Deny, Deny, Deny

The worst nuclear crisis ever is upon us, but Tokyo continues to deny the reality of what it faces. As does the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

IAEA: No Indication of Nuclear Reactor Meltdown in Japan

However under current Japanese leadership it is but a lap dog of Tokyo.

"Yukiya Amano, a veteran Japanese diplomat who heads the IAEA, said the agency was discussing details with Tokyo."

Both their assurances that nothing 'serious' is occurring flies in the face of reality. Over the weekend they went from one to two to three nuclear plants blowing up,

Japan crisis: third explosion raises spectre of nuclear nightmare

Japan's nuclear safety agency said Tuesday's explosion at the plant's No.2 reactor was caused by hydrogen. There was no immediate word on damage, but Jiji news agency quoted the trade ministry as saying radiation levels remained low after the blast, the third at the plant since Saturday.

And as coolant ran out and nuclear power rods were exposed to the atmosphere still denial from Tokyo and IAEA.

Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), expressed confidence Japanese authorities were doing all they could to restore safety at the sites and said a Chernobyl-style disaster was "very unlikely."

He spoke as Japan scrambled to avert a meltdown at a stricken nuclear complex after a hydrogen explosion at one reactor and exposure of fuel rods at another, just days after the devastation that killed thousands.

I have been following the nuclear disaster in Japan as soon as it occurred on Friday, posting updates on my Facebook page. Through out this period as news of the damage to these reactors was reported, the official line, which continues even today, has been deny, deny, deny.

The Japanese government and their UN lacky continue to insist that they 'have it under control', they reassure us that nothing serious or to terrible is occurring,.

The reality as report after report shows is that Japanese authorities and their electrical companies are not in control and lack the resources to actually deal with this crisis.

TOKYO, March 15 | Tue Mar 15, 2011 6:29am EDT

TOKYO, March 15 (Reuters) - Japan's prime minister was furious with the power firm at the centre of the nuclear crisis for taking so long to inform his office about a blast at a stricken reactor plant, demanding "What the hell is going on?".

Kyodo news agency reported that Naoto Kan also ordered Tokyo Electric Power Co on Tuesday not to pull employees out of the Fukushima plant north of Tokyo, which was badly damaged by last week's earthquake and has been leaking radiation.

"The TV reported an explosion. But nothing was said to the the premier's office for about an hour," a Kyodo reporter quoted Kan telling power company executives.

But being too proud to ask for help, which would incur obligation (giri), which is why they have not responded to international offers of help. They would rather deny they require help in dealing with this disaster because that would oblige them to admit to weakness.

Daily denials of the serious nuclear crisis they are facing is belied by hourly reports of yet another explosion, or continuing lack of water to cool the nuclear power rods.

The word Meltdown has been used since Friday, and they deny the reality. Their plants are in critical condition, their are indeed melting down. Whether they are equivalent or like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island or Hanford, is irrelevant. They are in the process of critical collapse. Only if their containment shells hold and the superheated rods are cooled, will there be no meltdown.

Should there be a melt down or two or three, then this situation will be a completely different scenario , another reason reassess Nuclear Power and especially policies regarding closing old plants like these.

These plants were built in the 1970's and even then were problematic.

In 1972, the first warning was issued about the vulnerability of the sort of General Electric reactors used in Fukushima in Japan

Government regulators knew of a heightened risk of explosion in the type of nuclear reactors used at the Fukushima plant in Japan from the moment they went into operation.

Safety inspectors at America's Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) warned as early as 1972 that the General Electric reactors, which did away with the traditional large containment domes, were more vulnerable to explosion and more vulnerable to the release of radiation if a meltdown occurred.

Michael Mariotte, director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said: "The concern has been there all along that this containment building was not strong enough and the pressure containment system was not robust enough to prevent an explosion."

The ageing GE reactors are regarded as less resilient then newer models. Dr Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environment Research, said: "They are not designed to contain these explosions. They are not designed to contain an aircraft crashing into it. Modern reactors are significantly different. Designs built from the 1980s onwards don't have the vulnerabilities of mark one reactors."

All six of the reactors at the Fukushima Two plant, which has suffered two explosions, are GE-designed boiling water reactors. Five are the original mark one design and went on line from 1971 to 1979.

