As DougJ said the other day, “shit happens” can’t be the response to the current nuclear crisis in Japan. A set of reactors based on an sixties-vintage US design, and spent fuel storage ponds operated in the same manner as US sites, has caused a local disaster and is now clearly at the brink of a major region-wide disaster.
With that in mind, here’s a snippet from a Union of Concerned Scientists press conference:
REPORTER: Is there any comparison to the BP oil spill? And, you know, that was a pretty worst-case scenario in a different manner in respect to, you know, several missteps and technological breakdowns happened.
MR. LOCHBAUM: Well, I think the common denominator is the United States Congress, and what we’re hearing now on the BP oil spill is that MMS was an ineffective regulator, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is another ineffective regulator, but it’s not really the NRC’s fault. The United States — when the NRC, in the nineties, was trying to enforce its regulations after the debacle up at the Millstone Nuclear Plant in Connecticut, the nuclear industry ran to Congress, and Congress told the NRC to stop enforcing its regulations. You are going to put these guys out of business. So, the NRC, since their budget is controlled by the United States Congress, they listened. They haven’t enforced regulations in about 15 years. So, when the accident occurs in a nuclear power plant, Congress will call the NRC and say, geez, what’s wrong with you? They’ll change their name and they’ll do the same old stuff. The United States Congress should stop telling federal regulatory bodies to stop regulating. They’re not doing the American public much good by those kind of shenanigans.
Reading the UCS press conference transcripts from the last couple of days, the issues that need to be addressed in the US include moving spent fuel from storage ponds to dry casks more quickly, backup generators for hydrogen ignitors, requiring that new plants be certified to a higher safety standard, and re-examining site blackout procedures and assumptions.
meh
yeah, because any of those things are going to happen. Not to be a cynical douche but come on…in what universe do you think that the GOP controlled house is going to allow resources (i.e. hard earned Galtian monies) to be used for job-killing enforcement of nuclear plants that will only embolden our enemies and alienate our friends? Get real Dougie boy…
bjacques
I find a splash of branch water “awakens” the taste of cask-strength spent fuel, especially if the water comes from the part of the country where the fuel was refined.
MikeJ
Let’s pretend for a moment that MegaCorp that owns your local nukes is absolutely honest and sincere in their desire to be as safe as possible.
Then imagine that 17 levels down the management chain, some guy in the middle wants a promotion and figures that having the fastest and cheapest sub-fiefdom is the way to move up. At that point it stops mattering how committed to safety the execs are.
For safety regulation to actually work in any meaningful way, they have to be intrusive. There’s an argument to be made that they should be adversarial. After all people argue that’s the best way to reach justice.
mistermix
@meh:
The universe where the a pile of molten radioactive slag is dripping out of the failed containment unit of a GE-designed reactor, and where fuel rods in an empty spent fuel pool are oxidizing and releasing a plume of radioactivity that is poisoning the city of Tokyo. In that universe, I think even the Republican-controlled House is going to have to do something.
Dennis SGMM
@mistermix:
The Republican Congress will pass The Job-Creating Nuclear Safety Act of 2011. It will cut the number of inspectors at the NRC to two and require that those two notify any site to be inspected six months in advance. It will allow the nuclear industry to write the safety requirements because it knows better than a bunch of eggheads and tree huggers.
MikeJ
@mistermix: You’re funny. Why would Republicans care what happen to the Japanese?
Ash Can
@mistermix:
Of course they’ll do something. They’ll blame it all on Obama and the Democrats, demand that the Dems do something about it, then block the legislation that the Dems come up with. Lather, rinse, repeat.
brantl
@mistermix:
Nope, Mitch McSUCKsalot is already saying that there shouldn’t be any impact on US reactors because of the Japanese disasters, because, you know, our reactors are different. Even though they’re built the same way the Japanese reactors are, by the same companies, and all.
brantl
@Dennis SGMM: Exactly!
MikeJ
@MikeJ: To reply to myself, I can’t imagine Republicans passing any worthwhile legislation even if the current reactor disaster were taking place in the US. Not just if it happened in a Dem state. Even if these reactors were in Mississippi the republicans would do precisely jack shit about it.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Dennis SGMM: This. Regulators don’t have jobs so they can be safely cut.
Alwhite
This is how Republicans win. First you emasculate the regulators claiming they harm business (and BTW – you get a lot of help from Dems when the business is in their district). The lack of real oversight allows a disaster and then the Republicans get to say “See! We had the agency that was supposed to be regulating the industry and it failed. Just another example of how government IS the problem!”
SEE:
S&L crisis
NRC
Banking
Katrina
BP Gulf spill
. . .
AB
@brantl:
Not that I’m a big fan of McConnell, but aren’t Japanese reactors largely in trouble because of the huge freaking tsunami? I was under the impression that they weathered the actual earthquake ok.
snoey
We only have about 10,000 excess deaths a year from burning coal.
The Niger delta is already an environmental disaster area as bad as the Japanese reactor site might be.
Then there is the excess carbon driving climate change and ocean acidification.
Sorry about the free lunch.
Bob
Please. The Union of Concerned Scientists?
These are the fools who claimed that General Motors “with off-the-shelf technology” could build a minivan that would reduce tailpipe emissions by 40 percent (and subsequently increase gas mileage) and cost just $300 per vehicle, but for some reason GM and every other carmaker on the planet are in some sort of conspiracy to withhold this mysterious and amazing technology.
Needless to say, we are all waiting for the UCS to build this amazing van.
geg6
As someone who lives pretty much right next door to a nuclear reactor (we are required to keep potassium iodide pills in our offices at work and they were distributed to all residents within 12 miles of the plant right after 9/11), this does not make me sleep well at night.
