Breaking News From The ABC

New tsunami alert for Japan, explosion at reactor site

A three-metre tsunami has reportedly been spotted by a helicopter off the Pacific coast of north-eastern Japan, local media is reporting.

A five-metre change in sea level has been reported off the coast and the tsunami is expected to hit land within minutes.

Residents have been told to evacuate to higher ground.

At the same time, there are reports of sounds of a fresh explosion and smoke billowing from one of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plants.

The second reactor may have had a hydrogen explosion, like the first. They don’t seem to be able to cool the reactor, even with the sea water.

Update: The BBC confirms it was reactor 3 which was viewed as the second problem reactor at the complex, and the probable cause was hydrogen build up.

The tsunami is probably the result of an aftershock.

Update: If you look at the listing of the individual events on the USGS map for the last week, you will see over 400 ‘quakes. This cycle started with a 7.2 on 2011/03/09 at 02:45:20 UTC and ends with a 5.1 on 2011/03/14 at 01:57:54. There are more than 30 ‘quakes in the 6.0 to 6.9 range, and a 7.1 on 2011/03/11 at 06:25:50, 40 minutes after the 8.9. While the trend has been to less powerful shocks, looking at the list you can see occurrences of multiple 6+ shocks hitting in quick succession at random intervals.

One of the things that has always bothered me personally about earthquakes is that it is the one of the few threats that you cannot hide from. In almost every other case, you can “crawl into a cave”, but you don’t want to do that in an earthquake.