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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Japan...

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D Fuller said:
As my former boss at a TV station once said, "Don't ever forget that program that runs at 6:00 is a show"
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This is why they use sad violin music on the news, when information use the same method as film to give an emotion, it make me feel sick.
 
My point is that in this age of internet we have to be very careful what we say and how we say it. The current media hijack of the situation might seam like a typical "harmless" war to get the best ratings to secure income from advertising - which is nothing new for media in general - but this could not be further from the truth. There are already some serious consequences. The panic fueled by the media frenzy has completely halted supplies of fuel to gas stations, which in return has stopped all deliveries of basic supplies of food and everything else. Where I live the is not a drop of gas at any gas station in the vicinity and when we asked how soon we can expect some, we were told that the HQ's of these gas companies are all freaking out about the radiation (which is still far from any dangerous levels everywhere with the only exception being the Fukushima plant itself) and we should not expect any gas for at least 1~2 weeks. As a consequence the grocery stores are empty of all essential items, such as rice, bred, milk, water, eggs, oil, fruits - You name it. Even things like Snickers bars are all but gone from the shelves... If we didn't have my wife's mother sending us some supplies from Kyushu, I would be freaking out.

Hang on. I am freaking out. Since there is no gas, the deliveries of shipments are all extremely delayed and/or postponed indefinitely. We were suppose to receive the supplies early on Tuesday - Wednesday has gone and nothing has been delivered...

You can not imagine the cascading effect this is having on the life here. Things are slowly rolling to hold and all this because there is no gas anywhere...

So sorry if I am little grumpy. I have a 3-months old baby and wife to take care of...

Peter
 
Yup, the stores are pretty gutted. People hear bad news and so they do what people do, decide to "stock up a little". This can have a serious chain reaction.

Peter, I was in Shinjuku today. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to get a Whopper for lunch and curry rice for dinner at a restaurant. The stores are the pits but most restaurants seemed to be open and serving customers.

Some sane voices are starting to come to the fore. Worst case scenarios have been presented. It's not Chernobyl II.

That said, I'd love to shake the hands of those samurai up north.
 
Michael T O'Connor said:
...
However, I must also say that the news coverage of the events has been terrible. Instead of reporting about the terrible tragedy, they cover the "nuclear catastrophe."

First off, a disclaimer: I do not represent the views of my employer. Any of the following statements are solely my own opinion,. I am not an expert on BWRs and am in no way a qualified spokesman, nor do I claim to be a spokesperson for my employer. I am withholding the name of said employer to ensure that anything I say will not be misconstrued.


Anyways, the reality is that the nuclear reactors are essentially a non issue. Anyone who wants to know a bit more about the current condition should check out this article written by the nukes at MIT: http://mitnse.com/


Current radiation levels at the plant are something like 20mrem/hr. So if you were living at the plant, it would take you 250 days of continuous exposure (assuming the levels stay the same -- they won't ) to reach the limit of 5mrem/year imposed on radiation workers in the US. Thats 24/7 for 250 days at the plant. For more info on radiation, check here: http://www.deq.idaho.gov/inl_oversight/radiation/radiation_guide.cfm

Also, radiation from Fukushima falls of exponentially as you move away from the reactor. For example, if you have a beaker of radioactive material measured as 25mrem/hr at 1m, the dose falls to ~12.5mrem/hr at two meters, and ~1.5mrem/hr at 4m. Of course, the power plant is pretty big, but if you keep the population >1km away, their radiation dose is going to be insignificant(at current levels).

In summation, I wouldn't worry about the nuclear power plants. Decay heat (the current problem) falls exponentially, and every day we are separated from the initial incident gets us closer to being over with the current situation.

I just hope the media gets away from this, and starts focusing on the real issues; like the thousands of dead or missing and thousands without food or power in Japan. That's the real story.
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Pronuclear people allways (have to) minimise nuclear danger. It remembers me while the Chernobyl disaster : french president did say that the nuclear cloud will stop by french borders... Japanese governement does not say all the "ugly" truth. Time will tell.

Let's pray for those hit by tsunami, the earthquake and the nuclear contamination.

Pat
 
This weekend, the Moon will be the closest to Earth in nearly two decades in what's called a "Super Moon."
Super moons, in fact, have a historical association with strong storms, very high tides, extreme tides and also earthquakes.

Peter, don't worry everything is going to be fine.
We are with you and your family.
 
Let me preface this with a comment that in my day job, I'm an environmental engineer and I spend a LOT of time thinking about risk... And we really need to get some perspective on the relative risks of nuclear power.

Do you realize that there is a heck of a lot of radiation sitting in the ash from burning coal. More people die of inhaling contaminants from coal plants than you'd ever imagine. Coal, oil, and gas contribute to global warming (if you believe in it). Solar, wind, hydropower, wave, and geothermal energy are all awesome and I hope they grow, but to discount nuclear because of a few media-hyped-but-in-the grand-scheme-of-things-not-that-bad accidents plus one actually really bad accident (Chernobyl) is just not logical and does not take into account actual and real relative cumulative risks of the various energy sources.

