The trend for earthquakes 7.0+ in the post-war is definitely up

 

Earthquake in Myanmar, aka Burma, kills over 1,000

Myanmar’s earthquake death toll jumps to more than 1,000 as more bodies recovered from the rubble

 

The death toll from a powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar jumped to more than 1,000 on Saturday as more bodies were pulled from the rubble of the scores of buildings that collapsed when it struck near the country’s second-largest city. ...

In neighboring Thailand, the quake rocked the greater Bangkok area, home to some 17 million people, and other parts of the country.

Bangkok city authorities said so far six people have been found dead, 26 injured and 47 are still missing, most from a construction site near the capital’s popular Chatuchak market. ...

Earthquakes are rare in Bangkok, but relatively common in Myanmar. The country sits on the Sagaing Fault, a major north-south fault that separates the India plate and the Sunda plate. ...

 

 

ICYMI the Green Party candidate for US Senate from New Jersey blamed the earthquake on the climate crisis lol

 Now her account is protected so you can't see her tweets lol.

I should hope so.

 

 

Japan starts 2024 with a bang with a 7.5 mag quake

 From the USGS here:

The January 1, 2024, M7.5 earthquake on the west coast of Japan, on the island of Honshu, occurred as a result of shallow reverse faulting in the Earth’s crust. Focal mechanism solutions for the earthquake indicate faulting occurred on a moderately dipping reverse fault striking to the southwest or northeast. Japan is a seismically active region, with most earthquakes occurring off the east coast, where the Pacific plate subducts beneath Japan. This earthquake occurred on the west coast of Japan where crustal deformation created by the broader plate motions is accommodated in shallow faults. Shallow earthquakes cause more damage than intermediate- and deep-focus ones since the energy generated by the shallow events is released closer to the surface and therefore produces stronger shaking relative to earthquakes located deeper within the Earth. This coastal earthquake produced both strong shaking on land and generated a tsunami.

While earthquakes are common in Japan, the region surrounding the January 1, 2024, earthquake sees lower rates of seismicity as compared to the major subduction zone along its east coast. Still, since 1900, 30 other M6 and larger earthquakes have occurred within 250 km of the January 1 event. Three of these occurred on or near the Noto Peninsula, where the January 1 event is located. On May 5, 2023, a M6.2 earthquake on the Noto Peninsula killed one person and damaged hundreds of buildings. On April 16, 1964, a M7.6 occurred 205 km east-northeast of the January 1 event, resulting in 36 fatalities and roughly 3,500 destroyed homes. 

 

Killer earthquakes in Turkey make five 7.0+ so far in 2023, but frequency was actually down in 2022 to 11 from 19 in 2021

 

2021 saw a return of large earthquakes across the world

 

We've added six earthquakes to this chart since the end of July

 

8.2 magnitude earthquake in Alaska brings 2021 total 7.0 and above globally to nine

 

Meanwhile in Apocalypse Watch, strong earthquake activity was muted in 2019-2020, but the first four months of 2021 have been busy

 

Edward Snowden documents help The Intercept identify eight AT&T buildings central to NSA spying on global internet, phone, email, chat

From the story here:

THE EIGHT LOCATIONS are featured on a top-secret NSA map, which depicts U.S. facilities that the agency relies upon for one of its largest surveillance programs, code-named FAIRVIEW. AT&T is the only company involved in FAIRVIEW, which was first established in 1985, according to NSA documents, and involves tapping into international telecommunications cables, routers, and switches.

In 2003, the NSA launched new internet mass surveillance methods, which were pioneered under the FAIRVIEW program. The methods were used by the agency to collect – within a few months – some 400 billion records about people’s internet communications and activity, the New York Times previously reported. FAIRVIEW was also forwarding more than 1 million emails every day to a “keyword selection system” at the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters.

Central to the internet spying are eight “peering link router complex” sites, which are pinpointed on the top-secret NSA map. The locations of the sites mirror maps of AT&T’s networks, obtained by The Intercept from public records, which show “backbone node with peering” facilities in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

One of the AT&T maps contains unique codes individually identifying the addresses of the facilities in each of the cities.

