From Stark
The New York Times reports that the safety of Mark I reactors like those at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan has long been questioned. Specifically, doubts have been raised for decades about the containment vessel’s ability to do its job in a serious accident.
The Times also notes that similar reactors are in place at 16 plants in the United States, although they have been modified to address some of the perceived safety issues.
Check this out:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm
Before and after:
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
This will give you pause also: http://www.truth-out.org/tokyo-electric-build-us-nuclear-plants-the-no-bs-info-japans-disastrous-nuclear-operators68457. This piece was written by Greg Palast a former “lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations.” He states in part: “I don’t know the law in Japan, so I can’t tell you if Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) can plead insanity to the homicides about to happen. But what will Obama plead? The administration, just months ago, asked Congress to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas – by TEPCO and local partners. As if the Gulf hasn’t suffered enough. Here are the facts about TEPCO and the industry you haven’t heard on CNN: The failure of emergency systems at Japan’s nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.”
Another fire in the spent fuel pool at reactor noe 4, second in days, plus a plume of smoke above number two and they have evacuated all personnel again. Radiation levels at hundreds of time above safe and it’s showing up in Tokyo over 250k to the south. Whatever Japan has saved by using Nuclear, they are fast eating the savings up now in human life and absolute unknown destruction to the health. Don’t you think we should pause to consider that maybe Nuclear is just too risky and short term savings pale in loss of life and other complications in the not unforseen eventuality?
I wish I had a nickel for every instance of environmental degradation that was played down but later came to pass as foresight….
But I thought we weren’t worried about radiation poisoning in Japan.
An MIT guy said so.
Shut down the dirty coal plants.
Stop the trains.
Tear down the fish killing dams.
Shut down the nukes.
Stop all drilling.
Just say no.
No to electricity.
No to heat and cars and planes.
No to industry and jobs.
No to everything say the new determiners of our future.
Back to horses, wood heat, and candles say these moralistic leaders.
And how will the farmers feed all these people, without fuel for their tractors?
Not a problem for these elite leaders of the future.
Population control
Guess who gets to determine who lives and dies?
The elite, who are sitting at home with the thermostat at 72 degrees blogging on their computer plugged into the grid.
Every one else will have to change. Maybe we should vote to turn off the power to their computers as a good first move.
Common sense solution.
Living like the flintstones could be fun!
Flintstones, meet the Flintstones, They’re a modern stoneage family.
From the, town of Bedrock, They’re a page right out of history.
Let’s ride, with the family down the street, Through the courtesy of Fred’s two feet.
When you’re, with the Flintstones, Have a yabba dabba doo time, A dabba doo time, You’ll have a gay old time!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
You cannot say “gay old time” anymore.
Don’t ya know.
The PC police are at work. (spun pun intended)
Barney Rubble: You know, Fred, I hear that eatin’ too much red meat is bad for you.
Fred Flintstone: What a load of bunk! My father ate it every day of his life and he lived to the ripe old age of thirty-eight.
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
That’s almost the lifespan of a coal miner,
or a Japanese nuke worker in a critical reactor accident,
or a cop at Chernobyl,
or a soldier in Afghanistan or any one of dozens of endeavors you think perfectly appropriate.
There are those who believe that people should be free to decide for themselves and then there are those who believe that since they be so much smarter than the rest they should dictate to everyone else.
One thing you aren’t hearing about enough are the brave souls who are doing their best to save other people lives whether it was at Chernobyl or now in Japan or anywhere else and for anyone to criticize those efforts only shows what a very little person they be!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Fred Flintstone: How can you be so stupid?
Barney Rubble: Hey, that’s not very nice. Say you’re sorry.
Fred Flintstone: I’m sorry you’re stupid.
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
The average male in the United States in 1850 was 38 years old.
That was when the evil coal burning steam engine was widely introduced to our country.
Then they learned that you could hook the steam engine up to a generator and send electricity (energy) via wires to people home of business, taking some of the back breaking toil out of life.
Allowing us to breathe at night without breathing carbon and fumes from lanterns.
Then they discovered oil.
Now the average lifespan for a man is 80. Since the widespread introduction of distributed energy, the lifespan of an American has doubled, but in countries still doing bone grinding manual labor with man or beast for power, the lifespan is not only far lower, but far less fun.
Energy has brought us a longer lifespan, and a better quality of life.
