I hope any of you near the coast have gone for dinner somewhere high ... news coming in from Japan is terrible and I don't know how far the tsunami will go but lets hope you are all OK.
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I hope any of you near the coast have gone for dinner somewhere high ... news coming in from Japan is terrible and I don't know how far the tsunami will go but lets hope you are all OK.
GMT+8 about 9pm Honkong will rasise ~0.5m
Watched 'lost in translation' last night, oh dear, 8.9 :eekers:magnitude on Friday.
My friends in Tokyo, far from the epicenter, are shattered. Constant aftershocks. One friend will set out on foot to fetch his wife from another part of town. Another friend is in a plane on the runway at Narita, Tokyo's big international airport. She felt the shock from inside the plane, and the flight was postponed. If systems permit they will fly at 6 a.m., after a night in the plane, as it is not possible to return to the terminal.
This disaster really will test Japan.
Godspeed to Japan and all who live there.
What a disaster in Japan. Didn't even know about the quake until I read jape's thread early this morning here in Florida.
Watched it from Youtube some time ago. Good footage in there. Nature is big and powerful. People are like ants when compared.
All the best for Japenese.
We have this modern phenomenon called 'rolling news' on some channels. Inane commentary, stupid questions from 'journalists', repetitive, badly focused clips taken from 'you tube'. The lowest common denominator of reporting. Yet although they were on air within a short while, many hours later the same clips, questions and comments.
I did some channel surfing and it is mostly the same on all of Australian TV with small variations in the 'experts', yup, repeating the same stupid questions and answers.
And they tie up phone-lines and badly needed communications facilities with this garbage.
Our Foreign office officials could not get in touch with our own Embassy there, except after a few hours and then with patchy mobile phones. What? No radio or satellite comms?
I still haven't seen any good reporting, just the sensationalism. Nothing, despite worldwide communications, from anywhere else on the planet that is affected. Rolling news, rolling crap.
We had day after day of this junk with the bush-fires and the floods and cyclone. Emotionalism, milking every moment for sensation. Very little real news, just hour after hour of conjecture and ridiculous commentary. It is not the hardware that is lacking, it is the journalists and station producers with brains we lack.
I watched it on both French and then Chinese (CCTV4) for a while. Both showed short, concise round-ups of events and images. Facts and just a little commentary. Shame they were not subtitled but I could still see and understand with my limited French language skills and no Chinese, what was going on better than on the local stations! Australia is simply copying the very worst of USA in business, news, fashion and TV - and going down the plug-hole fast!
Your posting made me curious to listen from Finnish Yleisradio (equivalent to BBC but Finnish version) news and I was very surprised to find level headed and calm discussion with maybe 10 different experts commenting this and that. It was almost heavenly experience when compared to Internet mass hysteria way of reporting.
Truly a tragedy - so incredibly heart-wrenching. I can't watch much of it.
Chinese news reporting is "different" from the West in one aspect - the sensationalism is blood & guts, in the raw. The more gory, it seems, the better. It reminds me of when I was in the waiting room at the Driving License bureau in Beijing - it has a large screen TV showing horrible accidents, including the aftermath. One was a close up of a guy that was decapitated. Another is of pedestrians being squashed by huge truck tires.
There's nothing quite so shocking as holding a mate in your arms as he dies. And nothing so quickly dehumanising as watching another mate turned into bits and pieces. Whether in road trauma or other nasty places we have all over this world. But I like all the 'gory truth' style road safety ads, might just wake up a few idiots. I wish they showed them in the Vehicle Licensing offices here. Unfortunately all the 'entertainment' movies of bombs and wars and heroes have so much removed people from reality that it has little effect, peer pressure to drink is more powerful.
No-one who has been through blood and gore likes to talk about it or think about it but strange things fix in your mind forever, like how yellow some bone is.
And when it comes to natural disasters, all is so strange these days, we watch it on TV, repeated over and over until it becomes unreal - and some locals I overheard just complained how they missed some TV show while the first reports rolled in. I asked them if they realised that people were dying, trapped and crushed and drowning in those images they had been laughing ta, marvelling at, of boats hitting bridges and cars catching fire in water. They moved away from me and looked at me as if I were the strange one. I am used to that.
Glad to see your words 'heart wrenching'. Few have hearts any more, fewer respond with them, and even fewer truly mourn and empathise. i am not sentimental but I am glad after a lifetime I can still feel.
I follow all sentiments above.
A friend of mine was sent a warning e-mail from the Phillipino embassy. Stay indoors if it rains in the next 24 hours.
Japan govt confirms radiation leak at Fukushima nuclear plants. Asian countries should take necessary precautions. If rain comes, remain indoors first 24hrs. Close doors & windows. Swab neck skin with betadine where thyroid area is, radiation hits thyroid first. Take extra precautions. Radiation may hit Phillipine at startng 4pm today. Pls send to your friends.
