Patterico's Pontifications

3/18/2011

Japan Admits That Nuclear Disaster Is Serious Enough to Kill

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 9:52 am



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update: Charlie Martin puts this story in some perspective.  Best line:  “But it’s also like saying ‘the truck reached 40 miles an hour, enough to kill people.’  It doesn’t mean ‘people are dying’, it means ‘get out of the way of trucks’.”

I have taken some flak for being, well… pessimistic about the nuclear disaster over in Japan.  It is fair to say that I always believed it was worse than they were telling us.  My gut feeling all along was they were downplaying the whole thing and bluntly in my experience my “gut feelings” are usually right.  Take for instance this report:

The boss of the company behind the devastated Japanese nuclear reactor today broke down in tears – as his country finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens

Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency admitted that the disaster was a level 5, which is classified as a crisis causing ‘several radiation deaths’ by the UN International Atomic Energy.

Officials said the rating was raised after they realised the full extent of the radiation leaking from the plant. They also said that 3 per cent of the fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima plant had been severely damaged, suggesting those reactor cores have partially melted down.

After Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cried as he left a conference to brief journalists on the situation at Fukushima, a senior Japanese minister also admitted that the country was overwhelmed by the scale of the tsunami and nuclear crisis.

He said officials should have admitted earlier how serious the radiation leaks were.

Now that doesn’t mean everyone should be freaking out, and it doesn’t mean that suddenly we have to stop nuclear power (although I give it about a 50% chance that Obama will announce a nuclear moratorium similar to the drilling moratorium).  Yes, radiation is scary, because it is hard to assess the danger of it, but we have to learn to think rationally about it—especially if we are ever going to shift away from our dependence on foreign oil.  At the very least any person who says they don’t want us to use nuclear power needs to answer this question: if not nuclear power, then what do we use instead?  Environmentalists don’t like nuclear power oil, coal, complain that dams are ruining habitats, and, hell, the late Ted Kennedy opposed the rational use of wind power for years because supposedly it would harm his view and thus his property values.  Obviously not all power sources are created equal, but we can’t just pretend that every possible option is too awful to contemplate (although you often suspect that some environmentalists really just want none of the above, hoping for us to return to the wild or something.  The rest of us think that is insanity).

In a related story we have this story discussing some of what led to this nuclear disaster:

The unfolding disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant follows decades of falsified safety reports, fatal accidents and underestimated earthquake risk in Japan’s atomic power industry.

The destruction caused by last week’s 9.0 earthquake and tsunami comes less than four years after a 6.8 quake shut the world’s biggest atomic plant, also run by Tokyo Electric Power Co. In 2002 and 2007, revelations the utility had faked repair records forced the resignation of the company’s chairman and president, and a three-week shutdown of all 17 of its reactors.

With almost no oil or gas reserves of its own, nuclear power has been a national priority for Japan since the end of World War II, a conflict the country fought partly to secure oil supplies. Japan has 54 operating nuclear reactors — more than any other country except the U.S. and France — to power its industries, pitting economic demands against safety concerns in the world’s most earthquake-prone country.

And of course GE built the failing reactors, so they are facing problems:

The crisis at a Japanese nuclear plant that uses General Electric Co built reactors following last week’s disastrous earthquake and tsunami is a reputational black eye that could badly hurt its efforts to grow its nuclear business.

But the largest U.S. conglomerate does not face much direct legal risk due to Japanese laws channeling liability to plant operators and the government, rather than equipment suppliers, and a drop in demand for nuclear reactors could boost demand for gas turbines, coal plants and other GE-made equipment.

“You do have reputational damage any time you have a company like GE associated with a massive disaster, a nuclear incident, that is a terrible thing. But from a strict liability perspective, the issues are extremely limited,” said Steven Winoker, an analyst at Bernstein Research.

Read the whole thing.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

73 Responses to “Japan Admits That Nuclear Disaster Is Serious Enough to Kill”

  1. yeah i did it, i posted AGAIN on the nuclear meltdowns. oh noes, 500 comments again!

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  2. Except many of those 500 comments had, um, not so much to do with that topic.

    Simon Jester (ea2bef)

  3. no use crying over spilled radiations Mr. Japanese utility man we just have to clean it up it’s not your fault the angry water came after the shaky shaky it was a complete fluke and you know what it could have been a lot worse

    happyfeet (a55ba0)

  4. Cynic’s rule of bureaucracy

    Any bureaucrat (which of course includes almost all government officials and many corporate managers and executives) can be depended upon to always claim that a problem is not as serious as it really is, or that it is someone else’s responsibility.