Nuclear gets spectacular press, but with the exception of Chernobyl, which was an incredibly poorly constructed reactor, there has never been another nuclear reactor accident that claimed a single life, that I know of. Nuclear has Chernobyl. Fossil fuels have Deep Horizon, coal mine disasters (how many people die in mines every year?), the oil fires of the first Gulf war, Exxon Valdez, and countless other disasters that have claimed lives and caused massive environmental damage.

Think about the actual real risks from the various energy sources before you discount nuclear energy. It took an 8.9 magnitude earthquake... the largest in recorded Japanese history... to cause what MAY be a problem, but as of things right now, as far as I know, there has not been a single death from it... and look at the rest of the devastation. It is a crime that the news is focused on this one thing that really is insignificant in comparison to the other horrible things that are going on in Japan.

Get some perspective. Please.
 
Japan nuclear crisis escalates

Japan nuclear crisis escalates

Damage-at-the-Fukushima-D-013.jpg

Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Satellite view of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant on Wednesday 16 March,
confirming damage to reactors 1, 3 and 4.
Steam can be seen venting from the reactors 2 and 3 reactor building

International concern that Japan has lost control over the nuclear crisis is escalating as Britain, France

and other nations advised their citizens to "consider" leaving Tokyo because of heightened radiation levels.

LINK>>>
 
Steven Hammer said:
Let me preface this with a comment that in my day job, I'm an environmental engineer and I spend a LOT of time thinking about risk... And we really need to get some perspective on the relative risks of nuclear power.

Do you realize that there is a heck of a lot of radiation sitting in the ash from burning coal. More people die of inhaling contaminants from coal plants than you'd ever imagine. Coal, oil, and gas contribute to global warming (if you believe in it). Solar, wind, hydropower, wave, and geothermal energy are all awesome and I hope they grow, but to discount nuclear because of a few media-hyped-but-in-the grand-scheme-of-things-not-that-bad accidents plus one actually really bad accident (Chernobyl) is just not logical and does not take into account actual and real relative cumulative risks of the various energy sources.

Nuclear gets spectacular press, but with the exception of Chernobyl, which was an incredibly poorly constructed reactor, there has never been another nuclear reactor accident that claimed a single life, that I know of. Nuclear has Chernobyl. Fossil fuels have Deep Horizon, coal mine disasters (how many people die in mines every year?), the oil fires of the first Gulf war, Exxon Valdez, and countless other disasters that have claimed lives and caused massive environmental damage.

Think about the actual real risks from the various energy sources before you discount nuclear energy. It took an 8.9 magnitude earthquake... the largest in recorded Japanese history... to cause what MAY be a problem, but as of things right now, as far as I know, there has not been a single death from it... and look at the rest of the devastation. It is a crime that the news is focused on this one thing that really is insignificant in comparison to the other horrible things that are going on in Japan.

Get some perspective. Please.
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Yes I agree coal is bad, but Robert Finkelman, a former USGS coordinator of coal quality who oversaw research on uranium in fly ash in the 1990s, says that for the average person the by-product accounts for a miniscule amount of background radiation, probably less than 0.1 percent of total background radiation exposure. According to USGS calculations, buying a house in a stack shadow—in this case within 0.6 mile [one kilometer] of a coal plant—increases the annual amount of radiation you're exposed to by a maximum of 5 percent. But that's still less than the radiation encountered in normal yearly exposure to X-rays.

So why does coal waste appear so radioactive? It's a matter of comparison: The chances of experiencing adverse health effects from radiation are slim for both nuclear and coal-fired power plants—they're just somewhat higher for the coal ones. "You're talking about one chance in a billion for nuclear power plants," Christensen says. "And it's one in 10 million to one in a hundred million for coal plants."

Radiation from uranium and other elements in coal might only form a genuine health risk to miners, Finkelman explains. "It's more of an occupational hazard than a general environmental hazard," he says. "The miners are surrounded by rocks and sloshing through ground water that is exuding radon."

But a nuclear plant on the other hand has the capacity to render a country and neighboring countries uninhabitable, depending on the scale of the disaster so we are not talking apples to apples here. just my 2 cents
 
isaac williams said:
But a nuclear plant on the other hand has the capacity to render a country and neighboring countries uninhabitable, depending on the scale of the disaster so we are not talking apples to apples here. just my 2 cents
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Modern reactor designs don't fail critical so no a modern reactor cannot by its very design and nature render a country or even a very large area uninhabitable.

Thats not to say there are not still old reactor designs in use or issues with waste storage or disposal, but we will not see a Chernobyl from any modern 1st world rector design.
 
I don't understand the "nuclear or die" attitude...
The humans have other resources, it's time to move on.

Now Japan is in trouble...
 
This show of support in both Japan threads has deteriorated rapidly. I'm reluctantly closing both of them because you kids can't seem to understand the difference between heartfelt support and CNN news.

Once again... our prayers go out to all the people in Japan who have experienced such an incredibly difficult life-changing event.

Jim
 
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