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Tag: earthquake
After Tsunami, Japanese People Think Waves Are Less Dangerous. What?
The wave that washed over the eastern coast of Japan was more than 130 feet high.
You would expect that a disaster of the magnitude of the Tohoku tsunami and earthquake, which killed 15,000 people and caused about $210 billion in property damage, would have people feeling more apt to evacuate when another killer wave approaches. But, strikingly, scientists who interviewed Japanese people a year before the event and afterwards found that the size of the waves they would think dangerous enough to flee had grown. As Adam Mann writes at Wired, people had stopped recognizing the height at which a wave becomes dangerous:
Ten Things You Should Know About the East Coast Quake
(1) First of all, in case you didn’t feel it, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck Mineral, Virginia at 1:51 pm.
(2) It was felt for miles around—as far away as Boston, with more reports pouring into the USGS every minute.
(3) The shaking lasted around 30 seconds in Washington, DC, according to the NYT liveblog, where the Capitol and the White House evacuated. No damage or injuries have been reported yet. The video above is the only one so far to show any damage.
(4) It’s the biggest earthquake to hit the East Coast since the 1890s—there was a 5.9 in 1897 in Virginia—and the third-largest since the USGS started keeping records; a 7.3 in 1886 in Charleston, South Carolina was the strongest.
Rash of Earthquakes—in Maine!—Brought to You by the Last Ice Age
What’s the News: When residents living on the central coast of Maine experienced nearly 30 small earthquakes in early May, some phoned their local authorities to report gunshots and unexpected blasting. That’s because Maine lies far from any active faults and rarely experiences more than two earthquakes a year. Measuring less than 2 on the Richter scale, these small tremors were actually vestiges of the most recent Ice Age.
As mile-high slabs of ice plowed their way across most of North America 25,000 years ago, they compressed Earth’s crust hundreds of feet, and ever since the ice melted away around 14,000 years ago, the land beneath our feet has been decompressing, much like a (very slow-moving) bed springs back to an equilibrium position when you get up in the morning. “The crust of the Earth is constantly moving,” Maine’s Bureau of Geology director Robert Marvinney told Wired. “We just don’t think about it that way, because it seems stable during our lifetimes.”
Study: Nuclear Fission Reactions May Have Continued After Fukushima's Alleged Shutdown
Reactor 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, on March 24
What’s the News: A non-peer-reviewed study (pdf) publicized last week by radioactivity-detection expert Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress suggests that nuclear fission reactions continued at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power station well after the plant’s operators had allegedly shut down the reactors there. The paper says there may be what are called “localized criticalities” have occurred in the plutonium and uranium left in the reactors—little pockets of fuel that have gone critical, propagating the nuclear chain reaction and generating potentially harmful radiation. The existence of criticalities is controversial: some researchers say there are certainly none; Dalnoki-Veress himself says it’s only a possibility.
Today's Best Science: Power Lines For Fukushima, Monkeys Recognize Their Buddies, and Plans for the Largest Tidal Array
Japan update: Engineers have successfully attached power lines to Fukushima’s reactor 2—a major development that should allow the pumps to cool the core. Still others warn that the reactor cores aren’t what’s really dangerous: It’s the spend fuel rods that we should be worrying about.- In less lethal news, scientists have created the first permanent anti-fog coating for glass and plastic surfaces. The days to steamy ski goggles and fog-strewn windshields may be coming to a close.
- Monkey see, monkey recognize: Scientist have demonstrated that monkeys can discern the faces of their friends—the creature spent more time staring at unfamiliar animals. The very fact that the monkeys took interest and scrutinized the photos are what surprised them the most.
- Turning the tides on carbon emissions: Scotland plans on installing the world’s largest tidal-power array. Ten underwater turbines will provide enough electricity for up to 10,000 homes, more than two times the electricity needs of two small islands.
- No more space limbo: Europe has finally figured out funding arrangements to extend operations for the International Space Station till 2020.
Image: flickr / daveeza
Today's Best Science: Waste-to-Water, Smarts Through Plants, and Rat-Brain Scanners
Clear thinking: The city of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates is taking a new approach to fresh water production: They’re harnessing the wasted heat from power plants to drive their water-desalination process, upping thermal efficiency from 43% to 90% in the process.- Food for thought: A new study suggests that merely surrounding yourself with indoor plants boosts your attention span.
- A sensor that looks like a miniature breath mint may be a boon for cancer treatment: It’s so small that it can be implanted right into the body to sense tumor growth, allowing doctors to avoid invasive—and sometimes harmful—biopsies.
News Roundup: Japan Nuclear Fears, Sperm-Whale Names, Internet on Steroids
Japan update: Authorities have been having trouble keeping enough water around Fukushima Daiichi’s nuclear fuel rods, leading Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano to respond, when asked whether they were melting: “Although we cannot directly check it, it’s highly likely happening.” Still, radiation levels remain at “tolerable levels.”- Call me Ishmael: Slight variations in sperm-whale calls may act as “whale names,” or personal identifiers that allow these social creatures to tell individuals apart.
- Star wars turns to trash: NASA is looking to create a cheap, ground-based laser that would be capable of blasting (ok, slightly nudging, slowing down, and de-orbiting) Earth-orbiting space junk in danger of crashing.
