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8.9 magnitude earthquake hits the coast of Japan, causing 10-meter tsunami waves

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Jimor:
My brother lives in Tokyo and he was at work when it hit. He's fine other than the 2-hour walk home because of the transit system shutdown. The videos from the tsunami devastation are horrific.

The Seldom Killer:
Looking like a nuclear power station is in significant difficulty. Not melting down at the moment but evacuation at 10km and exclusion at 60km. A non nuclear explosion has occured and they've had to vent radioactive gasses into the environment.

KvP:
A containment wall to the reactor has been compromised, according to Reuters.


--- Quote ---NHK television and Jiji said the outer structure of the building that houses the reactor appeared to have blown off, which could suggest the containment building had already been breached.
--- End quote ---

Italian geologists reporting that the earth's axis tipped by 25 cm due to the quake, and the island of Japan as a whole shited 2.4 meters. Insane shit.

The Seldom Killer:
The main reactor is housed below ground level. The structure that has blown up is the maintenance and engineering section. That it has blown up doesn't really suggest a breach and looking at the scale and pattern of the explosion it looks likely that this is ignition of a build up of hydrogen gas from an overloaded cooling process that has lost it's venting management. I reckon NHK and Jiji are being speculative. But then I watched the news sat next to an engineer with a rudimentary understanding of nuclear reactors.

The risk of meltdown is certainly high, but a containment breach is by no means definite.

Barmymoo:
Wow. I imagine that kind of shift is going to affect the weather, right? As in, globally? That is one hell of a shift. Maps will have to be redrawn. Is this common? I know less than nothing about topography and geology and similar geographical fields.

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