Dennis SGMM
@Bob:
Wrong. From March, 2007:
Link
Napoleon
@Bob:
I don’t know if they said that but you do know, don’t you, that the auto companies for years said for years that if the gov. raised the MPG that a vehicle had to get they couldn’t do it, yet for years with increasingly better technology like injectors, replacing parts of the engine previously driven by mechanical systems with electronics governed by chips and other advances they vastly increased the efficency of engines which they used to increase their power instead of MPG or anything else.
Compare the output of an old Ford Escort and Fiesta (late 70, early 80s) with a Ford Fiesta of today.
Napoleon
@geg6:
I though you lived in New Castle, PA or somewhere around there. Is there a plant there?
Napoleon
@Dennis SGMM:
You beet me to it while I was typing with a much better explaination.
Jack Bauer
OT – CIA man in Pakistan pardoned after “blood money” paid.
Freddy Dillard
FYI, your telecon snippet is from March 14, your link is to the March15 telecon.
Punchy
The green-glowing free hand of the market will fix this, assited by a healthy dose of tax cuts and the evisceration of the EPA.
PurpleGirl
@mistermix: Nope, nope, nope. Since the 1970s there has been a fight over how to handle nuclear waste. Yucca Mountain was supposed to become a national waste site to which all spent fuel would shipped and stored. While it hasn’t been only Republicans who kept that from happening, it has been kept from happening. And even if the site opened tomorrow, there are states which forbid the transit of spent fuel through their borders. I don’t believe we can even think about more nuclear plants, regardless of other safety concerns until we have a plan to deal with the wastes. Indian Point in NYS (as all plants) has to keep all its waste on site, compounding safety issues. Nuclear waste is the 900-lb gorilla in the room.
mistermix
@Bob: Perhaps you’d like to take a trip to Fukushima Daiichi #4 and take a peek into the boiling spent fuel basin to see why those “fools” have long argued for separating spent fuel storage from the reactor. While you’re there, take a spin by #2, where the Mark I containment system, that the fools at the UCS have long argued isn’t sufficient, has probably failed.
Jason
Per William Saletan, however:
“That’s how we deal with tragedies in the oil business. Accidents happen. People die. Pollution spreads. We don’t abandon oil. We study what went wrong, try to fix it, and move on.”
This was written before things went from bad to worse. No points for guessing the very exact phrase he uses in his follow-up.
meh
yeah can you imagine telling the GOP led Congress that radiation is a danger to humans?
“So, let me get this straight: You’re telling me that tiny, invisible particles – that I can’t see – can kill ME? Come on, that doesn’t pass the laugh test!”
These people think the Earth is 6,000 years old. Good luck explaining radiation poisoning and radiological half-life.
Pococurante
You can’t trust scientists. They’re just in it for all that free grant money.
Privately owned
mega-conglomeratesbusinesses can be trusted to work in our interests because we’ll just stop buying their energy if they make us sad.Someone once tried to tell me de-regulation kills people, jobs, and innovation but that can’t be true because… because… um, line please?
RalfW
@MikeJ: I have to agree. The Repubs have proven themselves time and again to not give one stinking shit about evidence-based decision making. Not one iota of care for anyone not richer than them. Period.
Moral bankruptcy is far too genteel a term for how utterly destructive, damaged, and deranged these people are.
Pococurante
@mistermix:
Like Bhopal!
Pococurante
@Napoleon:
The list of things our domestic automakers told us would drive them out of business is quite long. And of course those features did destroy their market share.
Because overseas manufacturers offered them.
Slow learners.
Corporations that corrupt the regulatory process destroy lives, innovation, and jobs. And they’ve done a fantastic job since the 1980s convincing the taxpayer we should pay for this.
Dennis SGMM
Business Insider has a fairly concise chronology of the events of the past several hours at Fukushima.
What jumped out at me was the news that plans to put water back into the cooling ponds using fire hoses or water dropping helicopters have now been scrapped because it’s too dangerous to do so. The Japanese army is considering using water cannons.
jibeaux
Sometimes I like to go to fantasyland, where we try to figure out how to fix problems, instead of the real world, in which all 31 GOP members on the Energy committee refuse to acknowledge global warming. And even in fantasyland, going entirely to green energy is very difficult, but theoretically possible if these engineering professsors are to be believed. Anyway, if you’re in the mood for pipe dreaming, worth reading.
rikryah
this nuclear plant stuff is just fucking scary. the workers there know they’re killing themselves, yet, there they are, trying to do whatever they can to avert complete disaster. they are no less heros than the cops and firefighters who entered the Twin Towers on 9/11.
DBrown
Is this Bob as dumb as the old one? What a winning post of get it wrong – I see a future for this guy here.
Lori
Why is Obama treating the nuclear problem differently than the deep-oil drilling problem? Obama’s response to the deep oil gusher was to put all new deep oil well drilling on hold until a safe method that couldn’t produce another long-term unsealable gusher was developed. He said that made sense, as we needed to make sure the accident never would be repeated – and we could only restart drilling when we had new and safe plans. The same thing should happen with new nuclear plant permits, for exactly the same reasons.
NobodySpecial
Am I the only person who’s even remotely impressed that after a 9.0 earthquake and one of the biggest tsunamis of the last 100 years hit these places in a 24 hour span, they haven’t gone full meltdown yet?
EDIT – can anyone point out the condition of any coal/gas based electrical plants in the area? Or does everything here go through the nuke plants?
Pigs & Spiders
@Lori: I’m not sure it’s fair to say yet that he’s handling them differently. It’s been, what, not even a full week since the quake? And we still don’t know the outcome at Fukushima, quite honestly. How long after the BP rig exploded and the nature of the problem there was discovered before the moratorium was put into place? Google’s not really helping me here but I think it was at least a week…
Pigs & Spiders
@NobodySpecial: No, you’re not the only one, but careful what you say, lest you be flamed as a “nuke flunkie”.
