Apr 012011
The damage is subtle, but if you know what to look for you can see it.
24 Responses to “Fukushima in high-rez”
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The damage is subtle, but if you know what to look for you can see it.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I found a photo of Fukushima under construction where you can see the containment vessel on reactor number 6 (to the right)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Fukushima_I_NPP_1975.jpg
Spooky Akira Kurosawa movie segment from 1990’s “Dreams” about six power generating reactors blowing up.
AFAIK, Fukushima Dai-ichi is the only six reactor complex in Japan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTg3D1PoyUE
What a disaster… radioactive water leaking into the ocean the whole time, it turns out.
> Spooky Akira Kurosawa movie segment from 1990′s “Dreams”…
Snerk. The comments (at least, the English language ones) are damned entertaining. The general concensus seems to be that “kurosawa warned us,” as if Fukushima is a disaster like this.
> What a disaster
A small one, to be sure. Along the scale of a refinery catching fire and exploding. But getting *far* more press, because of ignorant panic-mongers like the commenters on the Kurosawa youtube thread.
>A small one, to be sure.
http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2011/03/shaken-flooded-stressed-by-power.html
The blogger is for sure not a panic-mongers (and, btw, someone who supports use of nuclear power)
“It has become increasingly apparent during the past week that my view from afar was not as clear as I would have hoped. I was overly optimistic about the final consequences of the events at Fukushima Daiichi.
On the catastrophic scale of commercial nuclear energy accidents, where Three Mile Island was in second place and Chernobyl was the clear leader, Fukushima Daiichi has moved into second. It is likely that it will end up to be far closer to Chernobyl than to Three Mile Island in overall economic, public health and geographic consequences”.
> It is likely that it will end up to be far closer to Chernobyl than to Three Mile Island
OK, thus killing somewhere between fifty (Chernobyl) and zero (TMI). Sad, but in the grand scheme of things, something along the scale of a bus crash. Clearly, we must ban buses until they can be proven to be perfectly safe.
From that blog:
“The good news is that no one has been building the types of boiling water reactors whose limits were exceeded at Fukushima Daiichi in many decades. Today’s Generation III and beyond reactors include numerous design features that would have provided substantial margins against the specific challenges faced at Fukushima, but that is no cause for complacency. There is always something more to learn and improve.“
Yes, indeed. We’ve learned that reactors built more than forty years ago, designed probably close to fifty years ago, should have been replaced with newer, safer, more efficient reactor designs decades ago. Once again, we learn that the anti-nuclear Luddites have screwed not only the nuclear industry, but society as a whole, and should be held to account.
What I get a kick out of is that Japan had to ask other countries for robots to help look at the damage; aren’t they supposed to the world leaders in that sort of thing? Or do all they have is a bunch of androids that can’t really do anything more than smile and dance?
Regardless of how much environmental damage Fukushima ends up causing, it’s going to to be damn expensive to entomb the whole place and clean up the soil around it.
I saw that President Sarkozy of France visited Japan last week, no doubt trying to get them interested in vitrifying their atomic waste using France’s technology, which could make France a lot of profit.
Want to see a reactor rod cooling pool with the used rods putting out Cherenkov radiation?:
http://www4.nau.edu/meteorite/Meteorite/Images/Cherenkov.jpg
Probably not a good idea to let that go dry…
“A small one, to be sure. Along the scale of a refinery catching fire and exploding.”
Last time we had an oil refinery explosion, there was a ton of press. Because it was the largest oil leak in American history. I was not reading your blog at the time, but I suspect you downplayed it and blamed it on communists as well? Have you been to New Orleans recently?
More than 50 people died as a result of Chernobyl from prompt exposure, I think the figure is up around 70. Many thousands of people got cancer from it, but the exact number is very hard to measure because of the probability involved. The likely deaths from cancer are in the range of 1000 to 2000, however, if you include the liquidators. Many of them were children. Sure it isn’t as bad as a war or a tsunami. But why don’t you have your children or family members get thyroid cancer and call it a small disaster?
