Not just the Northeast.
Posted on 05/07/2012 7:21:18 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Any discussion of Japan and nuclear power is complicated by that country's history as the only nation ever to suffer a nuclear attack. That event continues to haunt the venerable Pacific nation. This is an immutable truth that one must accept regardless of which side one is on concerning the legitimacy of the US attack 67 years ago.
That said, the Japanese nation nevertheless staked much of its economic destiny on nuclear power. Beginning more than four decades ago, Japan deployed over 50 nuclear power plants to feed the energy needs of its densely packed population. Very limited in domestic fossil fuel sources and running one of the world's leading economies, the country's reliance on substantial nuclear power facilities made eminent sense.
And for over 40 years, this decision redounded to the benefit of the nation and its people. But alas, nuclear tragedy struck again in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The reactor at Fukushima was damaged and a partial meltdown ensued. People died, land areas became contaminated and the safety of the country's nuclear power plants was called into question.
Japan instituted a series of rigorous tests that all of its plants would have to pass (to ensure that they could withstand quakes and tsunamis) before they would be allowed to continue operating. One by one, reactors have been halted to perform the tests. Not one has been restarted, and recently the last operational reactor was taken offline. There isn't a single nuclear power plant operating in Japan today; and it is unclear when, if ever, any will start back up.
Here are some important points to keep in mind:
* The overwhelming percentage of the casualties last spring resulted from the quake and the tsunami, not the reactor meltdown.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Japan began its hara kari ceremony when it legalized abortion.
Japan began its hara kari ceremony when it legalized abortion.
So, instead of nuclear are they going to go with exercise bikes connected to alternators?
So, instead of nuclear are they going to go with exercise bikes connected to alternators?
It will add a whole new meaning to the phrase “rice burner”.
I had one of those bikes. It had a little generator on the front wheel that would run a very weak headlight..
No,they are going to deploy ocean wave driven generators along all the islands’ entire coastlines!!!
Rational and human just don’t seem to get together often.
meanwhile, the NE USA is swimming in natural gas which is tanking in price and everyone from NY State to the Greens are battling any further development of gas and LNG export terminals.
I’ve heard talk of the US working on putting wind farms on the northern Atlantic seaboard far enough out that people on land would not even see them. I don’t know if that is economically feasable, but if it is, it may actually be relatively practical. The Oceans are really like an enormous desert. There aren’t many birds to cut up. There isn’t all that much boat traffic out there.
Funny, no mention of the whole 50 Hz and 60 Hz fiasco that generally wracked havok with their entire grid.
Imagine having about 50% of the country on each grid, and having huge power-stations that could, in the event of a brown-out help change the frequency from 50 to 60Hz to help ride out a power surge.
Now, knock out one of the grids with a natural disaster ... golly, now you have not only a huge demand for energy for recovering form a natural disaster, you have the added mess of keeping the two incompatible power systems up and running - simultaneously.
I submit that if Japan had either gone 50 Hz, or 60 Hz (I really don’t care which) - their problems would have dimminished by well over 75%.
What ever happened to the Fukushima 50? Anyone of them suffered from radiation sickness yet?
Not just the Northeast.
For the first time in my life, the US is capable of producing sufficient domestic energy to eliminate imports.
And the shale/resource plays are how it can be done.
[ Japan began its hara kari ceremony when it legalized abortion. ]
The UN is evil, it was pushing this shit on the Japanese starting in the early 1950’s with “family Planning” and then later with abortion.
Orbital Solar is the ultimate Power source, till then, drill baby drill and burn baby burn those hydrocarbons!
With orbital solar WE could be come the wolrd’s energy supplier and if someone pisses us off enough we can just shut down their power satelites like OPEC shuts down our oil.
I would love to see the saudis squirm when we shut down down their microwave power downlink.
They will erect windmills and more windmills all the way as far as the eye can see like they have done in West Texas.
They look like sh*t and it is alleged that they have caused climate change as observed by record droughts in Texas.
When we took the southern route from Seattle to drive to our home in KY every single state we drove in had windmill farms except for New Mexico. And that is probably because we only cut acroos the northwestern corner of the state.
Yeah practical. To place and operate windmills in a marine environment is horribly expensive, way more then the land based ones which are themselves ridiculous as a source of dependable electricity.
—Yeah practical. To place and operate windmills in a marine environment is horribly expensive, way more then the land based ones which are themselves ridiculous as a source of dependable electricity.—
I have no idea about the costs. As long as a private company is willing to try it and some private investor is willing to fund it, I say let ‘em have at it. If they get wildly rich, they can keep their after tax earnings. If they fail, well, that’s why they call it “risk”.
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