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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jun 28, 2011 - 04:16pm PT
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It would not be surprising if a bunch of women manage to lose them during a national emergency of such incredible magnitude. A 35% increase is small, considering everything. Maybe that is a portion of the number that would lose them if they had no modern medical care at all.
Bullshit - if you were talking an epidemiological study down the road of infant mortality in affected areas of Japan you might find some supporting data. But here in the US? A statistically significant rate of infant mortality in the U.S. NW due to Fukushima in the immediate aftermath of the disaster? Not a friggin' chance.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Jun 28, 2011 - 04:33pm PT
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Radiation takes more time than that.
not according to riley's propaganda...
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Jun 28, 2011 - 04:45pm PT
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Radiation takes more time than that.
not according to riley's propaganda...
Well, it does cause some people to lose their minds rather quickly.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Jun 28, 2011 - 09:17pm PT
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Just made a trip to the Columbia River Gorge and Richland WA and back to Santa Cruz. And now we are having very oddly unseasonal rain storms in Santa Cruz. I don't make any claims to scientific rigor; but my old Geiger Counters seem to be substantially busier than the background levels I am used to; particularly when looking at rainwater.
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monolith
climber
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Jun 28, 2011 - 10:07pm PT
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No witch hunting going on JB, just calling out outright bullsh#t.
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Jun 28, 2011 - 11:16pm PT
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riley................weldit wants to know...................did you get any pussy or twinks from that pic of yours?
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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Jun 29, 2011 - 12:44am PT
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lol.....
Riley is not my type. no matter how much of a blow hard he is....
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Jun 29, 2011 - 02:12am PT
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Its just Riley. He isn't going to punch you unless you get in his face. He is just frustrated with the nuclear industry and what he perceives as peoples willingness to downplay human nature when talking about something as dangerous as nuclear material. In my opinion, he has a point. I think its hubris to think that we are so much better then the Japanese at controlling this stuff. I'm sure we may have some things better, because they do have a problem with saving face, but we also have our own idiosyncrasies, which could lead to disaster. And a nuclear disaster could have very serious consequences.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Jun 29, 2011 - 02:20am PT
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I agree. But I have also met Riley and he is a nice guy. A little high strung, but a good guy.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Jun 29, 2011 - 02:40am PT
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I have suggested to DOE waste management people that the only society with a proven record for managing a facility longer than a few thousand years are the Hopi at Orayvi on Black Mesa.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jun 29, 2011 - 04:22am PT
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So the accident in Japan is not contained yet, floodwater is leaking into the Nebraska nuclear plant, and a fire is approaching Los Alamos
think we should be getting the hint?
what would it take to prove that we just can't keep this genie in the bottle?
peace
Karl
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jun 29, 2011 - 04:35am PT
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You tell me how close to disaster this nebraska situation could be and barely escaped being a meltdown already. The utility wanted to build the plant to withstand a water level of 1009 feet. The water is already 1007 feet.
http://www.counterpunch.com/giambrone06272011.html
Negligence and Cover-Ups at Fort Calhoun Reactor
Nuclear Catastrophe Imminent in Nebraska?
By JOSEPH GIAMBRONE
When I wrote last week about the Nebraska reactor surrounded by floodwaters I, like most, still considered it a highly remote possibility of cataclysm.
Upon further investigation, it seems much more likely now. The New York Times has exposed some major criminal negligence and game playing with the safety of the nation by the plant's operator. Peter Behr's June 24th report examines what we've been told vs. what's there on the ground at Fort Calhoun's nuclear power station. This is truly frightening with water levels approaching the 1007 ft. above sea level mark.
The "aqua berm" collapsed on Sunday, and nothing holds back the waters but random chance at this point.
The Ft. Calhoun reactor was repeatedly reported to be in "cold" shutdown, with an endless supply of happy talk in the press about how safe the situation remains. Not one of these reports gives the actual temperature inside the reactor. "Cold" is a relative term when dealing wtih nuclear reactors.
A June 22 Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) press release inspires no confidence whatsoever:
"If there is a complete loss of power on site temporary pumps that run on gas can circulate cooling water through the spent fuel pool and reactor core."
And reactor core? But I thought it was in "cold shutdown?" Why would that be necessary? The NRC release avoids the word "cold," and merely restates the term "shutdown."