There are two groups here: those who know nothing about radiation and freak out, and those who apologize for nuclear power at every chance and pretend that nothing bad can possibly come from 3 million gallons of highly radioactive water being dumped in the ocean as we speak.
“What I get a kick out of is that Japan had to ask other countries for robots to help look at the damage; aren’t they supposed to the world leaders in that sort of thing?”
Almost like they just suffered a huge earthquake and tsunami 🙂 Good thing you get a kick out of it though.
I am being highly conservative in my numbers for Chernobyl. Here is what the IAEA suggests:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull472/htmls/chernobyls_legacy2.html
“A reasonable central estimate is about 4,000 fatal radiation induced cancers during the lifetime of the 600,000 most highly exposed individuals and perhaps another 5,000 in more peripheral populations. The number is small (representing a few percent) relative to the normal spontaneous risk of cancer, but the numbers are large in absolute terms.”
I question these numbers, nearly 9,000. But either way, this is not exactly a bus crash. The recent crash near me in the Bronx killed 14 people, and that was considered a bad crash. Probably worse crashes in South America however.
> Last time we had an oil refinery explosion, there was a ton of press. Because it was the largest oil leak in American history.
Really? I thought that was the Deepwater Horizon leak. What was this oil refinery explosion? The Texas City disaster? That was a while back.
> I suspect you downplayed it and blamed it on communists as well?
A bit before my time, but we certainly had our share of wannabe Communist saboteurs back in 1947, but I don’t think they were responsible for that.
> The likely deaths from cancer are in the range of 1000 to 2000
Still notably fewer than Bhopal. Not too many people screaming that we need to abandon the use of chemicals.
> why don’t you have your children or family members get thyroid cancer and call it a small disaster?
I *love* that form of rhetoric! It’s sort of a tacit admission that you have no rational arguement, and have to resort to emotional strawmen.
Look, lots of people die from lots of forms of accidents. Even if you could stretch Chernobyl to killing 2000 people, that is still a vanishingly small number on the grand scheme of things. If that number was sufficient to cause the US to panic about nuclear power and shut down that sector of the energy industry, then the tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths that cann annually be laid at the feet of coal would shut *that* down. And then natural gas, and petroleum, and chemical poisoning/cancer from the industrial processes that create PV arrays, the deaths from fumes from fiberglass resins needed for wind turbines (of course, wind power would go away withpout petroleum… no resins, no plastics, and no trucks to haul the materials around anyway). Selling tobacco would be a capital offense. Cars would be banned. Multi-level homes would be banned. Nothing more involved than spongebaths. People with AIDS? Quarantined into camps. And so on.
If you disagree with me… then let’s have your family fall in the shower and break their heads open. *Then* we’ll see how blase you are about covering up for the dangers produced by the Big Bathtub and Big Shower industries!
Still waiting for a cogent explanation as to why you wanted the NRA to break the law back when they held their pre-scheduled meetings in Denver some years back.
> this is not exactly a bus crash.
U.S. highway deaths hit lowest level since 1950
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39071582/ns/us_news-life/
” traffic deaths fell 9.7 percent in 2009 to 33,808″
9,000 dead due to Chernobyl – argueable deaths spread over *how* *many* decades? – is less than a third of the highway deaths in the US for one year. I shudder to imagine how many Russians died on the roads in 2009.
From the UK Guardian (*not* a bastion of Evil Right Wingers):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/apr/04/fear-nuclear-power-fukushima-risks
“Coal-related air pollution from power plants is globally responsible for more than 100,000 deaths per year.1,2 The World Health Organisation estimates that indoor air pollution from biomass and coal causes 1.5m premature deaths per year. … the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant is unlikely to kill a single person”
We spend billions every year trying to prevent accidents and deaths from disease, violence, and industrial accidents. That the scale of nuclear accidents is not as great as car accidents, tobacco, firearms, or heart disease does very little to convince me that thousands of preventable deaths are just fine. Particularly when those victims did not chose to have a plant poorly operated near their home. If plant workers died, it would be easy to accept. But nuclear accidents hurt people who live very far away.