MikeJ
@Lori: Who exactly has a permit in the works for a new plant? If there are permits in the pipeline, when are they expected to be acted upon?
There’s no hurry because there’s no new nukes going up anywhere in the US.
DBrown
rikryah – I wonder how many will die being true hero’s so that this accident is brought under control? These people are amazing and brave. Five are dead to date, two still missing yet their efforts, I think, have made a huge difference – nuke power -love it or hate it, the workers are truely some great people.
NobodySpecial
@Pigs & Spiders: Well, not that I care too much about that, because I think there’s a definite place in our increasing dependence on electrical generation for nuclear plants. Yeah, we need more better regulation, but anyone arguing for the status quo of fossil fuel generation is a grade A idiot.
Steve
I don’t know why they bring the MMS into this. The MMS sucked because the Bush Administration installed a bunch of tools there (and Obama and Salazar weren’t proactive enough in cleaning it up). As far as I’m aware, it had very little to do with Congress.
DBrown
I’ll never agree with pig, but Lori, are you seriously saying Obama should shut down nearly 20% of our electric generating ability? Really?
Pigs and nobody – who cares about coal plants shutting down due to damage – last I check, the massive radiation leaks were occurring at the nuke reactors, but maybe you think differently.
I support nuclear power but not stupidly that allows Americans to build a reactor that is so unsafe when the Candu reactor is available.
nancydarling
@jibeaux: The article you linked concludes that for nuclear to be just one wedge in solving the problem “the world would need to build as many as 20 to 40 reactors per year for 50 years—plus the equivalent of ten Yucca Mountains to store all the waste.”
geg6
@Napoleon:
Beaver County, not Lawrence County.
I currently live in New Brighton, but am moving in with my John, whose home is in Center Township (as is Penn State Beaver). Beaver Valley 1 and 2 are just down the road, right next door to where the old decommissioned Shippingport Atomic Power Station was (Shippingport was the nation’s first nuke). About 3 or 4 miles by road and less than 1 or 2 as the crow flies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_Valley_Nuclear_Generating_Station
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Reactor
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@Dennis SGMM: William Saletan begs to differ:
From Jason’s link @25.
Lori
@Pigs & Spiders: That’s a good point – thanks for making it. President Obama took 10 days to declare the drilling moratorium, according to this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/7677198/Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-spill-timeline.html
Pigs & Spiders
@DBrown: Last you checked there was “massive radiation leaks”? Where did you “check” that exactly. I’d love to know.
jibeaux
@nancydarling:
Yep. It’s a good context: going all green is dauntingly, almost unbelievably hard — a tremendous amount of huge windmills, solar panels, and a long slog ahead mining the “rare earth” minerals needed to build all those things. But trying to make nuclear a long-term solution — for the waste reasons you cited, not to mention that once they near their replacement age, we’d be building the massively expensive things every four to five months — is also an incredibly daunting road. Unfortunately, making calculations about these things rather than playing politics at it is just completely impossible.
cleek
@MikeJ:
in 2010, there were 13 new plants (or expansions of existing plants) in various stages of completion – some under construction, some still in planning.
one of them is less than 10 miles from my house. yay!
Lori
@DBrown: I’m proposing Obama stop all new building permits for nuclear power plants, until new safer plans taking into account lessons learned have been developed, reviewed, and approved(i.e. with used rods cooling at a safe distance in separate facilities, with robots capable of coming in to fill the cooling ponds, with earthquake-problem-proof backup power generators, etc.). That’s the same thing he did with oil drilling: he didn’t stop oil from being retrieved from current wells, he just stopped approval of all new permits until safer plans were developed, reviewed, and approved.
singfoom
Our regulatory system is broken. The revolving door has killed it, strangled it in it’s crib before it grew up.
It has been destroyed by those serving the powers our regulatory system was supposed to protect us from.
I don’t know how to fix it. I can make a couple suggestions, but in the political reality of today, it won’t matter anyway.
We could:
A)Pay regulators a salary at the same level as executives of the industries they regulate, or closely.
B)Have all government employees sign a non-compete that creates a 5 year buffer before they can go into a private industry directly or related to those which they regulate. – This should also be set up for congress people.
Pipe dreams, I know.
I’m glad to know I live in Illinois, the US state with the most nuclear power. It makes me feel all cozy and maybe someday, even glowing….
cmorenc
The free market will determine the best response to nuclear disaster. Regulations only prevent the free market from working efficiently to produce the optimal result, and are counterproductive. Power companies who use nuclear reactors well-designed against disasters will stay in business post-disaster, those who don’t will not be profitable and go out of business. In the meantime pre-disaster, power companies who use nuclear reactors which are cheapest to build and operate will be able to out-compete power companies who use nuclear reactors which are more expensive. What if the power companies in the best economic position aren’t necessarily the same pre-disaster and post-disaster? Well, that’s what so wonderful about the free market…it adjusts and properly changes its incentives to meet the challenges! And who could have known about unpredictable disasters anyway?
Dennis SGMM
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
Ah, well, I feel better now. Anyone who uses the phrase “All you have to do is…” in connection with a major catastrophe is setting themselves up to be made an ass of. In Saletan’s case it took less than twenty-four hours.
cleek
@cmorenc:
nice. but i think a little more flag waving and maybe some anti-Islam rhetoric could’ve pushed this into Awesome.
Lori
@MikeJ: I find info on new permits for nuclear power plants (USA) in these 2 links: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-15/chu-says-u-s-doesn-t-need-to-suspend-new-nuclear-plant-permits.html and http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf41aiii_COL_applications.html From the second link, “COL applications for 26 new nuclear reactors at 17 sites had been submitted to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by mid-2009. The NRC expects applications for a further seven reactors by 2010.”