The Omaha World Herald offers another clue:
"The NRC says its inspectors were at the plant when the berm failed and have confirmed that the flooding has had no impact on the reactor shutdown cooling or the spent fuel pool cooling." (Sam Womack, June 26)
The term "reactor shutdown cooling" implies it is not quite "cold" but requiring cooling still.
In an outstanding bit of hubris, the second threatened plant at Cooper is still operating at "full power." It's as if some are incapable of learning any lessons whatsoever.
CNN -- and almost all other news sources -- is still reporting the claims of the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) unquestioningly:
"The [Ft. Calhoun] plant is designed to withstand waters up to 1,014 feet above mean sea level, according to the OPPD."
That reassuring number ignores quite a bit. In the end it may prove to be the equivalent of the TEPCO assurances and the Japanese Government's claims that no meltdowns had occured.
"But a year ago, those new defenses were not in place, and the plant's hard barriers could have failed against a 1,010-foot flood ... at flooding levels above 1,008 feet, the plant "would experience a loss of offsite power and loss of intake structure" (NYT)
The NRC gave the operator OPPD a wristslap last October 6 to try and force some improvements of "substatntal importance" to the facility. The OPPD predictably stalled and tried to fight spending any money on improvements up through this year.
The plot thickened back in the 1990s, where a series of floods threatened the area. The Army Corps of Engineers warned the plant operator to increase its defenses by at least 3 feet, back in 2003. The plant however did not "properly act" on the "deficiencies." No surprises there.
When a senior nuclear investigator for NRC was asked how these situations can go on so long with no meaningful action taken to protect the public from disaster, Gerond George answered, "We only sample certain parts of their design basis..." This admission reveals gaping holes at the NRC.
Now it gets ugly. The plant was not actually "designed" for the 1014 ft flood level at all. Whether sufficient "improvements" to the original design have been implemented properly is anyone's guess. The plant was originally created to:
"The precise level -- 1,009.5 feet -- is written into the plant's operating licenses as a flooding 'design basis' threat that the plant must be guarded against." (NYT)
Here's the Omaha Public Power's solution to historic floodwaters lapping at their reactor:
"OPPD planned to extend the barrier to 1,014 feet by stacking sandbags on top of some steel floodgates that protected the auxiliary building, and to use more sandbags to safeguard the water intake structure and its essential cooling water pumps. "
You can't make this stuff up.
Yes, there's a reactor at Diablo Canyon in Southern California near an earthquake fault and designed magnitudes short of what could be unleashed there. Yes, they drilled so far below the Gulf of Mexico that they couldn't plug a leak until the Gulf was thick with oil and toxins. And yes, people in charge of the public safety at a Nebraska nuclear reactor thought piling up sandbags five feet high would safeguard against massive flooding.
These are the same geniuses who allegedly have performed the upgrades as instructed by NRC, just this year, to reluctantly fortify the plant against raging floodwaters.
I won't be touring the site personally.
The OPPD remains out of jail and in control of the situation. Its spokesman Michael Jones explained:
"We presented our analysis to [NRC] which we felt indicated that the design basis [for the flooding threat] should remain 1,009 feet," rather than 1,014 feet, he said." (NYT)
The current river level is just below 1007 feet.
"At 1,008.5 feet, the technical support center used by emergency technicians would have been inundated... At 1,010 feet, water would begin to enter the auxiliary building, "shorting power and submerging pumps. The plant could then experience a station blackout with core damage estimated within 15 to 18 hours..." (NYT)
The OPPD still clung to the absurdity that their fire truck would simply pump out the auxiliary building. That's their ace in the hole, apparently. One can picture Slim Pickens at the conclusion of Dr. Strangelove riding the nuclear warhead down and proudly waving his Stetson about with a victorious holler.
The NRC, it was reported deadpan, found that "it was not clear how workers could operate a crane to lift the fire truck into position if outside power were lost."
The Times waited until the end of the two page story to finally let the hammer drop:
"The NRC has not completed its evaluation of the new defenses installed at Fort Calhoun..."
The plant has not actually passed inspection, nor was it originally designed to handle the current reality. Its operator is criminally negligent in the extreme and incompetent also in the extreme. The operator has clearly fought the very safety improvements that are now desperately needed to hold back the river and avert a possible full meltdown a la Fukushima.
The age of nuclear power should be swiftly coming to an end. Do you really trust your family's lives to the sandbag plan? To the men who fight any reasonable action to make the nuclear reactors they have been entrusted with as safe as possible?
