Live updates: Nuclear emergency declared in earthquake-struck Japan

A MAJOR 8.9-magnitude earthquake has struck Japan. Latest updates will be posted by news.com.au below as they come to hand.

I may have given up for now trying to make sense of this until we get more information. There is so MUCH conflicting news about who, what, when, where and even why that I’m sitting back.

I’ve read no fewer than 7 pieces in the last few hours- all have differing data, assumptions and conclusions.

The last I heard on FOX was 140,000 are being evacuated from the area.

Some interesting speculation here too- beginning at 1:45 AM today.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/03/12/report-meltdown-at-japan-reactor-may-be-underway/

Every credible accident scenario analyzed indicates that the release is always almost fully contained. To get early fatalities you need acute exposures in the range of 450-600 rem whole-body (that is without medical intervention), which is the LD50/60 for human beings. There is a vanishingly small probability of a credible accident scenario resulting in the kind of release that would produce exposures like this in the general population. I've been doing these studies for a long time, and get the same results using PRA (probabilistic risk assessment) techniques as well as the older fault-tree analysis method.

The Fukushima accident is ranked as an INES Level 4 event. That means an accident with local consequences. Those are likely to be evacuation within a certain radius (which they are doing anyway because of the tsunami threat), decontamination and cleanup of the site and damaged building, and ongoing recovery work. That is probably going to be the extent of it when it is all added up.

There are reports that the Fukushima 3 unit is having trouble with its residual heat removal system. But these units have been shutdown for several days now, so they must be approaching a cold shutdown condition. It is now a matter of keeping the vessel filled to a level to keep the core covered.

Well it sounds like they're coming closer to verifiable safety, but I'm not convinced they're there yet.

Then there's the problem of nuclear waste which traditionally has been a nightmare - whether put in the desert or the ocean, there's some point where it begins to leak and contaminate.

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