Has Our Gov't Learned NOTHING from the Japanese Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima?

[Mustang]

Let's see: how many people died from the FUkushima "disaster?"

The answer: a big fat 0

That's nada, zip, zilch

Despite one of the worst Earthquakes in the last 100 years, and one of the most devastating tsunamis that has ever occurred, no one has died from anything occurring at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Conclusion. nuclear power is far, far, far safer than simply living within 5 miles of the coast.

Their land is contaminated. Their food is ALSO contaminated which affects both domestic consumption AND exports. Their economy is screwed. Their manufacturing exports have fallen. They're facing hundreds of billions of dollars in losses and clean up costs. The clean up time alone is estimated to be 3 years. Their population is displaced. People who previously were contributing members to society are now wholly dependent on charity and/or state aid.

Yeah, nuclear power disasters are merely an incidental cost equivalent to the disasters of other energy production accidents...NOT!

All those issues are the result of the earthquake and the tsunami, not the nuclear plant problem. Why do you expect a nuclear plant to survive a tsunami and 9.1 Earthquake when nothing else in the are did?

the upshot of the nuclear plant problem is a slight elevated level of radiation within 5 kilometers of the plant. Most of the radioactive material will be washed away by the rain in a single year.

That's it. Wow, that is such a catastrophe as a result of the biggest natural disaster in history!

There have been LNG disasters that have killed hundreds of people, but I don't see any of you anti-nuclear fruitcakes whining about LNG.

I have to laugh at human arrogance. Where's the common sense in building a nuclear plant in an earthquake zone along a coast that has a history of tsunamis?

Likewise, in America, here's what I see. As our plants are getting older and approaching the point where the original plan was to decommision them, the safety standards are continuously being lowered to keep the plants in compliance. How fuckin' stupid is that? They stick a stamp of approval on a deteriorating facility as if it's that stamp of approval that MAKES/PROVES it's safe.

Do you know what that sounds like to me? It sounds like the story of a man who buys a brand new car. It's got a good engine, a good battery, good tires, good brakes, a good starter, and it runs just as smooth as silk. He drives that car for many, many years. After ALL those years, the tires are worn, the electrical system is old, the brakes are soft, the tires have very little tread, and the transmission slips. But instead of fixing the car with new parts, the man just lowers the standards of what's considered an acceptably safe road-worthy automobile. Then he hands the keys to his teenage daughter and tells her it's got his stamp of approval. That's what our nuclear industry is passing off on the public.

 

[PoliticalChic]

It looks like this has been going on for years and years. The Japanese learned the hard way about being overconfident in their safety measures. Why do we have to tempt fate in light of what we now know AND after 3 well-publicized major nuclear disasters in the last 30 years?

If our gov't is not going to decommision these nuclear plants and shut them down, they should at least require the utility companies to modernize the plants in order to minimize the chances of any nuclear accident.

Let's see: how many people died from the FUkushima "disaster?"

The answer: a big fat 0

That's nada, zip, zilch

Despite one of the worst Earthquakes in the last 100 years, and one of the most devastating tsunamis that has ever occurred, no one has died from anything occurring at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Conclusion. nuclear power is far, far, far safer than simply living within 5 miles of the coast.

Their land is contaminated. Their food is ALSO contaminated which affects both domestic consumption AND exports. Their economy is screwed. Their manufacturing exports have fallen. They're facing hundreds of billions of dollars in losses and clean up costs. The clean up time alone is estimated to be 3 years. Their population is displaced. People who previously were contributing members to society are now wholly dependent on charity and/or state aid.

Yeah, nuclear power disasters are merely an incidental cost equivalent to the disasters of other energy production accidents...NOT!

So...more folks died in Ted Kennedy's car than in Fukushima???

 

[auditor0007]

Let's see: how many people died from the FUkushima "disaster?"

The answer: a big fat 0

That's nada, zip, zilch

Despite one of the worst Earthquakes in the last 100 years, and one of the most devastating tsunamis that has ever occurred, no one has died from anything occurring at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Conclusion. nuclear power is far, far, far safer than simply living within 5 miles of the coast.