    Corollary of the above–when a bureaucrat says we have a serious problem, it probably means we are up the fecal brook without the proper means of motive power.

    (Remember the Coast Guard admiral who announced one day after the Deepwater Horizon explosion that everything was safe and sound and there was no evidence of a leak?)

    so your “gut feelings” is my basic assumption in these cases.

    The news today, btw, is reporting that extremely low levels of radiation are reaching California (not anywhere near the level needed to impact anyone’s health) and that passengers flying in from Tokyo to Chicago and Dallas have set off the TSA’s radiation monitors.

    kishnevi (2fb3dd)

  5. As I understand it, the afflicted plants are using 40-year-old technology and the Japanese acknowledged they were due for upgrades but kept putting the work off. (Yeah, politicians are the same everywhere.)

    The latest generation of nuclear plants would not have suffered meltdowns under these conditions. This needs to be kept in mind when the future of nuclear power in the U.S. is finally decided by those least equipped to take that decision.

    navyvet (db5856)

  6. Maybe more experts can advise us to just take showers…

    The sad thing is that the reactor design, neigh the whole idea of nuclear power had some hurdles that could never get over, the inability to have passive cooling systems (which dont really exist) and the ability to more rapidly sow down the aboration of physics that we created.

    If anyone was paying attention if was trying to get our new resident expert to realize that those reactors had SEVERAL serious TMI and CHERNOBYL accidents before the earth quake.

    Japan, especially business – is still in the hands of very corrupt people the same families that goaded the army into the China incident are still running the main corporations which have very shady structures that its almost impossible to tell who owns who.

    At Amoco our dealing with Japex was eye opening to say the least during the Watt lease sales.

    I’m not surprized, astonished, except that they admitted it

    EricPWJohnson (477908)

  7. Nuclear submarines have gravity cooling systems to reduce noise. There are new designs, such as pebble bed reactors, and most of the problems in the industry are political. The anti-nuclear activists have dominated the information about the industry for 50 years. The result has been a lack of innovation and a freezing in place outdated designs and concepts.

    Mike K (8f3f19)

  8. Mike,

    No they dont, please the russians tried it once, that why there is some place in the north seas – no one fishes from

    EricPWJohnson (477908)

  9. I highly doubt it but what do i know i’am just an 800 pound gorilla in the room or the website.

    DohBiden (984d23)

  10. kish

    > The news today, btw, is reporting that extremely low levels of radiation are reaching California

    Does that mean Patrick will be able to do this?

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  11. Mike,

    This isnt about anti nucear activism, this is about corporate corruption and the pursuit of profits over safety, we can all argue realistic merits but a chevy engine exploding or an bad can of beans usually doesnt cause 140,000 people to evacuate or seal themselves inside – or a fleet of helicopters to try an desperately deluge it with water.

    The facts are – we cant stop the reaction and e cant control if it we lose power.

    And the station, according to a leading expert – a real expert – wasnt damaged by the earthquake and I’ll bet the next disclosure is that there wasnt any Tsunami wall either – just a typhoon wall

    EricPWJohnson (477908)

  12. Aaron, that’s–well, never mind, South Park is its own category of disgusting….

    Umm, no, the esteemed Mr. Frey, Mrs, Frey and the little Freys are in no real danger. Nor are Mr. Feets, aphrael, their spouses, and whatever other Californians congregate here. One story I heard said the amount of radiation was about equal to one chest x-ray; another version said the level of danger was “one billion” times the level of radiation actually detected.

    I’m sure given the “OH NOES!” potential of this part of the story, we’ll be hearing plenty of stuff on the news about it.

    kishnevi (2fb3dd)

  13. The result has been a lack of innovation and a freezing in place outdated designs and concepts.

    Comment by Mike K — 3/18/2011 @ 10:53 am

    Exactly!

    The anti-nuke crowd has guaranteed that the majority of nuclear energy plants in this country were designed in the 1960’s and built using techniques in the 1970’s. instead of allowing newer, better design to come on-line and permit older plants to be retired. The activists’ own actions have heightened the risk to the public of a nuclear accident.

    in_awe (44fed5)

  14. A minute amount of radiation has reached california so let’s freak out about how california will be the victim of gorebull warming and the entire population will die of radiation poisoning in 6 hours.