And that is also part of their denial, the reality that the reason these plants are so hard to shut down is that they are past their prime and the technology is flawed by comparison to modern nuclear power plants. And despite knowing their shortcomings the Japanese electrical industry and the government kept them operating hoping nothing terrible would ever occur. That is not contingency planning nor risk planning.

Japanese campaign groups have also warned of problems at the Fukushima 2 plant including a failure of the generator when the plant lost power in June last year.

In addition to the Fukushima 2 plant, eight reactors of the same design are in use in Japan at nuclear facilities at Tsuruga, Hamaoke and Shimane. Like the Fukushima plants, all three are also on Japan's main Honshu island.

Nuclear reactors of the same design are in widespread use in America.Of the 104 reactors currently in use, 23 are of the same GE mark two design, according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Twelve more are a modified version of the boiling water reactor.

And instead of being taken offline they were used beyond their time. This is the core problem of why these plants now are a danger to Japan and the whole planet.

Japanese isolationism and xenophobia are the problem, they no longer are an isolated culture on an isolated island, an island unto themselves. Having entered the atomic age, their island culture now has an impact on the whole planet. Their culture of doing things Japanese style now threatens the planet.

Red Sea Volcano

Three weeks after the tectonic plates moved in Indonesia they had an impact in Africa.

Jabal al-Tair, meaning bird mountain, is one of several volcanoes at the southern end of the Red Sea between Yemen and Sudan.

The island, two miles wide, has no civilian population, only military installations used for Yemeni naval control. It is not clear how many military personnel were there during the eruption.

Jabal al-Tair's last eruption was in 1883, according to the Washington-based Smithsonian Institute's global volcano programme.

There had been considerable seismic activity around the island ahead of yesterday's eruption, the Yemeni defence ministry said on its website, including an earthquake of magnitude 7.3 on Friday.

Canadian National Defence image shows lava flows and clouds of smoke and ash

This gives new meaning to Toronto the Good.

A Canadian navy ship rescued a Yemeni soldier Monday following a volcanic eruption on a small island in the Red Sea.

HMCS Toronto was part of a NATO fleet in the area that was called upon by the Yemeni government to help rescue its soldiers after the eruption began Sunday evening.

HMCS Toronto is seen during operations, part of Canada's contribution to Standing NATO Maritime Group 1, an international naval rapid deployment fleet. (Master Cpl. Kevin Paul / Canadian Forces Combat Camera)

Canadian Navy divers in small boats were seen searching the waters surrounding the island late Monday.

A survivor described to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa the first moments of the disaster.

"It was horrible. It started with shocks like quakes, and then we heard huge blasts with lava and rocks spewing out and dropping on us," Ahmad Abdullah al-Jalal, who was rescued by the Canadian frigate HMCS Toronto, told dpa aboard the vessel.

Al-Jalal said that he and six fellow soldiers decided to flee the island by trying to swim through "boiling water" surrounding the tiny island.

"Some of them cried 'the sea,' advising that we should jump to the water before it got hotter," he said.

"I saw four of my colleagues dying in the boiling water just behind me," al-Jalal said as he was being comforted by Yemeni Coast Guard officers who boarded the Canadian ship to receive him and the remains of the two soldiers recovered by the Canadian sailors.

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Quake!

More tectonic plate activity in the core of the Ring of Fire; Indonesia. Three days of shock and aftershock as the plates move.

Frightened Indonesians suffer new Sumatra quakes

Strong enough that; East African nations issue tsunami alerts


And the original quake was felt in Thailand

People in tall buildings in Bangkok felt the 8.2 magnitude earthquake that shook southern Sumatra, in Indonesia, almost 2,000 km away, yesterday. Office workers in business areas of Silom, Sathorn and Ratchadaphisek were seen running from highrise buildings when the quake struck shortly after 6pm.

The after shocks hit the Philippines. 5.4 magnitude quake jolts Batanes


Luckily though no Tsunami occurred, Indonesia escapes tsunami again as quake takes toll

The post-2004 warning system did work.

Fortunately, the tidal wave produced by the latest quakes reached a maximum height of just two feet. But unlike 2004, when governments were slow to issue evacuation warnings, officials responded quickly this time.

Unfortunately too well. Tsunami alerts quickly followed Indonesian quake; panic prevailed

Indonesia lifts 7th tsunami warning after 6.9-magnitude earthquake

It just goes to show that along with Bird Flu, Global Warming and the possible impact of an asteroid , we need to be aware of the dangers of the ancient crawl of the earth known as tectonic shift.