Their land is contaminated. Their food is ALSO contaminated which affects both domestic consumption AND exports. Their economy is screwed. Their manufacturing exports have fallen. They're facing hundreds of billions of dollars in losses and clean up costs. The clean up time alone is estimated to be 3 years. Their population is displaced. People who previously were contributing members to society are now wholly dependent on charity and/or state aid.

Yeah, nuclear power disasters are merely an incidental cost equivalent to the disasters of other energy production accidents...NOT!

So...more folks died in Ted Kennedy's car than in Fukushima???

I'm sure you will agree that none of those people involved in the clean up will die an early death. Actually, they will probably become super heroes with super powers due to their extremely excessive exposure to radiation. In time, they will even make movies about these newly created super humans.

 

[Mustang]

Let's see: how many people died from the FUkushima "disaster?"

The answer: a big fat 0

That's nada, zip, zilch

Despite one of the worst Earthquakes in the last 100 years, and one of the most devastating tsunamis that has ever occurred, no one has died from anything occurring at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Conclusion. nuclear power is far, far, far safer than simply living within 5 miles of the coast.

Their land is contaminated. Their food is ALSO contaminated which affects both domestic consumption AND exports. Their economy is screwed. Their manufacturing exports have fallen. They're facing hundreds of billions of dollars in losses and clean up costs. The clean up time alone is estimated to be 3 years. Their population is displaced. People who previously were contributing members to society are now wholly dependent on charity and/or state aid.

Yeah, nuclear power disasters are merely an incidental cost equivalent to the disasters of other energy production accidents...NOT!

So...more folks died in Ted Kennedy's car than in Fukushima???

People will die as a result of radiation poisoning. Some will die relatively soon. Some will die in months or years. However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Japanese gov't hides those numbers.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Their land is contaminated. Their food is ALSO contaminated which affects both domestic consumption AND exports. Their economy is screwed. Their manufacturing exports have fallen. They're facing hundreds of billions of dollars in losses and clean up costs. The clean up time alone is estimated to be 3 years. Their population is displaced. People who previously were contributing members to society are now wholly dependent on charity and/or state aid.

Yeah, nuclear power disasters are merely an incidental cost equivalent to the disasters of other energy production accidents...NOT!

So...more folks died in Ted Kennedy's car than in Fukushima???

People will die as a result of radiation poisoning. Some will die relatively soon. Some will die in months or years. However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Japanese gov't hides those numbers.

Wow!

OK...you convinced me!

Drill in ANWR!

...Today!

 

[martybegan]

Other countries are learning...

Germany says no nuclear power by 2022

We can replace our nuclear with renewables as well.

How much you want to bet that when push comes to shove and they cannot meet thier power demands locally, they will buy some power from across the boarder from good old France, who gets most of their electrical power from where?

 

[martybegan]

It looks like this has been going on for years and years. The Japanese learned the hard way about being overconfident in their safety measures. Why do we have to tempt fate in light of what we now know AND after 3 well-publicized major nuclear disasters in the last 30 years?

If our gov't is not going to decommision these nuclear plants and shut them down, they should at least require the utility companies to modernize the plants in order to minimize the chances of any nuclear accident.

Let's see: how many people died from the FUkushima "disaster?"

The answer: a big fat 0

That's nada, zip, zilch

Despite one of the worst Earthquakes in the last 100 years, and one of the most devastating tsunamis that has ever occurred, no one has died from anything occurring at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Conclusion. nuclear power is far, far, far safer than simply living within 5 miles of the coast.

I have no issue with us using nuclear energy. However, we need to do everything possible to make certain it remains safe, and with these aging power plants, safety is definitely not at the top of the list currently.

As usually, your response is the most simple minded at hand. Everything you ever post is simple minded and black and white. Unfortunately, life in general is not black and white, although I'm sure you will now tell us all how it is.

So far we have had 3 big nuclear accidents. Lets look at what caused them, in ascending order of clusterfuckery.