It's an indefensible industry. The situation is profit vs. public safety. The latter stands no chance over the long term.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jun 29, 2011 - 05:34am PT
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Working backwards on the post above, I'd say the most accurate sentences in that post are the first two sentences on the last line. It is a industry driven by short term financials and a sixty year-old [post-WWII, white, male] chauvinism which can't out run it's own Achilles heel of shortsightedness, 'good enough' design standards, and an unwillingness to deal with the entire plant and fuel lifecycle.
Otherwise I find most of the rest of it quite overly dramatic in tone and chock-filled with inaccurate assessments of risk and doom.
So the accident in Japan is not contained yet...
It's melted toast with floor penetration and total pressure loss in at least one of the reactors - a bunch of someones are going to have to die containing it as robots aren't going to cut it. I would bet it will probably take a decade before the plant is 'contained' (as in entombed) in some 'reasonable' manner.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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Jun 30, 2011 - 09:37pm PT
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKmCJhVL8u0&feature=related
Wow!!!
We are all among the walking dead....
Yeah.. its a good idea to build more of these things...
How many want to go on record for calling nuclear is cheaper?
At what cost?
Economic and Human?
Dr.Michio Kaku is brilliant. Thanks for the post ^^^^^^
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jun 30, 2011 - 11:59pm PT
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I've just been reading a new book Called Area 51 which promised to tell what really happened at Roswell (they claim Russian Psy Ops) and the more interesting part of which was the history of the development of various spy planes - U2, SR71, Stealth Bomber, and now the Drones.
As part of the story, they detail the atomic testing that went on there and the callous disregard for human and animal life it entailed. You'd be amazed at how much radioactivity we've all been exposed to, especially if you live in the western U.S. Much of it is still kept secret and not even the president of the US has access. The Atomic Energy Commission, now called the Department of Energy, is a secret empire to itself.
It's therefore not surprising that when the officials there retired to the civilian world, they continued that attitude as founders of the nuclear reactor industry. The public at large doesn't have a "need to know" how safe or unsafe these are and only gets a glimpse when something goes wrong.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Jul 14, 2011 - 02:56am PT
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Radioactive Beef Hits Japanese Market
Wall Street Journal
July 13, 2011
...The farmer later admitted he had fed his cattle straw that had been
exposed to the elements— ie Fukushima radiation fallout— and that
subsequent tests found to contain extremely high levels of radioactive
cesium. That caused internal contamination that wasn't detectable by the
prefecture's
external screening...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303678704576441682767970202.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jul 17, 2011 - 04:33am PT
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And they wonder why tourism is down 36% in Japan this year?
And, there's another huge typhoon headed toward Fukushima.
It just gets better and better.
Japanese Nuclear-Contaminated Beef 'Sold In and Around Tokyo'
By REUTERS
Published: July 17, 2011 at 2:54 AM ET
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's second-biggest retailer said on Sunday it had sold beef from cattle that ate nuclear-contaminated feed, the latest in a series of health scares from radiation leaking from a quake-crippled nuclear power plant.
Cases of contaminated vegetables, tea, milk, seafood and water have already stoked anxiety after the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986, despite assurances from officials that the levels are not dangerous.
Aeon Co said it had sold the contaminated beef at a store in Tokyo and at more than dozen stores in the surrounding area, as radiation continues to spill from the Fukushima nuclear power plant four months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Aeon, which competes with top retail group Seven & I Holdings, said in a statement cattle from Fukushima prefecture were given animal feed originating from rice straw that exceeded the government's limits for radioactive cesium.
Japan was now likely to ban shipments of beef, hugely popular in Japan, from around Fukushima, a cabinet minister said on Sunday. It was not immediately what had delayed such a move, unlikely to deflect criticism that the government has been slow in its response to the crisis.
Aeon said it sold 319 kg (703 lb) of the beef from April 27 to June 20 at one shop in Tokyo and other shops in Kanagawa and Chiba. Aeon said it also sold the beef at outlets in Shizuoka and Ishikawa, both in central Japan.
The retailer said it would start to check beef shipments from all areas that could potentially have contaminated feed.
Cesium three- to six-times higher than safety standards was found last week in beef shipped to Tokyo from a farmer in Minami Soma city, near Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
A Farm Ministry official said consuming such meat a few times would pose no immediate health risks.
(Reporting by Stanley White; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Jul 17, 2011 - 06:25am PT
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