Fukushima a stake through nuclear industry’s heart

Despite the managed media campaign by Tokyo Electric Company, the Japanese government and nuclear industry flacks worldwide, the 11 March 9.0 on the Richter scale earthquake, followed by a tsunami that off-lined TEPCO’s six reactor Daiichi Fukushima nuclear power complex represents a global mortal blow to the nuclear power industry, which had been optimistic of a renaissance following worldwide concerns about global warming. While TEPCO’s PR spin doctors along with Japanese government flacks will continue to parsimoniously dribble out information about the real situation at the stricken reactors while blandly assuring the Japanese population and the world that all is well even as nuclear lobbyists bleat “it can’t happen here,” all but the most obtuse are beginning to realize that catastrophes at nuclear power facilities, whether man-made (Chernobyl) or natural (Fukushima) have radioactive pollution consequences of potentially global significance.

It is the long-term consequences of the dispersal of radioactive reactor core fissionable material and, in the case of Fukushima, spent reactor fuel, that no amount of spin doctoring can diminish, and far from being environmental propaganda from eco-terrorists, has been a concern of specialists for decades, but those voices rarely reach the mainstream media, many of which are owned by massive corporations deeply invested in the revival of nuclear power.

Let's hope so. The sooner we get off dependence of nuke power the better. Drill baby drill!

I don't quite understand your post even if it's meant to be sarcasm. We don't get hardly any electricity from oil (less than 2% and most of that is Hawaii). So drilling for oil doesn't do anything for more electricity. 100% of Nuclear Power is to generate electricity. So what's drilling got to do with anything unless you are talking about drilling for natural gas.

Let's all hope that the hysteria over the accident in Japan doesn't damage our hopes for nuclear power. We really don't have any future to speak of without nuclear power. Japan will be forced to go forward with nuclear power. Either that or they will be forced to go back to the stone ages. They will design new nuclear reactors that are much better than Fukushina but they will have to go forward. I wish them luck.

Every form of Energy has some risk. There was a huge natural gas fire in San Bruno, CA just recently that killed a number of people. We all know about the Gulf Oil Spill. Many are killed every year mining for coal. Let's hope we can proceed with Nuclear Power after the hysteria of this accident wears off. Anti-Nuclear Power people are certified idiots.

First, the quake did not damage the Japanese plants. Second, the tsunami caused the havoc. Third, an earthquake is limited by the size of the fault and the tsunami limited by the quake.

I wrote, think of the mess if an earthquake damaged this one...(San Onofre). Can't figure out how you got what you did out of that simple sentence.

Let me ask it more directly. If a quake so damaged the San Onofre Nuke Plant to cause a partial meltdown and radiation leak that spilled across I-5, into Oceanside, Fallbrook and other communities, do you think it would be a mess?

Nuclear power plants? I say build more, build now. San Onofre is my local nuclear plant. What happened in Japan cannot happen here.

I think words similar to yours were uttered before.

In fact, it was not long ago that people on here - perhaps you - were saying the problem at the nuke plant in Japan was not serious.

One last question. I hope you won't take offense but for the record it should be asked. Do you work for Edison?

It is clear that wherever a plant can be screwed up by humans, it is possible for a plant to be screwed up, because humans can make mistakes.

It appears that one of the problems at Fukushima was caused by humans doing the wrong thing as a result of misunderstood readings.

To the extent the newer facilities have better control limits and better presentation of information, such errors can be minimized. To the extent we have a better human control structure, such events can also be minimized. Note that human error was also a major factor in the BP oil spill.

Most of our nuclear reactors are self-cooling. So to the extent we don’t let the humans screw THAT up, it is much less likely to have a cooling loss such as the one a the very old Fukishima plant.

In this regard, we are much less safe because of the prohibitive costs of building new reactors, or upgrading old reactors. It is so expensive to make any major renovations that old plants are simply continued, rather than being replaced.

The scaremongers of Fukishima will only make this worse. It is already hard enough to decommission a plant because there is no place to put the reactor fuel because of the Democrats. But anything that discourages new, safe reactors will make us continue to use the old reactors past their original lifetimes.

BTW, I don’t think “unsinkable” became an unthinkable notion. Nobody would get on a Disney Cruise if they had posted warnings that “This ship could sink at any time”. People assume ships will never sink unless there is a catastrophic accident. Just as we assume any particular plane will NEVER crash, even as we know that occasionally one does.

The question is whether there is such a thing as an “unacceptable loss”. People will die because of Fukishima. Lives will be destroyed, land lost, a company will be ruined. Is that an acceptable loss for clean, relatively cheap electric power? We need to compare to the costs of other power, and we will likely find that Fukishima’s losses are much less than for other plants.

Will the negative health consequences of working at the plant outweigh the health damage from coal? The number of people killed running the plant — will it be greater than the number of people who die at traditional electric plants? Will the environmental impact be greater when 40 years of Fukishima is compared to 40 years of an oil-fired plant which belched noxious fumes for decades before it was upgraded?

Unfortunately, humans are notoriously “bad” at assessing risk. We apply a much lower threshold to “spectacular” risks vs ordinary risks. People will avoid going near Fukishima, but they will fly and get higher dosage of radiation. They will be scared of the couple of deaths, while they ignore the tens of thousands who die in car crashes.

That is a great example — people will drive rather than fly, even though driving is much more dangerous than flying. In part that is because people feel they have control over the risk of driving, while the risk of flying is completely out of their control.

Another good example — during the DC sniper incident, kids sports leagues shut down, and schools kept kids inside during the day. This to end a risk that was so small as to be immeasurable — a total of a dozen or so people killed out of 3 milliont.

Meanwhile, those same kids were still required to go to school every day, even though buses crash, parents crash their cars, and kids get hit by cars while walking to school. None of those risks were worth shutting down school. BTW, I’ll admit that I simply didn’t go to the gas stations near the freeways, after he shot someone in my town. It’s not like I drove up there anyway, but I had the same irrational fear.

For example, even if there is a permanent exclusion zone around fukishima, it will be smaller than the land permanently lost to a hydroelectric plant; it might be less than the land lost to a solar or wind farm as well, depending on how big the exclusion zone is.

Yours is one of the best posts I read about the issue of Nuclear Plant Safety. The more new plants that are put into operation, the safer the situation will be. And from my understanding people could really move back into the area around Chernobyl but there is no reason to move back as there was never a lot there to begin with. But the radiation level is not such that people could not move back. I cannot confirm this and I don't know enough about the situation to say for certain. But one thing is for certain, people are living perfectly normal and healthy lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

No form of energy is without risks. We don't live in a risk free society. But the radicals want to destroy Industrial Society. They really do. These anti-nuclear power are very dangerous types. They have absolutely no answer as to how we are going to have the energy we need for the future. Only a complete idiot would believe wind and solar together can ever be more that just a very small amount of what we need. I always ask the people I know what wind power does for you when there's no wind. I ask what do you do when there is no sun shinning. I never get an answer from these buffoons. These people scare me to death.

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