“Still notably fewer than Bhopal.” So Bohpal is the threshold of a bad accident that should not have happened? I am glad that you chose yet another example of industrial accidents that harmed innocent people. So when hippies protest the chemical industry, and you claim commies are behind it, you will forgive me for seeing it in a different light.
>We spend billions every year trying to prevent accidents and deaths from disease, violence, and industrial accidents.
A goodly fraction of which are *self* *inflicted* deaths. Just about every single death from smoking or AIDS is self inflicted, frex. And smokes and sex produce not a single joule of useable energy for the power grid.
> But nuclear accidents hurt people who live very far away.
And so would a blizzard-based failure of a wind farm in the absence of other powerplants. Thus we circle back to the origin: we need a moratorium on the dangerous scheme being foisted on us by Big Wind.
>So Bohpal is the threshold of a bad accident that should not have happened?
And you conclude that how?
> So when hippies protest the chemical industry, and you claim commies are behind it, you will forgive me for seeing it in a different light.
When it turns out that commies *are* behind the anti-chemical movement, as they were behind the anti-nuclear movement, then it’ll be relevant. As it turns out, most of the people behind the anti-chemical movement (specifically, those behind petition drives to ban dihydrogen monoxide) are typically conservatives or libertarians.
Dihydrogen monoxide is often found in nuclear reactors. Dangerous stuff. Better ban it.
Still waiting for your explanation for your hatred of the NRA for not breaking the law. And also waiting for your explanation of the relevance of the Texas City disaster.
“A goodly fraction of which are *self* *inflicted* deaths. Just about every single death from smoking or AIDS is self inflicted, frex. And smokes and sex produce not a single joule of useable energy for the power grid.”
So we should be less interested in spending money to prevent acquired disease than nuclear power by this argument! So nuclear accidents should be even less forgivable. I don’t really care if a person dies from AIDS or smoking because, as you say, they did it to themselves with abundant warnings. But preventing these things actually saves us money because we have to pay for their long and costly care once they get cancer or AIDS. It feels like a tangent; but those with AIDS are not really innocent the way those hurt by an industrial accident are. That is the only reason why I bring up this comparison. We spend money to protect people who are not exactly innocent; to protect them from themselves. The least we can do is spend the money to protect those who did nothing but grow up on a town near a reactor. And if nuclear power does become widespread, that would be almost everyone.
A failure of a wind-farm (something that should be easy to prevent, certainly no harder than designing a nuclear power plant, one of the most expensive and complex ways to generate power) would not cause cancer or kill anyone. Obviously wind farms are not able to form a complete power solution for an entire country. They certainly can augment other more reliable methods in windy places like the Northeast – and they cause very little harm. I think you are being sarcastic about the dangers of wind power, hopefully. I hope you have at least looked into the topic enough – before you started tilting at wind turbines.
Now to discuss the NRA meeting after a school shooting where teenagers got guns with great ease, directly as a result of lax gun laws and a massive industry that produces guns that no civilian needs:
Not a single person would have fined the NRA for canceling the meeting after a large shooting. And you know this. It is an obscure law that was used as an excuse by a bunch of cowards. If you want to have a meeting because you don’t care about a shooting, just say so. Sack up. “We afwaid of getting in twoble!” Yeah right. Somehow I doubt the 50 NRA lawyers and lobbyists would have had a hard time defeating what was most likely to be a small fine if anything.