3. TMI. Crappy operator attention and a lack of emergency training resulted in a partial meltdown after around 2 days of the operators doing the wrong thing to fix the problem. Result, No containment breach, but reactor destroyed.

2. Fukishima. a 9+ earthquake followed by a 40 ft wall of water (they designed to resist a 20 footer) resulted in 3-4 possible meltdowns, significant release of nucleotides, and possible local contamination. This is still up in the air because we havent seen the report yet, and Japan is still reeling from the other results of the earthquake.

1. Chernobyl. A combination of a poor design (high void coefficent, postive power feedback response, bad control rod design, lack of containment) and dumbfuck operational procedures (running an emergency test in less than ideal conditions with people not trained in the procedure) resulted in a graphite fire and explosion that destroyed the reactor and hurtled parts of it out of the building, as well as a fire that made radioactive soot.)

Meanwhile there are hundreds to thousands of reactors that run just fine, well regulated and watched, that function every day without a peep. Hell in this country a plant in Nebraska had to turn on a backup pump 90 min after another one failed, resulting in ZERO problems, yet had to report it as an incident. That is how regulation should work, yet people jumped on it going ZOMG LEVEL 4 ALERT WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIEZ

 

[martybegan]

Their land is contaminated. Their food is ALSO contaminated which affects both domestic consumption AND exports. Their economy is screwed. Their manufacturing exports have fallen. They're facing hundreds of billions of dollars in losses and clean up costs. The clean up time alone is estimated to be 3 years. Their population is displaced. People who previously were contributing members to society are now wholly dependent on charity and/or state aid.

Yeah, nuclear power disasters are merely an incidental cost equivalent to the disasters of other energy production accidents...NOT!

All those issues are the result of the earthquake and the tsunami, not the nuclear plant problem. Why do you expect a nuclear plant to survive a tsunami and 9.1 Earthquake when nothing else in the are did?

the upshot of the nuclear plant problem is a slight elevated level of radiation within 5 kilometers of the plant. Most of the radioactive material will be washed away by the rain in a single year.

That's it. Wow, that is such a catastrophe as a result of the biggest natural disaster in history!

There have been LNG disasters that have killed hundreds of people, but I don't see any of you anti-nuclear fruitcakes whining about LNG.

I have to laugh at human arrogance. Where's the common sense in building a nuclear plant in an earthquake zone along a coast that has a history of tsunamis?

Likewise, in America, here's what I see. As our plants are getting older and approaching the point where the original plan was to decommision them, the safety standards are continuously being lowered to keep the plants in compliance. How fuckin' stupid is that? They stick a stamp of approval on a deteriorating facility as if it's that stamp of approval that MAKES/PROVES it's safe.

Do you know what that sounds like to me? It sounds like the story of a man who buys a brand new car. It's got a good engine, a good battery, good tires, good brakes, a good starter, and it runs just as smooth as silk. He drives that car for many, many years. After ALL those years, the tires are worn, the electrical system is old, the brakes are soft, the tires have very little tread, and the transmission slips. But instead of fixing the car with new parts, the man just lowers the standards of what's considered an acceptably safe road-worthy automobile. Then he hands the keys to his teenage daughter and tells her it's got his stamp of approval. That's what our nuclear industry is passing off on the public.

And I have to laugh at people who think that unless you can eliminate all the risk of something, you shouldnt do it. There is always a chance of failure, all you can do is make it very very small.

 

[bripat9643]

People will die as a result of radiation poisoning. Some will die relatively soon. Some will die in months or years. However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Japanese gov't hides those numbers.

ROFL! No they won't. No one received enough radiation to cause radiation poisoning. If anything, they will probably have a lower incidence of cancer than the population that didn't get exposed to the radiation.

As The New York Times science section reported in 2001, an increasing number of scientists believe that at some level -- much higher than the minimums set by the U.S. government -- radiation is good for you. "They theorize," the Times said, that "these doses protect against cancer by activating cells' natural defense mechanisms."

Among the studies mentioned by the Times was one in Canada finding that tuberculosis patients subjected to multiple chest X-rays had much lower rates of breast cancer than the general population.