    DohBiden (984d23)

  15. A pebble bed comes with 350,000 self-heating charcoal briquets.

    jim2 (48087a)

  16. Kyodo News reports Japan has raised the accident severity level to 5, the same level as Three Mile Island. They are also sending in specialized Tokyo fire squads to help the helicopters spray water on the reactors.

    In the meantime, I wish the Japanese would ask for more help feeding and helping the victims of the earthquake and tsunami. This story is especially moving.

    DRJ (fdd243)

  17. just a typhoon wall
    That shouldn’t make a big difference, if the typhoon wall was properly built (and it might not have been properly built). The storm surge from a tropical cyclone/typhoon/hurricane is essentially a a big wall of water being pushed forward by massive winds–and in a tropical system the winds, unlike the wall of water, will maintain themselves for at least several hours, which can be even more stressful for a structure. A strong enough storm system might actually produce more damage than a tsunami, although the damage would be much more localized.
    So a wall built to withstand a category 5 storm would probably also withstand a tsunami, unless its structural integrity was compromised by the preceding earthquake.

    kishnevi (2fb3dd)

  18. This isn’t due to nuclear energy itself but 37% of people would not trust nuclear power.

    DohBiden (984d23)

  19. No Kishnevi, dynamic loads from a large surge will place greater forces on a structure than a gradually rising storm surge.

    Most of a storm surge will be high water. The rest will be wave action on top. The wave action is additional force on top of the hydrostatic force from water. Tsunamis have more wave action and the same hydrostatic force. It’s kind of a no brainer.

    Newtons.Bit (922da8)

  20. Newton–that’s not a storm surge (or more precisely, not the only type of storm surge).

    A storm surge is really a wall of water being pushed ahead of the storm by the winds: it’s a sudden event, not a gradual event like a flood. So it’s as much a wave action event as a tsunami.

    Rereading the article on safety problems linked by Aaron, it seems the tsunami wall was only built to withstand a 5.9 meter event, and this tsunami was a 7 meter event.

    kishnevi (2fb3dd)

  21. If anyone was paying attention if was trying to get our new resident expert to realize that those reactors had SEVERAL serious TMI and CHERNOBYL accidents before the earth quake.

    Yeah, because everyone knows that there were several Japanese reactions with graphite moderators burning uncontrolled.

    EPWJ making up stuff again.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  22. I guess I have to ask: can we really expect every island nation on the planet to build all their essential facilities to withstand any possible, extremely unlikely, particularly unprecedented natural disaster?

    Japan isn’t like the USA. They have to build everything in earthquake zones. They have to build a lot of their facilities near the ocean. They have to rely on nuclear power.

    There are an awful lot of natural disasters that have never happened, but could happen in the next 1,000 years.

    What I see is a success. Yes, it’s still a disaster that will hurt people and cause a massive cleanup, amid a disaster that killed thousands and requires a rebuilding of much of the country, but the most serious types and degrees of radiation exposure have actually been prevented by design. It’s not perfect, but there’s plenty of indication that because of the design of the MK1, the disaster resulted in much milder consequences.

    I am actually satisfied with that. If we prepare for 1,000 year earthquakes, we are irrational not to prepare for every other 1,000 year event. That’s only possible to the degree of limiting damage. We simply cannot make these things perfectly, and we probably can’t proceed as a civilization without power plants like this.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  23. I heard the 1 billion factor as Kishnevi did.

    I heard that there are people dieing in rescue shelters from hypothermia, that the lack of electricity from the plants may end up killing more than the plant radiation.

    I agree with the view that a 9.0 quake and resulting tsunami is a massive catastrophe and the nuclear story is relatively small. that of course does not mean it is OK not to be truthful about it.

    I heard that the “final solution” would be to dump liquid cement on it and bury them, as they aren’t going to be usable again anyway. Let’s see what the nuclear energy experts have to say.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  24. Christiane Amanturd says a similar disaster will happen here in the next 5 years,Ohnoez everyone panic.

    /Sarc

    DohBiden (984d23)

  25. I have taken some flak for being, well… pessimistic about the nuclear disaster over in Japan. It is fair to say that I always believed it was worse than they were telling us.

    I think as events unfold, it’s important to keep a couple of things in mind.

