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News & ArtsFriday, July 1, 2011
Panic / Enviro Japan's New Normal
Posted by Goldy on Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 8:21 AM
In the latest from post-Fukushima Japan, where radioactive cesium has been detected in the urine of children, and the government is now recommending another round of evacuations from radioactive hotspots outside the evacuation zone, chronic power shortages are starting to impact both industry and daily life.
Tokyo's subway system has begun temporarily stopping air-conditioning at stations because limits have been placed on heavy electricity users ... It will also reduce trains by 20 percent, except during the morning and evening rush hours, to meet aims of cutting power use by 15 percent from last summer's peak.
And at factories throughout Eastern Japan:
Leading Japanese electronics maker Hitachi has started shifting some of its operations to weekends to cope with expected power shortages. The firm is closing its group factories in eastern Japan on Thursdays and Fridays, to operate them on weekends from July to September.
On Friday, one of the firm's plants in Hitachi City, north of Tokyo, that produces turbines for thermal power stations and has about 7,000 employees was quiet, with closed gates and shutters.
Clean, safe, reliable nuclear power.
2
The claim of nuclear power being "clean" still gets my teeth grinding. Anyone saying that it is clean needs to go to the places where they mine the original resource. ideally to the places in the developing world where open pit mining of radioactive substances has whole towns covered in carcinogenic dust. Look into Somaïr and Cominak in northern Niger and how they've been operating. Mind you, no one cares about the risks to an anonymous foreigner or their family... we only care that the plant might blow up near our own home.
3
I think this is unnecessarily misleading, Goldy.
1. Reduction of stress loads on power is something everyone should be doing -- we don't need air conditioning everywhere, and we probably need to retake the weekends. Japan, in light of an energy problem, is being sensible by reducing reliance on electricity. We should applaud them for their actions.
2. Nuclear energy is only as safe as we make it. The Fukushima plant was a very out-moded design that unfortunately, was poorly sited. Siting regulations like exist in the US probably wouldn't have allowed a nuclear power plant to be situated where this one was because we don't have the same land shortage concerns Japan does. Other countries, with newer plants and perhaps more rigorous oversight are continuing the be safely atomic -- we should look at the successes of safety, not the few remarkable failures to tell us where to go in the future.
Cheers.
1. Reduction of stress loads on power is something everyone should be doing -- we don't need air conditioning everywhere, and we probably need to retake the weekends. Japan, in light of an energy problem, is being sensible by reducing reliance on electricity. We should applaud them for their actions.
2. Nuclear energy is only as safe as we make it. The Fukushima plant was a very out-moded design that unfortunately, was poorly sited. Siting regulations like exist in the US probably wouldn't have allowed a nuclear power plant to be situated where this one was because we don't have the same land shortage concerns Japan does. Other countries, with newer plants and perhaps more rigorous oversight are continuing the be safely atomic -- we should look at the successes of safety, not the few remarkable failures to tell us where to go in the future.
Cheers.
4
@3 This.
And look at just how awesome America is. One of our plants has to deal with flooding and handles it like a champ. If the Japanese would rather sit in the dark than use nuclear power, that's their problem. The thing was built closer to the discovery of nuclear power than to today.
And look at just how awesome America is. One of our plants has to deal with flooding and handles it like a champ. If the Japanese would rather sit in the dark than use nuclear power, that's their problem. The thing was built closer to the discovery of nuclear power than to today.
5
@3 @4
"According to Biff Bradley, the director of risk assessment for the Nuclear Energy Institute, it's almost impossible to try to rank the absolute safety risk of a plant, due to the number of variables that would be involved in any sort of direct comparison."
"Narly half of the 104 nuclear reactors operating in the United States are close to major fault lines"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20…
"According to Biff Bradley, the director of risk assessment for the Nuclear Energy Institute, it's almost impossible to try to rank the absolute safety risk of a plant, due to the number of variables that would be involved in any sort of direct comparison."
"Narly half of the 104 nuclear reactors operating in the United States are close to major fault lines"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20…
6
What is your alternative to clean, safe, reliable nuclear power; asswipe?
yeah, we thought so.....
yeah, we thought so.....
8
@3: That's right, an outdated American General Electric design that is used in 23 reactors at 16 locations in the United States:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/0…
And you're right, siting regulations in the United States would NEVER allow a nuclear plant to be so close to a major metropolitan area. Fukushima Daiichi is, for example, only 37 miles from Fukushima City.
We would NEVER put a nuclear plant so close to say, New York City. Indeed, Indian Point is sited a whopping 38 miles away from an urban center with a population of ~20 million people. And it's not like plant hasn't ever incidents such as FLOODING, or LEAKAGE of radioactive water into the Hudson River or accidental releases of gases. Of course not, that would never happen because Americans are a can-do people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Poin…
And concerning the stupidity of siting a nuclear plant RIGHT ON THE OCEAN near one of the most tectonically active faultlines ON EARTH, that's clearly a Japanese error that has everything to do with their limited land mass. In America, where we have LOTS of open dead space throughout the midwest, we would never be so stupid as to site a nuclear reactor on, say, the coast of California halfway between San Francisco on Los Angeles and then not bother to have any kind of earthquake response plan:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/16…
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/0…
And you're right, siting regulations in the United States would NEVER allow a nuclear plant to be so close to a major metropolitan area. Fukushima Daiichi is, for example, only 37 miles from Fukushima City.
