Some updates from Japan

• The Japanese government has declared an emergency and begun to evacuate people who live within 3 km of a nuclear power plant in Fukushima prefecture. There are six reactors at the plant, three of which were operational at the time of the earthquake (the rest had been shut down for scheduled maintenance). One of the three operating reactors seems to have been damaged, along with its diesel-powered backup cooling system. Right now, there is no radiation leak and a full-scale core meltdown is not imminent—just a worst-case scenario. Work is in motion to get the cooling system back online, and protect the reactor's nuclear fuel rods in the meantime.

• Police have found several hundred bodies in the coastal Japanese city of Sendai. Al Jazeera has news and some video.

• Tsunami waves could be up to 6 feet in California. Judging from those predictions, and from what I'm hearing from friends in Hawaii, this is a "get away from the beach" situation, but probably not an "everybody flee to the hills" situation". La Jolla has a surf cam, if you're interested. Although, from the couple of minutes I've spent with it, it seems difficult to see much of anything. (Thanks MrGunn!)

• There's a series of devastating tsunami photos that you may or may not want to look at. (Via Jamie Vernon)

More to come ...

• [dfletcher]

  “difficult to see much of anything”

  Understatement of the year there, that site is terrible. I kept getting a bunch of commercials and zero actual video.

  Well, at least now I know that http://www.surfline.com is most certainly NOT the place to go for emergency information ;-)

• [holtt]

  FYI, the tsunami isn’t forecast to arrive in La Jolla until 8:48 AM, so you’ve got an hour until anything could be seen.

  Here is a NOAA report showing estimated arrival times from the earthquake…

  http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/2011/03/11/lhvpd9/06/webetalhvpd9-06.txt

• [Guysmiley]

  Worst case scenario with a Western style reactor is still a melted core sequestered in its massive containment vessel. These aren’t Russian style “reactor in a tin shed” plants.

  • [Dr. Pasolini]

    Call me an anti-scientific Luddite if you wish, but if there was a nuclear reactor near me with a failed cooling system, plus who knows what other damage due to a mega-quake, I think I would want to be more than 9,000 feet away from it, at least initially.

• [Anonymous]

  Horrific. I hope they are getting the help they need.

  What cause the fires at edge of the tsunami? Gas cooking systems ripping loose?

• [MooseDesign]

  I really fear for some of the cars and people seen fleeing the tsunami in some of the video footage from the Sendai area. It just utterly overwhelms trucks and cars that are turning onto fields and trying to get out of the path of the wave. Just totally terrifying…

• [ondre]

  Earthcam.com has a link to cams in affected areas.

• [bjacques]

  Two out five commenters looked in on La Jolla. No wonder its webcam is bOINGEDbOINGED.

  Baby don’t you go, don’t you go to La Jolla…

• [Anonymous]

  fortunately, the japanese do build nice robust nuclear facilities, unlike certain soviet facilities. It sounds like reactor #1 at fukushima I is the one without cooling. that particular reactor is the oldest on the site and also the smallest. It’s a boiling water-cooled reactor, which likely has dozens of secondary or tertiary safety features if they can’t get the coolant pumps running.

• [MooseDesign]

  CNN is reporting a burst dam in Fukushima…

• [Tavie]

  FYI all – there are a lot of donation links to Red Cross being posted/tweeted/retweeted around. They’re accepting donations by credit card or by texting REDCROSS to 90999 to give $10.

  If, like me, you don’t pay your own cell phone bill and don’t use your credit card, you can also donate via Paypal through another organization, Global Giving: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/japan-earthquake-tsunami-relief/

  Just an alternative payment method for people looking to help.

• [studio2f]

  Reuter’s is now saying that pressure is building inside the reactor with risk of radiation leak:

  http://www.breakingnews.com/seed/ahBicmVha2luZ25ld3Mtd3d3cg0LEgRTZWVkGLSg5wIM/2011/03/11/tokyo-electric-power-co-pressure-inside-no1-reactor-at-fukushima-daiichi-nuke-plant-is-rising-with-risk-of-radiation-leak-reuters