beth_leonard

Here's a link Jon sent me about Japan's geography which may be useful. i.e. Don't call up the mayor of Chicago and say, "YIKES!!! Are you OK!?!!! I heard you have a BIG HURRICANE to deal with over there!!!"

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/03/13/some-perspective-on-the-japan-earthquake/

And here's another blog I've found has some fascinating explanations for what's going on at the various reactors. In short, as of 2pm Pacific on March 15th, most of the reactors have gone all the way cool, and one is still having issues.

When the quake hit, the control rods which usually control the nuclear reaction to produce more or less power were instantly inserted, taking the plant down from producing 100% power to 7% power right away. That remaining 7% generation power still needs to be cooled and slowly bled away over the course of several days. In some of the plants, the cooling systems were knocked out by the Tsunami, and the backup batteries ran out of power, and and and, you can read the post for details, but it looks like things will be brought under control they just haven't been yet. Some material was released into the environment, but nothing people who don't work at the plant need to worry about.

If you want to know all the details, start here and click forwards: http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/. I find it all fascinating.

The other part I liked is that in the article from Jon, the guy made a comment about the worst thing to happen will be that someone gets a cleanup bill with lots of zeros. It turns out that these plants were scheduled to be decommissioned in a few years anyway, so while yes, there will be lots of zeros involved, less than there could have been.

The missing train and missing people and general rebuilding are still a far greater worry than the power plant.
--Beth

Take the "Did you feel it?" questionier from the earthquake site here: http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/ca/STORE/X40204628/ciim_display.html So far I'm the first responder from my zip code. Wee!


We put our family earthquake plan into action. That is, stay put and Mommy or Daddy will come get Peter when the shaking stops. Luckily this wasn't too hard because we were all in the same room and the baby appears to have slept through it. After it was over I called my brother (our out of town contact) because we were in the middle of the bedtime routine and didn't want to go net surfing right then to find out where it was centered or how bad it really was. (I remember the first time I knew Loma Prieta was really bad was when we turned on the radio to get some information about it and instead of KGO we got empty silence with an occasional pinging sound.)

Peter seemd to enjoy the phone call so we called the Grandparents Leonard and let him surf the net and see the earthquake map. He wanted to know where earthquakes live, who their Mommies are, and other pertinant information to a two-year old. It makes you realize just how little they know about the world. We'd discussed our earthquake plan with him before, but this is the first time he's ever felt one.

I have purchased earthquake straps/hooks for all our heavy furniture. I have even installed... about a tenth of them. Sigh. Better get going on that project.

We decided not to buy earthquake insurance because it costs $5000/year and has a $60,000 deductable (i.e. if the chimny collapses with no other damage, we still don't hit the deductable) Our reasoning was that if we spent $5000/year on home improvements, that would have a better payoff than the insurance.

Of course, we haven't actually spent $5000 on earthquake proofing improvements. I belive we're bolted to the foundation, and we've installed a good roof that's supposed to help with rigidity or so the salesman told us, but we haven't done much beyond that.

--Beth