    First, while I expected the Japanese to be stingy with the information I don’t believe they’d outright lie. They’ve tried that before and it didn’t work. In any case you can not hide a radiological disaster.

    Second, most if not all of the people reporting on this are in way over their heads. I’ve turned off the news, and it might be a good idea for everyone else. I spent 20 years in the Navy, and I know who to turn to for good information on nuclear power. And they largely direct me to sites they tell me are accurate, as they themselves don’t want to risk giving up NNPI.

    “The Stupid Shall be Punished” has a good discussion on this; it’s a blog run by a former submariner. MIT’s school of nuclear science and engineering has a number of good posts explaining what’s going on & what the people responding to this are dealing with. The one dealing with decay heat is particularly valuable as that is the main problem right now.

    After that, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the ANS nuclear cafe, and NHK World in English for general news about Japan.

    Last but not least keep the guys doing the damage control in your thoughts and prayers. That they are still on the job, given the devastation the earthquake and tsunami caused around them & they probably have issues of their own to deal with in addition to a work site falling apart, leads me to suspect that certain parts of their anatomy are huge and made out of brass.

    Steve (49173f)

  26. Yes, the Japanese government is going to downplay the risk, that is expected. Yes, the MSM is going to exaggerate the risk, that is also expected. For those interested in determining the risk to folks on the ground you should know that that risk lies someplace between.

    My parents called me last night and asked me, “you’re a Nuclear Engineer how worried should we be?” I told them the truth, I don’t know, I am not there, I do not know the facts on the ground. However, I can say one thing, those supposed experts being interviewed on the TV news don’t know anything either and if they say that they do they are pushing an agenda, not reporting facts. I imagine in a couple weeks time we will have a better idea of what happened and how close we got to disaster, but as for now, I would say that it has been a week since this thing started and the probability is pretty darned good that the worst is over.

    thomas (9681be)

  27. What else did you expect from the LSM?

    DohBiden (984d23)

  28. I imagine in a couple weeks time we will have a better idea of what happened and how close we got to disaster…

    I imagine if we’re not all still here in a couple of weeks the answer will be, “Too close.”

    When I was listing good sources of information earlier, I forgot to mention to do a search for the DOE’s fundamentals handbook 1019. Don’t imagine that reading through it will make you an expert, but it will put you light years ahead of a reporter.

    Steve (49173f)

  29. I’ll go on the record now and predict the same number of deaths and radiation related illness from the incident in Fukushima as was experienced at Three Mile Island.

    For those playing from home that would be zero.

    Rodney G. Graves (f12db5)

  30. “Yes, radiation is scary, because it is hard to assess the danger of it”

    Actually, from what I can tell, assessing the danger of it would be relatively easy, except that any time radiation is involved everybody collectively loses their minds. Or, rather, and time it comes to the attention of a certain class of alarmist that radiation from some unapproved source is involved. They don’t seem to care about the radiation from granite, or from living in Aspen (that high up).

    My father spent WWII refining uranium at Oak Ridge TN. He’s 87, and hale. The predictions of mass cancer deaths at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl never panned out. Expected long term sickness at Hiroshima and Nagasaki turned out to be much higher than was actually the case.

    Radiation from Japan is probably going to do far less damage to public health in the U.S. than hysteria about it. Pity that the very worst of the professional hysterics seem to have the constitution of so many oxen.

    C. S. P. Schofield (71781e)

  31. Some of the links referred to by Steve in his comments above:

    1) Google “Department of Energy Handbook 1019” to bring up various links; the document itself is a 1.2 MB PDF

    2) The Stupid Shall Be Punished : http://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/
    Although the last post related to Japan dates from Monday, and his politics is described thusly:
    Politically, I’m a moderate realist. In Idaho, that makes me a Democrat.

    3) The MIT blog is here: http://mitnse.com/

    kishnevi (a6ffde)

  32. If anyone was paying attention if was trying to get our new resident expert to realize that those reactors had SEVERAL serious TMI and CHERNOBYL accidents before the earth quake.

    Links please?

    Because that statement is complete garbage.

    TomB (03bb50)

  33. If I remember correctly, nuclear reactors are designed so that, if there is total power failure, emergency shutdown control rods drop into the reactor core, shutting it down. (Electricity is needed to keep the rods suspended, so a power failure will cause them to drop.)

