shore within 10 minutes after the earthquake. Around 30 minutes after the quake, coastlines in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures were hit by waves of higher than 3 meters.
Professor Furumura estimates that the height of waves topped 10 meters in some locations.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_09.html
Corner Stone
@Woodrowfan:
But at least they stay the same age, amirite?
MikeJ
@Mr Stagger Lee: I have to say, this is what I hate most about living out here. Everything is debated and voted on by the city council then there’s a public initiative and then the state lege will overturn it and then the blah blah blah.
It’s been almost 10 years since the quake and jack shit has been done. I think a replacement viaduct is the dumbest of all options but I’d go along with anything if they just fucking did something.
For an east coaster this place is just fucked up. Hell, it’s not really a western thing. SF knows how to get stuff built in a hurry. Here everything from buses and trains to not allowing freeways to fall on you is a decades long battle.
sukabi
@MikeJ: 50 years ago the monorail was supposed to be the first phase of our “light rail” system… so yeah, decades and decades of “discussion”.
Yutsano
@sukabi: And they finally DID build it…and it’s more or less a joke. Tacoma has better rail lines than we do…because the city of PORTLAND bothered to create a connection for them. But don’t you DARE take away a lane from the expressways or build a line next to the 520!!
PeakVT
Tsunami waves travel at about 500 MPH in the deep ocean, less as the water gets shallower. So the first tsunamis would have arrived in Sendai in about 10-15 minutes. But a tsunami is not just one wave, and if the pattern in Japan was similar to what happened on the west coast, it was the 3rd or 4th wave that was the greatest. So the time on the video showing the water arriving inland at Sendai airport some 70 minutes after the earthquake is probably accurate.
ETA: Seismic p-waves travel at about 18,000 MPH at the crust, so coastal residents would have felt the quake immediately.
MikeJ
@sukabi: I would never condone violence against an elected official, but I wanted to slap the mayor when he said he wanted to scrap the done, settled, already fought over and paid for plans for the 520 bridge because it didn’t have a bus lane. Yes, it would be better if it did. It’s too late. Build the damned thing.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: Dude, you’re this close to making me want to subscribe to the Times. I really should pay more attention to the local issues anyway.
Jay C
Last I heard, a third reactor at Fukushima Daiichi had been stricken with cooling-system problems and had to have an emergency seawater-pump to get the temp down. Not good news:ike I read on blog this afternoon: “by the time you have to resort to ‘dunk in seawater‘ as a fix, you’re likely in BIG trouble”
Nellcote
@MikeJ:
It’s kinda funny that SF got to NOT rebuild the (ugly ass) Embarcadero Freeway after the earthquake. An idea that was a decades long battle!
trollhattan
@Nellcote:
10,000 missing from one coastal town, Minamisanriku, alone.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/13/3162576.htm
AhabTRuler
@bkny: That video was awesome! I’d be nervous too.
AhabTRuler
3 meters of the 4 meter fuel rods were exposed at some point. And apparently they will be releasing steam from multiple reactors.
Comrade Mary
You may find the BBC live blog very useful. Some points:
0232: The plant operator [at the No 3 reactor] says the top of the fuel rods is 3 metres above water – AFP, quoting Kyodo. [Response from a Metafilter commenter, who is generally soberly optimistic about nuclear technology and not a doomsayer: “If that’s the case, they’re done. They’re typically 4 meters in length, this would mean that they’re basically uncooled at this point. It also flies in the face of the seawater add — the water can’t be leaking or boiling off that fast. But if it is true, we’re down to the last line on that reactor — the containment vessel.”]
0228: Just a reminder: cooling systems failed at the No 3 reactor hours after the explosion at the No 1 reactor.
0225: The unsafe level of radioactivity at the Fukushima plant is being created by the plant’s No 3 reactor, AFP says, quoting the Japanese government.
And for even more good news, someone at Metafilter says that “Asahi Shimbun is reporting 4X levels of radiation at a different nuke plant in Ichimaki-Onnagawa, 120 km north of Fukushima.” He links to a Japanese language site that I can’t penetrate. Anyone here read Japanese?
Yutsano
@Comrade Mary: I’ll try but my kanji isn’t exactly up to standard. But I’ll see if I can make a little sense out of it.
EDIT: see if this helps.
JGabriel
@MikeJ:
Jim Demint? Mitch McConnell? I’m just sayin’.
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Comrade Mary
Thanks, Yutsano.
From what I’m now seeing at the Metafilter thread, Kyodo may not be a very reliable source for that claim about 3 meters of rod being exposed. If this is the only source for this story now, a pinch of iodine-rich salt should be applied.
Comrade Mary
Ah! That’s a different story, Yutsano, but it’s great to see any English version — thanks!
I passed the 4x radiation story through the Google translation tool and you can see it here. I fiddled with your URL to see if there was an official English version of the story, but it doesn’t seem to be there yet.
The auto-translated version:
Bootlegger
March Madness is upon us (at the very least if you have 8 and 9 year old boys who are chased indoors by the rain you are going mad).