Pigs & Spiders
@Lori: I wouldn’t mind him imposing a 6 month moratorium on new permits in the aftermath of this incident–even if it doesn’t turn out to be the catastrophe everyone thinks that it is. We’re already decades behind on nuclear energy in the US, what’s another 6 months?
MikeJ
@Pigs & Spiders:
From the ultra left wing capitalism hating Atlanta Business Journal article titled “Crews flee nuclear plant fearing radiation”.
Dennis SGMM
@cmorenc:
The nuclear industry will be advocating a two-pronged response to the disaster at Fukushima:
1) Open air reactors. No containment means no failure of containment vessels or pressure buildup. In the event of an “incident” people living down wind of the reactor will be advised via Twitter to Run Like Hell!
2) The US Air Force will be responsible for dropping all spent fuel far out to sea. There’s plenty of water there.
Problem solved.
MikeJ
@MikeJ: Wolfram Alpha says about 1000 mSv:
~~ ( 0.2 ~~ 1/6 ) × ionizing radiation equivalent dose which may lead to death when received all at once (~~ 6 Sv )
~~ (0.2 to 0.8) × moderate radiation poisoning dose, 35% fatality after 30 days ( 1 to 4 Sv )
~~ ionizing radiation equivalent dose which may cause symptoms of radiation sickness if received within 24 hours (~~ 1 Sv )
Virginia Highlander
@cmorenc:
Needs more cowbell!
Pigs & Spiders
@MikeJ: Yeah, that’s inside the plant while venting steam from a core they are trying to cool, and it’s secondary radiation that dissipates very rapidly in the air. And no one “fled” in “fear”. They were ordered out of the complex while they vented the steam because they knew a.) it was radioactive and b.) It contained a metric shit-ton of hydrogen which is what caused the explosions. Eplosions, by the way, that were largely intentional.
You really have to be careful what you read in the newspaper these days. Most of the people writing these articles know about as much about nuclear reactors as you or I.
singfoom
Maybe, just maybe, it might be a good idea to try to focus on energy sources that aren’t entangled with foreign policy or possible catastrophic failure that can poison land water and people.
Why the hell aren’t we pouring tons of money into R&D for more efficient solar and wind power?
Why isn’t the renewable energy sector being re-energized and increasing our manufacturing base so we can sell our technology to the rest of the world?
Oh wait. I forgot, I already know the answer. Money. We can’t get off non-renewable fuel sources because we subsidize oil and nuclear and those interests give campaign contributions.
And as we all know, campaign contributions is how the market works out politics. I’m glad theres a way as a normal citizen that I can write letters and make phone calls to my congress people so they can ignore me….since I don’t have wads of cash to give them.
Our system is broken.
DBrown
Pigs, I realize you are massively stupid but experts that aren’t as smart as you, think not one but two reactor cores have vented or are venting to the air. Of course, you will fly over there, go to the reactor and take measurements …
Strange, I don’t recall seeing your by-line in past; when did you start posting?
Dr. Squid
@mistermix:
Feh. Making sure campaign contributors don’t have a sad is way more important than actual lives. Didn’t you know that?
someguy
It would be a real shame if we missed this opportunity to completely shut down the nuclear power & weapons industry in this country. Just as the BP oil disaster let the Administration stop issuing new offshore drilling permits and shut down a lot of existing ones, this offers tremendous possiiblities for the anti-proliferation movement.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
MikeJ
And let’s add:
330 × total annual effective dose in US from natural sources ( 3000 µSv )
An airline flight from NY to Japan would give you an exposure of about .085 mSv. That’s also about one chest x-ray.
1000 mSv is just a teensy tiny bit more than .085 mSv.
Pigs & Spiders
@DBrown: Why does it always revert to name calling around here? I’ve been posting here off and on since early 2007 (I think) though I was under the monike “TheFountainHead” for a number of those years.
Also, I’d love to see links to those experts who believe the cores are venting.
Thanks.
geg6
@Pigs & Spiders:
Well, I actually do know a lot of people who are nuclear engineers and technicians (not to mention welders and construction workers who’ve built nuclear plants), and they are not as sanguine as you are about all of this. In fact, they are pretty much shitting their pants over this, much the same way they did when Chernobyl happened.
But what do they know anyway.
nancydarling
@Pigs & Spiders: We resort to name calling to vent so we don’t start kicking puppies.
DBrown
Yes pig, any newspaper that says anything bad about nuclear reactors is wrong – why didn’t the rest of the enlightened world ever realize this deep truth that only you know?
How fucking stupid do you think people here are? You are a tool and a bad one – no one in their right (or even left) would so restlessly defend such stupid like you are; yes, we do see that the king has no clothes despite all your worthless propaganda.
You are either the biggest nutcase here since BoB or else a tool – can we know which … wait, your posting is showing that.
geg6
By the way, anybody remember McLaren’s ranting the other day about how some guy at MIT said there was no danger from this? And how McLaren screamed at anyone who questioned his “expert’s” take on what is happening at Fukushima?
Well, here’s McLaren’s expert:
http://www.salon.com/news/japan_earthquake/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/03/15/josef_oehmen_nuclear_not_worried_viral
Who knew a Lean/Six Sigma guy knew more about nuclear reactors than actual nuclear engineers?
Dennis SGMM
@someguy:
I’m certain that’s on the agenda right after permanent world peace and equitable distribution of wealth.
Pigs & Spiders
@geg6: I’m not “sanguine” about it at all. It’s a massive fucking disaster caused by a massive fucking earthquake which caused a massive fucking tsunami. However, what I am saying, is that despite the earthquake and the tsunami and admittedly poor planning regarding some diesel generators and their backup, the systems at Fukushima are actually holding up remarkably well and I think that time and a little rational scrutiny will show that the environmental impact from this incident will be radically smaller than that of the recent BP oil rig accident. Which WASN’T caused by mother nature.
magurakurin
@Pigs & Spiders:
you have to be getting paid.