Radioactivity Leak Remains a Risk After Third Explosion at Japanese Nuclear Plant
Update (March 15): Shortly after this post was originally published, the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi facility worsened dramatically: there was an explosion at a third reactor, which may have damaged the containment unit there, along with a new fire. Reports elsewhere now suggests that more radioactive material escaped, but the extent of the risk of further release of radioactivity is not yet clear. The title of the post has been edited to reflect the changing situation. (Original title: “Relax: Fears Of Japan’s Radioactive Leakage Are Overblown”)
A second explosion hit Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant today and authorities are preparing to pump seawater into a third imperiled reactor. But considering that Friday’s earthquake was seven times more powerful than the maximum limit they were designed to withstand, we’re lucky the situation isn’t much worse. Japan’s scenario is a far cry from Chernobyl: Any radioactive leakage that has occurred is low, and unlikely to affect anyone outside the local area (if that).
What Happened
Both today’s explosion (in reactor No. 3) and the one on Saturday (reactor No. 1) have the same cause: a breakdown in the cooling system as tsunami waters swamped generators. Specifically, today’s explosion was caused by hydrogen gas, which builds up as the seawater that’s pumped in to cool the reactor also heats up. From video footage, the explosion looks devastating, and while 11 people were injured, the steel and concrete containment shell around the nuclear reactor was not damaged—which is the main reason why authorities say the situation is mostly under control. “There is no massive radioactive leakage,” Cabinet Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told the New York Times. Here’s a rundown on the risks in the leakage that has occurred:
What Is Escaping (and How)?
The root problem is heat: Even though the nuclear chain reaction is safely stopped in all of Japan’s nuclear reactors, that doesn’t stop heat from building up.
The uranium “stopped” the chain reaction. But a number of intermediate radioactive elements are created by the uranium during its fission process, most notably Cesium and Iodine isotopes, i.e. radioactive versions of these elements that will eventually split up into smaller atoms and not be radioactive anymore. Those elements keep decaying and producing heat. Because they are not regenerated any longer from the uranium (the uranium stopped decaying after the moderator rods were put in), they get less and less, and so the core cools down over a matter of days, until those intermediate radioactive elements are used up. [The Energy Collective]
The Science of Japan's Earthquake, Illustrated by Harrowing Video
Oil refineries aflame. Train tracks twisted like string. Buildings ripped from their foundations. Japan’s 8.9-magnitude earthquake has left its mark, especially in the expected death toll of over 1,000 people. This video roundup shows the science behind what happened today in Japan.
Why (Most) Buildings Didn’t Crumble
The death toll is estimated around 1,000, which is bad enough, but it would have been much higher without good engineering, mandated by strict building codes. But these codes haven’t been strict for long. In the 7.3-magnitude Kobe earthquake in 1995, 6,500 Japanese people died, and engineers looked on in horror as many buildings came crashing down; the most deadly ones were built before 1981, when building standards were still lower.
The Kobe tragedy, says The Telegraph‘s Peter Foster, compelled Japanese officials to tighten building regulations for residential offices and transportation infrastructure. Engineers made buildings “earthquake proof” by outfitting them with “deep foundation and massive shock absorbers that dampen seismic energy,” and by enabling the bases of buildings to move “semi-independently to its superstructure, reducing the shaking caused by a quake.” Skyscrapers now sway during an earthquake but don’t collapse, Foster says, and that helps explain why damage to buildings in Tokyo was kept to a minimum this time around. [The Atlantic Wire]
Why Couldn’t Geologists Predict It?
What Happened in the Japanese Earthquake—and Why It Could've Been Worse
Japan’s massive earthquake today may be over, but we’re still feeling the effects, from nuclear reactor scares in Japan to tsunami warnings along the entire west coast of North America, from Mexico to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Much is still unknown about this earthquake, including official destruction assessments and total death tolls, but here’s what we do know:
Two preliminary earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.2 and 6.3 struck off the coast of Honshu, Japan, the day before the major blow: This 8.9-magnitude quake—the largest in Japan’s recorded history—struck at 2:46 pm local time on Friday, its epicenter located about 231 miles northeast of Tokyo at a depth of 15 miles. Even after this large one, over thirty aftershocks—the strongest measuring 7.1 in magnitude—continued to batter the island nation.
The Immediate Effects
Fires and collapsed buildings were the main cause of injuries and death early on, from conflagrations sweeping an oil refinery in Chiba prefecture near Tokyo to the roof collapsing during a graduation ceremony in Tokyo. But fears soon centered on Japan’s nuclear facilities: Four power plants successfully shut down, but one experienced problems:
According to Nature’s Tokyo correspondent, David Cyranoski, Japanese media are reporting that the emergency core cooling system (ECCS) at the Fukushima #1 plant is not working due to a loss of electrical power, and problems with the backup diesel generator. The reactor is currently relying on an alternate cooling system that circulates water using a pump system. This system can operate for about 7 to 8 hours. According to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency of the government’s industry ministry, this is the first time in Japan that the ECCS of a nuclear power station has not functioned. [Nature]
The local governments near the Fukushima plant urged the area’s 2,000 residents to evacuate, though no leaks have been detected and the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum assured everyone (pdf) that Fukushima reactor’s core “still has a sufficient amount of water for cooling, with no danger of the nuclear fuel being exposed”.
Why It Could Have Been Worse
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