Powerful quakes terrorize Indonesia, experts warn of 'big one'

A series of powerful earthquakes has terrorized residents in western Indonesia - including one that triggered a tsunami warning Friday - leaving thousands sleeping on plastic sheets in the hills. Seismologists warn the worst may yet to come.

"No one can say whether it will be in 30 seconds or 30 years," he said. "But what happened the other day, I think is quite possibly a sequence of smaller earthquakes leading up to the bigger one."

An 8.4-magnitude quake that shook Southeast Asia on Wednesday was followed by dozens of strong aftershocks - including one measuring a magnitude of 7.8 and another 7.1 - that killed 13 people, damaged hundreds of houses and spawned a 3-metre-high tsunami.

On Friday, a 6.4-magnitude temblor hit the area again, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, triggering the latest in a string of tsunami warnings that was later lifted.

The fault, which runs the length of the west coast of Sumatra about 200-kilometres offshore, is the meeting point of the Eurasian and Pacific tectonic plates, which have been pushing against each other for millions of years. This can cause huge stresses to build up.

"There is a strong indication this foreshadows the big one," said Danny Hillman, an earthquake specialist at the Indonesian Institute of Science. "We all agree there is an 8.5 or stronger earthquake waiting to happen."

Especially when idiots in the region insist on testing nuclear weapons. Or creating mud volcanoes from petroleum exploration. Thus adding a man made element to the mix.

Geothermal plants would tap 'Ring of Fire'

The Pacific Northwest, which sits on the volcano-laden "Ring of Fire" bordering the Pacific Ocean, would seem an obvious spot to pursue geothermal power.

For Gordon Bloomquist, it has been obvious for nearly 30 years. He and others have estimated that by capturing the Earth's subterranean heat and converting it into electricity, they could generate enough power for 2 million homes.

But, only now, as the Washington State University geochemist prepares to retire and take his talents to work on geothermal projects for the World Bank in Eastern Europe and Africa, does it look as if this region may be pushed to exploit the hot-rock power lurking beneath our feet.

Speaking of geo-thermal energy and climate warming let's not forget that this is the region that produced Krakatoa.

However, Becker said, a leaky tectonic quilt on average would lead to greater volcanic activity, earthquakes and plate movement. This would affect almost every aspect of Earth's geography, from sea level to erosion to climate.

"There's sort of a chain of things that follows from a good mechanical understanding of how plate tectonics works," he said.

Like the proverbial butterfly effect, what happens in the core of the Ring of Fire affects us too.

'Ring of Fire' asserts power with tremor
Times of India, India - 16 Aug 2007

Peru has become the latest country to feel the renewed heat from the ‘Ring of Fire’ that unleashes earthquakes around the Pacific almost every day.

At least 337 people were killed after the 7.9-magnitude quake rattled the country on Wednesday. The Ring of Fire stretches along the western coast of the Americas through the island nations of the South Pacific and on through Southeast Asia. It is a series of fault lines in the hardened upper layers of the Earth’s crust.

These lines of weakness are the meeting points of huge continental plates that make up the crust and which literally float on the molten rock of the Earth's core.

These plates are in constant motion, clashing into each other or moving away from each other, creating stresses and pressure build-ups at their margins.

This stress is released through volcanic eruptions, when the molten rock is ejected as magma through fissures in the crust, or via earthquakes, when the pressure causes the crust to buckle and shift.

Two days ago reports fluctuated as to whether the quake was 8.4 or 7.9
it all depended on where it was registered.

But that should have set off warning bells that apparently there were overlapping quakes leading to the next two days of so called after-shocks which were more like quakes than shocks.

A massive magnitude 8.4 earthquake hit southern Sumatra's Bengkulu province Wednesday at 6:10 pm local time. It was followed by 51 tremors, including one in western Sumatra's Jambi province Thursday morning that was measured at a magnitude of 7.8. The severe quakes rattled buildings in three countries and triggered tsunami warnings across the Indian and Pacific oceans.

The powerful earthquake of 7.9 magnitude that struck off the coast of Indonesia had its epicentre about 100 km southwest of Bengkulu.

According to R.K. Chadha, scientist with the National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, the fault plane was in a northwest-southeast direction. The focus (where the plate rupture actually takes place inside the earth) was at a depth of about 30 km from the ocean floor.