Among the pinpointed buildings, there is a nuclear blast-resistant, windowless facility in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood; in Washington, D.C., a fortress-like, concrete structure less than half a mile south of the U.S. Capitol; in Chicago, an earthquake-resistant skyscraper in the West Loop Gate area; in Atlanta, a 429-foot art deco structure in the heart of the city’s downtown district; and in Dallas, a cube-like building with narrow windows and large vents on its exterior, located in the Old East district.

Elsewhere, on the west coast of the U.S., there are three more facilities: in downtown Los Angeles, a striking concrete tower near the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Staples Center, two blocks from the most important internet exchange in the region; in Seattle, a 15-story building with blacked-out windows and reinforced concrete foundations, near the city’s waterfront; and in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, a building where it was previously claimed that the NSA was monitoring internet traffic from a secure room on the sixth floor.

The peering sites – otherwise known in AT&T parlance as “Service Node Routing Complexes,” or SNRCs – were developed following the internet boom in the mid- to late 1990s. By March 2009, the NSA’s documents say it was tapping into “peering circuits at the eight SNRCs.”

And the right is paranoid, too, this week: Michigan's Steve Gruber repeats hysterical Yellowstone supervolcano story

Yesterday on his show Michigan's Steve Gruber uncritically read from this dark story, which has several iterations on the internet featuring a lurid "sea of red" map of earthquakes in Yellowstone, from which this claim:

So why are the public seismographs from the US Geological Survey (USGS) OFFLINE (to the public) today?  No one is providing any answers.

Even more peculiar, the privately-funded seismographs from the University of Utah . . . are also OFFLINE (to the public) right now.  No one is providing any explanation for this either.

The USGS page here showing earthquakes as recent as yesterday in Yellowstone features this box, with dead links to the University of Utah Seismograph Stations page here:

So what's up with that?

Well, just click "home" and the University of Utah Seismograph Stations page tells you:

UUSS has launched a redesigned website! Please visit us at http://www.seis.utah.edu  (http://quake.utah.edu ) to check out the new features.

Obviously, the government page at USGS hasn't been updated yet. Government moves slowly, and often incompetently. No news there.

Also at the Univ. of Utah home page you'll see this map of reality:

Not this scary beast, which appears to be an historical map of all events over a long period of time:

Paranoia will destroy ya.

Radiation From Fukushima Accident Revised Up In New Report

CNN.com reports here:

Japan's largest utility said Thursday that more radiation than previously thought was released into the atmosphere in March 2011, in the days after the nuclear disaster that followed an earthquake and tsunami. TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) estimates about 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials were released between March 12 and March 31, according to Japan's Kyodo news agency. ... In one town in the Fukushima area, the estimated thyroid doses to infants are within a dose band of 100 to 200 millisieverts (mSv), the preliminary report said. This level of radiation exposure could be associated with an increased likelihood of developing cancer. However, in the rest of Japan, the estimated thyroid doses are within a dose band of 1 to 10 mSv, the report said. Outside the country, the estimated thyroid doses are less than 0.01 mSv, and are usually far below this very low level, it said.

PBS.org had a fuller report here, comparing the accident's severity to Chernobyl and assessing the health consequences of the radiation releases:

Tokyo Electric, the plant’s operator, said on Thursday that reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant released approximately 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances into the air in the immediate aftermath of the March 2011 accident. By comparison, approximately 5.2 million terabecquerels of total radiation were emitted in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. ... In terms of the accident’s health implications, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that the amount of radiation released fell below cancer-causing levels in nearly all of Japan. Outside of “no-go zones” in Fukushima prefecture, residents were exposed to radiation levels between 1 millisievert and 10 millisieverts, the W.H.O. said. The annual average amount of exposure from naturally occurring background radiation is 2.4 mSv globally, according to the report ... . Cumulative exposure to 100 mSv is generally thought to raise a person’s risk of cancer death by 0.5 percent.

Reuters.com reports here that Namie and Iitate were the two towns hardest hit:

In a preliminary report, independent experts said that people in two locations in Fukushima prefecture may have received a radiation dose of 10-50 millisieverts (mSv) in the year after the accident at the power station operated by TEPCO. ... The areas estimated to have received the highest doses of radiation were Namie town in Futaba county and Iitate village in Soma county, northwest of the stricken plant, the report said. Infants in Namie were thought to have received thyroid radiation doses of 100-200 mSv, it added. The thyroid is the most exposed organ as radioactive iodine concentrates there and children are deemed especially vulnerable.

