earthquake in japan

YourValentine wrote:

I really try not to allow myself to get personal in such discussions but this upsets me greatly. You can thank God (or fate or coincidence) every day that you were not born a First Nation Canadian in Alberta. That your water is not contaminated and your land is not destroyed by oil sand strip mining. That your fish and deer are not poisoned and your kids do not die of cancer as a result of the incredible pollution. That your rich land and green trees have not been turned into black, hostile, poisonous waste land.
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Oh boy Barb, no way for you to know, but are you ever barking up the wrong dead tree here.  I was born in 1967, and in 1971 Apollo astronauts came to the city I grew up in to train because of the presence of unique rock formations called shatter cones.  That was the fact, but the enduring myth (as in still enduring today in many quarters) is that they came because my city was a desolate wasteland that looked like the surface of the moon.  Years of destructive mining practices ravaged many parts of the city through smelting practices that led to fallout and acid rain, and complete deforestation occurred in some areas.  Canadian Shield geography consists of a thin layer of soil on top of rock formations, and the deforestation caused erosion of what little soil there was, leaving behind only rock that was burned black as pitch by whatever was in the air and the rain.  And I mean black.   I think I was a teenager before I even noticed that all rock wasn't black, once enough of it was blasted out for new construction.  I recall playing 'Nadia Comaneci' during the Montreal Olympics in 1976 on a little hill in my backyard.  I can't believe we didn't kill ourselves, or at the very least split our skulls open, but it was normal for us for rocks to be our playground.  Black rocks and scrubby little plants (blueberries! yum!) and spindly little trees that could survive in the highly acid soil was the immediate environment of my early life.  We swam for hours in local lakes that presumably had the same crap that turned the rocks black, but as children we didn't  know to care, so we simply didn't.

In a generation, it's all different.  The city has undergone a United Nations recognized reclamation effort that has been described as "a landscape devastated and then transformed into a Canadian environmental success story, inspiring communities to improve their environment through the rehabilitation of air, water and land, resulting in a positive image for a damaged ecosystem".  Today it looks just like any other small city, which is to say ugly, average or beautiful depending on where you are looking at any given moment.  The regreening outside the immediate city limits continues today.  For me, they've almost taken it too far in spots.  The black slag heaps of the waste products of nickel mining that ring one end of the city were until recently rows of  impossibly long banks of black rocks that looked starkly beautiful (to me) against the oranges and blues of sunset and twilight.  Now they've added lime and soil and they're covered in grasses and are colloquially referred to locally as 'Dublin'.

So I know first hand about dirty industry, it's impact, and how it is turned around.  I would rather have a nuclear plant in my backyard, like right in my backyard as long as I can keep my maple trees, than have projects like the oil sands three provinces away.  The emissions of oil sand production are comparable to coal. Unreasonably vilifying nuclear energy on emotion is as good as flying to Alberta yourself and personally shovelling a few loads of toxic sludge into the Athabasca River.

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YourValentine wrote:

Back to the topic: I am not going to count the victims of the eartquake and Tsunami against the victims of the nuclear catastrophe or potential nuclear catastrophe. Or compare the number of still suffering Chernobyl victims to victims of other tragedies - that is just shameful.

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No, you don't get to turn my point about the relative human and environmental cost of each energy option into rhetoric.  If pursing fossil fuel for human energy needs kills magnitudes more people than nuclear energy  could ever hope to in 50 Chernobyls, that is a fact that needs to be factored into energy policy.  Radiation is a potentially carcinogenic industrial contaminant that is released in potentially troublesome quantities every 20 or 30 years, where dirty fossil fuel waste products are released every moment. We don't yet know how Fukushima will turn out, but I know that calling a crisis a catastrophe doesn't to me indicate a balanced, fact based view.  A crisis may become a catastrophe of course.  Yes there has been radiation detected in Japanese food and water supply, but that is as expected as it is frightening to people. At those levels broad harm to health is so completely unlikely. Marie Curie literally carried radium around in her pocket for years and used to write about how it gave off pretty light in her drawer at night.  I've read that her papers from the late 1800's are still too hot to be handled without protective equipment, though I don't know if that's true.  She died from radiation all right, 40 years later when she got anemia. Radiation must be respected, clearly, but most of the public fears are so wildly off the reality that I really hope what 78% of Germans (or Canadians, or anybody else) think is given it's proper perspective by the people who are ultimately making the decisions.  The fear however will work for us as a society because nuclear operators will be always be driven to greater and greater improvements and safety mechanisms, knowing the industry is so vulnerable to public opinion and political realities. 