    Michael Ejercito (64388b)

  34. Michael,

    In BWR control rods enter from the bottom of the pressure vessel. They are spring loaded such that a loss of latching voltage causes them to be inserted back into the core. The reactors at Fukushima SCRAMmed when the quake hit, and were doing fine until the Tsunami wiped out the electrical switching equipment, thus severely curtailing the operators ability to remove decay heat from the already shut down reactors.

    Rodney G. Graves (f12db5)

  35. TomB,

    EPWJ is talking out his anal orifice.

    Rodney G. Graves (f12db5)

  36. It’s true that “The Stupid Shall be Punished” hasn’t had a new blog post on the accident at Fukushima for awhile, but the commenters are staying on top of the news along with their observations.

    The Atomic Insights blog is another site I should mention. The blogger’s another nuclear trained submariner, who just retired after nearly 30 years, who’s providing some perspective on this. Occasionally joined by people who can hardly be called amateurs around a nuclear reactor, such as Ted Rockwell, who was ADM Rickover’s technical director for 15 years.

    When people like that say that there is no radiation danger and that there will be no radiation danger to the general public, I believe them. Note: that is not the same thing as saying there will be no radiation.

    Steve (49173f)

  37. Rodney,

    Well, no not really. The problems with nuclear energy has always been the physics – because of lawsuits, interference, the costs went up and so they had to build really big reactors to generate the power needed to break even. The Japanese hve had serious problems with two of those reactors – especially in the last 8 years

    EricPWJohnson (477908)

  38. The Japanese hve had serious problems with two of those reactors – especially in the last 8 years

    Still waiting for those links desciribing those “Chernobyl” style accidents you wrote of earlier

    TomB (03bb50)

  39. If the government was actually concerned with radiation they would take out those body scanners that have turned out to have 10X the radiation output than TSA claimed. But of course this is really about crippling the energy industry and subjecting us to their control, so they will talk out of both sides of their arse.

    ray (99928d)

  40. EPWJ,

    You wrote earlier:

    If anyone was paying attention if was trying to get our new resident expert to realize that those reactors had SEVERAL serious TMI and CHERNOBYL accidents before the earth quake.

    You were called on it.

    Put up your supporting evidence or take your fecal smelling breath elsewhere.

    Rodney G. Graves (f12db5)

  41. EPWJ is a liar?

    SHOCKER….not

    DohBiden (984d23)

  42. Rodney

    Gave you the info, go find out for yourself, take your sanctimonious bullcrap where it belongs – yeah pretend nthing happened

    EricPWJohnson (477908)

  43. The links were sent to Aaron and I believe I posted them, Nuclear power today – go find the articles

    EricPWJohnson (477908)

  44. The usually cheese-eating surrender monkeys derive 78% of their electrical power from nuclear energy. I’m surprised the Green movement ever allowed that in France. I think the figure for the US is 20%. Obama does not want us using our own resources and talks the BS wind power and other alternative energy crap. So it is ok for him to ignore court injunctions against offshore drilling moratorium. It is fine for the Chicoms to drill for oil in the Caribbean around Cuba. No one seems to mention that Cuba has an old nuke plant in relatively poor repair. I suppose the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Peninsula would be ok with a meltdown in Cuba? Sure, and yet Obama’s puppet urged people on the west coast to stock up on KI.
    When I was a kid, you could try on shoes and see the fit with some kind of X-ray machines in the stores. That was around the time of ABOVE ground nuclear testing ninety miles from Las Vegas. In retrospect one might wonder how much radiation was released during those years? I never managed to be awake when a bomb went off and broke windows locally. I think it was usually around 5am.
    South Florida had some wicked hurricane activity 2004-2005. It was a good excuse for insurers to gouge people with big rate hikes and for some insured to scam the insurers with fake claims. At least all that infrastructure damage in Japan should create a big demand for building materials.
    One might also question the fact that those damaged plants are GE designed from decades ago and apparently due to be phased out. Are the greens going to urge that high speed trains have a moratorium also? I mean, how many people died on those trains due to earthquake/tsunami vs. deaths from radiation leakage?

    Calypso Louie Farrakhan (798aba)

  45. Rodney, and calling me names just shows wht a total ignoramous you are especially when a simple google will show you that these plants have had a stories histor of poor design, construction, maintenance.

