How do you do to measure radiation levels in the hard-to-reach forests near Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant? Why, fit wild monkeys with radiation sensors, of course! Researcher Takayuki Takahashi tells CNN that his team plans to fit three monkeys in early 2012 with collars that measure radiation, as well as GPS units that record location and distance from the ground. The researchers plan to leave the monitors in place for about a month, before detaching them via remote control and picking up them up to retrieve their stored data.

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Satellite radar data showed two wave fronts combining into a doubly tall tsunami off the coast of Japan on March 11.

The tsunami that spawned by the 9.0 earthquake off Japan this March was a disaster of massive proportions, reaching heights of over 130 feet in some areas and traveling up to six miles inland in others. Scientists at NASA and Ohio State University have now found another factor, beyond the sheer strength of the quake, that made the tsunami so ferocious: It started out as two separate walls of waves that combined to form one taller, more powerful “merging tsunami.”

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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:

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The nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant this spring may have released twice as much radiation into the atmosphere as the Japanese government estimated, a new preliminary study says. While the government estimates relied mostly on data from monitoring stations in Japan, the European research team behind the new report looked at radioactivity data from stations scattered across the globe. This wider approach factored in the large amounts of radioactivity that were carried out over the Pacific Ocean, which the official tallies didn’t.

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What’s the News: The tsunami that deluged Japan in March was so strong that it broke off several large icebergs in Antarctica, 8,000 miles away, researchers report in a new paper [pdf]. Using satellite images, the researchers saw the tsunami causing new icebergs to split off—or calve—from an ice shelf, the first time such an event has been observed.

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The anti-whaling movement hit its peak in 1986, when the International Whaling Commission banned all commercial whaling. Despite the ruling, however, the privately funded Institute of Cetacean Research in Japan has continued whaling by exploiting a loophole in the moratorium that allows some whaling for research purposes. But now, in a report by the government-run Fisheries Agency of Japan, the country has publicly considered ending its whaling efforts in the Antarctic Ocean (aka Southern Ocean), according to Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan’s five national newspapers.

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What’s the News: Researchers have found high concentrations of rare earth metals, essential materials for making nearly all high-tech electronics, in mud on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, according to study published online earlier this week in Nature Geoscience. These huge deposits could help satisfy ever-increasing demand for rare earth metals, but there are major questions about the economic viability and ecological effects of mining the seabed.

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In this images of infrared radiation in the days before the March 11 earthquake, the red circle indicates the epicenter and the red lines are tectonic faults.

What’s the News: Scientists analyzing the March 11 earthquake in Japan will have the benefit of some of the most sensitive and comprehensive atmospheric data yet, thanks to satellites monitoring climate. And a team has now reported a strange effect—a sudden spike in the temperature in the atmosphere above the quake site—detected just before the event. If the spike was related to the quake, and other earthquakes do the same thing, it might help scientists predict such cataclysms in the future.

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A house decimated by the 2010 earthquake in Chile.

What’s the News: Enormous earthquakes are rare; there have been only seven quakes with a magnitude 8.8 or above since the start of the 20th century. Of those seven quakes, three of them have happened in the past seven years: off the coasts of Indonesia in 2004, Chile in 2010, and Japan last month. Some researchers think this earthquake cluster marks the start of a period of megaquakes, while others believe that the earthquake cluster is simply a statistical fluke, with these unusually massive quakes just happening to occur within a short amount of time, according to recent analyses (PDF) of Earth’s earthquake history presented at the Seismological Society of America’s annual meeting last week.

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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.

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What’s the News: Japan has finally called in the robots to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, dispatching this red AKA Monirobo that is equipped with radiation detectors, temperature and humidity sensors, and a 3-D camera.

What’s the Olds:

• This particular robot is one of a suite of earthquake rescue bots that Japan has at its disposal.
• 80beats has covered Japanese robotic wonders such as the first robot marathon runners and catwalk-strutting robots as well. (If you’re wondering why such a tech-savvy, robot-friendly country didn’t deploy robots earlier, Reuters has a couple of guesses: old, robot-unfriendly reactor design, and a surprisingly anachronistic tendency to leave humans in charge of some easily automated tasks, “such as operating elevators and warning motorists of road construction.”)
• Japanese engineers have also created robots that express emotion.
• And one nuclear facility is mere parsley on the fish compared to Japan’s big goal of launching a robot to the moon.

Not So Fast: It isn’t clear how much work (if any) the AKA Monirobo is accomplishing thus far.

Image: Asahi Shimbun

• 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

• Orbit time! Launched in 2004, NASA’s Messenger spacecraft will this Friday become the first probe to orbit Mercury—potentially uncovering polar ice or explaining why the planet is oddly dense.
• Older AND wiser: When scientists played recordings of lion roars for elephants, they discovered that the oldest female elephants were the most sensitive, and even discerned the calls of lions from lionesses.
• Health experts say that this year’s cholera epidemic in Haiti could affect double the UN’s prediction of 400,000 people. The UN’s “crude” predictions assumed only a certain percentage of the population would be affected, whereas the new estimate takes water supplies and immunity into consideration.

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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]

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