Register now for the Balloon Juice NCAA tournament pool, brackets will be ready for pickin’ on Sunday.
I also created a pool for the women’s tourney here.
Lesley
Residents had ten minutes warning. The water travelled 6 miles inland within minutes of arriving.
Yutsano
@Comrade Mary: If you’re curious, Toukyoudenryoku just means Tokyo Electric Power, I’m not sure why the translator mangled it so bad.
Edmund in Tokyo
@Mr Stagger Lee: My cat predicted the earthquake by going to sleep in front of the heater. Unfortunately that’s also how he predicts non-earthquakes, so it’s a bit hard to interpret.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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“Comfortable shoes,” Day 24.
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bcwbcw
Water wave speeds go as the square root of the wavelength in deep water and for shallow water as the square root of the water depth. When the depth is less than about 7 times the wavelength the wave speed starts being limited by the ocean depth and the wave slows, piles up and forms a rolling breaking wave. This is what happens at the beach.
Tsunami’s are very long wavelength waves, and only appear as smooth waves in very deep water where they may be hundreds of miles long and move at 500 miles an hour or more. Anywhere near a coast they pile up and slow. Speed is around 10 miles an hour at 100 feet depth.
Tides also travel as very long wavelength waves. Thus the tide arrives at the Albany about 6 hours after the NYC Battery because the wave carrying the tide takes that long to roll up the shallow water of the Hudson River.
pjcamp
The epicenter was 80 miles from Sendai. Tsunamis (in deep water) travel on the order of 500 mph and vary with the square root of the water depth, so they slow down in shallow water.
Ignoring the slowdown, that gives us an outside figure for the time of 0.16 hours or about 10 minutes. So the 20 minute figure reported above is credible.
No, nobody had a shot at evacuating.
bcwbcw
@bcwbcw: err, 10m/s at 10 m depth, so actually about 40mph at 100 feet. oops
pjcamp
‘Scuse me, I meant a minimum figure.
New Yorker
OK, so the choice of the night was “Idiocracy”. It was amusing, but also fucking terrifying, given that the movie was made before a certain trailer trash beauty queen with compressed air between her ears became a serious presidential candidate in one party. I suppose I should add that her daughters use “fag” liberally.
At least I now know what “bring on the brawndo” means.
J. Michael Neal
@Bootlegger: The women’s tourney started today. Wisconsin moved on. My Gophers fell on their faces.
Unless you mean some boring sport played without skates.
S. cerevisiae
@New Yorker: It’s got electrolytes!
Yeah, that movie seems more prophetic every day.
S. cerevisiae
@J. Michael Neal: Yeah, the Badgers beat my Bulldogs but hey the men pulled off a sweep of St. Cloud State – the game just ended in triple overtime.
J. Michael Neal
@S. cerevisiae: A day that ends with a Bad Doggies(fn1) loss is almost as good as a day that ends with a Fighting Sux loss.
(fn1) Badd Doggies equal SCSU. Good Doggies are Michigan Tech. Just as Purple Cows are Mankato and Red Cows are Nebraska-Omaha. How do you have a 12 team conference with two duplicate nicknames?
JGabriel
pjcamp:
Actually, it’s confirmed by multiple sources that it took about 70 minutes for the tsunami to go from epicenter (2:46p) to Sendai airport (3:55p), about an 80 mile distance.
There are, however, points where the epicenter may have been only 15-20 miles from the shore. They probably got hit about 15 minutes after the quake.
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MTiffany
I would like to semi-seriously suggest that we put bounties on the heads of any talking heads which appear on the Sunday bs-fests and start blathering on about what the events in Japan “mean for America.”
Not everything is about ‘Murikkka.
bob h
80 miles/500 miles per hr. = 9.6 minutes. Really no time.
AhabTRuler
BBC is reporting that a third reactor, Fukushimi Daichi #2, has also been injected with seawater.
To say nothing of a possible expected M7.0 earthquake that might occur at any time.
AhabTRuler
BBC News again:
It really would seem that the earth neglects to identify to what standards a nuclear plant is built before decided to throw a disaster.
MTiffany
Christ I hate the Huffington Post. No, no, no, you sensationalist assholes, an explosion at a nuclear power plant is not a nuclear explosion. PuffHo is getting shoddier by the day.
Caravelle
From what I read on Obsidian Wings (I think) the people in Sendai and the first places to get hit had a 4-5mn warning. Presumably the tsunami took longer than that to get there because the warning happened after the earthquake but I don’t know by how much.
AhabTRuler
@MTiffany: To be fair, I have seen more than one headline characterize the emergency that way. Editors can’t help themselves, and sometimes don’t even know the difference. Morans.
MTiffany
@AhabTRuler: I’d be more inclined to give PuffHo a pass if they could ever bother to get a few goddamned facts. But when it comes to anything science-based, they serve up nothing but steaming piles of pseudoscience bullshit and superstitious woo.
Used to be an avid PuffHo reader, now it just turns my stomach.
MTiffany
Japan Meteorological Agency revises quake magnitude upward to 9.0.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_21.html