A $10 million Department of Energy study from 1991 examined 10 years of epidemiological research by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health on 700,000 shipyard workers, some of whom had been exposed to 10 times more radiation than the others from their work on the ships' nuclear reactors. The workers exposed to excess radiation had a 24 percent lower death rate and a 25 percent lower cancer mortality than the non-irradiated workers.

The only people who will die in Japan are all the victims of mother nature. Radiation simply isn't the danger that libtards have made it out to be.

 

[bripat9643]

So far we have had 3 big nuclear accidents. Lets look at what caused them, in ascending order of clusterfuckery.

3. TMI. Crappy operator attention and a lack of emergency training resulted in a partial meltdown after around 2 days of the operators doing the wrong thing to fix the problem. Result, No containment breach, but reactor destroyed.

2. Fukishima. a 9+ earthquake followed by a 40 ft wall of water (they designed to resist a 20 footer) resulted in 3-4 possible meltdowns, significant release of nucleotides, and possible local contamination. This is still up in the air because we havent seen the report yet, and Japan is still reeling from the other results of the earthquake.

1. Chernobyl. A combination of a poor design (high void coefficent, postive power feedback response, bad control rod design, lack of containment) and dumbfuck operational procedures (running an emergency test in less than ideal conditions with people not trained in the procedure) resulted in a graphite fire and explosion that destroyed the reactor and hurtled parts of it out of the building, as well as a fire that made radioactive soot.)

Meanwhile there are hundreds to thousands of reactors that run just fine, well regulated and watched, that function every day without a peep. Hell in this country a plant in Nebraska had to turn on a backup pump 90 min after another one failed, resulting in ZERO problems, yet had to report it as an incident. That is how regulation should work, yet people jumped on it going ZOMG LEVEL 4 ALERT WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIEZ

So what is the sum total of deaths from these three incidents?

The answer is: 31.

There were no deaths caused by TMI, no deaths cause by Fukushima and only 31 confirmed deaths caused by the worst nuclear catastrophe in history, Chernobyl.

The empirical evidence gives us no reason to be concerned.

 

[bripat9643]

here's more evidence that moderate doses of radiation are not harmful:

Lawrence Solomon: Fears Over Fukushima Radiation Overblown

Those who survived the immediate atomic blasts but were near Ground Zero died at a high rate from excess exposure to radiation. The tens of thousands more distant from Ground Zero, and who received lower exposures to radiation, did not die in droves. To the contrary, and surprisingly, they outlived their counterparts in the general population who received no exposure to radiation from the blasts.

These findings come from the Atomic Bomb Disease Institute of the Nagasaki University School of Medicine, which has been analyzing the medical records of survivors continuously since 1968. The voluminous records — based in part on the free twice-a-year medical examinations that 83,050 registered Nagasaki survivors received — provided the researchers with a database of 2.5 million examination items to mine. To determine how the survivors fared, the researchers compared the survivors with Japanese men and women of the same age who had not been exposed to radiation.

“Among about 100,000 A-bomb survivors registered at Nagasaki University School of Medicine, male subjects exposed to 31-40 cGy [centigrays] showed significantly lower mortality from non-cancerous diseases than age-matched unexposed males,” the researchers found. “And the death rate for exposed male and female was smaller than that for unexposed.” The 31-40 cGy is a measure of radiation absorption higher than the general population in the vicinity of the plants is likely to have received.

 

[martybegan]

So far we have had 3 big nuclear accidents. Lets look at what caused them, in ascending order of clusterfuckery.

3. TMI. Crappy operator attention and a lack of emergency training resulted in a partial meltdown after around 2 days of the operators doing the wrong thing to fix the problem. Result, No containment breach, but reactor destroyed.

2. Fukishima. a 9+ earthquake followed by a 40 ft wall of water (they designed to resist a 20 footer) resulted in 3-4 possible meltdowns, significant release of nucleotides, and possible local contamination. This is still up in the air because we havent seen the report yet, and Japan is still reeling from the other results of the earthquake.