    These plants – for your information, I’m pro nuclear power, just not pro ignorant correupt companies whoses executives have resigned in disgrace and whose plants have had serious problems for decades

    But you can ignore it and keep saying all is well, all is well

    EricPWJohnson (477908)

  46. Rodney, and calling me names just shows wht a total ignoramous you are especially when a simple google will show you that these plants have had a stories histor of poor design, construction, maintenance.

    If you make an assertion, it is up to you to support it. Otherwise it is safe to say you don’t know what you are talking about, or worse, lying.

    TomB (03bb50)

  47. TomB

    I didnt make an assertion – i relayed facts – if you want to dispute them – then you need to contact the publishers of the industry magazine, the peope at TEPCO respnsible for the press releases of the accidents, the Govt of Japan Nuclear regulatory agency and all of them

    I didnt make any assertions

    get off your lazy as$ and go find some facts read the press releases – a flooded reactor flooe and a long shutdown over and over and over – esplosions and steam vented and more shutowns

    this was decades before the tsunami

    I’m only relaying what they are publishing

    I dont need to support anything

    Simple as that

    EricPWJohnson (58b455)

  48. Now I’n busy go back to yor nothingburgerness and enjoy trying to pile a nucler accident that daily is making the nothing wrong with nuclear energy crowd apologists look almost as stupid as the environmentalists that opposed them

    Hint, they built the thing on the coast why?

    EricPWJohnson (58b455)

  49. Words mean things, Eric, that incident in 1978, can in no way be compared to TMI, nor the one in 2007.

    narciso (a3a9aa)

  50. I didnt make any assertions

    Cut-and-pasted from you comment at

    If anyone was paying attention if was trying to get our new resident expert to realize that those reactors had SEVERAL serious TMI and CHERNOBYL accidents before the earth quake.

    That, by anyone’s definition, is an assertion. And you have been completely unable to support it. It is safe, therefore, to ignore it.

    Perhaps instead of backpedaling, you should retract the statment.

    The fact of the matter is that Chernobyl was a historically bad accident, a 7 on a scale of 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale as measured by the IAEA.

    It is the ONLY accident even to reach a seven.

    It’s safe to conclude you are making things up.

    TomB (03bb50)

  51. I’m only relaying what they are publishing

    WHERE!?

    All we’re asking for is a link!

    “Some guy told me” is not proof.

    TomB (03bb50)

  52. Here is a thread on another forum about the subject.

    Michael Ejercito (64388b)

  53. http://www.accessmylibrary.com/archive/435127-nuclear-power-today/august-2005.html

    There is nothing in Nuclear Power Today of August 2005 (as provided by earlier post) about Fukushima nuclear site. Could find nothing published about a nuclear melt down at Fukushima in any year in any publication before the earthquake/tsunami.

    ray (99928d)

  54. Let me guess bush inherited this nuclear diaster as well as the war on libya from bush?

    DohBiden (984d23)

  55. I meant obama……sorry about that typing too fast.

    DohBiden (984d23)

  56. There was a reactor that was shut down in 2007, Karashiki (sic) but not nearly the same thing,

    narciso (a3a9aa)

  57. 55- indubitably. EVERYTHING negative (past, present or future) is fault of evil Bushitler and Darth Vader. One “progressive” on another site just asserted we are using double standards to criticize the mighty wonderful Obama and give W/Cheney a pass for using lies about WMDs to get us into Iraq war. Doesn’t matter that many liberals were spewing the WMD line long before W even ran for POTUS. Revisionist history works for liberals and a compliant media that desires to fellate Obama.

    Calypso Louie Farrakhan (798aba)

  58. There was a reactor that was shut down in 2007, Karashiki (sic) but not nearly the same thing,

    To lazy thinkers like EricPW, all radiation and radiological emissions are exactly the same. That’s why it’s such an effective boogeyman. Just shouting “radiation!!!” is enough to frighten them, even when the measurements are infinitesimal (like TMI). That he includes TMI as an accident to fear shows he has no clue of what he’s talking about.

    TomB (03bb50)

  59. Comment by Calypso Louie Farrakhan — 3/19/2011 @ 8:11 am

    Old GE designs….
    I blame Jack Welch.

    AD-RtR/OS! (442927)

  60. Have fun, TomB. You should look into the history of the fellow’s prior assertions. He just wants to bicker.

    I’ll leave out the monkeys and their probable source.