Do I think the NRA has the right to meet anywhere it wants to within the assembly laws and constitution? I certainly do. I demand they have the right to meet. But could they have had even a shred of respect for the people killed in that shooting? Sure they could have. But in a much larger issue, if the NRA cared about the thousands of Americans murdered every year by guns, they would support strong gun regulations. So worrying about the grief of a few dozen people is not much of a big deal by comparison, and I would not expect anyone from the NRA to care.
On to oil leaks and explosions as an example of industrial accidents that got press coverage:
I mistakenly referred to the Horizon oil platform explosion and leak, the largest in American history, as refinery explosion. Your 1950s hatred of communism is so disturbing and shocking that I often have trouble following what you mean by statements. I was a few days oil time ahead of the refinery explosion stage. You conveniently ignore or downplay the most serious industrial accidents, which happen all the time. Then, in passing, you drop one off. “Not even a Bhopal!”
It is not just isolated events, but rather a continuous condition where the public and environment are harmed by lax regulations. I cannot predict the future, but I suspect that if you and industry had your way, there would be no regulations, and more disasters. I only have the past track record to show this.
With no regulations, you get the Hanford Site. With heavy regulations, you get the nuclear power industry today. Under a stifling burden? I would agree that yes, it is, because liberals tend to misunderstand the danger posed by nuclear power. But without this pressure from the other side, what you generally get is excessive risk taking for the sake of profit, and a regular supply of serious industrial accidents.
I wonder if you live near a nuclear power plant or an urban area where gun crimes are common? Most gun people live in the country where they are unlikely to be shot at, most fans of nuclear power (outside of the industry) don’t live next to the plants. I live within 50 miles of a plant, in a city that represents about $1 trillion worth of american productivity annually. Even a severe meltdown won’t be likely to kill me at this plant, but the economic damage could cause harm to our entire country. Imagine if these Japanese reactors were right next to Tokyo (the largest metro area on Earth). I also live in a city that is now quite safe, but in the late 80s – early 90s was posting 1000 – 2000 murders a year. Most of the guns started out legal, in the country and suburbs, and were only later sold to criminals. Few criminals get guns directly from the plant, unless they want Lorcins.
I should restate that I support nuclear power as long as it can be safe and environmentally sustainable. I doubt the old plants are safe, and think they should be retired. (Sadly, once a plant is shutdown, it normally will not be removed. So we will have lots of concrete domes all over the country with highly radioactive material within.)
I have questions about what we do with high level nuclear waste, and also about the high cost per kWh of nuclear power. These are challenges that can be solved in time; I have zero doubts about the ability of science and a few good minds to make this work. My concern is with safety, regulation, and the fact that corporations are legally required to worry about profit first, and all other matters later.
The thermal output of even a tiny reactor is impressive to say the least. Making it work has taken more than 70 years, and I don’t know that we really have really arrived. The next generation of reactors could be better, I have seen some really great designs for the Gen IV reactors.
Holistically speaking, our energy problems will not be solved by any single magic bullet. We need a new power grid that can better share power between regions and that will not cause blackouts every few years. Maybe advanced technology like buried superconducting lines can work for this, maybe it is too expensive. Should be use wind energy in certain areas when possible? Sure. Nuclear in places away from populations? Yes. How much power can we get from solar? That remains to be seen. But at 1 kW per square meter, for free, every day, it is certainly a good supplement for use in sunny places like Nevada. Maybe solar and nuclear power will help make hydrogen for automobiles and buses.
The exact solution will require experimentation, debate, and money. But what will not work is this kind of “wind power bad nuclear good” commentary. And considering your posts, I think you honestly pick your stance based on political affiliations which is shocking from a person who is so obviously smarter than any politician in what I assume is the party most aligned with your views. Anti-science people like Palin (making fun of fruit fly research), McCain (calling a planetarium an “overhead projector”), and Bush? Really? I just find it hard to think that an aerospace expert like yourself could fall into that nonsense almost without fail. Still making jabs at communism? It is beneath you. Hopefully that explains my motivation here.
> we have to pay for their long and costly care once they get cancer or AIDS.