When you're down to calling people  'apologists' I do think you've lost some of your objectivity.  The corporations are pulling one way, the environmentalists are pulling the other way, and somewhere in the middle is the truth. I kind of like the truth, though I'll grant that for me at least there is a sometimes difficult sacrifice of idealism and simplicity for reality and complexity.

Well good for you, that your landscape was rebuilt, GFF, I am really glad. If it had been a nuclear accident rebuilding would not have been possible - that is the whole difference you choose to ignore in the discussion. You would prefer nuclear plants over coal plants but I want renewable energy rather than nuclear plants. Coal is the energy of the 19th century, renewable energy is the energy of the 21st century.

You suggest that anti-nuclear activists are paranoid, emotion-driven and ignore the facts. With the same right I can say that the pro-nuclear supporters ignore the facts. You mention Marie Curie and that she lived to be 70+ although she was exposed to radiation but that is like the grandfather who smoked all his life and died peacefully at  the age of 90. You would not say that smoking is not dangerous because Grandpa did not die of cancer, right ? Instead of Marie Curie you could have picked the "Radium Girls" who were exposed to radium as well but they did get  anemia and cancer, And in the same way as in all other cases the industry who made the money out of it tried to hide and supress the facts and lied.

Like for example in Chernobyl where 59 victims were officially recognized but in fact there were thousands who died. Hundred thousands who became ill of cancer, thousands of children who were born with severe genetic effects. Hundreds of the so-called lquidators who were sent in to seal the plant and got cancer later were denied social security because they could not "prove" that the illness is related to the liquidation although the radiation-related illnesses are well documented and there is no doubt about cause and effect. Probably it is overly emotional and idealistic to have sympathy for the victims of Chernobyl - just not grabbing the the complexity of the situation. It needs the rationality of the decision makers who happen to be lobbyists to make the correct decisions for the stupid masses who are just unable to evaluate the issue correctly. After all, that is the idea of a democracy: you would not ask  Tom, Dick and Harry who have nothing to lose except their stupid lives, anyway. Scientists who do not work for the nuclear industry must be paranoid idiots by nature, as well.

Let me add something about the special situation in Germany because I read a lot about the "German Angst" when it comes to nuclear energy.

It is true that we have a tradition of anti-nuclear movements and it became very strong after Chernobyl. After Chernoby we always had a majority in the country who was against nuclear energy.

In the year 2000 we already had an exit strategy. The red-green government managed to make a compromise with the nuclear industry and issued  a law to limit the running time of all nuclear plants until the year 2020, older plants would have been closed as early as 2011. As a result the investment into publicly funded renewable energy roared and private citizens as well as communities and industry put billions into the new technology. Renewable energy technology became the biggest export hit in German history since the VW beetle. Protests and civil-war like rallies against waste transport in the country stopped, there was a big consensus.

Unfortunately, the new government took back this law just months ago in an unprecedented move, disregarding the constitutional rights of the state governments who did not approve. Claiming that the country would not have enough energy if the law prevailed Chancellor Merkel just ditched the compromise in favour of the profits of the four big energy companies in the country. That is the only reason for our government to switch off the old plants for three months after the accident in Japan. They just cannot hide the fact that they put the profit of four energy companies higher than the public good. Switching off the old plants was an act of sheer panic with no legal grounds just hoping that people will forget and not vote them all out of office.

We have hope that the Supreme Court will rule that the government acted against the constitution and that the red-green exit law will prevail. If this happens the world can watch and see if it is possible to run an industrial country with renewable energy. After all, we are still an industrial country and not just a financial playgound for the banks. Progress is the advancement of newer and better technology and not being held back by the interests of a few.

For Japan I can only hope it does not get worse before it gets better. In the long run they will change their policy, as well. It is not a question if it can be done, just a question if it is wanted.