1. Chernobyl. A combination of a poor design (high void coefficent, postive power feedback response, bad control rod design, lack of containment) and dumbfuck operational procedures (running an emergency test in less than ideal conditions with people not trained in the procedure) resulted in a graphite fire and explosion that destroyed the reactor and hurtled parts of it out of the building, as well as a fire that made radioactive soot.)

Meanwhile there are hundreds to thousands of reactors that run just fine, well regulated and watched, that function every day without a peep. Hell in this country a plant in Nebraska had to turn on a backup pump 90 min after another one failed, resulting in ZERO problems, yet had to report it as an incident. That is how regulation should work, yet people jumped on it going ZOMG LEVEL 4 ALERT WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIEZ

So what is the sum total of deaths from these three incidents?

The answer is: 31.

There were no deaths caused by TMI, no deaths cause by Fukushima and only 31 confirmed deaths caused by the worst nuclear catastrophe in history, Chernobyl.

The empirical evidence gives us no reason to be concerned.

I know one cannot confirm cancer deaths due to increased radiation long term, but to be fair, we have to assume some people in the area had to have gotten a healthy dose due to the radioactive graphite smoke, as well as cancers in people in the response teams and the operating staff.

I know you cant 100% link it, but in Chernobyl's case I would give it a strong possibility.

 

[bripat9643]

Here's more on all the death and illness resulting from the Fukushimi meltdown.

Mummy, mummy, there's a nuclear monster! ? The Register

Thus far the worst exposure was suffered by three workers who stood in ankle-deep radioactive water for several hours and sustained doses above 100 millisievert from doing so, indicating local levels of 20-odd millisievert/hour. They have suffered zero health consequences as a result. As of the latest reports, as many as four other workers (of all the many hundreds present at the site) have gone above 100 millisievert: the maximum level allowed is 250 before being withdrawn from the operation altogether, but as is common in the nuclear industry intense caution is being exercised.

Danger beyond the plant fence has remained effectively nil. As of yesterday, according to nuclear experts at MIT in the States (reviewing data from Japanese and international monitoring teams on the ground) the highest dose rates seen within 30km of the plant have been 0.0016 millisievert/hour.

For context, you could live permanently under radiation levels of 0.0016 mS/hr and you would never achieve even half the annual dose levels permitted by airline crew.

The only actual health menace of any kind beyond the plant fence from Fukushima (and indeed following Chernobyl) has been presented by ingestion of radioisotopes in food: specifically of radioisotopic iodine. For adults this appears to have almost no effect, but in the case of children radio-iodine is taken up and concentrated in the thyroid gland very efficiently. Even though it decays away completely in a matter of weeks (iodine-131 has a half-life of just eight days), if a child ingests even quite small amounts of radio-iodine he or she will have a tiny extra risk of thyroid cancer in future – about 0.02 per cent, based on Chernobyl.

Fortunately, thyroid cancer – unusually among cancers – is almost always curable without ill effects (this is done, counterintuitively, using much larger amounts of iodine-131) and so the chance of such a child actually dying as a result of such exposure is unfeasibly tiny: less than one chance in a million.

 

[bripat9643]

I know one cannot confirm cancer deaths due to increased radiation long term, but to be fair, we have to assume some people in the area had to have gotten a healthy dose due to the radioactive graphite smoke, as well as cancers in people in the response teams and the operating staff.

I know you cant 100% link it, but in Chernobyl's case I would give it a strong possibility.

To be fair, the incidence of cancer among people living near Chernobyl shows no detectable increase. Aside from the men who died in the initial explosion, there are no verifiable deaths or illnesses as a result of the Chernobyl disaster.

 

[sparky]

The recent oil spill in the gulf and the nuclear disaster in Japan has given us proof positive that these companies don't know how to handle disasters of ANY magnitude. They have no contingency plans and no plan for cleaning up a mess once its made. God forbid we try to actually regulate these dangerous companies.

How many people have been killed in solar panel or wind turbine disasters?

I've been part of the contingency plan now for over 2 decades

imh 'insider' o , my best advice is>

RUN!