We do? Says who?
> A failure of a wind-farm … would not cause cancer or kill anyone.
Individual wind turbines have *already* killed people, so your arguement is immediately invalidated. But loss of power during a blizzard would potentially kill lots of people.
> Not a single person would have fined the NRA for canceling the meeting after a large shooting.
Not a single person, no… just the state government of New York. Additionally, a lot of people had spent a large sum of unrefundable money to hold a legally manadated meeting. What *possible* rational motivation can you give for wanting the NRA to both break the law *and* throw away a ton of other peoples money? For what? So Michael Moore wouldn’t have somethign else to lie about on camera?
> I cannot predict the future, but I suspect that if you and industry had your way, there would be no regulations, and more disasters.
Uh-huh. Compare western, “lax” disasters and environmental problems to disasters and environments in controlled economies. Ooops, there I go again, pointing out communism.
> But could they have had even a shred of respect for the people killed in that shooting? Sure they could have.
And *they* *did.* Slinking away like cowards in the face of shrieking ideologoues who used the Columbine tragedy for their own evil, anti-human, anti-civil rights would *not* have shown respect for the victims or their families. Quite the opposite.
> if the NRA cared about the thousands of Americans murdered every year by guns, they would support strong gun regulations.
Baldercrap. If *you* cared about all the people murdered every year, you’d support increased access to firearms and firearms training. Numerous studies have shown that when the citizenry arms up, murder rates go down. When rapists and burglars know there’sa decent chance they’ll get a dose of Vitamin Pb, there’s a good chance they’ll find a new line of work.
But regardless: the use of reasoning that includes “guns that no civilian needs” indicates a mindset that is disturbingly authroitarian at best. It’s *nobodys* right to restrict ownership of *anything* based on whether or not a person might “need” it.
Here’s a Teachable Moment for you: you can realize the basic truth of that, or you could realize that anythign you might like or want, but don’t actually “need,” can be taken away from you. Posting priveledges, for instance.
> Your 1950s hatred of communism is so disturbing and shocking that I often have trouble following what you mean by statements.
If I expressed disdain for Nazis, would you call me an outdated throwback to the 1940’s? Unlike Nazis, Commies exist *today* in large numbers and continue to run a number of nations.
> (Sadly, once a plant is shutdown, it normally will not be removed. So we will have lots of concrete domes all over the country with highly radioactive material within.)
Somethign to thank your local anti-nuclear activists for. otherwise the nuclear “waste” would be simply reprocessed, and would be merrily chugging away at providing electrical power.
> I have questions about what we do with high level nuclear waste, and also about the high cost per kWh of nuclear power. These are challenges that can be solved in time;
Both solvable by dropping the anti-nuclear activists into the Laurentian Abyss.
> Still making jabs at communism? It is beneath you.
Why? Communism and it’s believers remain a serious problem in the world.
“It’s *nobodys* right to restrict ownership of *anything* based on whether or not a person might “need” it.”
Nuclear weapons for all!
One good thing to come of your posting; I now know that there actually are still people who blame our problems on communism. Normally I had to learn about that in history books. I hear the anarchists in Sarajevo are a big threat also these days.
> Nuclear weapons for all!
A common retort among the reflexively non-thinking anti-rights activists.
> I now know that there actually are still people who blame our problems on communism.
*Really?* You were unaware that problems from the past may persist? I shall be sure to note that you will apparently see the forthcoming 150th anniversary of the beginning of the War of Southern Aggression as a date that will have no emotional bearing on anyone anywhere.
“A common retort among the reflexively non-thinking anti-rights activists.”
Ok so then what is the limit to the power of weapon or explosive that a civilian can have in our country? It is easy to say that the government has no right to regulate anything or say what we have. Let’s pretend (shudder) that you do get your way. Anyone can make any bomb they want? Obviously nuclear weapons are unlikely, but how about mines and grenades?