YourValentine wrote: Well good for you, that your landscape was rebuilt, GFF, I am really glad. If it had been a nuclear accident rebuilding would not have been possible - that is the whole difference you choose to ignore in the discussion. You would prefer nuclear plants over coal plants but I want renewable energy rather than nuclear plants. Coal is the energy of the 19th century, renewable energy is the energy of the 21st century. ============================ No, if it had been a catastrophic nuclear accident  rebuilding would not have been possible. Of the approximately 21,000 days that the world has been in some part powered by nuclear technology, ONE of those days saw a catastrophic nuclear accident.  And that is what you are ignoring.  Chernobyl was horrible, and still is,  and I should have acknowledged a few posts ago that your proximity to that event of course contributes to your position both intellectually and psychologically.  I do understand, because a nuclear accident is incredibly vivid and emotional. But  making a generalization - that the technology is wholly unacceptable on it's face - based on an incredibly rare event - just does not stand up to scrutiny.   In more common terms it's like calling for the end of flight because of a plane crash.  That would  not be seen as a reasonable response, and neither should any similar response on the nuclear front. If vilifing nuclear had no cost, I'd be unlikely to even be talking about this with you.  But that is not the case. A big name environmental activist in the UK begged people not to abandon nuclear in the wake of this event saying "Even when nuclear power plants go horribly wrong, they do less damage to the planet and its people than coal-burning stations operating normally....Abandoning nuclear power as an option narrows our choices just when we need to be thinking as broadly as possible.”  I don't think anybody wants nuclear energy in the long run, on the presumption that we will be able to displace it with green tech, but you're doing the equivalent of yelling for everybody to ditch their cassette tapes in 1981 and calling people cassette apologists.  Emerging CD technology was exciting and clearly the future, but it took years for everybody and everything to catch up. There is great value in green activists pushing on the political front and on the public information front, and generally doing everything they can to eliminate the human factors that prevent the most rapid development of green tech possible.  But there is great harm when that same conviction is used to vilify nuclear power to the point that decades old technology is failing to get replaced with newer and safer tech, safer dry cask spent fuel storage initiatives are being blocked, coal continues to pump the most reprehensible garbage into the air every minute of every day, and the progress of the developing world is threatened.  That's too much of a price too sooth what are essentially somebody's ideological tailfeathers.  ============================= YourValentine wrote: You suggest that anti-nuclear activists are paranoid, emotion-driven and ignore the facts. With the same right I can say that the pro-nuclear supporters ignore the facts. You mention Marie Curie and that she lived to be 70+ although she was exposed to radiation but that is like the grandfather who smoked all his life and died peacefully at  the age of 90. You would not say that smoking is not dangerous because Grandpa did not die of cancer, right ? Instead of Marie Curie you could have picked the "Radium Girls" who were exposed to radium as well but they did get  anemia and cancer, And in the same way as in all other cases the industry who made the money out of it tried to hide and supress the facts and lied. ================================ No, I suggested that unreasonably vilifying nuclear energy on emotion that contradicts facts was irresponsible.  The key words there being 'unreasonably'  and 'irresponsible'.  Emotion should of course contribute to human decisions, but emotion should be a witness, not judge and jury. I mentioned Curie only in reference to your conclusion that you didn't think things were going to turn out well because radiation was discovered in Tokyo water.  We are exposed all the time, voluntarily and involuntarily, to radiation.  The amount first found on the spinach was equivalent to one chest x-ray if eaten for five years.  The water would have had to have been consumed for one year.  Both Curie and the Radium Girls died from prolonged exposure in unusual circumstances.  Those poor factory workers put radium powder right in their mouths and on their skin as a matter of course.  This is not the situation in Japan, even though as human beings we can of course deeply feel their plight right now.  They are in such an uncertain situation and being helplessly bombarded with radiation, no matter how slight, must be a terrible psychological burden.  How frightening it must be to read about your food and water having any extra radiation in it AT ALL.  But here, remote from the crisis, we have the option to be more circumspect and to help by not adding anything speculative, sensational or alarmist to the global chatter. ======================= YourValentine wrote: Like for example in Chernobyl where 59 victims were officially recognized but in fact there were thousands who died. Hundred thousands who became ill of cancer, thousands of children who were born with severe genetic effects. Hundreds of the so-called lquidators who were sent in to seal the plant and got cancer later were denied social security because they could not "prove" that the illness is related to the liquidation although the radiation-related illnesses are well documented and there is no doubt about cause and effect. Probably it is overly emotional and idealistic to have sympathy for the victims of Chernobyl - just not grabbing the the complexity of the situation. It needs the rationality of the decision makers who happen to be lobbyists to make the correct decisions for the stupid masses who are just unable to evaluate the issue correctly. After all, that is the idea of a democracy: you would not ask  Tom, Dick and Harry who have nothing to lose except their stupid lives, anyway. Scientists who do not work for the nuclear industry must be paranoid idiots by nature, as well. ======================= Are we having a discussion, or are you breaking up with me?  You're starting to sound like Brian May on foxes.

Brian May has the habit to call people names if they do not agree with him - I would prefer not to be compared with him.

