Plans Afoot To Build New Seawall At Fukushima Complex - But Only Rated For 8.0 Quake/Tsunami

:wtf:

The operator of Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant will build a wall to defend it against future tsunamis, reports said Monday, as public confidence slipped in the government's handling of the disaster. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) also plans to triple from about 1,000 to 3,000 the number of staff nuclear workers and subcontractors handling the crisis to reduce each individual's radiation exposure.

Emergency crew have been battling for eight weeks to stabilise the six-reactor plant which was damaged by the March 11 quake and tsunami, and which has since been hit by explosions, leaking radiation. Confidence has slipped among voters in the handling of the wider disaster by the centre-left government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan, according to a nationwide telephone poll by the mass-circulation Asahi Shimbun daily. The survey showed 55 percent of respondents expressed reservations about how the government was dealing with the crisis, while 27 percent were hopeful about the efforts, according to the poll of more than 3,000 people on April 23-24.

In order to guard the plant against future quakes and tsunamis, TEPCO plans to build a wall about two metres (six feet) high and 500 metres long, made of rocks contained by wire mesh, said reports citing TEPCO officials.

The wall would be built at a height of about 10 metres above sea level and be designed to resist a wave generated by an 8-magnitude quake -- smaller than the monster wave triggered by the 9-magnitude quake in March.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Japan_plans_new_tsunami_wall_at_nuclear_plant_999.html

too late? I have read and heard so much about what is happening in Japan and do not know what to believe. I wonder why at this point anyone is still alive. I feel certain a lot of people have left Japan for safer countries. Is the entire country doomed?

There may be far-reaching health consequences, but no, as things stand, the entire country is not doomed.

Assuming nothing goes dramatically wrong from this point (and it still could since the plants are obviously more prone to additional problems today than the day before the quake... but thousands of times).

We'll be debating 20 years from now what percentage of additional cancers/deaths in Japan can be associated with Fukushima. I don't know whether the number will be 500 or 1,000 or 20,000 - but there will certainly be more cancers. An expected increase in thyroid cancer can easily be blaimed on the reactors, but hardly anyone dies from that in a case like this. Maybe leukemia will be better correlated than anything else... but it'll be hard to tell whether any given person is sick because of the radiation from these reactors, and it's awfully difficult to control for other causes.

On edit - And, of course, we can safely predict that despite what any credible organization has to say, the 2030 verstion of LRCC will claim it's in the millions.

As for the seawall. It may not be feasible to build one strong enough to withstand what they just went through. But it isn't unreasonable to target an 8.0. This isn't just "lighting striking twice" - it's "worst in our history happening in the same place twice in the space of a few years". Might as well build a meteor shield over the top of it for all the chance it'll repeat at that strength.

About what you said:

1.) It's fair to say that a substantial portion of people living in Japan do not know what to believe, as TEPCO and the government essentially destroyed any credibility they had or trust in their ability to effectively deal with Fukushima.

2.) People are alive because Japan is not the size of Singapore.

3.) If you are talking about the expatriate community, I'd say far more of them have left Japan than the Japanese themselves. There's a real siege mentality that has developed over here; you see public service advertisements popping up now exhorting the Japanese to rebuild, there has been a massive ad-hoc relief effort on part of the Japanese public to try and assist the tsunami-stricken areas, and many Japanese have forgone traditional or typical types of behavior which they deem inappropriate given the circumstances (the subdued nature of hanami this year is a prime example). The Japanese aren't going anywhere. Not that they would want to, anyway.

4.) Depends on how you define "doomed". If you are talking doomed as a direct result of 4 nuclear reactors melting down and the inherent health risks that lie within, no. Nagasaki and Hiroshima are, after all, thriving cities so it's not like there aren't precedents to this sort of thing over here. And before people jump in arguing about comparative levels of radiation release and the types of radiation being released between Fukushima, Hiroshima and Nagasaki that is not the point I am making. However, if you are talking economic, infrastructural or societal doom, then there is a very realistic possibility that a number of things could happen. I posted this earlier on another thread, but the potential ramifications of Fukushima are;

a.) Sending an already chronically frail Japanese economy into a permanent tailspin, through lost production and reconstruction costs.
b.) Japanese food production permanently impaired, and for the export market permanently destroyed.
c.) Mass exodus of foreign-staffed foreign multinationals.
d.) Permanent elevation in unemployment.
e.) Economic meltdown as a result of the twin burdens of the highest debt-load of developed nations coupled with a $300 billion plus reconstruction bill that they can't afford.
f.) Wholesale violations of labor laws as companies struggle to stay afloat.
g.) A drastic spike in the already overheated suicide rate.
h.) Geopolitical marginalization on the world stage.