Fukushima one week on: Situation 'stable', says IAEA | Shameful media panic

The Register - UK ^ | 18th March 2011 12:56 GMT | Lewis Page

[brityank]

I've routinely called them the Maggot Slime Media for a couple of years - they feast on the body politic and create fetid carrion.

Pass it around. :^)

[who knows what evil?]

That’s a great description! ‘Maggot Slime Media’...sweet!

[HeartlandOfAmerica]

TY for that ;)

[brityank]

Wikipedia is pretty good for anything besides politics or the humanities. Try it, as there’s lots of info on all types - LIFTER, Pebble Bed, CANDU, etc.

[samtheman]

I always wondered what MSM stands for. :)

[Stosh]

For those who didn’t make it all the way to the third article in the series:

“The lesson to learn here is that if your country is hit by a monster earthquake and tsunami, one of the safest places to be is at the local nuclear powerplant. Other Japanese nuclear powerplants in the quake-stricken area, in fact, are sheltering homeless refugees in their buildings – which are some of the few in the region left standing at all, let alone with heating, water and other amenities.”

[PA Engineer]

I like the pebble bed nuclear reactor technology. I would like to get my hands on the spent pebbles to bury in my driveway. Run a ground loop (no compressor) and free heat and deicing system in winter. One can dream. ;-)

[HeartlandOfAmerica]

Hey, if you're an engineer, answer a question for me if you can?

Is it really so hard to fly in some few generators and pumps at the start of this to keep those coolant systems intact and operating?

It doesn't seem like it should be that hard to me but I'm a computer guy as I've pointed out in other places, not an engineer or anything even close to that.

The quake/tsunami hit on Friday, they had steam on sat morning and the first explosion was Monday evening. They couldn't have gotten power and pumps in that area in that 3 day weekend for some reason that I can't see?

[chimera]

The heavy water that the reactor uses can be poured out in the street and is very much non toxic, i just wouldn’t drink more than 1 gallon of it a day for more than a week.

Neutron capture reactions in the deuterium breed a fair amount of tritium. While tritium emits very weak beta particles, it has a 12 year half-life. So you probably don't want to spill it, or drink a lot of it for a long time.

[SE Mom]

Sigh...you may be right. I kind of expected him to close some and then declare nuclear energy is dead in the U.S. so anything less seemed like a good deal!

[brityank]

Is not the above sentence a lie?

No not really.

If there'd been no earthquake, then no tsunami. The damage was caused as a result of them both, but the primary cause of their reactor problems was they ran out of power to maintain the cooling pumps in the spent fuel pools once the battery stacks ran down.

Now you have no roads, no rails, no port to get supplies into the area, and 90+% of your reliable staff just got wiped away. I think they're handling it as well as anyone could, for all the blathering and moaning. JMHO.

[chimera]

Is it really so hard to fly in some few generators and pumps at the start of this to keep those coolant systems intact and operating?

Those aren't terribly portable. We aren't talking about backyard generators here. The emergency diesels have to put out power in the 5 MW range. Typically, those are an 18-month custom order, then about a year onsite installing and qualifying them.

Then, you don't just plug in the plant like you do a PC to a UPS. Generator output must be synched to the plant safety buses. When offsite power comes back on, you need to synchronize the generators (phase) to the offsite feed before switching over. If you're off a little on the synchro, you end up blowing the safety buses, which puts you in a worse place than you were before power went out.

[Eldon Tyrell]

Just so you know -
You are the victim of a media hoax.
What you presented - is the spin they will use as well - “could have” a nd “thank goodness - boy were we lucky”. etc.

It was hype, and you were suckered. Go back and make a filter to filter out those sources of information int he future. They have no credibility.

[End Times Sentinel]

Just so you know, nearly everyone would have realized the statement was sarcasm.

Just so you know...

[brityank]

It’s taken two years for me to think Obama did something right (regardless of his true motives). While many other world leaders have said they’re closing plants or going to stop building new ones and are having various knee-jerk reactions etc.- he ordered a safety review- which seems reasonable, but hasn’t gone overboard and hasn’t added to the panic.

Sorry Mom - I tend to look at the actions he takes, not his sputterings. He has put a cabal of leftist luddites in place throughout the government - he doesn't have to do a thing, they will do it for him.

Stand by for repercussions!

[semantic]

FYI

The moment nuclear plant chief WEPT as Japanese finally admit that radiation leak is serious enough to kill people
* Officials admit they may have to bury reactors under concrete - as happened at Chernobyl * Government says it was overwhelmed by the scale of twin disasters * Japanese upgrade accident from level four to five - the same as Three Mile Island * We will rebuild from scratch says Japanese prime minister * Particles spewed from wrecked Fukushima power station arrive in California * Military trucks tackle reactors with tons of water for second day

[La Enchiladita]

The usual culprits — Anderson and Shep — the disaster drama queens.

Agreed. What good is Fox News when their premier news anchor is a flaming liberal who tattoos eyeliner and eyelashes on his eyelids? Doesn't he know that could cause brain cancer? Not that I'm trying to stir up any fear or anything.....

[cycjec]

Thanks muchly for this. I hope everyone read the sentence
about how a nuclear reactor site is one of the *safer*
places to be after a major natural disaster.

[onemiddleamerican]

Sean Hannity has also been acting much like Shemp Smith throughout this disaster.

[La Enchiladita]

Sanity? At last. I can’t believe my eyes.

And I predict the only deaths that could possible be linked to radiation from Fukushima will be as a result of desperate measures taken due to the pressure from panicked publicity.

It’s a tragedy and deeply offensive to human sensibility.