- by New Deal democrat
By now we've all seen the horrible videos of the tsunami swallowing up entire towns and the tremendous loss of life that the Japanese are enduring. My thoughts and prayers are with them.
For a moment, though, let's remember something that, for all of the hours and hours of video of walls of water smashing into and destroying towns that was recorded, we haven't seen. All of those videos show tsunami's damaging or destroying intact structures. Not a single building anywhere in Japan seems to have suffered major damage from the 8.9 earthquake itself, as opposed to the following tsunami. Think about that for a moment: despite undergoing one of the 10 most severe earthquakes to strike the planet in the last century, not a single structure was lost to the ground movement. Compare that with last year's earthquake in Haiti.
The Japanese building codes have proven to be outstanding. California, Oregon, Washington State, and all of the areas at risk due to the New Madrid fault, ought to enact that Japanese code into law, word for word. It has proven itself in this Great Quake.
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7 comments:
Here's an anecdote that I found heartening:
One American living north of Toyko, about 75 miles away from the areas hardest hit by the earthquake, experienced groundshaking so violent his gas stove was ripped from the wall.
The gas service in his 4-story apartment building was immediately, automatically, shut off by the quake.
I think this is demonstrative of the small miracles possible through thoughtful planning.
I live in Portland, OR. Were a quake of that magnitude to hit here, half the buildings in the city would crumble. It's not "if" the big one comes, but rather "when". We are overdue, yet ill prepared.
One minor change I'd suggest. Whatever the codes are that apply to nuclear reactors should be amended.
Maybe this is because Japan is less keynesian-oriented than California, Oregon and Washington State? They don't see the virtue of a destroyed house.
Johan
I've lived through every major e-quake in Los Angeles since 1971. My understanding is that seismic building codes in Calfornia and Japan are already identical. What seems to matter most is the location, depth, duration and type of earthquake, and strata. This quake was well off shore and 15 miles deep. As violent as it was, were it to have been closer to the mainland, and more shallow, the damage from the quake would have been infinitely worse. The 6.3 temblor in Chirstchurch caused more damage to buildings built to the same seismic standards as Japan and California due to the location of the epicenter. In the '93 Northridge quake in Los Angeles, my home was just 5 miles from the epicenter, but sustained virtually no damage because our foundation is on bedrock. By contract, one of my sisters who lived 13 miles from the epicenter sustained about $10,000 in damage, while my other sister who lives 26 miles from the epicenter sustained over $100,000 in damage because her neighborhood is located in a liquifaction zone where the hard soil turns to jelly when subjected to the right frequency of waves. That earthquake was also particularly violent, as it had both a pitch and roll. No one should be so naive as to think seismic building codes alone can prevent major e-quake damage.
You know what people in industry call that? "Overengineering". They don't like it because it costs money. Sorry for being bitter; I was up late last night following Fukushima. It's a bit off-topic, but here's an update.
Fukushima Site 1 is the main source of all the problems making the news. I have a few admissions to make; the risk of fallout has become real when I earlier said it was zero. However, it is localized to a 30km radius at this point. The incredibly brave and resilient workers at Fukushima worked very hard to limit the impact of any worst-case scenario, so any U.S. anchors getting excited about the thought of fallout reaching this side of the Pacific are shamelessly mongering fear.
Reactors 1-1 and 1-3 vented hydrogen (to avoid pressure buildup), which exploded. It was a risky, desperate move and the workers literally risked their lives. There is major damage to the outer buildings but the containment vessels are, as far as we know, intact. Reactor 1-4 is on fire but it was idling for maintenance reasons before the quake so beyond giving the already-exhausted workers more to do, it won't be a disaster. Reactor 1-2 might have damaged secondary containment. This is like having a cereal bowl on top of a cracked tray. There is no confirmation on the status of the containment vessel (the cereal bowl), but IF it's damaged as well, the secondary containment (the tray) won't keep in the contamination. Reactors 1-5 and 1-6 were shut down like 1-4; there are elevated temperature readings but no other news as of yet.
The radiation readings you're hearing may have come from Reactor 1-2, but it was also revealed that the explosions exposed some surrounding waste fuel treatment pools. This is not a meltdown; they're pools used to contain ultra-hot, radioactive waste. When they lost power the water stopped circulating through the pools, allowing the waste to be exposed to air.
There are rolling blackouts in central Japan, and north Japan is basically a huge disaster. Risk of radiation exposure will make resource shortages even more critical.
The part of reactor 1-4 that was on fire was the part where spent fuel rods were stored. Spent fuel rods contain radioactive isotopes of iodine and of cesium. The cesium in particular forms a major portion of the nuclear waste storage problem that's been vexing the industry for decades. If the radioactive isotopes become involved in the fire, their oxides will form part of the ash and disperse over a wide area, effectively salting the ground with radionucleotides.
In terms of long-term crop damage, fires in the fuel rod containment pools and nuclear waste storage areas may well be more of a threat than core meltdown.
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