    Simon Jester (ab9e0c)

  61. Perhaps someone could enlighten us to what are the objectively best designed nuke plants and with which countries’ engineering acumen? Germans are often engineering geniuses but it seems the German public eschews idea of more plants, some have even been shut down after the Japanese disaster. And of course it served the anti-nukes well for us to have the TMI snafu and Hanoi Jane’s propaganda movie. When was the last regulatory approval for new nuke plant construction in this country? When was the last refinery constructed? Must be more than twenty five years ago. I suppose all those yoots so enthusiastic for the hope and change from Obama will learn in the fullness of time that their generation will be paying the price in lowered living standards. Or maybe all the millions of likely legalized illegal immigrants will still be happier not living in Mexico and enduring that lifestyle? Go to Miami and try getting help in some stores which seem at times to not even have staff that speaks English or Delray Beach where you encounter French Creole speaking Haitian clerks. Funny how years ago immigrants made an effort to assimilate and learn English. Press Uno for Espanol and breed like rabbits.

    Calypso Louie Farrakhan (798aba)

  62. From reading the mitnse.com site, it seems the problem is actually mostly due to the tsunami. The wall of water actually flooded the switchgear as well as the internal plant wiring. This also explains the delay in getting the pumps up and running.

    Also, the plant was not rated for this strong of a tsunami. At a certain level of rarity and severity, you can only mitigate the situation. This was one of the strongest quakes on record. Conceivably, a nuclear plant could also get hit by a giant meteor or get saturation bombed by the USAF, but we don’t design them for such a risk.

    The newer gas-cooled reactors actually are walkaway-safe. They can be cooled adequately with convection and radiation alone. The technology is new, but quite promising.

    OmegaPaladin (a63d4d)

  63. EPWJ, full of crap again.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  64. Senatus Populus Qua Roma,

    Indeed.

    Rodney G. Graves (f12db5)

  65. Hint, they built the thing on the coast why?
    Comment by EricPWJohnson — 3/19/2011 @ 8:34 am

    — Maybe because the major cities are on the coast. And why are the major cities on the coast, you ask? How about because on that island nation you cannot go too far inland before you run into mountains . . . ?

    Icy Texan (cec02e)

  66. Go to Miami and try getting help in some stores which seem at times to not even have staff that speaks English or Delray Beach where you encounter French Creole speaking Haitian clerks. Funny how years ago immigrants made an effort to assimilate and learn English.

    Not been to Miami, much, I assume. I don’t have a problem when I’m in Miami; I don’t go there because I can everything I need in Broward, where I live, but when I go I have no problem, even though I speak only the most minimal Spanish. (I have to know some Spanish to deal with our customers that come from Central and South America.)

    And it’s Kreyol, not Creole, and if you paid attention you’d discover those Haitian clerks have one of the best work ethics around. I know, I work with a bunch of them, and “highly motivated” can apply to them all. Perhaps it helps to come from a country which is the living definition of “poverty”. And they all speak English.

    And those Spanish speakers you deride aren’t very far behind the Haitians in the motivation department.

    kishnevi (b40a74)

  67. Oh, and when I said “customers from Central and South America”, I meant they live there and visit here as tourists or on business trips. Not as permanent residents.

    Just to be clear about it…

    kishnevi (b40a74)

  68. Oh yeah and just how corrupt have those cubano pols and cops shown themselves to be? I agree that Haitian blacks have a strong work ethic but why do we make people who can contribute immensely to American society jump hoops in order to gain citizenship?
    I live in Boca and I refuse to believe that West Palm/Boca are the eighth worst metro area to live in in whole USA. Yahoo had a story on it and the author stated although Miami was rated second worst, it would have been worst city of all if not for lack of state income tax and the great weather. But then another bogus list had places like Philly rated better weather than Florida because of thunderstorms. I prefer my 80 in winter to 8 in Pa. So I guess I should consider improving my life by moving to Detroit, D.C., Cleveland, Oakland, Atlantic City or ??
    And you can keep the crappy drivers in Miami even though I hear Houston is far worse. I think truckers themselves usually say Pa. has the worst roads. I wonder what the Surekill Expressway is like now since I moved away? And back to Cubans, why not stay in havana and fight for what you believe in or will you (they) wait until it is safe and then claim old property? Funny how the wonderful Miami-Dade mayor just got recalled also. I think he was a Republican but then people did not much care for a 12% tax hike and raises for govt. employees. I will end with despite what we hear about how rotten the Chicago way or Philly corruption is, the whole of south Florida really goes the extra mile in government corruption, including plenty of WASPs.

