It was just ok. I hoped it would be more of an introduction to how a nuclear plant operates, what is the fuel, what elements does it decay to, how much would be on hand, how much energy is that, etc.. Instead it was just a little better than what I seen on the news. There were five experts there and one on the phone so each got just a few minutes to present something. They showed a few more images from Google Earth and a few more plant diagrams and a timeline of the events which it turns out was mostly from this wikipedia page, Timeline of the Fukushima nuclear accidents.
I didn't expect them to give us current status or to have any info more than I did. Though I didn't realize that some of the professors are (of course) leaders in their field and had worked on industry safety standards and practices. Still the best point raised was why wasn't this possibility foreseen in the design. A few questions asked things like there have been big quakes and tsunamis lately so this doesn't seem like a one in 10,000 year event (as is the design standard) and why was the plant at the coast instead of a little bit away in the mountains on higher ground. They basically couldn't say why on the location and repeated that this was an extremely powerful and unusual quake and tsunami. More on that below.
This talk was the first time I brought my iPad with me. In fact I had my moleskin notebook and used that to take handwritten notes (still the fastest). I had my iPhone and used that to take pictures of the slides (the best camera I had) and I used the iPad, connected to the public MIT wifi, to lookup things during the talk. So while one professor was showing PowerPoint slides on the timeline of events, I was brought up the page in wikipedia and had more up-to-date and better formatted info. I was at a talk early today and tried to use it to take notes but I wasn't good enough yet at typing on it (though i did get an audio recording of the talk). Still the iPad is great to lookup things during the talk. Rather than replace a student's notebook for me (so far) I think it easily replaces a text book.
So I looked up Historic tsunamis and convinced myself this wasn't a 1 in 10,000 year event by any stretch. When asked about other recent big tsunamis in Chili or Indonesia they said that wasn't Japan. But from the article, "Japan is the nation with the most recorded tsunamis in the world. The number of tsunamis in Japan totals 195 over a 1,313 year period (thru 1997), averaging one event every 6.73 years, the highest rate of occurrence in the world." They listed at least 20 huge ones in Japan since 684 including seven in the 20th century. They said the sea wall at the plant was 2 meters high but that sounds way too low. I would have asked a question about this but the line was already too long.
Anyway, it was still interesting. Here are some other web sites I've found helpful:
The IAEA maintains a page of just the facts and is updated regularly, IAEA Update on Japan Earthquake. World Nuclear News has another one, Battle to stabilise earthquake reactors.
This article is very good and includes some of the images shown in the presentation. Fukushima Nuclear Accident – a simple and accurate explanation
NASA's JPL reports that the Japan Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days, Moved Axis "But don't worry-you won't notice the difference." Universe Today reported on this story and added this great chart:
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