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[ChairmanPoo]

Looks like that would be an apartment building.  Flats is good and technically correct, but it's not used much.

depends on which dialect of English you're using:
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/block-of-flats

Bah, we all know American English is the only real English.

hahahahah
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Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Kogut]

"1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami" - from wikipedia

The 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami occurred on July 9, 1958, in Lituya Bay, Alaska, reaching a height of 524 meters (1,720 feet), 143 meters (470 feet) taller than the roof of the Empire State Building. This was the highest recorded megatsunami, which is defined as a wave reaching more than 100 meters (328 feet) in the deep ocean.

What about walls protecting from this?

[Bouchart]

"1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami" - from wikipedia

The 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami occurred on July 9, 1958, in Lituya Bay, Alaska, reaching a height of 524 meters (1,720 feet), 143 meters (470 feet) taller than the roof of the Empire State Building. This was the highest recorded megatsunami, which is defined as a wave reaching more than 100 meters (328 feet) in the deep ocean.

What about walls protecting from this?

Yeah if that had happened there wouldn't be a Japan left to talk about.  You can't really protect yourself against doomsday.

[Sheb]

Well, there is a difference between tsunami from earthquake and tsunami from a huge landslide just across the bay.

[Starver]

Well, there is a difference between tsunami from earthquake and tsunami from a huge landslide just across the bay.

I'd say proximity and directionality.

An earthquake/tectonic event (excepting in the events of the '2012' film, sheesh) makes a section of seabed shift up/down/round-and-round/whatever, and may spark underwater landslides, but even in coastal waters is going to (in general) cause a relatively small height (say 10s of metres, as recently seen) of total water displacement, across a large area, and what's more that energy gets shoved out in all directions (not equally so, but generally).  Meaning that if it's quite close to a shore, that shore will get almost that amount of wave, but it'll lessen (excepting where it 'refracts' around underwater and shoreline features, constructively building) the further away the wave goes.  Unless it's an extremely in-shore event (in which case the raising/lowering of the landscape will raise/drop the coastal area as well), there'll be dissipation.

If you have, on the other hand, a deep lake with an tall, unstable hillside on one edge, then a landslip (caused by anything, but possibly also an earthquake) might well dump an amount of soil/rock/etc into the lake...  This could represent a significant proportion of the volume of the lake, dumped in at one narrow band at one edge, and you end up with have half a lake jumping out of its bath, Archimedes-like, onto the opposing shore and doing a watery 'Euraka!' dance all over the land on the other side.  There's no actual room for any meaningful dissipation and it's almost all aimed in one direction.  Deep and narrow lake + co-operative geography + huge landslide => 500m wave.

That's skimming over some of the issues, but as a summary it'll probably do.

[Nadaka]

Looks like that would be an apartment building.  Flats is good and technically correct, but it's not used much.

Pfft, only 30 meters high?  Ever see that documentary on supertsunamis?  Or just about any worldwide disaster movie?  Clearly we need to build the reactors on space elevators.  Only way to be sure.

If we actually get space elevators out of the deal, I am all for this.

[Tellemurius]

Well, there is a difference between tsunami from earthquake and tsunami from a huge landslide just across the bay.

I'd say proximity and directionality.

An earthquake/tectonic event (excepting in the events of the '2012' film, sheesh) makes a section of seabed shift up/down/round-and-round/whatever, and may spark underwater landslides, but even in coastal waters is going to (in general) cause a relatively small height (say 10s of metres, as recently seen) of total water displacement, across a large area, and what's more that energy gets shoved out in all directions (not equally so, but generally).  Meaning that if it's quite close to a shore, that shore will get almost that amount of wave, but it'll lessen (excepting where it 'refracts' around underwater and shoreline features, constructively building) the further away the wave goes.  Unless it's an extremely in-shore event (in which case the raising/lowering of the landscape will raise/drop the coastal area as well), there'll be dissipation.

If you have, on the other hand, a deep lake with an tall, unstable hillside on one edge, then a landslip (caused by anything, but possibly also an earthquake) might well dump an amount of soil/rock/etc into the lake...  This could represent a significant proportion of the volume of the lake, dumped in at one narrow band at one edge, and you end up with have half a lake jumping out of its bath, Archimedes-like, onto the opposing shore and doing a watery 'Euraka!' dance all over the land on the other side.  There's no actual room for any meaningful dissipation and it's almost all aimed in one direction.  Deep and narrow lake + co-operative geography + huge landslide => 500m wave.

That's skimming over some of the issues, but as a summary it'll probably do.

Basically its displacement and volume expansion vs. energetic waves.

[Shinziril]

Randomly looking at Wikipedia, it seems that tsunami wave height is not necessarily correlated with earthquake size . . . you can get pretty tall tsunamis even from fairly small quakes (at least compared to 9.0 monsters like the Tohoku earthquake).  I am thus changing my recommendation of a higher seawall for the generators to some sort of waterproof, tsunami-resistant building that can be opened after the tsunami has receded (it has to be openable since the generators need air to run, but they don't necessarily need to be running right after the tsunami hits . . . the batteries can hold out for a few hours). 

[Greiger]

Actually yea now that I think about it that sounds like it would work.  Bunker type building with 2 concrete protected pipes in and out for each generator.  Tsunami warning?  Turn off the generators and pull a lever to close those pipes.  Tsunami's over?  Send somebody to check on the pipes and clear any light debris (or worse case scenario cut a new vent into the damaged pipe.) then reenable the systems.  Hell it could even have ventilation windows in the walls if heat would be an issue.  Push a button?  Wham, those windows close and seal up like a submarine airlock.  Works in DF and don't see why it couldn't work in reality.

P.S. Yes if those systems fail you have a flooded generator room, but everything should probably be able to be made to have redundency.  And it could supplement an already existing wall around many current plants.

That can't cost much more then it costs to build a 10 meter high wall around the whole facility, and those plants cost millions if not billions of dollars surely such a system would be a drop in the bucket.

[Vector]

Well, this is terrifying.

Enjoy your necro.

[Tellemurius]

Well, this is terrifying.

Enjoy your necro.

Surprised you even brought it back to life but thanks non of the less. From what i understand the current disaster rating for that whole mess is 7 INES with Chernobyl with them.

[Vector]

I live in Berkeley, and this is the first data I've seen in months.  Frankly, I feel it's important to bring the info around when I've got it =/

[Tellemurius]

Aye, i been keeping track on the current repairs, units 1 2 and 3 are under meltdown with unit 1 being the hell hole right now with 50% melted fuel chewing successfully through the containment shield.

[Euld]

"These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April."

O_O  Now that's scary, I live in the Seattle area.  But I haven't heard a peep about radiation around here?

[Cuppsworth]

"1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami" - from wikipedia

The 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami occurred on July 9, 1958, in Lituya Bay, Alaska, reaching a height of 524 meters (1,720 feet), 143 meters (470 feet) taller than the roof of the Empire State Building. This was the highest recorded megatsunami, which is defined as a wave reaching more than 100 meters (328 feet) in the deep ocean.

What about walls protecting from this?

Yeah if that had happened there wouldn't be a Japan left to talk about.  You can't really protect yourself against doomsday.

You can't, maybe.