Posted on 03/13/2013 5:12:15 PM PDT by raptor22
Nuclear Power: Buoyed by data showing that outside the immediate area, radiation dangers remain small, Japan's pro-nuclear prime minister seeks to restart other shut-down reactors to restart a stagnant economy.
It has been two years since the March 11, 2011, Honshu quake and tsunami that killed nearly 19,000 people, smashed Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima plant, and put the brakes on the worldwide commercial use of nuclear power.
Days after the quake — which registered at 9.0 on the Richter scale and was equal to about 336 million tons of TNT, a quake so powerful it shifted the position of the Earth's axis by as much as 6 inches and moved Honshu, Japan's main island, eight feet eastward — we wrote regarding the future of nuclear power: "Despite a once-in-a-century event in Japan, it's time to put our foot on the accelerator and realize, as someone once put it, that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
That was not the conventional wisdom, then or now.
Nuclear power's image as a clean and safe form of energy seemed irrevocably tarnished, but, as someone else once said, facts are stubborn things, and the fact is that two years later, outside the immediate area of Fukushima, this is hardly a problem at all.
According to a World Health Organization report, there is unlikely to be any detectable increase in cancers in Japan, Asia or the world except close to the facility.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
The fix to me is to build reactors in locations not liable to tsunami damage. Fukushima survived the 9.0 magnitude earthquake with serious but Manageable damage, it was the wave that did it in. We’ve got to learn to safely build and run nuclear plants.
I forgot we were supposed to be dead by now.
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Just imagine if they could build modern reactors.
No kidding. I’m not sure they need to be restarting any old reactors. In fact, that’s probably a terrible idea. And they need a better storage plan for the old stuff instead of on-site too. We need that last part as well.
Smaller reactor facilities. Newer, safer, cheaper fuel. Safer locations.
And smarter politicians.
Why don’t they build incinerators to burn all the junk that has floated away.......
. . and send serious, mature, knowledgeable nuclear scientists out to do PR and answer the valid questions of the public . . instead of . . the little teeny bopper girls to pooh-pooh any and every valid question that anyone raises. Back in the 70’s they employed cute T&A teeny bopper very young women to do PR when they were trying to get nuclear power plants built. One of the cousins was in that sort of job; and she was very condescending to me for simply asking how and where they planned to store the nuclear waste. Basically told me to shut up; that “they” would solve that problem when it came up. Without respect, they might as well can it.
Time just flies...
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They rethought nuclear after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They can do it again.
Not to mention they were built 40 years ago.
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We have the answer to that last part. Harry Reid prevents us from using it.
Rule #1: Don’t build nuclear facilities at the beach.
The 1960's technology we should have followed!
(A five minute video with details.)
We already know how to do that. It's just that governments make it so hard to build new plants that energy producers are forced to keep outdated plants online for decades longer than intended.
What does a coal plant, the only meaningful large-scale baseload alternative to nuclear power, do with its waste, which includes radioactive materials? It dumps it on the ground or spews it into the air.
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