“The length of the fault plane should not be more than 250 km. Its epicentre is 300-400 km further south of the December 2004 quake,” Dr. Chadha said. The 2004 earthquake caused a rupture 1200 km long and pushed the Burma plate by 15 m for the entire length of the fault.

In 2004, the focus was 10 km, and hence it was a shallow earthquake. Unlike deep quakes, shallow ones cause more damage. A tsunami that results from such quakes can be more powerful and widespread compared to deep-seated earthquakes.

The quake that struck at 6.10 p.m. local time on Wednesday had a magnitude of 7.9-8, while that of the 2004 quake was 9. With magnitude being measured on a logarithmic scale, a magnitude difference of one translates to a quake 10 times more powerful.

Though a tsunami can be generated even by a shallow quake of 6.5 magnitude, maximum tsunami energy will always be focussed in the direction perpendicular to that of the fault plane. With the fault plane of Wednesday’s quake lying in a northwest-southeast direction, the maximum energy dissipation would have been in the same direction.

Unlike in 2004, where the direction of energy dissipation from the fault plane was nearly parallel to the Indian coast, maximum energy dissipation from the current quake would not have been in the direction of the Indian coast but into the open ocean. On the northeast direction, the energy dissipation would have been towards Bengkulu island.

Following the 2004 quake, another earthquake of 8.7 magnitude struck off the coast of Sumatra on March 28, 2005, about 200 km south of the 2004 event. It happened in the same subduction zone. “We call this as loading and unloading of stress,” said Dr. Chadha. “When stress is released at one point, it accumulates at another point. And, we had predicted that another quake would strike further south of the March event.”

The latest quake was in the same subduction zone, and lies further south of the March 2005 event.

SEE:

Earth in Upheaval-Updated




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Our Living Earth

It's Alive.

Lovelock's Gaia thesis is that the Earth, our home, is alive. Though she may not be interested in the goings on of the surface dwellers. I began this post a week ago, and while posting a nuclear leak occurred in Japan after an earthquake and as these posts show there was wide spread tectonic plate activity this last week and over the last month all across the globe.

More than 5000 tremors have been felt since January in the Patagonia region of Chile, causing residents to fear that a cataclysmic earthquake may surface.

Kenya: Earth Tremors Cause Panic in Nairobi Tremors hit Peshawar, Swat

Two 5.0 magnitude earthquakes jolt Negros Oriental

Uganda: Heavy Rains Causing Tremors, Says Expert

Tremors shake Portsmouth again — second this month

Another quake hits the North People living in the Burmese town of Tachilek and Laos' Bokeo province also felt the tremors.

PESHAWAR: An earthquake of mild intensity was felt in Peshawar and Swat districts on Sunday at 1724 hours. According to Peshawar Meteorological Station, magnitude of the earthquake on the Richter scale was recorded at 4.8. The epicenter of the tremor was about 300 kilometres north of Peshawar in the Hindukush Range, it said.

Then a couple of days later I discovered in the discount bin a book on the social and geological history of the 1906 San Fransisco Quake. Simon Winchesters; A Crack In the Edge of the World.

It outlines not only the geological faults that resulted in the San Fransisco quake, in light of the recent 2004 Tsunami, reviewers were quick to link it to the recent hurricanes; Katrina and Rita that destroyed New Orleans.

Winchester relates that 1906 was record year for massive, 8 and higher on the Richter Scale, earthquakes around the world, the plates all shifted. Which is the BIG picture of life on earth. Get practicing on your skate boards for the global shift.

Ours is an age of disasters: natural, as in hurricanes, tsunamis, famines, earthquakes, fires, and man-made, as in war and terrorism.

It's hardly surprising, then, that such a distinguished writer as Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa, should commemorate the approaching 100th anniversary of the earthquake and fire that began at dawn on April 18, 1906, and nearly destroyed San Francisco.

But Winchester doesn't confine himself to the disaster itself. He provides a virtual guidebook to the world of tremors and earthquakes and the geological conditions that produce them. He also examines the long-range effects of the San Francisco disaster.