    Calypso Louie Farrakhan (798aba)

  69. The Yahoo ranking was due mostly to current (relatively high) rates of unemployment and the still crumbling real estate market here.

    However, I refuse to move from a place where I can, as I did this year, wear short sleeves for most of February and March. I won’t torment you Northerners with details of how the temperature has stayed in the 70s for about the last two months, except when it decided to go above 80.

    even though I hear Houston is far worse

    I spent one weekend in Houston, and that was enough to show me that Houston’s traffic was worse even then the Palmetto Expressway in Miami.

    the whole of south Florida really goes the extra mile in government corruption, including plenty of WASPs.

    Much much too true, and it includes Republicans as much as Democrats.

    kishnevi (b40a74)

  70. True, were smarter than the people of a certain state, who promoted someone who rose the property taxes, 66% then they promoted him. Or in another
    hamlet, where mismanagement of a 150 million dollar educational foundation is some kind of credential. Or in yet another state, where the votes of two corrupt hacks in the state legislature, held the balance between the parties, it’s only in our littlehamlet, where the attention ends up being that narrowly focused. As with our election foibles, a decade back, such things would never happen anywhere else, Sarc

    narciso (a3a9aa)

  71. Relative Radiation Doses Illustrated:

    http://xkcd.com/radiation/

    Rodney G. Graves (f12db5)

  72. Again, I believe this is still getting overblown and taken far out of proportion to the actual risk.

    This is still mostly idiots going “The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling!! AhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”.

    No, it’s not trivial. Yeah, it looks as though a few people might actually lose their lives, outside of those directly involved in fighting it (I’ll ack that possibility now, a mild reversal of my previous “zero deaths” opinion, I grant).

    However, I’d like to call attention to an excellent overview of what Chernobyl did, compared to what this is likely to do, written by Neo-neocon:

    Chernobyl and Fukushima: how do we define “disaster?”

    And then put this into a deeper context — We’ve got a massive “natural” disaster which caused well over 6000 known deaths, as well as triggering the failure of some seriously problematic man-made systems that are 40 years old (and hence substantially behind the safety capabilities of current designs for those man-made systems).

    What are we getting hyped up about? Something that might kill a couple people outside the emergency crews.

    Forget about those 6000+ people, they don’t count. It’s the ones who MIGHT BE KILLED that matter!!!

    >>>> That’s an agenda, folks. <<<<<

    IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society (c9dcd8)

  73. Not been to Miami, much, I assume.

    I have, jerkoff:

    My uncle was a cop in the WPB PD. Late 70s, early 80s, he had to go down to Miami for a prisoner pickup. Found the station house. Went in. Took him 20 minutes to find a cop who spoke English. They required Miami cops to be able to speak Spanish. They had no such requirement for English.

    Early 90s, I happened to be down and got off at the wrong 95 exit, which was “exit only”… Drove around for 30 mins trying to find someone who spoke English for directions (granted, it was a fairly bad neighborhood, didn’t stop and ask everyone in sight) — but you could pretty much tell that all the stores in the area had no customers in English, not a one had any signage that wasn’t in Spanish.

    You think it’s gotten better in the last 15+ years, with multiculti crap being celebrated everywhere and everyone being told that Whitey stole everything they have, and that no one needs to actually assimilate to match the surrounding culture?

    How about, oh, what, about 7-8 years ago, when an Apopka (Orlando) area school (as I recall), got it’s third “F” rating in a row, which, by Florida law means that the parents can pull their kids out and place them in any county school they want to… And only a handful of the student’s parents took their kids out… why? Because the school’s teachers taught in Haitian. There were pictures from the school, BTW, that highlighted the deep nature of the problems there — the teachers were, as a group, wearing ones that said “‘F’ for Fantastic”. No S***. They actually said that. What kind of message does that send to kids about work ethic and achieving something with your education? Hmmmm?

    If YOU don’t grasp what the language issues in the USA, and particularly the ‘southern states’, are, then YOU don’t get out much in those places, and as you hang around your white upper-middle class twit friends in your communal libtard circlejerk telling you what great people you all are for your support for “The Correct” causes..

    >:-/

    IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society (c9dcd8)


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