Fuck me.
It’s a fucking nightmare. I’m here. Believe me it’s a fucking nightmare.
There is nothing to be said to these apologists. The entire facility is now reduced to smoking rubble. The accident is now at level 6, and still developing. The plan now appears to be try and spray water into the enormous hole of Reactor 4 to try and fill up the spent fuel pool. It’s right out of the Keystone Cops. There is now more or less unanimous agreement by the Japanese officials and scientist that the containment vessel in Reactor 2 is breeched. Radiation is being detected hundreds of kilometers away, although, thankfully it is still at low levels. A howling west wind is helping.
These apologist should be sent to the accident site and made to do a turn at opening the relief valves by hand.
Fuck them. Fuck them with rusty razors. Make them eat plutonium for lunch.
F-U-U-U-CK YOU. You scum bag apologist.
Pigs & Spiders
@nancydarling: Sounds like anger issues to me. If people on the internet makes you want to kick puppies, I’d prescribe less internet.
DBrown
Pig – I know how smart you are but try reading a newspaper or look on the internet – oh my, the NYT leads with that story but that is a paper so of course it is wrong – you are a real winner, here. Your only purpose is to say all is well and get clowns to cry for you.
geg6
@Pigs & Spiders:
Yes, they have really held up well, haven’t they? Jeebus.
The biggest bit of poor planning in this whole mess is the idea of building nuclear power plants in one of the least geologically stable places on earth. And that WASN’T caused by mother nature, either. That is nothing more than the result of stupid, stupid human tricks.
Again, I can only go by what the people around me with vast knowledge of the nuclear industry tell me. But the idea that it’s safe and clean and green is a joke to them (especially due to the frightening lack of regulatory oversight), so I am pretty confident in saying that it’s a joke to me, too.
Dennis SGMM
@Pigs & Spiders:
Fukushima is releasing radiation from various sources into the open air. The wind there is predicted to blow at 12 meters per second to the Southeast. In a densely populated country like Japan there isn’t any such thing as a small impact. If you read the thread above, the authorities there have already decided that it’s too dangerous to refresh the spent fuel cooling ponds by means of fire hoses or helicopters. That suggests that things aren’t getting better.
DBrown
Nuke workers are dying and many more will die in there desperate efforts to stem and control those reactors and frankly, I give a shit if their leaking or open or covered with fairy dust – those people are dying and are making the greatest scarfice anyone can – and what are you doing? pig, you low life asswipe, you are making a mockerly of these brave people’s efforts with your lies that all is controlled and safe. So pig, you and your fellow paid clowns should tell these brave souls and their families how safe everything is and how everything worked.
You are worse than a typical paid whore – you are making a mockery of what these hero’s are going to save so many others. You and any clown that supports you are utter low life’s – shame on you and your puppet masters.
DBrown
Nuke workers are dying and many more will die in there desperate efforts to stem and control those reactors and frankly, I give a shit if their leaking or open or still holding – those people are dying and are making the greatest sacrifice anyone can – and what are you doing? pig, you low life asswipe, you are making a mockery of these brave people’s efforts with your lies by saying that all is controlled and safe. So pig, you and your fellow paid clowns should tell these brave souls and their families how safe everything is and how everything worked.
You are worse than a typical paid whore – you are making a mockery of what these heroe’s that are fighting on the front line saving so many others. You and any clowns that support you are utter low life’s – shame on you and greater shame on your puppet masters.
Pigs & Spiders
I’m clearly barking up the wrong tree trying to get anyone to be rational about this, so I’m going to go back to work. I’ll check in with y’all later.
singfoom
@Pigs & Spiders: I rationally think it’s a bad idea to generate power from a toxic process that can lead to catastrophic failure due to mother nature.
Nuclear power is inherently unsafe. You can cry about it. You can hem and haw about it.
Or we can stop investing in toxic energy and do something more productive with our money….
Seems rational to me.
magurakurin
@Pigs & Spiders:
Don’t bother checking back, asshole.
Seriously, what part of “fuck you with rusty razors” didn’t you understand?
Fuck off and die, shitbag.
rickstersherpa
@Dennis SGMM: To bootstrap on Dennis here, as we can see in Senator Shelby’s and Congressman Baachus’s shenanigans on enforcing rules on the banks, the rule of thumb for our Galtian overlords is that there is to be no regulation or oversight that could hurt the quarterly bottomline and thereby diminish the current CEO’s mega bonus, whether of bank, utility, or reactor manufacturer. But when the shit hits the fan, it willl be “hoocoodhadkno,” its the incompetent Government’s fault for not regulating us, and, who cares, the working class taxpayer will pick up the tab that we can’t stick onto the victims. Evacueees, after a brief month of concern and compassion, will be regarded as shiftless drunks if they don’t pick themselves up by their boot straps and start over (whether they be age 20 or age 60 is irrelevant). And remember, get rich before you get sick; if not, just die quickly.
Dennis SGMM
The shorter Pigs:
I can tell from the tone of your voice, Dave, that you’re upset. Why don’t you take a stress pill and get some rest?
PeakVT
@Jason: Fuck Saletan with a warm fuel rod.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@Dennis SGMM: There’s a song from a 1964 Carol Burnett musical that has the lines:
ETA: For the satire-impaired, the song is a satire on the upbeat, feel-good music of the Great Depression. Burnett sings it as the six-year-old Shirley Temple.
