Not out of the woods yet

[zolac_no_miko]

Explosions, fires and radiation leaks at the Japanese nuclear power plant. Still trying to get the fuel rods cooled down. Not good, guys. Not good.

Aftershocks still shaking the country. Rolling blackouts due to power plant shut-downs. Grocery and convenience stores have been cleaned out. Trains are not running regularly. The effects on the

Comments

[shichahn]

Given the populations of the towns that were completely wiped out, and how many people are still missing, it's going to be a lot more than 10,000 dead by the time this is over. :(

I've just got my fingers crossed that the situation with the reactors doesn't end up putting a whole lot of that Cesium into the jet stream because it'll all be headed straight here, argh.

As for that little windstorm, yeah, sounds like it was a lot worse lots of places. We just had a couple small branches come down and that was it. Power didn't even flicker here.

[zolac_no_miko]

From what I'm hearing, we will not be having another Chernobyl... the plant in question wasn't even running when the earthquake happened, we're just dealing with a failure in keeping some spent fuel rods cool... whatever else might happen, we're not looking at a massive explosion sending radioactive material into the upper atmosphere. Thank god.

Yeah, we had branches come down right across the street from us, so we had the whole teal lightning, weirdo creepy buzzing non-explosion sound, showers of sparks, and no power for hours. Fun times!

[shichahn]

This is true, Chernobyl was affected by some very different circumstances that are not even possible of being duplicated at Fukushima. However the fire on the waste pit and the occasional ejections of steam from the reactor buildings are already putting radiation into the atmosphere at a measurable level. Most of that won't go very far (though it still sucks for Japan, especially since Tokyo is starting to be affected) but, you know. We get enough pollution from coal plants in China where adding a few radioactive particles on top of that really isn't something we need.

[zolac_no_miko]

True. Basically, it's not a question of whether it's bad, it's how bad is it going to be.

[drownedcities]

I was wondering what had happened on Sunday. The power up here flickered, but it didn't go out. I thought maybe a light was going out or something until I realized how bad the wind was outside. :/

[mosrael]

Oh man the power plants. I've been making my nuclear-history nerd buddy send me all the updates - here's a very useful summary: http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/ and a short piece from a Tokyo resident on why he's staying in Japan: http://altjapan.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/03/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go.html... )