We would NEVER put a nuclear plant so close to say, New York City. Indeed, Indian Point is sited a whopping 38 miles away from an urban center with a population of ~20 million people. And it's not like plant hasn't ever incidents such as FLOODING, or LEAKAGE of radioactive water into the Hudson River or accidental releases of gases. Of course not, that would never happen because Americans are a can-do people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Poin…
And concerning the stupidity of siting a nuclear plant RIGHT ON THE OCEAN near one of the most tectonically active faultlines ON EARTH, that's clearly a Japanese error that has everything to do with their limited land mass. In America, where we have LOTS of open dead space throughout the midwest, we would never be so stupid as to site a nuclear reactor on, say, the coast of California halfway between San Francisco on Los Angeles and then not bother to have any kind of earthquake response plan:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/16…
9
@6, I have repeatedly said that I wouldn't rule out nuclear. I just think that we have to have a realistic understanding of the potential consequences before we go down the path of expanding our nuclear power industry. That said, I don't think we're making a sufficient investment in wind and solar.
Fukushima is a disaster. The impact is real. Folks here should be aware of this.
Fukushima is a disaster. The impact is real. Folks here should be aware of this.
10
an individual human being may be capable of determining a safe set of protocols for nuclear power. the problem is that society/civilization isn't capable of consistently enacting those protocols, and both the history and the present of the nuclear industry bear that out.
12
@10 I happen to favor judicious use of Nuclear power but one of my favorite comebacks comes from Wendell Berry (keep in mind he is a religious man) when he was at a meeting to protest construction of a Nuclear Plant:
Plant official: Only an idiot could cause a problem
Wendell: You provide the plant, God will provide the idiot
Plant official: Only an idiot could cause a problem
Wendell: You provide the plant, God will provide the idiot
15
@3 In addition to Indian Point (noted @8), what about the South Texas Nuclear Project spitting distance from the Gulf of Mexico? It will be underwater if the Greenland ice cap melts or during a Banda Aceh tsunami event. And that California plant on an earthquake fault line AND on the beach. And in Nebraska, where... (read the news).
We suck at nuclear power as bad as the Japanese and Soviets/Russians/Ukrainians. And the Chinese are doing equally stupid plant sitings today. Humans must have a death wish and no nationality is exempt.
We suck at nuclear power as bad as the Japanese and Soviets/Russians/Ukrainians. And the Chinese are doing equally stupid plant sitings today. Humans must have a death wish and no nationality is exempt.
16
The technology now exists, and is being used that would have prevented this situation. Passive reactor cooling is something built into all modern designs, and is not what was present at Fukishima. Instead, they had a diesel backup system that was hit by a double natural disaster. Tragic and horrible don't begin to describe what is happening there, but it is hardly an argument that nuclear energy is a bad idea. To those who disagree, I propose the following: why don't you tally up the enviromental and human damage from mining and burning coal? Once you have done this, tally up the damage in Japan. Hell, tally up the damage done in the three other nuclear accidents that have ever happened, and then compare it to the numbers you get from the consumption of coal. A few years ago NPR did a story on "clean" coal plants, and coal in general and a key talking point there was the fact that if we could just stop burning coal, world wide, right now, there would be no concerns for global warming as a result of CO2 in the atmosphere. Think about that when you start arguing the "long term" affects of what is happening at Fukishima. I think global warming trumps that, hands down. But, we will probably keep burning coal so, whatever.
18
@16: Name me one reactor in the United States that has complete passive shutdown capability.
Instead, they had a diesel backup system that was hit by a double natural disaster.
Just like every single nuclear reactor in the United States.
But as you should know, that doesn't actually matter that much. Why? Because ALL of these reactors have CONTAINMENT structures. And the CONTAINMENT structures won't fail in the case of a meltdown event and any kind of vessel breach and molten corium flow and byproducts will be contained. And we can see how in Fukushima how effective our brilliantly American-engineered containment structures turned out... We are standing at 0 for 3 on that safety feature, which is the same as used on 23 reactors in the US.
Still unknown is whether any of the melts has penetrated the basemat, which actually did not occur in Chernobyl, thankfully. The Japanese have been very quiet about the possibility of mining operations underneath Fukushima, and do not at this point seem to be as prepared for this possibility as were the Russians, and TEPCO has made only the most cursory mentions of this in their public documents and have remained completely silent in their public pronouncements about this.
Instead, they had a diesel backup system that was hit by a double natural disaster.
Just like every single nuclear reactor in the United States.
But as you should know, that doesn't actually matter that much. Why? Because ALL of these reactors have CONTAINMENT structures. And the CONTAINMENT structures won't fail in the case of a meltdown event and any kind of vessel breach and molten corium flow and byproducts will be contained. And we can see how in Fukushima how effective our brilliantly American-engineered containment structures turned out... We are standing at 0 for 3 on that safety feature, which is the same as used on 23 reactors in the US.
Still unknown is whether any of the melts has penetrated the basemat, which actually did not occur in Chernobyl, thankfully. The Japanese have been very quiet about the possibility of mining operations underneath Fukushima, and do not at this point seem to be as prepared for this possibility as were the Russians, and TEPCO has made only the most cursory mentions of this in their public documents and have remained completely silent in their public pronouncements about this.
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