DBrown
Pigs is a total asswipe and realized his attacks and insults of the brave nuclear workers is not a winning path to get his pay masters to continue their support – I’m sure pig and his paid clown(s) will return again – be aware that besides thugs paying trolls to write on blog postings, it appears the nuke industry now is doing this – maybe not, maybe pig is just someone who lives only to justify the nuke industry and its accidents but then again, maybe pigs do fly.
magurakurin
@Dennis SGMM:
Daisy, Daisy. Give me your answer do…
bago
@mistermix: I’m sorry, but given the Republican deficit concern trolling that has been going on for all of my life… Seriously, never in my lifetime have I ever seen a republican balance a budget. Ever. I have no faith.
Dennis SGMM
@rickstersherpa:
AFAIK, the insurance industry still refuses to insure any US reactor for the full extent of any damage that it might cause. The government, which is to say us, is still the insurer of last resort.
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.
-Lily Tomlin
jheartney
Just as a reality-check, it’s pretty obvious to me that even if this accident doesn’t get any worse, nuclear power generally is toast going forward. Obama doesn’t need to announce any moratoriums.
Japan, unlike the old Soviet Union, is a modern, rich industrial country with, supposedly, both the smarts and the wherewithal to run nukes safely. A clusterfuck on this scale is a screaming neon sign saying nuclear power isn’t practical. The fanboys can come up with all the mitigating excuses and talking points they like, but no one will listen. Politically, nuclear electricity generating is dead.
Bill H.
This guy could not possibly be more full of shit. MMR may have been a lousy regulator, but NRC was not.
Three years ago the NRC caught the operators at San Onofre in some minor safety procedural violations. I read the press release and the infractions were very minor, but the reaction of the NRC was to place full-time, on-site inspectors in the plant for two years to assure proper training and supervision in the plant. After a year they were not entirely satisfied with progress and extended the full-time, on-site inspectors for another year.
We have not only never had another Three Mile Island, we have never come within shouting distance of such an event, and we have the governmental NRC to thank for that, because they have done an absolutely superlative job.
nancydarling
@Pigs & Spiders: I’d say you’re definitly irony deficient, Pig. If you can’t see humor in much of the name calling here at BJ, you need to read this report and maybe see yourself in it.
http://www.ejop.org/archives/2005/08/religious_faith.html
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@jheartney:
Yeah, right.
McConnell Defends Nuclear Power Amid Japan Fears
daverave
One of the few things we got right here:
“On June 6, 1989, Sacramento became the first — and only — community in the world to shutter a nuclear power plant by public vote.”
It helps that the utility that ran it is community-owned (communist!) so profits were not sacred. Also, too, the fact that the reactor was extremely inefficient, was always having problems, was unreliable and a financial black hole… probably all due to not having the invisible hand of the free market guiding its operations.
DBrown
Bill H.; maybe but then that leaves open the issue that the Japanese reactors are an later model of a design used for something like thirty-one US reactors that are still running after years of people saying since 1973 that the design is flawed? Why have we not built one Candu reactor in the US which is well know to be ultra safe?
Please, a few detail answers – denials or side stepping will just prove that you are either wrong or lying.
catclub
@MikeJ: 1. I thought that the max peak was 8217 microsieverts.
2. I have also seen the radiation measured as microsieverts/hour
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@nancydarling: Thank you for that link. I’m addicted to this kind of stuff. What street corner do you deal from?
nancydarling
Has any one but me noticed that Pig’s literary sources for his moniker are devolving like HAL the computer? He’s gone from The Fountain Head (Rand) to Pigs & Spiders (E. B. White). Will his next incarnation be Humpty Dumpty?
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@nancydarling: I wouldn’t call moving from Rand to E. B. White devolving. Quite the contrary.
nancydarling
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude: Age appropriateness is the issue here.
jheartney
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
Oh, I’m not saying there won’t be a defense offered. The industry is big enough to have tools like McConnell say whatever they want said. It just isn’t going to make any difference.
TMI could be passed off as a fluke that didn’t result in any large-scale radiation release. Chernobyl could be blamed (not without justification) on the evil/corrupt/feckless commies. But this one? Huh uh.
The pictures of the trashed reactor buildings belching radioactive steam tell the story. Nobody is going to allow another one of those to be built going forward.
Ironically, the firehose of excuses being blasted by the industry and its tools, not to mention the loud assertions that all was well at every stage of the unfolding disaster, will be what kills the industry. No reason anyone should believe anything that they say. Even if the Candu version is as good as is being claimed around here, no one will believe it. I sure don’t.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@jheartney: In a rational political environment, I would agree with you.
I don’t know anything about Candu other than what I’ve read here, so, in defiance of the BJ Commenter Code, I don’t have an opinion about it.
catclub
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
I have read about some inherently safe reactor designs.
I think they are inherently safe in terms of loss of reactor control, but may have nuclear proliferation dangers instead.
Isn’t fluidized bed one of them? Is that the same as Candu?
My guess is that Candu is more expensive to build, and given
how godawful expensive they already are to build, an increase in cost kills the economics of the project – even with the government subisdizing insurance and promising a waste storage solution.
DBrown
Bill H., where have you been during these rants the last few days? We sure could use someone with your background and knowledge – please wade in and add your voice, (Mine gets a little bit… , ok, a lot, off the wall!) Thanks.
Nied
I think part of the problem people have with Nuclear energy is that the overwhelming majority of people know fuck all of how it works. From talking to people over the last week and reading comments in various blogs it appears people think the process works something like this: 1. H-bomb parts go in the big funnel smokestack thing 2. Electricity and radiation come out. Most don’t even realize that the majority of reactors in the US work on a completely different principle from Fukushima (that’s vastly safer). Or that there are even safer designs like CANDU that could actually run on the waste from our current reactors instead of burying it (Single payer and safe nuclear energy, is there anything Canada can’t do better than us?) Fukushima is bad don’t get me wrong, a horrible confluence of corruption, mismanagement and one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history. Even still it’s about a tenth as bad Chernobyl (like the Richter scale the INES scale is logarithmic) and it’s more than likely that the whole area around the plant will be perfectly safe within a year.
