How much radiation is dangerous. Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:01am IST REUTERS - Japan asked local governments to make more frequent radiation checks after explosions at two nuclear reactors, with reports of radiation levels nine times normal briefly detected in Kanagawa near Tokyo. Below are some facts about the health dangers posed by higher radiation levels. * Chief cabinet minister Yukio Edano said radiation levels near the stricken plant on the northeast coast reached as high as 400 millisieverts (mSv) an hour, thousands of times higher than readings before the blast. That would be 20 times the current yearly level for some nuclear-industry employees and uranium miners. * Exposure to 350 mSv was the criterion for relocating people after the Chernobyl accident, according to the World Nuclear Association. * People are exposed to natural radiation of about 2 mSv a year. * Airline crew flying the New York-Tokyo polar route are exposed to 9 mSv a year.
*A single 1,000 mSv dose causes radiation sickness such as nausea but not death. Social Networking Gets Serious-Japan. Animate Map: How FB Users Reacted to the Japan EQ. The 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck the coast of Japan Friday was the most powerful in Japan's history. The earthquake launched a devastating tsunami that covered many of Japan's northern coastal cities in water, created a nuclear crisis and set off tsunami warnings as far away as Hawaii and California.
Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, referred to the quake as Japan's “worst crisis since World War II.” While many reacted to the disaster on Twitter, others took the conversation to Facebook. The social network counted 4.5 million status updates from 3.8 million users across the world on March 11 that mentioned "Japan," "earthquake" or "tsunami. " The animated graphic above plots these status updates at 10 points in time.
To view the maps as a slideshow, click here. 8.9 Earthquake in Japan. We are learning more about a massive quake in Japan, with an estimated magnitude of 8.9 offshore of Sendai, Honshu. A major tsunami has been generated and the cable news shows are showing aerial shots of an extraordinary wave spreading across agricultural fields, overwhelming roads and villages. From the maps, it appears that the quake was generated in the subduction zone on the Pacific side. There is a good chance that a tsunami could be spreading through the Pacific, but I have not heard any confirmation. I would only say that if the authorities issue a warning, take it seriously and get to a safe place. The most stunning aspect so far has been the aerial perspective of the tsunami spreading across the landscape. The 2004 tsunami in Indonesia was documented better than any previous event, but I don't recall seeing any aerial shots like this. Tsunamis are not really waves, they are surges of water that rush inland at speeds sometimes approaching 100 mph.
Disaster strikes Japan, twice. The strongest earthquake ever to hit Japan unleashed a terrifying 10-metre-high tsunami that claimed hundreds of lives on Friday, with a nuclear plant and petrochemical complex among multiple sites set ablaze. The monster wall of water generated by the 8.9-magnitude quake — the seventh biggest in history — pulverised the northeastern city of Sendai, where police reportedly said 200-300 bodies had been found. The 33-foot wave of black water sent shipping containers, cars and debris crashing through the streets of Sendai and across open farmland, while a tidal wave of debris-littered mud destroyed everything in its path.
More than 90 people were confirmed killed in addition to the bodies found in Sendai, public broadcaster NHK reported. “The damage is so enormous that it will take us much time to gather data,” an official at the National Police Agency said. The wave set off tsunami alerts across the Pacific, including in the US state of Hawaii. Japan $1 billion EQ warning sys. Japan EQ-What fools we are to think...
By Robert HardmanUPDATED: 01:45 GMT, 12 March 2011 How we chuckle at those primitive civilisations with their sun-worshipping superstitions, their sacrifices and their pagan ways. How we pooh-pooh those Creationist Bible-bashers clinging steadfastly to their crackpot beliefs in Noah and his Ark. The only real threat to the world, we are always told, is the human race itself. Because we’re the ones in charge. We reclaim land from the oceans and build sea walls to keep those irksome waves at bay.
The wrath of nature: The tsunami crashes into the Japanese coastline yesterday morning We plant preposterous skyscrapers on a patch of land which, for the last million years, has accommodated little more than a few animals, a few birds and a spot of vegetation. And then, suddenly, we wake up and realise that Nature is deeply unimpressed. One of the most advanced nations on Earth was innocently going about its business when Nature suddenly decided to go Thwack! Like a film? She was very lucky. Japan EQ- A Wake Up call for US.
