Mar 20

Structural engineer and earthquake specialist Kit Miyamoto, who has provided valuable forensic information from nearly every major earthquake site around the world in recent years, is now in Sendai, Japan. He reports:

Sendai, Japan (March 19, 2011)

Mar 14

I spent much of the day researching and talking to experts and trying to make sense of how a critical facility with four nuclear reactors can be built to withstand massive earthquakes and tsunami and God knows what else, and still leave its mission-critical backup generators exposed to flooding. 

There is something fatally wrong here, and I do not know why I should think it is any different in the U.S than it is in Japan. I am also deeply troubled by the fact that most of us have already mentally isolated our exposure to this menace to the Pacific Northwest, where the geology has similarities to northeastern Japan, and thus is the only area at similar risk.

 I am not convinced. 

Protecting backup generation capacity should be at least as high a priority, if not even higher, than protecting primary feeds. You will not need backup unless you are absolutely desperate to have it. Case in point: Japan. What could be more important?

More on this tomorrow. 

But this report comes to us from Kit Miyamoto, a San Francicso-based earthquake engineer who happened to be in Tokyo when things started coming apart last Friday, and who now is heading toward the northeast coast to make assessments for clients, after sending his family safely home:

“My super packed train has stopped again. I am in the middle of Tokyo heading to Shibuya to catch a van to the North. The threat of a power outage has changed the train schedule.  People are getting sick in the trains, since so many people are packed in tightly together and the train frequently stops due to sudden schedule changes. 
 
“I sense a dark cloud of stress hovering over this well organized, advanced society. This earthquake disaster is evolving into something much more than anyone expected on Friday. We are expecting over 10,000 deaths now. Beyond damaged nuclear plants, many fossil fuel burning power plants are also damaged along the eastern coastline.  Because of this, we are experiencing 4-hour rolling power blackouts in the cities to save energy, forcing many large stores and businesses to close. 
 
“And the aftershocks continue.  This constant rolling motion makes me dizzy. There is a 70% probability of a Magnitude 7 or larger aftershock in the next five days, which will cause more damage and potentially another tsunami. Many businesses and plants across the country, including Toyota, are closed because of damage to key suppliers. The total economic impact to society is still unknown, but it will be huge. The economic impact of this earthquake will be felt worldwide.

“Why did the sea walls and power plants fail? Aren't they engineered by advanced Japanese earthquake engineering technology? The answer is simple. Following a standard building code is not good enough to provide sustainability for a building or for a city. Many buildings in Japan are designed to withstand a Magnitude 7, or what engineers call a 500-year earthquake event. This has pretty much been the standard worldwide. But often these forces are exceeded in earthquakes. If we engineered these sea walls for 10 meter tsunamis, if the cooling system of the nuclear plant didn't fail because the tsunami went over the sea walls, then the impact of this earthquake would be much less. Is it too expensive to do that? That question should be asked of the people in the cities that were swallowed by the Tsunami or the people in buildings that collapsed and can no longer be occupied. There are often cost effective, innovative ways to control the effect of disaster.

“It is getting dark. I am climbing up on the van heading toward Sendai. This will be a long ride.” 

See his reports at  www.miyamotointernational.c

here is another essentially raw feed from Dennis Normile, a long-time correspondent for ENR, from Tokyo:

    The magnitude 8.9 earthquake that struck northeastern Japan on March 11 seems set to reinforce a lesson from previous large off-shore temblors: Coastal dwellers and their buildings and lifelines are far

more vulnerable to ensuing tsunami than from the shaking itself.

     This may be especially true for Japan, where a stringent building code has apparently kept structural damage from shaking to moderate levels, even though the earthquake that struck 231 miles northeast of Tokyo and 80 miles east of Sendai, a city of one million, is the fifth largest ever recorded by modern seismic instruments. But structures that apparently withstood the shaking were no match for a series of waves up to 30 feet high that topped coastal storm surge berms and even washed over 3-story buildings. In dramatic live coverage from helicopters, NKH, the national broadcaster, captured scenes of intact buildings simply washed off their foundations by the relentless surge of water.

      At press time, the confirmed death toll was approaching 2,000; but at least 15,000 were missing. Large swaths of Iwate, Miyagi and  Fukushima prefectures remained without electricity, phone and water service. Hundreds of thousands remained in shelters while Japanese TV news reported that gasoline shortages were hampering the delivery of food and supplies to stores.

   Entire communities along the coast were virtually washed away or reduced to massive piles of ruble. Rescue efforts have been hampered by debris blocking bridges, roads and train lines. Emergency shelters ar facing shortages of food and water with phone lines and even mobile phone connections cut, communication has been difficult. Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, declared it the nation's  "worst crisis since the war."

     But all eyes have been on two crippled nuclear power plants located in Fukushima Prefecture 170 miles north of Tokyo where partial meltdowns were feared at 2 reactors. The earthquake knocked out power to the primary cooling systems and the tsunami took out backup pumps. Operators had taken what one expert described as a "desperation measure" b pumping seawater into the reactor to cool the core. Meanwhile, gas that built up outside the containment vessel blew the walls off of the reactor building. Officials from the government and Tokyo Electric Power, the plant operator, assured the public the reactor containment vessel was intact. Naoto Sekimura, a systems engineer at University of Tokyo, appearing on NHK insisted there was little chance of a Chernobyl-like meltdown and that radiation leakage would be minimal.

    But 11 nuclear reactors at different plants were shut down for inspection. With its generating capacity crippled, Tokyo Electric had to resort to a scheme of rolling daily blackouts across its service area cutting power to targeted regions for 3 hours 40 minutes at a time. Central Tokyo, the nerve center of the response effort, was exempted. The blackout announcement caused a run on flashlights, batteries and candles.

 At press time it was not clear how long the blackouts would continue. Meanwhile, a panel of experts appearing on TV discussed the challenge of protecting against tsunami. Building walls tall and strong enough to resist such waves would be horrendously expensive, as would schemes to raise buildings off the ground on columns to allow water to flow underneath. Stands of trees and vegetation to absorb the brunt of the impact would require moving structures far from the coast. Stout concrete buildings can act as vertical refuges, but providing enough of them to serve an entire community would also be a formidable challenge. The tsunami problem is likely to occupy the minds of engineers and planners for some time.

Mar 13

How to Help NYT

A 20-km exclusion zone is in place as the authorities pump in sea water in a bid to cool down the nuclear reactor. UK Channel 4

Japanese Man Rescued 10 Miles Offshore After Being Swept Away Time

NYT Blog roll: Latest updates

Mar. 12

Report on infrastructure damage are starting to come in. From the Los Angeles Times: Japanese officials have determined that more than 1,231 buildings have been destroyed and another 4,000 damaged by the incident, according to the report, and about 1,450 roads, eight railways and 22 bridges have been damaged or washed away. An irrigation dam has reportedly burst, sweeping away houses in Fukushima.

The Mainichi Daily News reports: Japanese authorities have confirmed there was an explosion at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant Saturday afternoon but it did not occur at its troubled No. 1 reactor, top government spokesman Yukio Edano said.