Something that I doubt many will want to give up in the name of whatever hare brained scheme the elite want to sell us now.
Al Gore said we all have to sacrifice, which really means only the poor will bear most of the suffering, as we are not likely to see the wealthy change their lifestyle much, if at all.
Citizen, you can move back into a cave if you wish. It’s a free world, but do not demand that I join you.
“It was twenty years ago, on April 26, 1986, that Vasily Ignatenko and his wife were rudely awakened at 1:23 AM by the sound of an explosion. Their bedroom was lit by an eerie red glow. Flames were visible out their window, and since Vasily was one of the resident firemen at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, it was time to go to work. With a quick kiss he told his wife, “Go back to sleep. There’s a fire at the reactor. I’ll be back soon.”
Vasily and his fellow firemen battled the blaze for hours. In the words of his wife, “They went off just as they were, in their shirtsleeves. No one told them. They had been called for a fire, that was it.” They didn’t realize the cells of their bodies were being destroyed by radiation levels thousands of times above the lethal limit. None of them returned home to their wives and children. In a matter of hours their bodies were swollen and distorted. In a few days they were all dead….
But as bad as it was, it could have been a lot worse, if it hadn’t been for the heroes of Chernobyl. Firemen who stopped the fire from spreading. Helicopter pilots who dropped sand and other materials onto the fire to help smother it and contain the radiation. Soldiers who were ordered into the worst of it to lend a hand. When some of the soldiers protested, they were told, “You’ll go to jail or be shot.” But most went willingly, knowing they were sacrificing themselves, and that the fate of countless thousands, or perhaps even millions, was hanging in the balance. There’s no telling what the consequences might have been had the fires been allowed to burn any longer, or spread to the other reactors. To many, the firemen, pilots, soldiers, and others who sacrificed their lives at Chernobyl did nothing less than save the world.
http://mexicanskies.com/archives/chernobyl.htm
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“IT WAS 1.40am when Viktor Birkun woke to the sound of his doorbell ringing.
He knew that something serious had happened as soon as he opened the door and saw one of his colleagues from the fire station. But it was only as they drove out of his home town of Pripyat, Ukraine, that he realised the scale of what is still considered the worst man-made disaster in history….
As the plant managers and technicians fled or frantically tried to contact Moscow, the firefighters rushed straight into the inferno. With only a cotton uniform to protect him, Mr Birkun drove his fire truck over the reactor’s metal roof, now lying on the ground, and up to 15m (50ft) from Reactor 4.
Using his bare hands he lowered the engine’s siphon into the nearest cooling pool to suck up water for his colleagues as they battled 300 fires around the complex. Within seconds he began to feel the effects of the gamma rays that were bombarding his internal organs.
He started vomiting about every 30 seconds. He grew dizzy and weak. After two hours he could not stand….
“It was a hugely heroic effort, and I suspect anyone who understood how much radiation was there would never have gone in.”
Twenty years on Mr Birkun knows he is lucky to be alive and living in Moscow with his wife, Nadezhda, and his daughters, Lyudmila and Valentina.
Of the 134 “liquidators” with a diagnosis of ARS, 28 died in 1986, including at least six firefighters. Mr Birkun, now 56, is proud of the sacrifice that his team made to reduce the cloud of smoke that spread radioactive particles across Europe and even as far as Japan.
“These were the people who saved Europe,” he said, fingering a black-and-white photograph of his former colleagues. “If they had not done what they did, the fire would have spread to Reactors 1, 2 and 3.” …
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article707924.ece
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“The heroes risking their lives on the front line of Japan’s nuclear crisis – some 50 workers at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant – are being watched by a grateful and anxious nation.
The workers are tasked with keeping cooling water flowing into the six reactors at the Fukushima plant, four of which have overheated since Friday’s quake, raising fears of a meltdown.
Explosions and a fire at the plant, 250 kilometres north-east of Tokyo, have unleashed dangerous levels of radiation, forcing the operator to pull out hundreds of workers and leaving just a few dozen behind….
“The people working at these plants are fighting without running away,” Michiko Otsuki, an employee at the separate Fukushima No.2 plant who also has been evacuated, wrote in a post on Japanese social networking site Mixi.