With hurricanes Katrina and Rita fresh in our memory, Winchester's words on the far-reaching consequences of natural calamities strike home:

Seldom does an entire and very large urban community fall victim to utter disaster ... The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are among the most obvious. The Great Fire of London in 1666. ... The huge earthquake in 1755 in Lisbon — and then, in 1906, San Francisco. ... The largest of these cities and areas survived [because they] exist for reasons that go far beyond the accumulation of buildings that is their outward manifestation. Their presence ... is invariably due to some combination of geography and of climate, together with some vague and indefinable organic reason that persuades mankind to settle there.

So it was with New Orleans and San Francisco. Otherwise, who would live in a city situated below sea level and adjoining a stormy sea? Who would want to settle in a place where, over the years, numerous earthquakes and fires have occurred?

In New Orleans, the catastrophe came from the sea; in San Francisco, from the earth, specifically the San Andreas Fault, which runs from Northern to Southern California, ending at the Salton Sea near the Mexican border.

Winchester, who trained in geology at Oxford, gives the reader a short course in geological theory, detailing the history of geological ideas. He shows why the 1906 earthquake occurred and why such a catastrophe will almost certainly recur near the same place.

The San Francisco earthquake changed the life of the city. More than 28,000 buildings were laid waste. Estimates of the dead range from about 600 to about 3,000. More than half of the city's population of 400,000 were left homeless.

Before the quake, moreover, San Francisco was the preeminent city of the American West. After the quake, slowly but inexorably, that title passed to Los Angeles, 400 miles to the south. Various things wrought the change, but among them was this: The San Andreas Fault in Southern California has never been as destructive as in the north. Los Angeles has had its quakes, but so far none has come close to devastating the city.

Winchester points out that tectonic plate activity is a source of earthquake activity as much as magma movements are and current research verifies this.

Tremors deep inside the Earth are usually produced by magma flowing beneath volcanoes, but a new study suggests they can also be produced by the shifting and sliding of tectonic plates. "Unlike the sharp jolt of an earthquake, tremors within Earth's crust emerge slowly, rumbling for longer periods of time," explained Kaye Shedlock, the program director for Earthscope at the National Science Foundation.

These are the first recordings of non-volcanic tremors deep inside the Earth. They were recorded in deep boreholes that were drilled down to a depth of about 2 miles.

Instead of volcanoes, the scientists think the subterranean rumblings might be caused by processes similar to those that produce tremors near the Cascadia Subduction Zone, an active fault that runs from mid-Vancouver Island to northern California.

Add to that the fact that some scientists believe the Earth is about to reverse polarity, and well as they say; 'all Hell will break loose'.


So lets go back to the beginning of this post which I began last Monday five days after the initial shocks as a result of our living earths tectonic plate movements, which are slow as molasses in January as my mother would say, resulted in a series of earthquakes and other seismic activities.

Tanzania's 'Mountain of God' erupts

Kenyan panic after more tremors

US geologists say recent earth tremors were due to a seismological process known as seismc swarm

Research on earth tremors necessary, say local geologists

The Japanese earthquake ,Southwestern Japan proving temblor hotspot, resulted in exposing the poor safety and maintenance record of their privatized nuclear industry. Tremors spotlight nuclear plants

But there is always a silver lining.

Many earthquakes in the deep ocean are much smaller in magnitude than expected. Geophysicists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have found new evidence that the fragmented structure of seafloor faults, along with previously unrecognized volcanic activity, may be dampening the effects of these quakes.

Examining data from 19 locations in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, researchers led by graduate student Patricia Gregg have found that "transform" faults are not developing or behaving as plate tectonic theory says they should. Rather than stretching as long, continuous fault lines across the seafloor, the faults are often segmented and show signs of recent or ongoing volcanism. Both phenomena appear to prevent earthquakes from spreading across the seafloor, thus reducing their magnitude and impact.

Until you get the big picture. Which is that it is not magma alone that is responsible for earthquakes and volcanic activity, some of it is human, (oil and gas drilling, nuclear blasts), and much of it is now being attributed to tectonic plate activity as well. Because a week later, early this morning another quake hit India.

Moderate quake in India, mild tremors in Delhi

Along with the threat of global warming and asteroids now we have to consider Gaia evolving herself, and we are just along for the ride.


See:

Boreno is Burning

Did Nuke Cause Earth Quake

Our Living Earth

Dialectics of Extinction

(r)Evolutionary Theory

Earth in Upheaval-Updated

1666 The Creation Of The World

Man Made Volcano

Lost Tsunami Lost Atlantis

New Island

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