Japan’s massive earthquake and tsunami is alerting the US west coast that the same kind of thing could happen here. In fact, say experts who study the earth’s shifting crust, the “big one” may be past due. Skip to next paragraph Subscribe Today to the Monitor Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS ofThe Christian Science MonitorWeekly Digital Edition Both Japan and the Pacific Northwest lie along subduction zones – areas where tectonic plates push against each other. When the growing pressure finally gives way, earthquakes and related tsunamis result. The Cascadia subduction zone (“Cascadia fault”) is where the Juan de Fuca and North America plates meet – sometimes in violent confrontation. IN PICTURES: Japan's 8.9 earthquake The last time a “big one” of the type Japan saw Friday occurred along the northwest coast was on Jan 26, 1700.
“It would be devastating,” said professor Burns. Quake is 5th biggest, but Japan best prepared - Japan EQ in Pics. A massive 8.9-magnitude quake hit northeast Japan on Friday, causing dozens of deaths, more than 80 fires, and a 10-meter (33-ft) tsunami along parts of the country's coastline. Homes were swept away and damage is extensive. As more images of this historic event become available, they will be added below. [Update, Sunday 3/13 - new entry added with Scenes from the Aftermath] [48 photos] Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate Choose: Buildings burn after an earthquake near Sendai Airport, northeastern Japan March 11, 2011.
People take shelter as a ceiling collapses in a bookstore during an earthquake in Sendai, northeastern Japan March 11, 2011. Houses are swept by a tsunami in Natori City in northeastern Japan March 11, 2011. Houses, cars and other debris are washed away by a tsunami in Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture, northern Japan, after strong earthquakes hit the area Friday, March 11, 2011. Houses swept by a tsunami smoulder near Sendai Airport in Japan March 11, 2011. Engineer: Tough Japanese building codes worked. Friday's earthquake in Japan was the world's fifth most powerful since 1900, but most of the nation's buildings are still standing in the wake of Friday's ultra-strong earthquake, having suffered only minimal damage. How did they come through the shaker in such good shape? Structural engineer Bill Faschan, who's designed cutting-edge commercial towers, hotels, sports stadiums and museums around the world, says some of the strictest building codes in the world were up to the task.
He noted on "The Early Show on Saturday Morning" that Japan is part of the Pacific's "Ring of Fire" of nations especially vulnerable to powerful temblors, which is why Japanese codes are so tough. Complete coverage: Disaster in Japan The Ring of Fire, he told co-anchor Russ Mitchell, is "a very active seismic center. Japanese building codes, Faschan says, "are very comparable to American codes. That city's tall buildings literally swayed as the quake shook the ground. "In real terms, it's not that big a premium. Millions saved in Japan by building codes. Japanese EQ could be most expensive ever. The cost of damage from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami is expected to be in the tens of billions of dollars.By Chris Isidore, senior writerMarch 13, 2011: 7:21 PM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- While the full extent of the disaster's aftermath is not yet clear, the earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of Japan could be the most expensive quake in history.
Its toll on Japan -- its people and its institutions -- is already staggering. By official counts, more than 1,500 people have perished and about as many have been reported missing. There are fears that the death count could go much higher as rescuers get to towns that were washed away by powerful flooding. Damage to power reactors has sparked fears of nuclear meltdown and radiation contamination. As of Sunday morning, nearly 5 million homes were without power. (Bank of Japan to help banks) And the financial cost to the Japanese government, businesses and individuals is expected to be big.
Share this. Tech Hero- Building Codes. Shakedown Artists- Japan EQ. The images of March 11's earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan -- landscapes awash in flaming debris, cars piled up in parking lots like toys, industrial facilities exploding amid dense black smoke -- are staggering. But what's actually most amazing is that things aren't worse; the death toll, while horrific, is orders of magnitude less than the far less geophysically impressive earthquake in Haiti last year. FP spoke with Michael K. Lindell, an urban planning professor at Texas A&M University and a leading expert in the field of earthquake response -- who, as it happened, was at a meeting of the U.S. government's multi-agency earthquake planning group when we called.
He explained why the Japanese are better than everyone else at planning for earthquakes, how real estate developers are hurting the United States' ability to withstand similar tremors, and why earthquake experts are more interested in what's in local building codes than what's on CNN right now. Michael K. ML: Right. Strict Codes saved lives. [After the Kobe earthquake in 1995, which killed about 6,000 people and injured 26,000, Japan also put enormous resources into new research on protecting structures, as well as retrofitting the country’s older and more vulnerable structures.