“Now I can only pray for the safety of everyone… Please don’t forget that there are people who are working to protect everyone’s lives in exchange for their own lives.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/16/3166012.htm?section=world
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
While we have hiss and spit at one another about global warming science and what it means, really means not pretend means, scientist are straining to learn from the latest truly appalling man-made disaster. Already the politically and economically polarized arm of accredited but not credible “scientist” are selling their snake oil as fast as money can be made.
My daughter is in her last trimester. My sister called this very morning. From Texas, she offered to fly her niece and my future grandchild to that state — for safety concerns due to Japanese radiation. Should I do this?
“Fool!”, most of the scientific community might think, at least as far as I can tell, and I have a very great deal of respect for science.
Yet my sister’s own husband, who I introduced in 10th grade and with whom I also spoke, worked as for years, and to this day trains, inspectors in the nuclear industry. I ask readers again, should I send my daughter away from the West coast?
Did my brother-in-law say leave? Not really, no. My dear sister does fret so sometimes. Not the point. The point is that our species made the decision to put these known dangers in an area of known threats built in a vulnerable way. What on earth could cause us, the collective us, including scientist, to ignore the now so very obvious?
My daughter? At this point I am trustful of the opinions of the science presented at official United States government sites. They seem credible at this time. The mainly industry-based Japanese sources, however, do not seem so candid, or, to be candid, believable. Is there any wonder about the confusion of my dear relatives in their concern for the safety their loved ones?
To the question then, of my daughter fleeing the area; from U.S. based science responses, the answer is no.
“Wouldn’t it be great if the whole world were run like a corporation?” — Japanese businessman in the 1980s.
Apparently, the answer is no.
Japanese TV seems extremely candid,
and much more realistic than The Herald reporting which gets many facts wrong,
fails to explain others
and omits the rest.
Leave Tokyo for Texas,
Do not leave the West Coast for Texas, it won’t matter.
Our dangers here are not acute.
UG,
If this were my daughter I would advise her to consider moving anywhere but Texas.
At this point we have not done any “reporting” on the Japan nuclear situation, citizen. How do you happen to know which facts are right and which facts are wrong, from your vantage point here?
The Texas jokes happily accepted. The family has had it’s share of chuckles believe me…
The suggestion of less than candid reporting came from a U.S. nuclear engineer, whose comments early this morning on television news reflected a concern not so much from the political community, but from the Western scientific community. One reader reflected about the vantage point of this scientist, how does one know who has the clear view, or whose view is obscured by clouds?
To the lay observer, most of us and certainly me, there do seem some — discrepancies. Some in the U.S. say the rods are dry and exposed. The Japanese say they are not “dry”. What does that mean? The Japanese say evacuate 15 miles; the U.S. says get out of the country. What does that mean? It means confusion. Imagine what they must think in Japan.
What has happened appears largely over, as far as man’s counter-efforts are practically concerned. It’s what will happen, over not only the next days or weeks, but over future decades either way, the unexpectedly good or the horrifyingly bad. The layman might find a bit of both a believable prediction. This layman predicts perhaps a future trillion or more bits spat out over the internet wire blathering hindsight — scientific and otherwise.
And, unlike the Herald, on the Internet you can believe every word…
The AP stuff cannot be corrected factually since they keep censoring posts.
Japanese TV is full of first-hand info about the situation.
Even that ‘story’ about iodine tablets omitted the reasons they are or aren’t needed,
a very good way to start to explain the real situation.
Japan doubled its maximum safe dose yesterday,
and even My Esteemed Host was unsure what type of radiation hazards exist where and why.
Those helicopter pilots?
Doomed.
The workers inside the containment buildings have already died,
they just don’t know it yet.
The heroism of the plant workers is ignored since alarm might result from knowing how they were killed.
For a situation like this the NRC recommends a 50 mile radius for evacuation.
Sen Boxer points out that 7.5 Million people live in that space around the San Onofre power plant.
Well if Grace, McGee, Marlene or whomever says everything is alright, I guess we can all just relax and let the good times roll. After all the force of ignorance in this country seems to be just as strong as nature’s though I’ll bet on nature everytime.
