Mike, thanks for the link -- I'll listen as soon as I can.

Mike,

Now may be the time we can start to have rational and infromed converstations about what's going on in and around Fukushima.

The eco-journalist you quote is distracting us from the real issue. Anyone can see there is no conspiracy of silence in the media, only less hysteria. People in Vancouver will of course not be meaningfully affected by the stuff that leaked out of Fukushima. It is primarily a local problem and talking up the global impact only ruins one's credibility and misleads those who listen to you. It's a shame because there are worthwhile things to say about this disaster.
Here's what one could read in the press (Google's first result for my two-word search):

A silent spring...

The disaster at Fukushima is ruining the land, livelyhoods and communities. The stress alone is going to make people ill and probably kill not a few. That's the real story. It's not only a local story. It's a story that should be discussed by people all over the world because there are lots of nuke plants aroud the world located in populated areas.
Don't worry about minuscule amounts of radioactive stuff from Fukushima getting near you or even in your diet. Small amounts of radioactive stuff is something our ancestors have lived with. But they did not live near nuke plants. So check out the evacuation radii around Fukushima and then move them over the nuke plants lying closest to where you live, where your family lives, where your friends live. How safe are those plants? How responsibly and conscientiously are they operated?

It's probably still too early to look at the minutiae of what happend at Fukushima to draw practical lessons about how to make nuke plants safer. But anyone should be able to get some hints.
And something ought to be clear at this point: the risk of disaster with nukes is not zero. Neither is it close enough. It's not only them foolish Soviets who mess up. So don't take any bullshit from authorities and operators. And spending gigabucks on plush contracts is not what's going to make the plants near you safe.
When a disaster hits is not the time to investigate this stuff. Then it's too late and the most responsible thing to do is probably going to be listening to whatever the people in charge say even if you suspect they're criminally incompetent. But now, when everything is rosy, you can discuss this in your community, act and possibly make a difference.

Japan could be using wave and tidal power to generate electricity with no fuel and no pollution and no radiation and no waste. The whole country is islands; surrounded by oceans, and this is a natural fit.

There are several companies that already make these:

http://www.oceanpowertechnologies.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/working_lunch/7633597.stm
http://www.pelamiswave.com/

TEPCO slipping behind schedule to contain accident (Less than 1 minute to read from Daily News (Japan Broadcasting Corporation))
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/11_04.html


Nuclear collapse looms? Fukushima No. 4 reactor 'leaning'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxbm7iJTT8U (5 minutes of video from RussiaToday)



(much longer 30 minutes to read?)
From the 'Rains it Pours' department: http://economic-undertow.blogspot.com/2 ... dgame.html

Information trickling out of Fukushima Daiichi makes this the data- dump that keeps on giving. Since the weekend news has not been good. The four reactors are a cauldron of 'broken' with hellish radiation and extreme temperatures. Evidence suggests that reactions taking place within the reactors are escaping operators' control

Radioactive water found in No.3 reactor pit (Japan Broadcasting Corporation)
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/11_29.html

Tokyo Electric Power Company says water containing radioactive material has been found flowing into a pit outside of the No.3 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The flow was confirmed on Wednesday afternoon at a pit linked to a utility tunnel near the reactor's water intake.

Workers could not confirm whether the water was leaking out into the sea, but they reported seeing froth near the water intake.
TEPCO says the concentration of radioactive Cesium in water sampled from the pit was 620,000 times higher than the safety limit set by the government.

Workers entered Reactor #1 recently, and installed new cooling systems, but they found the spent fuel storage a wreck of twisted metal and fuel rods. It is leaking radioactive water into the sea.

You know I got a lot of cr*p on this thread earlier about my expressed contempt for the TEPCO executives who made all this possible and my references to seppuku.

Is it sinking in? Is it making any more sense to people now? Should there not be any accountability when someone melts down an economy or a reactor? And should not higher levels of authority be associated with higher levels of accountability.... not less?

Here's a super detailed presentation of the current status:

http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/files/en20110511-3-2.pdf

So if you're interested, have a look.

The *core* on Reactor #1 has been leaking...

"Fukushima Could Have Avoided Nuclear Meltdown, Lost Chance By Inaction" dailytech.com


http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=21665

"Japan panel: Fukushima nuclear disaster 'man-made'" "The crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant was "a profoundly man-made disaster", a Japanese parliamentary panel has said in a report." "It also blamed cultural conventions and a reluctance to question authority."