This message is being circulated in China via SMS. I've received it in both English and Chinese, purportedly sourced to the British Broadcasting Corp. I've not seen these recommendations from other authoritative sources.
It's a very serious situation and will have worldwide ramifications for days and months and perhaps aeons to come.
Stay tuned your local and national authorities, folks, and stay safe.
BBC News has an article stating the text message is a fake:Quote:
Originally Posted by euphonius
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12745128
If you are in China and don't have a V*N you might not be able to see that, so here is the text:
There is also an article on the BBC site saying the radiation levels at the plant are falling.Quote:
A fake text message warning people that radiation from the Fukushima nuclear plant has leaked beyond Japan has been panicking people across Asia.
The SMS message, purporting to come from the BBC, has been circulating around Asian countries since Monday.
It warns people to take necessary precautions against possible effects of radiation.
The BBC has issued no such flash but the hoax has caused particular panic in the Philippines.
Some media reports suggest that workers and school children there were sent home after the rumours began to spread, prompting the Philippines government to issue an official denial.
Disasters such as that currently unfolding in Japan often trigger a rise in scam texts and e-mails intended to fool users into downloading malware or simply to spread panic.
The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has told computer users to be wary of potential e-mail scams, as well as fake anti-virus and phishing attacks regarding the Japan earthquake and the tsunami disasters.
"Such scams may contain links or attachments which direct users to phishing or malware-laden sites," it said.
In the Philippines, the Department of Science and Technology has held a press conference to reassure the public that they are safe even if radiation levels in Japan continue to rise.
On Tuesday morning, reactor 2 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant became the third to explode in four days.
Radiation has reached harmful levels but there is no suggestion that it is affecting anything other than the immediate area.
Officials have extended the danger zone, warning residents within 30km (18 miles) to evacuate or stay indoors.
FAKE E-MAIL IN FULL
BBC Flash news : Japan Government confirms radiation leak at Fukushima nuclear plants. Asian countries should take necessary precautions. If rain comes, remain indoors first 24 hours. Close doors and windows. Swab neck skin with betadine where thyroid area is, radiation hits thyroid first. Take extra precautions. Radiation may hit Philippine at around 4 pm today. If it rains today or in the next few days in Hong Kong. Do not go under the rain. If you get caught out, use an umbrella or raincoat, even if it is only a drizzle. Radioactive particles, which may cause burns, alopecia or even cancer, may be in the rain.
My cousins were in Tokyo for the week, they have emailed a few times and said they are fine, they are supposed to return to Beijing tomorrow.
I hope everyone you may know is fine.
Many thanks for this, Josh. I suspected as much. I've occasionally received official government notices by SMS here in China, and these did not conform to their style and format. Needless to say, the Chinese government would NOT be quoting the BBC.
It does seem that, dire as they are, things in Fukushima are "relatively" stable right now. Damn scary, serious situation nonetheless, and makes me worry about China's own coastal nuclear power stations.....
cheers
The BBC is reporting an explosion at reactor 4 now, and more released radiation, but everything says the radiation is of a "local" (20km-30km) nature. So while I guess its stable(r), it doesn't seem out of the woods yet.
The BBC had been pretty made clear that right now as far as everyone can tell, the 'meltdown' that has occurred is only of the containment materials, not of the nuclear fuel itself, which would be much more dangerous.
Here is an interesting link that displays an Austrian forecast of radiation dispersion ...
http://www.myhealthbeijing.com/preve...r-the-pacific/
Low levels (very low, don't know what THAT means) shown to kick back into China and across to western USA ...
While the radiation doesn't seem headed this way, the latest BBC article is kind of scary:
Wonderful.Quote:
it is possible that enough fissile uranium is present in the cooling pond in enough density to form a critical mass - meaning that a nuclear fission chain reaction could start.
The pool lies outside the containment chamber.
So if it happened, it would lead to the enhanced and sustained release of radioactive materials - though not to a nuclear explosion - with nothing to stop the radioactive particles escaping.
If you are 'special', you can read the full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12762608
Thanks Josh. Damn. Here's the money quote in that Beeb story: "The possibility of re-criticality is not zero".
Two very telling stories today in the New York Times. One quotes US Nuclear Regulatory Commission head as saying there's no water in the No.4 cooling pond, seemingly in direct contradiction of TEPCO, and the other notes an acute political leadership vacuum in Japan at just the moment it needs it most. The former is of extreme immediate importance, given the potential for huge releases of cesium-137 and other deadly isotopes. The latter is just downright depressing, as it's a legacy of America's own paternalistic colonialism in Japan for the past 65 years. You prop up and micromanage compliant governments to keep them compliant, and, when push comes to shove, you discover the incompetence that you've helped to cultivate.