Latest news from out of the country–you can’t trust U.S. sources much anymore– death toll topping 7,000, could go as high as 15,000 from the quake alone. Many are being admitted to hospital for what looks like radiation sickeness. The reactors are totally out of control and those in the plant are starting to die or show signs of sickness, but they are dumping hot tub sized buckets of water on the situation which is sort of like pissing in the wind, and that is where most of it is going, on the wind and missing the targets. So now watercannons, except it is getting increasingly hard to find anyone to man the cannons. A reporter in Sendai, 50 K to the north held up a geiger counter and it pegged out at it’s highest level so the reporter got out of the area. The nuclear industry is on the ropes and in an effort to not panic, they are also not telling the truth. Every incentive to lie at this point, but hey why worry huh Grace?
kinda weird having someone posting as ‘grace’ over here.
Ciz, you still didn’t answer john’s question!!
BTW, I’s been a thinkin, a very dangerous thing I’s must add, wasn’t there something once called the China Syndrome, well looking at Japan, I’s don’t think that works no more, so after much scientific calculations I have come up with what that should be called in Japan, get ready;
THE Bham Syndrome!
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Like I said, I watch Japanese TV and they don’t play games.
they actually have nuclear physicists telling the true story with numbers and readings and facts.
There’s no such thing as a pill against radiation sickness,
no exposure that’s safe anywhere near the plants,
no way to know what particles are being spread,
and no way to definitively say fallout won’t reach our nation.
So it’s not Herald reporting,
the AP sucks and the Herald sells the AP.
That’s yer answer.
AFY you’re a disgusting excuse for a sham of a poster.
Maybe drinking with you is better,
but your brain is shot for thought.
Too bad, even if it’s a game you play,
it’s a disturbed game and not a bit funny.
Joke about something else,
not nuclear emergencies.
Are you worried about radiation from Japan?
In light of radiation fears, I offer this repost
“Going bananas over radiation”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/17/in-light-of-radiation-fears-i-offer-this-repost/
Crossposted from the other thread: Here’s something interesting I discovered on a blog: Nuclear Problem In Japan: Is Obama Partly Responsible?
“From the BBC:
2226: The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, quoting a senior official of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, said the US made the offer immediately after the disaster damaged Fukushima No 1 nuclear plant. According to the unnamed senior official, US support was based on dismantling the troubled reactors run by Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) some 250 km (155 miles) northeast of Tokyo. However, the government and TEPCO thought the cooling system could be restored by themselves, the report said.”
http://market-ticker.org/post=182524
Video, for those of you who are into that kind of presentation: FUKUSHIMA: Vivid New Video Shows Horrible Wreckage At The Nuke Plant
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-nuclear-plant-2011-3#ixzz1GuHIn130
Nobody ever said there’s a pill against radiation sickness. Stop with the straw man stuff. The pill does help keep radioactive iodine isotopes out of the thyroid gland, which is a vulnerable point when some kinds of low-level contamination occur. Obviously there are lots of types of radiation exposure in which iodine pills won’t be useful.
I still don’t understand how you know the experts on Japanese TV are telling the truth. I read a lot of people accusing the Japanese of minimizing the risks.
Grace Kelley,
“Citizen, you can move back into a cave if you wish. It’s a free world, but do not demand that I join you.”
All of citizen’s pluses; thirteen, I think, accumulated during his infrequent lucid moments, are hereby transferred to you, along with an additional +1.
Grace is hereby awarded +14.
Here’s to personal choice and to a rational assessment of the risks that accompany everyday life, where there are no solutions; only trade-offs.
ciz, I do’s hope in real life you be happier than on this blog!
Doom & gloom is a terrible way to waste a life!
You ever think that your constant need to prove what you think you know, really does prove what you don’t?
AFY!!the heelotsheepdog!!!
Well John is the voice of reason, but I must say that some jap[anese TV is more up front, but the officials are all over the map and contradicting each other. Radiation took a huge spike today. Tokyo is starting to resemble a ghost town with people staying indoors and there are 20 confirmed radiation sickness cases with at least 5 dead. The 180 in the plant are on a suicide mission and being lauded for giving their lives to try and save others, but things continue to get worse. Even U.S. expoerts like the guy from MIT that CNN is using believes things are spiraling out of control and the levels are reaching harm to human life levels and the reported spike today, can cause radiation sickness in a short time. 20ms an hour spewing out, whereas 3ms a year is the average for humans. This is a terrible tragedy with worldwide implications. the US military keeps moving further away from Tokyo and the stricken area.
AFY, just admit you are a butthead who has already stood too close to a micro wave or something…. but pop some iodide…