Tsunami in Japanese harbors

[REBrueckner]

It appears that like in a hurricane, even if your boat is securely fastened unless you are uptream of floating boats/ships/houses and other debris, damage is likely. I wonder what the relative force of all the debris is rising versus falling water heights.....because much is subsequently swept out to sea....

Portions of some of these are on tv...more than I have seen there appears below...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YPOK_3r8Dc&feature=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YPOK_3r8Dc&feature=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQTJy5mWejA&feature=

 

[REBrueckner]

If you notice boats going over small "waterfalls" they do quite well..initially...but the sideways movement in current gets them stuck under the "falls" flow in the backtow....looks like they'd fill up from the water fall......so anybody having to ride such a fall should run their boat parallel with the wate flow...perpendicular to the waterfall itself...could also drag an anchor to keep such an alignment....

 

[jim rosenthal]

There is a photo in NYTimes yesterday of a ferryboat sitting on top of a building in Japan...all those people dead, all the living ones homeless, and radiation leaking out of the damaged reactors. I can't imagine a worse situation.

 

[REBrueckner]

I've been following the radiation and reactor stories....mostly hype and uninformed, likely biased, articles........There seem to be political motivations in some articles....

"Meltdown" while possible is not likely....and there is NO evidence of such yet.....all the radiation testing of the public is precautionary....those reactors were 40 years old, some already scheduled for de commissioning and others were to be scheduled soon....

Good background and links to reliable technical sources here on PHYSICS FORUMS:

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=480200&highlight=japanese+nuclear

Note the posts from "Astronuc"...an ex astrophysicst then nuclear engineer...

 

[jim rosenthal]

The only real meltdown that has occurred with radiation release was at Chernobyl, and wasn't that because there was no containment vessel? I don't think that's going to occur here; I certainly hope not. Just as it is, I can't imagine how long it will take to rebuild all that damage. Years, maybe decades.

 

[Canuck Dennis]

If they have not yet secured cooling water to the rods something really wrong, a backup, without on site generators is available......fire trucks,,hoses to salt water and away you go..any excuse otherwise is criminal .

 

[spartonboat1]

Difficult as it is to believe, one of the Gen Sets driving a sea water pump, at one of the nuke sites, ran out of fuel today sometime, thereby, without water flow, allowing the rods to be exposed. At least, that is what one website reported.

Of course, I have run out of fuel "once" in my life, about 2 miles from the fuel dock, which will "never" happen again. I allowed the Admiral to push to get home and by-passed the fuel dock, when I started out, so the "bad" is on me for that one.

But to allow the fuel to run out at a genset, during this nuke emergency is hard to fathom.

 

[ThirdHatt]

Of course, I have run out of fuel "once" in my life, about 2 miles from the fuel dock, which will "never" happen again. I allowed the Admiral to push to get home and by-passed the fuel dock, when I started out, so the "bad" is on me for that one.
QUOTE]

Oh NO! The good thing is I bet ever since then your Admiral *NEVER* questions the Captain's judgement ever again!

 

[jim rosenthal]

They are using firetrucks and seawater. I think the problem is that the pressure is so high they can't get water into the area they need to....

I suspect the next generation of reactor installations will have backup gensets located well above the flood plain; the current ones were not, and were drowned by the seawater coming in on the flood waves. That is why the cooling systems failed- there are battery backups, but they ran down, and there were no generators available to take over. A shame, and sad to say, a foreseeable one.

 

[spartonboat1]

Of course, I have run out of fuel "once" in my life, about 2 miles from the fuel dock, which will "never" happen again. I allowed the Admiral to push to get home and by-passed the fuel dock, when I started out, so the "bad" is on me for that one.
QUOTE]

Oh NO! The good thing is I bet ever since then your Admiral *NEVER* questions the Captain's judgement ever again!

No, now the Admiral always asks "Have you checked the fuel yet?"...and I better, or I hear about it!

 

[spartonboat1]

True Dilbert moment, several years ago. A major AT&T switching center lost it's grid AC, and the UPS's continued to carry the load. The Diesel Gensets failed to start because their 8D's were old and would not hold a charge. Now for true Dilbert...management was in a meeting discussing disaster recovery processes, while all this was happening...can't make that up!

You think maybe Cat/Cummins/MTU will shortly in doorways with Proposals for New Gensets, esp at nuke sites around the world?

 

[krush]

Japanese never had MacGyver.

 

[REBrueckner]

Here is a different perspective...on the Japanese nuclear reactor issues and reporting.....from MIT:

http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N13/yost.html

Maybe around this weekend, 3/20, there will be enough factual information to BEGIN to draw a FEW conclusions....Note that even this MIT EXPERT can't figure from (from inaccurate and perhaps biased reports) out what the situation is...

Once a reactor has been shut down, automatically due to significant earthquake movement, within hours, virtually all the heat comes NOT from fuel but by products of the fission...but radioactive contaimination concerns remeain REAL.....

 

[spartonboat1]

Recent web post via Drudge relates that a GE engineer, plus some associates, quit their project about 40 years ago, over concerns about the GE design they were developing and now in place at Fukushima. These are GE "Mark I" reactor designs, according to reports.

The engineering team that quit expressed at that time concerns that the containment vessels would be subject to rupture under severe conditions, which apparently what has happened. Further, the indications are that if the designs had been upgraded, then they vessels would have been able to withstand any amount of reactor internal pressure.

In short, per reports, it is possible that if the containment vessels had been upgraded to the engineering teams preference, they would not be experiencing the current ruptures. At any rate, that is the report.

 

[REBrueckner]

So far it seems the dumbest thing is not the Mark 1 containment vessel, but rather placing emergency diesel power where a Tsunami could drown it. You don't have to be a nuclear engineering wizard to realize that placing emergency power say 100 feet above sea level would be a wise precaution.

As you may have heard, all three nuclear working reactors were shut down immediately when tremors were felt. So within 3 minutes power was down to 10% or normal and within 6 minutes, to about 1%.....so cooling was always the real issue because it is required even after shutdown....