Follow the labels at the end of this post for this blog's reporting on the accident from the beginning.

Radioactivity 150 Miles From Vermont's Troubled, Aging Yankee Nuclear Plant Blamed on Atmospheric Testing in 1940s and 1950s, and on Chernobyl

Strontium-90 has been found in bass far from Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, according to this story:

Now, new tests of bass caught 150 miles away in northwestern Vermont and outside the area affected by the plant's groundwater show similar levels of Strontium-90, said William Irwin, chief of the Vermont Health Department's radiological division.

The likely source, rather than Vermont Yankee, is residue from above-ground nuclear testing in the 1940s and 1950s and the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in the Soviet Union in 1986, he said.


This report puts it as follows:

Irwin said Lake Carmine, in Enosburg Falls, is about as far away from Yankee as you can get and still be in the Green Mountain State.

"The results are that cesium-137 and strontium-90 in Lake Carmi fish is in the same range as Connecticut River fish," said Irwin. "We take this as some evidence that all fish in Vermont are likely to have radioactive cesium and strontium at these levels and that, as we've hypothesized, it is from nuclear weapons fallout and the releases of Chernobyl. All of us are glad to have proof and not just conjecture."


The similar levels of radioactive contamination suggest that the reasons for shutting down an aging plant like Vermont's Yankee Nuclear are distinct in this case, not the least of which is that the design is identical to the Fukushima, Japan, nuclear power plants which melted down after the earthquakes and tsunami in March 2011.

The Incident at Fukushima Six Months Later

Bloomberg.com has a very affecting story about the aftermath of the earthquakes, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima.

A brief excerpt:

The area’s [Minami Soma's] biggest festival, Soma Noma Oi, a re-enactment of samurai battles, attracted 200,000 visitors last year. This year 37,000 came. Of the 300 horses typically used in the event, 100 were drowned in the tsunami and another 100 were evacuated due to radiation.

Read all of it here.

White House Response To The Virginia Earthquake

“(He) didn't feel the earthquake today.”

It's still all about you, isn't it? "What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see . . .." The good of one man only.

Story here.

Anonymous Eyewitness Fukushima Workers Allege Quake Caused Meltdowns, Not Tsunami

The Atlanticwire.com has the long story here, including testimony from three different workers:

 “I personally saw pipes that came apart and I assume that there were many more that had been broken throughout the plant. There’s no doubt that the earthquake did a lot of damage inside the plant. There were definitely leaking pipes, but we don’t know which pipes – that has to be investigated. I also saw that part of the wall of the turbine building for Unit 1 had come away. That crack might have affected the reactor.”

“If the walls are too rigid, they can crack under the slightest pressure from inside so they have to be breakable because if the pressure is kept inside and there is a buildup of pressure, it can damage the equipment inside the walls so it needs to be allowed to escape. It’s designed to give during a crisis, if not it could be worse – that might be shocking to others, but to us it’s common sense.” (first worker)

“It felt like the earthquake hit in two waves, the first impact was so intense you could see the building shaking, the pipes buckling, and within minutes, I saw pipes bursting. Some fell off the wall. Others snapped. I was pretty sure that some of the oxygen tanks stored on site had exploded but I didn’t see for myself. Someone yelled that we all needed to evacuate and I was good with that. But I was severely alarmed because as I was leaving I was told and I could see that several pipes had cracked open, including what I believe were cold water supply pipes. That would mean that coolant couldn’t get to the reactor core. If you can’t sufficiently get the coolant to the core, it melts down. You don’t have to have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out.”

“There were holes in them [the walls of Unit 1]. In the first few minutes, no one was thinking about a tsunami. We were thinking about survival.” (worker two)

“I was in a building nearby when the earthquake shook. After the second shockwave hit, I heard a loud explosion that was almost deafening. I looked out the window and I could see white smoke coming from reactor one. I thought to myself, ‘this is the end.’” (worker three)

Worker three, quoting a supervisor: “there’s been an explosion of some gas tanks in reactor one, probably the oxygen tanks. In addition to this there has been some structural damage, pipes have burst, meltdown is possible. Please take shelter immediately.”