Scary shit.
Yeah, and 40 year old reactors with external back-up generators in an earthquake and tsunami zone? Difficult to judge facts from outside but it seems to me GE (CEO talking to TV and in Aus at present) are already wriggling and saying they just supplied the things, that only the Japanese should take responsibility for upgrades. I don't personally think that sort of commercial legal consideration is all that applies with nuclear reactors.
Jeff, I read somewhere that if it all goes to shit the 'betadine' solution mentioned above has some validity as iodine injections stops some radioctivity progress in the body? What do you know about that? Just that I only have Savlon and it is iodine free ...
The deal with iodine tablets is that the body only absorbs as much iodine as it needs, and everything else passes through. So if you take a tablet of safe iodine to max out your body's supply, when you are exposed to radioactive iodine particles, your body won't need any and won't absorb them. I think iodine collects in your thyroids which are especially sensitive to cancer, so keeping radiation away from them is a good thing.
As for the reactor 4 pond being dry, the BBC article I linked to seemed to be saying that adding water to the well is a catch-22, because adding it could SPARK the nuclear chain reaction by slowing down the radiation and moderating it. With the well being dry, the radiation moves so fast it doesn't get absorbed by the rest of the nuclear fuel, so the chain reaction can't start.
There was a CBS Marketwatch alert this morning saying that Japan was resuming attempts to drop water on No.4 from helicopters, though this would oblige chopper crews to fly through the cesium plume. The word kamikaze comes to mind. There will be 700 virgins in heaven for those pilots. Damn I hope they can cool those fuckers and regain control.
Yeah, lets hope, and wish them well.
So even if iodine is blocked, the other nasties wouldn't be? Not worth a rush to the chemists then. Might steal some lead off the neighbour's roof just in case, and for old time's sake.
Lead undies don't arf chafe though.
Yeah, lets hope, and wish them well.
So even if iodine is blocked, the other nasties wouldn't be? Not worth a rush to the chemists then. Might steal some lead off the neighbour's roof just in case, and for old time's sake.
Lead undies don't arf chafe though.:diggin:Maybe better dig a deep hole.
A bit more nonsense: I overheard a local plumber at the café telling his mate that it was god's revenge because the japanese set off the first atomic bombs in WW2!
Oh my, education in Aus is working well. I'm gonna start digging that hole tomorrow.
So, I am not an expert by any means, but here is what I understand: if you absorb radioactive iodine, its in your body and you can't escape it. The closer you are to radioactivity, the higher the chance of poisoning or cancers forming, so obviously, having radioactive material in you is a bad idea. The worse stuff, uranium, plutonium, etc, is of course, worse, and stronger radiation, but it just passes through you, and if you get away from it, the radiation goes away. So naturally, the farther away from the uranium, etc, you are, the better.Quote:
So even if iodine is blocked, the other nasties wouldn't be? Not worth a rush to the chemists then. Might steal some lead off the neighbour's roof just in case, and for old time's sake.
I think (but I'm not positive) radioactivity falls off logarithmically, so if you are 2" away from a radioactive source, its 10 times less potent than being 1" away from the source.
From reading the BBC reports and reading the wikipedia page on the "China Syndrome", the real danger is an uncontained, uncontrolled nuclear reaction happening exposed to the air. What happens then is the uranium, plutonium, etc, get superheated, and start to vaporize and drift into the atmosphere. Then you've got a huge radioactive cloud blowing around waiting for people to inhale, and the super-heated core is so dangerous no one can get near it to cover it back up again easily.
Just to be clear, a nuclear reactor can NOT turn into a nuclear explosion... its the wrong kind of reaction.
Starting early Thursday morning, I began receiving messages from former students pleading with me to go check the stores around me for any salt, as their family did not have enough. Very bizarre. Apparently, every store in Beijing had been sold out of salt. By Thursday evening, I heard on the news that virtually every store, throughout China, has had its salt supplies stripped from the shelves (the effect of mobile sms, I guess). Incredible.Quote:
Originally Posted by CantDecide
A quick search on the internet found that it would require consuming 80 tablespoons of iodized salt to equal one iodine tablet. Hmmmm. The "cure" kills the patient?
Yes, I read it would take ingestion of 1.5kg of salt -- surely a fatal dose -- to obtain one day's benefit from the iodine in the salt.
Most interesting for me is this: This massive nationwide run on salt only started AFTER the government announced that there was no point in consuming iodized salt. Hows that for faith in government!
Nonetheless, I've got about a cup of salt in my kitchen. I'm going to set up a litte stand at the streetcorner today and hold an auction. I'll be rich!
i believe there must be mastermind behind, think Chinese Capitalism.Quote:
Originally Posted by euphonius
It is Euphonius, 盐主 is his other name, Shanghai is just down the road from Yancheng ...