 

[Too Tall]

It looks like this has been going on for years and years. The Japanese learned the hard way about being overconfident in their safety measures. Why do we have to tempt fate in light of what we now know AND after 3 well-publicized major nuclear disasters in the last 30 years?

If our gov't is not going to decommision these nuclear plants and shut them down, they should at least require the utility companies to modernize the plants in order to minimize the chances of any nuclear accident.

Let's see: how many people died from the FUkushima "disaster?"

The answer: a big fat 0

That's nada, zip, zilch

Despite one of the worst Earthquakes in the last 100 years, and one of the most devastating tsunamis that has ever occurred, no one has died from anything occurring at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Conclusion. nuclear power is far, far, far safer than simply living within 5 miles of the coast.

Their land is contaminated. Their food is ALSO contaminated which affects both domestic consumption AND exports. Their economy is screwed. Their manufacturing exports have fallen. They're facing hundreds of billions of dollars in losses and clean up costs. The clean up time alone is estimated to be 3 years. Their population is displaced. People who previously were contributing members to society are now wholly dependent on charity and/or state aid.

Yeah, nuclear power disasters are merely an incidental cost equivalent to the disasters of other energy production accidents...NOT!

The problem in Japan was because of the proximity of the nuclear plants to the ocean. If the backup system to cool them had not been destroyed by the tsunami, I suggest that there would have been a non-problem.

I will agree with anyone who argues to not build a nuclear plant close to the ocean. Building one on the San Andreas fault would not be very bright either.

For what it's worth (not very much) I built experimental nuclear reactors many years ago in San Ramon, California. We had a test reactor at a facility in Idaho and sent some instrumented components to the Livermore Radiation Lab for testing.

 

[sparky]

It looks like this has been going on for years and years. The Japanese learned the hard way about being overconfident in their safety measures. Why do we have to tempt fate in light of what we now know AND after 3 well-publicized major nuclear disasters in the last 30 years?

If our gov't is not going to decommision these nuclear plants and shut them down, they should at least require the utility companies to modernize the plants in order to minimize the chances of any nuclear accident.

Let's see: how many people died from the FUkushima "disaster?"

The answer: a big fat 0

That's nada, zip, zilch

Despite one of the worst Earthquakes in the last 100 years, and one of the most devastating tsunamis that has ever occurred, no one has died from anything occurring at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Conclusion. nuclear power is far, far, far safer than simply living within 5 miles of the coast.

Something like 700 employees volunteered to stay and catch enough rads that they'll probably never see retirement

Another million are projected to die over a generation of exposure related incidents

so may i suggest you post with a clean pair of pampers lad....

 

[sparky]

Now the left accepts research by the AP on scientific issues? Note the "report" only suggests fears are higher. Well no kidding? Color me shocked the government over regulated something. Next you'll be telling me people are afraid of bunnies over 25 pounds. Eek!

the union of concerned scientists are not a government entity

 

[bripat9643]

The problem in Japan was because of the proximity of the nuclear plants to the ocean. If the backup system to cool them had not been destroyed by the tsunami, I suggest that there would have been a non-problem.

I will agree with anyone who argues to not build a nuclear plant close to the ocean. Building one on the San Andreas fault would not be very bright either.

For what it's worth (not very much) I built experimental nuclear reactors many years ago in San Ramon, California. We had a rest reactor at a facility in Idaho and sent some instrumented components to the Livermore Radiation Lab for testing.

Nuclear plants are built on the coast because they need lots of water for cooling. Building them on small streams or rivers will get the environmentalists after you because the waste heat can be bad for fish life.

No matter where they are built, someone will complain.

 

[bripat9643]

Something like 700 employees volunteered to stay and catch enough rads that they'll probably never see retirement

Another million are projected to die over a generation of exposure related incidents

so may i suggest you post with a clean pair of pampers lad....

I assume you're talking about Chernobyl, not Fukushima. Even so, that is still utter horseshit. There is no detectable increase in cancer rates in the immediately vicinity of the plant.

If you have evidence of these 700, produce it.