I am not quite sure if you are serious in your posting. Yes, I happen to think that it is not a good thing when your drinking water is contaminated with radioactive substances. Actually, the WHO and IAEA happen to think the same and I am not irrational or irresponsible in my arguments at all. I also do not believe that arguing against nuclear power plants adds anything bad to the situation of the affected Japanese population - I happen to think that there is an actual danger  for the health of these people and it is not just some irrational fear - there is an actual, measurable danger. The danger does not come from scaremongers in Europe - the danger comes from the nuclear plant and not from anywhere else. Please visit the IAEA website  and look up the values, I am getting tired of trying to argue the obvious.

I never said that all nuclear power plants must be switched off tomorrow, that is ridiculous. It has been a "bridge technology" from the coal age to the renewable energy age. Therefore  the UK activist you quoted does not really need to convince me. Nobody wants to replace nuclear plants with coal plants, that would totally work against any climate protection goals. I am arguing in favour of an exit strategy and for a common national and European effort to make it possible to shut down all nuclear power plants in a foreseeable future. There are many ways to help this goal - new energy-saving technology, solar and wind energy, biomass plants for basic loads etc.

I do not believe that developing countries would be harmed if we close nuclear plants in Europe. Developing countries cannot feed their energy hunger with only nuclear plants  because it will take decades to build enough plants and there is simply not enough uranium on this planet to run all these plants until they are cost-effective. Of course, it would be a huge loss for the European nuclear industry if the developing countries chose to introduce renewable energy technology - which they will do in addition to their nuclear plants, anyway.

Yes, I think the risk is too high and the risk alone should be a reason to close all nuclear plants asap. An official risk study in my country says that there is 0,1% risk that a so-called MCA happens in  a nuclear plant per 40 years running time. With 150 plants in Europe that would be a 16% risk in 40 years and world wide a 40% risk in 40 years. When you think about it, is is not that small, after all.  You meantioned airplanes - only one passenger plane crashes per 100 000 flight hours. Since there are so many you have still a serious plane crash almost each year but the huge difference is that the plane crash is a local event and the crash site is not contaminated for generations to come. That is apparently the crucial point where nuclear power supporters cannot agree: nobody has the right to destroy whole landscapes for centuries.

No strength to argue just now, but wanted to share a couple of shots of my black rocks.  No point here, just happened that earlier I walked by a good example of of the striated effect of 'healthy rock' (ha ha) cut out of the pollution scarred rock.  Rocks are not that exciting I guess, but I had mentioned it and it isn't something you see everyday I suppose.  So, without further ado, my rocks!

Well, no one talks about all the various coal mine slurry containers that break and contaminate  low-lying valleys, place their employees in constant danger...because it is constant and 'mundane' to the news.

I am really appreciating all the 'politico-speak' from the company and Japan's government.  "The dangers are not IMMEDIATE."  There are no "short-term health risks." 

What is immediate?  What is short term?  Two days?  A week?  A month? 

We all know that those in the nearby areas that have had their food and water affected are ....shall we say, SOL in a year or two.

You cannot expect them to tell the public that their land and water is contaminated and they all have a 100 times higher cancer risk if they do not leave the contaminated 100 km zone. They told people to leave the 30 km zone on their own and many did - they left the old, the sick and the poor behind. In some places there is no food to buy, no water to drink, no doctor to look after the patients. Truck drivers refuse to drive into the contaminated areas because they fear for their health. The government should evacuate the people but in case of evacuation they would have to provide for them which is hard to do with  half a million homeless people after the earthquake.

You cannot see and feel the contamination - you have to trust your government to tell you the truth. I know how much I would trust my government ....

I cannot classify people like GratefulFan as anything other than "deliberate morons", in that they are smart enough to know better, but choose to completely ignore all that does not fit their dogma.

For the record: according to the offical statement by Japan's nuclear energy agency made yesterday morning (GMT), by sunday one week ago, radiation released had equaled 20% of the release in the Tchernobyl-disaster. That is eight days ago now. Considering the fact that official estimates speak of a minimum of eight more weeks for basic repairs, we can conclude that if this trend continues, the total release of radiation y will be approximately (56/9)*0.2x with x being the Tchernobyl disaster. The result would thus be 1.24x the release of nuclear material at Tchernobyl.

ThomasQuinn wrote: I cannot classify people like GratefulFan as anything other than "deliberate morons", in that they are smart enough to know better, but choose to completely ignore all that does not fit their dogma.

