Quake/Tsunami

[Lamplighter]

The Guardian
Dec 7, 2011

Tsunami that struck Japan in March resulted from merging waves

(CNN) -- The devastating wall of water that struck Japan in March was the result
of at least two waves that combined to create a more powerful tsunami, U.S. scientists said Monday.

Ocean ridges and mountain ranges below the surface of the water channeled
the waves created by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan,
bringing them together far out at sea to form a "merging tsunami,"
according to researchers from NASA and Ohio State University.

The above link has a video, but the animation was running
too quickly to appreciate what was happening.
It's hard to see the merging waves on the east side of the epicenter (blue area).

I stepped through and at 17 sec finally got the image below.
This shows two waves (red) with a sliver of yellow in between, just to the left of the blue area.
In the next images, those two red areas merge into a single red band moving towards shore.

[Lamplighter]

NY Times
MARTIN FACKLER
12/14/11

Japan May Declare Control of Reactors, Over Serious Doubts

On Friday, a disaster-response task force headed by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda
will vote on whether to announce that the plant’s three damaged reactors
have been put into the equivalent of a “cold shutdown,” a technical term normally used
to describe intact reactors with fuel cores that are in a safe and stable condition.

Experts say that if it does announce a shutdown, as many expect,
it will simply reflect the government’s effort to fulfill a pledge
to restore the plant’s cooling system by year’s end and,
according to some experts, not the true situation.<snip>

And indeed, experts credit the operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco,
with making progress in regaining control of the damaged reactors.
They say the plant’s makeshift new cooling system, built with the
help of American, French and Japanese companies, has managed to cool the reactors’ cores,
including the molten fuel attached to the outer containment vessels.<snip>

“Claiming a cold shutdown does not have much meaning for damaged reactors
like those at Fukushima Daiichi,” said Noboru Nakao, a nuclear engineering consultant
at International Access Corporation.<snip>

“At this point, I would be more worried about the contamination
than what’s happening inside the reactors,” said Murray E. Jennex,
an expert on nuclear containment at San Diego State University<snip>

“All it would take is one more earthquake or tsunami to
set Fukushima Daiichi back to square one,” Mr. Kudo said.
“Can we really call this precarious situation a cold shutdown?”

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