DBrown
The Candu uses heavy water and un-enriched uranium and yes, is higher cost on a kilowatt bases but requires fewer safety systems due to the fact that active cooling can fail and no problems occur. All fission based reactors have a nasty waste issue but so do coal plants. Can’t say if one is worse than another but with AGW threatening millions of lives, I could live with Candu’s and the power we get without all the CO2 but then again,I’m lazy and like my life style.
DBrown
Ok Nied, so far that is true (your last part, no argument about CANDU and their health care) and I really hope that today is the start of better news from Japan!
Nylund
@Bob:
.
I suggest you bone up on your basic reading skills:
The $300 isn’t the total price of the van, its the increase in the total price of the van. BIG DIFFERENCE.
Bob
@Pococurante:
My beef with the UCS claims isn’t that the Domestics can’t meet high standards, it is that no automaker on the planet has met the standards they claim is so easy and cheap and can make our fleet AVERAGE 35 mpg.
Keep in mind, I support anti-climate change actions, such as raising the gas tax. I just don’t think the UCS is better at engineering cars than every auto engineer in the world.
What they say reminds me of the urban legend of the 100 mpg carburetor. The legend was that the auto companies bought the patent to keep selling gas.
Bob
@Nylund:
I know it is not a $300 van. It is $300 in extra, fuel saving technologies, which they claim will enable carmakers to have a 35 mpg fleet average.
Why isn’t some carmaker, somewhere on the planet building a fleet of cars, so easily and cheap that their AVERAGE is 35 mpg? If it were easy, Toyota, Honda or someone whould do it.
Bob
@DBrown:
I am the dumb Bob (lots of Bobs here.) that supports the objectives and anti-climate change objectives of the UCS. But, because they say things that are not technologically feasible, I get irate that they discredit environmentalists as a whole.
I support cap and trade , increasing the gas tax and other measures to reduce CO2, but I do not think it will be a free or cheap lunch as the UCS makes it sound.
Nied
@DBrown: Honestly if I had my druthers we’d start a program to replace the 31 BWRs (Boiling Water Reactors, the same principle as the Fukushima reactors) in the US by building CANDUs in situ and fueling them with the waste from the BWRs that’s sitting around the plant.
Nied
@catclub:
I think you’re thinking of Pebble Bed Reactors, which are just as awesome as but work on a different principle as CANDU. Neither pose big proliferation problems since they don’t run on highly enriched fuels (although both can run on de-enriched fuel from decommissioned nuclear weapons). CANDU is a variation of a pressurized water reactor, with added safety measures built in to the design and using heavy water as a moderator as DBrown mentioned. PBRs use a vat of fuel pellets about the size of a baseball that are cooled by high a pressure gas like helium or Carbon dioxide instead of water like most current designs. The nice thing about them is that they get less powerful the hotter they get so in the event of a coolant failure (like at Fukushima) the reactor stops working rather than melting down. They aren’t perfect however since the fuel pellets are coated in carbon which may (there’s actually some dispute about this) burst into flames if exposed to oxygen at the temperatures a PBR operates at.
Bill H.
@DBrown:
The Fukushima reactors are boiling water reactor type that was built in the US in the sixties and discontinued in the seventies. We have, I believe, thirty or so, all built about the same time that these Japanese reactors were built, and I do not regard them as a good design. They were created as a cost cutting measure, since the reactor can be lighter than that required by the pressurized water reactor type that the San Onofre reactor is. The AEC outlawed them sometime around 1980, which doesn’t exactly sound like extreme incompetence.
The issue that I was addressing, however was regulation of operation and safety of ongoing use. Can you cite for me one single instance since Three Mile Island of a reactor accident that required an emergency scram of even one reactor unit?
Bill H.
Sorry, I just reread your post. No, they are not of a later basic design. They are the same old Mark 1 and Mark 2 boiling water types, built in the early 1970’s.
And since Three Mile Island, I believe, we have not built any nuclear power plants, CANDU or otherwise.
Neutron Flux
@Bill H #118. I agree with your account of what happened at San Onofre. Safety Conscious Work Envoirnment is front and center at all NPP’s in the US as a result.
DBrown
OK BOB, point made and accepted- you aren’t dumb and I was wrong to say that – my dumb mistake and I am sorry; I too make mistakes in posting and should not throw stones … except at pig,.
DBrown
Bill H.,
refreshing to read someone who knows what they are saying – thanks. Corrections on my posts are welcome.
Neutron Flux
@Bill H #118.
Reactor Trips (Scrams) are pretty common. You can check this link daily from the NRC website and it will tell you all of plant events in the last 24 hours.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/en.html
RalfW
@Nied
Now I’ll grant that this was just one nuclear scientist, and on the peoples glorious socialist revolution radio network (NPR), but dude was suggesting that farmland near the reactor site might not be able to produce human-edible food for 100 years.
Rank speculation at this point.
But so is saying it’ll all be fine in a jiffy.
I have heard that things are not so awful around Chernobyl now, but it’s been what, 25 years? Maybe, if Japan is lucky, in 10 years people can be within a few km’s of whatever sarcophagus gets put over Fuku-fucked-up.
DBrown
Here is a mjor one that didn’t occur very long ago. This issue and the NRC was a major failure and this failure/problem could, I believe, endanger all plants – the issue was found at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Plant (some time in 2001) – boron had corroded away a very deep hole in the reactor “cap”. This could and would have led to massive and large loss of coolent from the main reactor.