For the record: according to the offical statement by Japan's nuclear energy agency made yesterday morning (GMT), by sunday one week ago, radiation released had equaled 20% of the release in the Tchernobyl-disaster. That is eight days ago now. Considering the fact that official estimates speak of a minimum of eight more weeks for basic repairs, we can conclude that if this trend continues, the total release of radiation y will be approximately (56/9)*0.2x with x being the Tchernobyl disaster. The result would thus be 1.24x the release of nuclear material at Tchernobyl.

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Talking of morons and dogma, where's that pan-European War you promised us a few years back if more power wasn't devolved from individual countries to EU parliament?

And on another thread you accused me of being more right wing that someone you've seen on Fox. You were aksed to explain that but skulked off instead. I suppose not so much a case of you being moronic but simply acting like a dickhead?

My personal view is that as long as nuclear power is safer than other energy sources, I support it. However I don't have much scientific knowledge, so I will opt out of the discussion.


I will say though that it is quite unusual to encounter a discussion in which it is not considered ideal to be compared to Brian. :D

Blah blah blah.  Nuclear has had its day.

^so has sushi..

ThomasQuinn wrote: I cannot classify people like GratefulFan as anything other than "deliberate morons", in that they are smart enough to know better, but choose to completely ignore all that does not fit their dogma.

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Yeah. Rave on, van Duff.  Seeking clear facts before forming an opinion and making suppositions is called critical thinking.  There's nothing dogmatic about desiring the least destructive path to the green tech future everybody wants and expects.  Being anti-nuclear for the sake of being anti-nuclear is what's dogmatic.

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For the record: according to the offical statement by Japan's nuclear energy agency made yesterday morning (GMT), by sunday one week ago, radiation released had equaled 20% of the release in the Tchernobyl-disaster. That is eight days ago now. Considering the fact that official estimates speak of a minimum of eight more weeks for basic repairs, we can conclude that if this trend continues, the total release of radiation y will be approximately (56/9)*0.2x with x being the Tchernobyl disaster. The result would thus be 1.24x the release of nuclear material at Tchernobyl.

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How much radioactive material is ultimately released is of course of note, but there are multiple independent variables that mean that that alone tells one virtually nothing at this point.  It may release 4 times the radioactive material of Chernobly and do 1/10 of the harm.  It may release half and do twice the harm. That simply cannot be determined right now. And any assumption that the release of radioactive material is going to be linear is likely to be a dumb and useless one anyway.  You might have other people fooled with your shiny syntax and your Texotic Tspellings and your general regurgitating of largely useless and reliably boring information, but you don't have me fooled.  You're one of the poorest thinkers I've ever encountered on an internet forum, a fact which you attempt to hide by regularly ranting like an effing maniac.

"Being anti-nuclear for the sake of being anti-nuclear is what's dogmatic. "

I have never met anybody who was "anti-nuclear" for the heck of it. Just because they had nothing better to do than protest in the streets. In the whole world people and politicians are re-evaluating their position vs nuclear plants right now. For example, Claifornia has two nuclear plants in earthquake regions which both are not designed to withstand an earthquake that is worse than 7.0 on the Richter scale - many people in Californing are now rethinking.. We cannot ignore Fukushima - that would be totally irresponsible.

What we see now in Japan is the horribly helpless way how TEPCO and the Japanese government respond to the challenge. Yesterday the opposition in the Japanese parliament finally attacked the government for not evacuating at least pregnant women from the contaminated areas. They are still in a mode of denial that will have severe consequences for the health of the affected population.

In the past the anti-nuclear movement has often been accused of being paranoid, anti-technology, anti-industrial - just a bunch of spoilt kids of a rich society who have nothing better to do than to dream about a pre-industrial world which has no connection to reality at all. However, it was the anti-nuclear movement which pushed and pushed towards research and development of technologies that are not so harmful and not so dangerous. If the suffering of the Japanese people were not  so heart breaking we would say "told you so" but we all hoped and prayed that it would never happen again. If not for the anti-nuclear movement we would not be in a position to get out of nuclear technology in the next 10 years which is now possible. All we have to do is invest into the nets and new power plants - it won't cost more than bailing out one or two big banks - or the useless war in Afghanistan.

Everybody should ask themselves one question: what is the economical advantage  for a
an average anti-nuclear campaigner if the nuclear power plants are closed? Answer: none - we all must fund the new technologies with our tax money and we have to pay a higher price for electrical power. Now - what is the economical benefit of nuclear power for the nuclear industry? Answer: several billions of profit each year for a technology that was publicly funded in an unprecedented manner with zero responsibility for the waste management that will cost the tax payer billions again. No wonder that they downplay the risk - they would not even have to pay for the damage because nobody can pay for that.