According to the Japanese government it turns out that I was... inadvertently, correct.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18718057

Do you still think those in authority, who were the cause of this disaster, should not be held accountable. If they are held accountable, given the large number of deaths... what in your opinion would be a proportional sanction. Certainly not retirement with a life time CEO pension?

As to your question about whether I have not shame, shouldn't you really direct your indignation at the perpetrators or this "man made" disaster and retract your defense of their actions?

UPDATE 2-Japan's atomic disaster caused by "collusion" - panel report
"Across the board, the Commission found ignorance and arrogance unforgivable for anyone or any organisation that deals with nuclear power. We found a disregard for global trends and a disregard for public safety,"
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/ ... QK20120705

The people who should be held accountable must also include those who finalised and agreed on the design of the plant to be "a bit" resistant to a Tsunami, the problem was that they did not design and build the plant to be resistant to a damned huge Tsunami's such as the one that wiped out the plant and all of its backup cooling. If the plant was properly protected from the Tsunami that hit it, it would still be operating now.



Please do tell of the large numbers of deaths... I have not heard of a single death being reported (that is not to say that there are none, but if you argue for non-direct causes then please consider the huge number of "silent" deaths that occur routinely due to fossil fuels being burned).


Andy

????? Are you serious ?????

The lack of any death being reported due to the Fukushima accident, not the Tsunami, I'm sure that's what Andy means. I'd have to agree with that theory. There were some of the Fukushima team who will have received large doses but not in the scale of Chenobyl.

I would consider any measurements of dose received by the general population to be invalidated by the sheer scale of property damage done in the Tsunami. The amount of dust kicked up from rubble will be a serious cancer risk itself and how much of that will include asbestos? Or naturally occurring radon gas release from being trapped in granite?

Clearly there's a few failings in how the plant was built:

1. Coastal defences only designed for a 3.8 m wave. In the UK we build things a lot stronger than this and we aren't exactly in tsunami territory.

2. Fundementals of BWR design.

3. Lack of redundancy in case of loss of power/pumping of primary coolant.

You've then got the failings of TEPCO...

There was an accident. A lot of people died. Thousands upon thousands. Many of them, a result of abruptly moving a large number of old and sick from their homes, have not even been properly attributed to the accident.

Deadly mistakes were made prior to the accident, during the accident and after the accident. They were made by humans in whose care these many people's safety had been entrusted.

Whatever political points you want to make about nuclear power vs. something else, just doesn't seem relevant. And there is no aspect of this horrible event that didn't cause large numbers of deaths.

My answer was pretty obvious, after all I was replying to your statement below.



Assuming that you are not suggesting that "people" specifically those in Japan somehow "caused" that horrendous Tsunami you must have obviously been referring to the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant cock-up, mostly as I refereed to "the lame design for a nuclear power station on the shore's of the sea in a region prone to earthquakes and Tsunami's.



No there was not, there was "a natural disaster", accident implies that there was an unintentional human cause.



Sadly yes.



That is the part that has barely been mentioned in the news, and when it has, only guessed figures have been used.



That was for the whole world to see, and surely one of the things that ironically helped charities to hand over such large amounts of money in the form of aid to a rich nation - we witnessed the poorly coordinated response on a daily basis for a few months.



It is only relevant in the argument against nuclear power by those wishing to use more "safer" fossil burning power stations. I thought I would drop the point in now rather than later, and also as an aide to my question of "how many people were killed as a result directly or otherwise of the power station going into meltdown" vs "how many people would have been killed by the many fossil burning power stations that would have been there in its stead over the last 40-years".?



I don't want to play a counting game with peoples deaths, however things need to be put into perspective. Of the 18-19 thousand deaths, how many were caused directly or otherwise by the nuclear meltdown.? I honestly have no idea, and I am not going to speculate. How many of the deaths were caused directly or otherwise by the nuclear meltdown were preventable.? My answer is "all of them".


Andy

The decisions of what to do in preparation for a Tsunami were well within the ambit of those in charge. Though much more grievous were the decisions made after the Tsunami.

I was referring to all of those decisions. I believe the government report referred to all those decisions as well... with the same emphasis on the post Tsunami decisions.

Sort of Like Hurricane Katrina, squared.... "Browny" doing a good job and all.