Earthquake and Tsunami hits Japan.

Very common in Japanese restraunts.
Typical recipes include tofu, flaked bonito, green onion

Tasty. A bit heavy in MSG but I doubt that is a major concern right now.

It s times like this when it is easy to see why people like to post in here.
celttooth
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Here's an updated report on the Japan Quake:

Rescuers scramble to save lives as aftershocks jolt Japan
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Looks like all three reactors are in danger and one has already suffered a partial melt down. At this point it's almost tied with 3 mile islands and I expect it will be approaching Chernobyl pretty soon.

The day the Chernobyl cloud passed over Italy I was visiting the Euratom site ad Ispra and, as a rule, I was given a small nuclear radiation detector to monitor any radiation I might receive. I had to give it back while exiting the site, so I never knew how much radiation I had absorbed that day.
Tullio
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The day the Chernobyl cloud passed over Italy I was visiting the Euratom site ad Ispra and, as a rule, I was given a small nuclear radiation detector to monitor any radiation I might receive. I had to give it back while exiting the site, so I never knew how much radiation I had absorbed that day.
Tullio

I think the containment building of one reactor has exploded, unless it was the turbine hall that exploded cause a hydrogen buildup.
Tullio
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I think the containment building of one reactor has exploded, unless it was the turbine hall that exploded cause a hydrogen buildup.
Tullio

The safety of a nuclear reactor is three tiered. Th first tier is the casing of the fuel elements, made from an alloy called Zircaloy. The second is the steel vessel containing the reactor core. The third one is the containment building made of reinforced concrete. It is this that may have crumbled after a chemical explosion.
Tullio
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Q&A: What has quake done to Japanese nuclear reactors?

How does a nuclear reactor of this kind work?

Uranium 235 -- the fuel inside a nuclear reactor -- undergoes nuclear fission. This process emits a lot of heat energy, (water is used to cool down the U235)which produces steam, and that steam turns a turbine, generating electricity.

What happened to the nuclear reactors during the quake?

Three of the six reactors at the site were in operation when the earthquake hit. The reactors are designed to shut down automatically when a quake strikes, and emergency diesel generators began the task of pumping water around the reactors to cool them down. However, these stopped about an hour later. The failure of the back-up generators has been blamed on tsunami flooding by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

On Sunday an official with Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said a meltdown may be under way at one of Fukushima Daiichi's nuclear power reactors.

Described by one analyst as a "Hail Mary pass", Tokyo Electric Power Company began injecting sea water mixed with boron into the primary containment vessel in an operation that got under way Saturday night, IAEA said.

Boron is an element with the ability to absorb neutrons, the sub-atomic particles that occur in the nucleus of all atoms. In a nuclear reactor, it is essential that just the right number of neutrons are present. Too many neutrons can cause a fission reaction to get out of control. Too few neutrons and a fission reaction stops.

What could have caused the explosion at the plant?

The blast was not caused by damage to the nuclear reactor but by a pumping system that failed as crews tried to bring the reactor's temperature down, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Saturday. He said the plant operator confirmed there was no damage to the steel container housing the reactor.

Malcolm Grimston, Associate Fellow for Energy, Environment and Development at London's Chatham House, said he believed the explosion had been caused by a build-up of pressure inside the inner containment of the reactor.

"Because they lost power to the water cooling system, they needed to vent the pressure that's building up inside.

"My suspicion is that as the temperature inside the reactor was rising, some of the metal cans that surround the fuel may have burst and at high temperature, that fuel cladding can react with water to produce zirconium oxide and hydrogen.

"That hydrogen then will be part of the gases that need to be vented. That hydrogen then mixes with the surrounding air. Hydrogen and oxygen can then recombine explosively.

"So it seems while the explosion wasn't directly connected with the nuclear processes, it was indirectly connected, because the hydrogen was only present because of what was going on in the reactor core."

UK latest

How on earth are they going to remove the many ships inland on the ground? Some are very large, they will have to be cut up in pieces one assumes?