The Civil war is a good thing to remember and study as history. The difference is, you don’t hear me blaming problems on the south. Do you understand the contrast? I think history is very important, I am an east coast liberal elite after all… But I do not fixate on communism which was, even at the height of the USSR, mostly a fabricated enemy. It was a good way to get elected in the 1950s and 60s. Furthermore, I reject the claim that the USSR or North Korea were true communist nations. They were just one new shade of despotism. True communism has never been enacted in large populations. Visit a commune to see it. It is simply a theoretical type of government that will never work alone. However, certain ideas from the theory may prove helpful in the way we run a country. Just as we have a mixture of socialism, democracy in our government, which is ultimately a republic.
Rather that go through it all again…
http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=5662
> It is simply a theoretical type of government that will never work alone.
Or at all, outside of relatively small communities with strict and inflexible (and intolerant) social orders.
> certain ideas from the theory may prove helpful in the way we run a country.
Sure, as an object lesson in just how bad a system can fail. Americans have tried communism many times, and have pretty much always demonstrated that the whole idea is simply counter to human nature.
The fact that some people still think there’s merit to communism, decades after it was shown to be a universal nightmare, proves that it remains a danger.
I also support an amendment to the constitution. But you would not like where I draw the line; no handguns or semi-automatic weapons at all for civilians. Only shotguns and rifles for hunting and home defense. The former is obviously the best choice for use in the home anyway.
“The fact that some people still think there’s merit to communism, decades after it was shown to be a universal nightmare, proves that it remains a danger.”
You will have to name the times it was shown not to work, since I reject the fact that any large country has ever tried communism. Do you really think that what Stalin ran was a communist country? It was a dictatorship where most people got nothing. Just because he called it communism, do you really think it was? Communism cannot even be tested on the large scale because of human nature. And for the same reason, it will never work on a large scale government. But should we consider sharing certain things in this country? Sure. Should all of our productivity be spread evenly among those who work and those who don’t? No, and no one really suggests that. (Note I said evenly rather than, more evenly than 1% owning 25% of the country, which many do think should be altered.)
Your unwillingness to even consider learning from concepts like communism reminded me of this article:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iISI7ifh-AjUE3ejyC1wQmwFrMFw?docId=CNG.61c886c438708471a9f4ea23070fa70c.3a1
Let me test your limbic system:
Black, Muslim, Gay, Reading a book, More than one side to an argument, Drill baby drill, FBI trying to steal your basketball hoop. 🙂
> But you would not like where I draw the line; no handguns or semi-automatic weapons at all for civilians.
I don’t think you mean “civilians.” I believe the word you are looking for is “subject.”
At least I hope you’re consistent that you would also restrict the number and types of books :civilians” can buy.
> You will have to name the times it was shown not to work
Plymouth Plantation. Work your way up from there. History is replete with attempts at communism. Like it or not, the Soviet Union *was* commun ist; ask the Kulaks who dared to try to retain a semblance of private property rights, something that cannot be allowed under communism.
> Your unwillingness to even consider learning from concepts like communism
Bullcrap. I have pointed out many times that communism has much to teach. Such as:
http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=4652
http://up-ship.com/blog/blog/?p=3855
You fervently wish to believe that communism has failed because it’s never been actually tried, that it’s been hijacked by dictators. But your problem is that communism *requires* that thugs and tyrants and dictators and murderers *must* run the program. Because otherwise the people won’t go along with it, since it very quickly becomes blindingly obvious that the whole concept is based on a massive misunderstanding of what actually motivates humans.
Plymouth Plantation tried it, yes, but the Jamestown Plantation tried it in 1607. They had to give it up within six months.
Many an honest and earnest group of people has tried communism over the centuries. With only one exception that I can think of (the Hutterites), they’ve all either given it up as a bad idea or transitioned to tyranny… the only way to support communism on a large scale. The Hutterites pull it off via what the rest of us would consider an incredibly strong and oppressive religious order.