It's a little odd that the story concludes with this statement:

[S]haking experienced at the plant during the quake was within it’s [sic] approved design specifications.

Three readings from TEPCO's own report of the seismic data, updated June 16, 2011, contradict this statement for Units 2, 3, and 5, and Unit 1 got very close to not just its E-W limit, but also its N-S, which would cohere with its geographic position at the plant, bearing the brunt of the forces from the north, and sharing in the record-setting forces from the east:

Workers fleeing west before the tsunami hit were reported here to have heard a radiation alarm sounding at a point 1.5 km distant from reactor Unit 1.

Robot at Fukushima Reactor 1 Finds Crevice in Floor, Steam and Highest Radiation Yet Measured in Air Pouring From It

NHK World has the story here:

The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says steam was observed coming out of the floor of the No.1 reactor building, and extremely high radiation was detected in the vicinity.

Tokyo Electric Power Company inspected the inside of the No.1 reactor building on Friday with a remote-controlled robot.

TEPCO said it found that steam was rising from a crevice in the floor, and that extremely high radiation of 3,000 to 4,000 millisieverts per hour was measured around the area. The radiation is believed to be the highest detected in the air at the plant.

That's an astounding number, also expressed as 3 to 4 sieverts per hour. See this series of charts to appreciate the significance of the level, which is deadly:

It seems pretty clear that the earthquake damaged the floor of the reactor building, causing the crevice. And it also seems pretty clear that the water which has had to be supplied continually to the core to cool it has been leaking out, along with melted fuel materials, from holes caused in the pressure vessel by the meltdown and out onto the floor and into the crevice. Or something close to that.

A monumental mess.

Concrete Pump with 58 Meter Boom Replenishes Water at Fukushima Unit 4 Pool

Presumably one like this:

Another news report here said a 70 meter version was being dispatched.

The Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 used fuel pool has needed nearly 1300 cubic meters of water over 13 days from April 13-25, according to this update. That number is consistent with, but about 200 cubic meters lower than, the predicted boil-off rate for the period in question:

Unit 4 pond contains a total 1331 used assemblies (783 plus full fuel load of 548), giving it a heat load of about 3 MW thermal, according to France's IRSN, which in that case could lead to 115 cubic metres of water boiling off per day, or about one tenth of its volume. ...

The pond at unit 4 is the main focus of concern now. It needs continual top-up with water, but at the same time there is concern about the structural strength of the building, which has been weakened either by the earthquake or the hydrogen explosion. Some 195 m3 was added to the pond on 13 April, about 20% of its capacity, and another 140 m3 on 15 and also on 17 April, by concrete pump. Another 100 m3 went in on 20 April, then 200 m3 on 22nd, 140 m3 on 23rd, 165 m3 on 24th and 210 m3 on 25th. Temperature has been up to 90°C and water level 5 metres down. It is not clear whether the main water loss is from leakage or boiling. However, Tepco reports that analysis of radionuclides in water from the used fuel pool of unit 4 suggests that some of the fuel assemblies there may have been damaged, but the majority are intact.

Radiation Monitoring Posts Inside the Fukushima Daiichi Complex Show Declines

Through 4/13, available at fleep.com/earthquake.

Fleep.com/earthquake Has The Most Comprehensive Fukushima Accident Radiation Data

Here is a sample, graphing the differences between the histories of the radiation levels measured at the two gates to the reactor facility, compared with the main building of the complex itself, from March 24th until April 1st:

Note that the radiation in the main building is still close to a full millisievert per hour (1000 microsieverts). You would absorb there in just 6 hours what the average American absorbs in a year.

Radiation in the most sensitive areas of the reactors themselves, and the turbine buildings, has been reported as high as 1000 millisieverts per hour, even now. Expressed in full sieverts, an hour of such exposure equals 1 sievert. 8 of those will kill you very quickly.

When it comes to radiation, distance away is your friend: first the main building, then the main gate, then anyplace else, even Iitate.