Japanhas spent billions of dollars developing the most advanced technology against earthquakes and tsunamis.] Hidden inside the skeletons of high-rise towers, extra steel bracing, giant rubber pads and embedded hydraulic shock absorbers make modern Japanese buildings among the sturdiest in the world during a major earthquake. And all along the Japanese coast, tsunami warning signs, towering seawalls and well-marked escape routes offer some protection from walls of water.
In Japan, where earthquakes are far more common than they are in the United States, the building codes have long been much more stringent on specific matters like how much a building may sway during a quake. Of course, nothing is entirely foolproof. The difference, Mr. Mr. Fareed's Take on Japan's EQ. If you take the earthquake that hit New Zealand a few weeks ago and multiplied it by 1,000, you would get the one that hit Japan last week.
Or if you remember the one that devastated Haiti last year, this one is several hundred times more powerful. That’s why, despite all the precautions and preparedness, the devastation has been so great. Most experts agree that in terms of safety plans and procedures, Japan has done almost everything right. It is too soon to do anything but mourn, but this tragedy does remind us that no matter how much advanced work a country does, no matter how well the buildings are built, nothing can prepare you for this. Nevertheless, the work has helped. The death toll in Japan would be much, much worse if not for all the safety codes and drills that they had adopted. Even in their nuclear power plants, things could have gotten much, more worse. The one area where Japan did not adequately prepare itself was economics.
Japan did not do that in the economic case. Japan's deadly seismic history. Amazing story: Twitter & Japan EQ. Every once in a while, I have an “aha” moment where I’m blown away by an unsuspected use or combination of technologies. Prior to yesterday, the last such moment was when I heard my son shouting in French while playing alone in his room on a new game console: “Cache-toi derriere le rocher … tire, tire, tire!” (“Hide beind the rock, shoot, shoot, shoot”). Had he gone crazy, I thought? Then it clicked. I knew the console was Internet connected. I knew it had a bluetooth headset. Yesterday, I had a similar moment while I was talking to a friend with family in Japan. We were on Twitter that night and suddenly the Japanese Twittersphere lit up with tweets about the earthquake. This blew me away. Seismic waves travel at 4 km/second plus or minus. Recall, I’m earthquake geek since I majored in geophysics and worked during school at the Center for Computational Seismology at Lawrence Berkeley Lab (LBL).
But I think with Twitter, we’re darn close. Like this: Like Loading... Japanese Preparedness Likely Saved Thousands. Kit Miyamoto was riding on a train in Tokyo on Friday when a massive earthquake struck off the Japanese coast. Although the earthquake's epicenter was hundreds of miles away, the train came to an immediate halt. Rather than panicking, Miyamoto recognized that the sudden stop represented an attempt to protect against loss of life. "As soon as the train feels an earthquake of any magnitude, it stops so you will not get derailed," Miyamoto says.
"This is the Japanese alarm system at its best. " Because of a long history of frequent, sizable earthquakes, Japan was relatively well-prepared for the latest quake. Japan could not protect its entire coastline against tsunami with its system of seawalls. That's in spite of the fact that the Port-au-Prince earthquake was far smaller in magnitude than Friday's, which was 8.9 — one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded.
"They get a magnitude earthquake of 7 or 8 every decade, so naturally they get good at it," he says. The Rich Pay; The Poor Die. Japan EQ: Twitter & FB. What Happens During a Nuclear Meltdown? Technicians are scrambling to contain the damage after March 11's devastating earthquake and tsunami knocked out power at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Seawater is being flooded into the reactor core to prevent overheating, and radioactive gas is being periodically vented to prevent pressure from building up. But these are merely stopgap measures to prevent a full meltdown of the reactor core. How likely is it that this strategy will fail and Japan will face a total meltdown? At the moment, not very. It's an inexact term, but "meltdown" generally refers to the complete melting of a plant's nuclear fuel rods.
These rods are about half an inch in diameter and 12 feet long and are surrounded by a zirconium covering called cladding. In the case of the Fukushima plant, it is believed that the top 2 to 3 feet of the rods were exposed after the power went out, causing them to overheat. STR/AFP/Getty Images. Japanese EQ- Human Foresight.