Stuff happens but experts feel that the NRC didn’t really do their job there. The NRC had accepted the companies pleas to delay work/inspections and this problem came rather close to the point of failure due to that. True, no failure but it did come to a hair-length of being a critical failure. Isn’t that what the NRC is supposed to prevent before it gets that close and aren’t they supposed not to give in to operators just because? Rather poor over site, I believe.
geg6
@Neutron Flux:
True. It’s happened at the plant here on pretty much an annual basis that is reported in the local press. The people who work there tell me it happens all the damn time.
Bill H.
@Neutron Flux:
Well, three were listed there, all of which were “nonemergency” and none of which were the result of accidents. I don’t feel like searching, maybe you can find one for me that is of the “emergency” category and that is the result of an accident?
So, DBrown, we find one corroded cap and conclude that the NRC has done a lousy job, disregarding 30+ years of many reactors (including the one with the corroded cap) operating completely accident free?
Miriam
@mistermix: Yeah. They are going to make sure no regulator goes near a Nuclear plant ever again.
The whole point of the GOP is to trigger the End of Times by causing world wide devastation.
Miriam
@Bob: It could be built, it would just be a death trap. Even worse than the Tata cars in India. The American people don’t like it when they end up in a Carbeque, so American cars cost more to make sure that people don’t die and their damages are minimal in even incredibly dangerous situations. The cars sold in America have programming and safety equipment to protect the driver from their own stupidity.
Nied
@RalfW:
Things will have to get quite a bit worse at Fukushima for it to get anywhere near the level of Chernobyl. At Chernobyl the reactor itself was exposed by an honest to god nuclear explosion (though not one nearly as powerful as a full fledgedr bomb) and proceeded to burn for days sending fallout for thousands of miles. The absolute worst case scenario for Fukushima at this point are the less radioactive spent fuel rods catching fire for an extended period of time which would spread fallout for several miles and that fallout would be much less radioactive than the stuff Chernobyl threw out. It’s looking less and less likely that the reactor material is going to escape their containment vessels so cleanup should be much easier than Chernobyl (a sarcophogus probably wont be necessary since the reactor vessel can just be pulled out and carted off to be safely stored).
People work and even live in plenty of places where it wouldn’t be suitable for farming right now without issue. There will be plenty of other things that can be built on that land (including housing) in a relatively short amount of time that wouldn’t pose any kind of health effects. Although given the stigma that’s likely to be associated with the area it might make for a great site for a wind farm.
Cermet
@Bill H.: I don’t see how this addresses DBrown’s concern – appears the NRC failed for reasons that show that what mistermix said was correct.
For a nuke reactor, a critical problem that affects the primary cooling loop and one that could led to primary coolant lost, is a major deal and just missing a major accident by the skin of one teeth is hardly proof that the system works – rather, had the NRC found this problem well before it became almost critical AND had not delayed inspection by pressure from the company, then I’d be more willing to agree with your assessment.
Finally, are not all reactors based on steel for their primary coolant systems/reactor walls and isn’t boron used for all coolant loops? I’d say this is a very scary problem for all US reactors.
Maybe not but looks to be rather big and that the NRC really did drop the ball in a big way for reasons that should never be allowed. My take.
Wolfdaughter
Sigh. This CANDU (I suppose this stands for Canadian Uranium or some such) sounds better than what we have now. BUT. I don’t buy your all-to-sanguine faith that a CANDU will never fail. It’s designed and built by humans.
Also, given the current regulatory climate or lack thereof in this country, with inmates running the insane asylum, I don’t want to see something built which, if it failed, could cause colossal damage, possibly for many years to come. OK, by the time such a plant were actually built, we might have a different regulatory climate. MIGHT. But it could be flawed from the getgo just because of lack of oversight now.
Someone, I think in this thread, who’s in favor of nuclear power, had the NERVE to post that continuing to defend fossil fuels, with the undoubted safety problems, was insane. Talk about a straw man. I’ve been following threads on BJ, Huffpo/AOL, Salon, and I’ve not seen one, not one post by us tree-huggers defending fossil fuels!
My position is that obviously we need to replace fossil fuels to the extent possible. I also believe that there will not be one modality to replace them. Nuclear plants are exceedingly expensive to build and there’s a long lead time. Why not put some of those resources to improving already extant technology in the true renewables? Yes, that’s also a long lead time, but it’s a PERMANENT solution, not a stopgap. Plus a little conservation is always good.
I’ve seen countless posts by nuclear power defenders by now, and you all share the problem of binary assumptions. Try to think outside your narrow assumptions.
Bill Murray
@jibeaux: The rare earth mining will produce much Thorium, which in many ways is a far better nuclear fuel than Uranium (except for the not producing nuclear bomb materials). India and China are building new Thorium based power plants off of designs from Oak Ridge National Labs. Not that there aren’t some problems with Thorium, but the technology does get away from nearly all the really bad problems in Uranium reactors, and some versions even destroy the waste from the old Uranium nuclear plants.
Nied
You’re close, CANDU stands for CANadian Deuterium Uranium (deuterium or heavy water is used as the coolant medium).
As for why so many take the binary position that it’s Nuclear or fossil fuels, that comes from a simple hard look at the numbers, and right now renewables just aren’t capable of replacing fossil based sources, and building a few more wind farms or solar plants won’t be able to cut it. We’re talking an order of magnitude deficiency here and that’s at current usage rates, it just gets worse when you factor in population growth in the future. So I doubt you’ll find many nuclear proponents argue against renewables (I certainly don’t) but we’ve done the math and there has to be something else thrown in if we’re going to meet our needs, nuclear just happens to be the least pie-in-the-sky option out there.
Lidia
@Bob: They do it, just not in the US. Ford’s European cars get way better gas mileage than the US versions of the same model (eg., Fiesta). Plus there are lots of diesel options that get better mileage and also last longer.
But the best thing to do is to strive to reduce car usage in the first place.