LIVE BLOG (JAPAN QUAKE) The fire was associated with a large increase in radiation levels at the plant, according to the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (PDF), with radiation monitors detecting 400 millisieverts/hour in the vicinity of the plant's reactor no. 3 shortly before it burnt out. It's unclear how this has changed subsequently, but the IAEA says this measurement was the trigger for the decision to evacuate non-essential staff from the site. A 1000 millisievert dose is enough to cause radiation sickness, although it would not ordinarily prove fatal. Radiation levels at the plant gate rose to 8000 microsieverts/hour during the fire, reported JAIF, but had fallen back to just under 500 microsieverts/hour by 4.30pm local time. There are no reliable reports of more recent measurements. There is also confusion over the source of a possible explosion early this morning at the same plant's Unit 2 reactor - and just how much radiation it might have released. 0130 GMT, 15 March 2011 1845 GMT, Monday 14 March 2011.
A measured disaster. Read more: "Special report: After Japan's megaquake" "This will be one of the best studied earthquakes of all time," says William Ellsworth. Ellsworth, of the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, is not being flippant. After the immense damage and human suffering wrought by the quake and tsunami, he knows that this weekend's events have also given scientists like him an unprecedented opportunity to study how giant earthquakes occur. One of the most puzzling aspects of earthquake behaviour is how and why they blossom into monsters. Japan has a network over 800 seismic monitoring stations called Hi-net that can detect everything from the faintest tremor to the biggest temblor.
Similarly, within 48 hours of the quake, the country's network of around 1200 GPS stations revealed that Earth's crust in central Honshu had shifted some 4 metres eastward following the release of strain along the fault. Lifesaving seconds Chile slips More From New Scientist More from the web Recommended by.
Why earthquakes are hard to predict - environment - 14 March 2011. On 11 March, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake, one of the largest ever recorded, struck with no apparent warning off the coast of Sendai, Japan. New Scientist explains why earthquakes are so hard to predict, how seismologists have tried to foretell quakes in the past, and what promising approaches may lead to successful prediction in the future. Can earthquakes be predicted? No – at least not so that we could issue an advanced warning for a specific time at a specific location that would allow for an orderly evacuation.
Most quakes do, however, occur in predictable locations along well known fault zones, as was the case with last week's megathrust off the coast of Japan. How close can we come to predicting earthquakes? For places with a high rate of historic activity, the chance that a quake will hit in a future period of several decades can be quite high. Why are big earthquakes so hard to predict? What sorts of signals have seismologists considered for predicting large earthquakes?
Aftermath of a megaquake. Cian O'Luanaigh, online producer (Image: REUTERS/Asahi Shimbun) A woman sits and cries amid the devastation of Natori, Miyagi Prefecture, in northern Japan, on March 13, 2011, after a 9.0-scale earthquake hit the country on Friday. Thousands of people are feared dead. The earthquake - the largest in Japan's history - occurred when two adjoining tectonic plates slipped 40 metres in a 300 - 400 kilometre fault line off the Japanese coast, triggering a tsunami, which sparked alerts around the Pacific.
The Japanese government declared a "state of nuclear emergency" on Friday after cooling systems failed at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant 240 kilometres north-east of Tokyo. Engineers are still struggling to stabilise three reactors at the plant. An erupting volcano is now adding to the country's problems. Follow our live blog for updates on the situation. Kyodo News. Japan earthquake. US 7th Fleet. Operation Pacific Assist - Department of Defence. Operation Pacific Assist was the Australian Defence Force (ADF) component of a joint effort between the ADF and Emergency Management Australia (EMA). Their mission was to provide an Emergency Services Task Force in the wake of the of the earthquake in Japan and the subsequent devastating tsunami.
NSW Police, Fire and Ambulance services; ACT fire fighters; and, search and rescue dog handlers from Queensland came together to create the Task Force. The ADF provided strategic air lift of the Task Force to Yokota Airbase, Japan by Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) C‑17A Globemaster. The Task Force arrived in the early hours of Monday 14 March. The C-17A Globemaster remained in Japan for two weeks and undertook 23 sorties providing intra-country airlift of vital stores and equipment assisting in the humanitarian effort, including food and bottled water.
Reuters Special Report (PDF) IT Resilience - Japan’s Internet. In the grand scheme of things, the fact that the Internet has, by and large, kept working in Japan despite earthquakes, tsunami, and potential nuclear reactor meltdowns, is very small. But perhaps it isn't really that minor when you consider that for hundreds of millions of people wanting to know if friends and family are well, a simple e-mail, instant-message, or even a Facebook update can spell the difference between hours or days of worry and the relief of at least knowing their loved ones' fate.
Unlike Egypt or Libya, where dictatorships found it all too easy to turn off the Internet, Japan's Internet has largely stayed up in the face of disaster. This is a credit to Japan's robust Internet that has managed to keep running despite a 8.9 Richter scale earthquake and numerous powerful aftershocks, tidal waves, and all the havoc that such natural disaster play on a modern society's infrastructure. Not all of the Japanese Internet has kept going of course. Japan Earthquake Online. Social media and the web have become the go-to for real-time information when disasters strike. It's no surprise that the news of Friday's 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan spread rapidly on Twitter, while live video feeds and blogs kept pace. With unreliable cellphone service, social media is the only form of communication consistently available to people in Japan, says Brian Gillespie of Texas. He has reached out to friends in Japan through Twitter and Facebook.
Mixi, Japan's largest social networking site, has also been used to located loved ones, he says. Like Gillespie's friends, many in Japan are updating us on the country's status via the Internet. Now, hours after the initial quake, information about the earthquake and tsunami abound. What tools are you using to track the crisis? Social Media Live Video and Blogs Other Resources Image courtesy of MapLarge.com. FB response to Tsunami. 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. Underwater Sounds of Japan earthquake. The Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics (LAB), a unit of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), directed by Professor Michel André, has recorded the sound of the earthquake that shook Japan on Friday, March 11. The recording, now available online, was provided by a network of underwater observatories belonging to the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and located on either side of the earthquake epicenter, close to the Japanese island of Hatsushima.
The UPC laboratory is using this platform as part of Listening to the Deep Ocean Environment (LIDO), a LAB-led international project. "LIDO aims, for the first time ever, to record deep-sea sounds in real time and determine how artificial sounds impact the conservation states of the marine environment," says Michel André.
The system can be used to listen simultaneously to what is happening at different observatories. On March 11, 2011, at 2:45 p.m. Undersea noise impact assessment. Www.remnet.jp/english/lecture/e_iryou.html.