Is there a role for nuclear energy?

[Neferti]

Japan nuclear crisis: fire in fuel pools 'would raise radiation exposure'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... -radiation

Nuclear engineers warn there is more radioactive material stored in those pools than in the reactor core – and a fire would increase the chances of radiation spreading.

... "It was a design mistake to put the spent fuel in the same building as the reactor," he said.

The proximity makes it much harder for technicians struggling to cool down the reactor and the spent fuel pool at the same time. "They are Siamese twins, you can't separate them," Lochbaum said.

So?

[Outlaw Yogi]

So?

Assuming the topic question is still: Is there a role for nuclear energy?

So .. No!

Nuke is dead ... just not buried yet.

[Outlaw Yogi]

Wave - 10,000 to 20,000 dead
Nukes - 9 injured

Is that about right?

This is the biggests disaster you could ever expect to put a nuclear powerplant through. It is a worst case senario... you fearmongerers are obviously hoping like hell that it turns out a whole hell of a lot worse than Chernobyl, with all the whine that has been brought already. What did Chernobyl kill? 100?

Pales into insignificance, really.

Yer reckon?

Fukushima’s Nuclear Martyrdom and Occupational Hazards of the Atomic Age
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/ent ... atomic_ag/

While local residents and staff fled the widening danger zone surrounding the crippled reactors, the anonymous Fukushima worker uttered words that could brand him one of the first martyrs of Japan's monumental triple-catastrophe. He reportedly told an official that he “was not afraid to die, that that was his job.”

The workers are being asked to make escalating — and perhaps existential — sacrifices that so far are being only implicitly acknowledged: Japan’s Health Ministry said Tuesday it was raising the legal limit on the amount of radiation to which each worker could be exposed, to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts, five times the maximum exposure permitted for American nuclear plant workers.

The change means that workers can now remain on site longer, the ministry said. “It would be unthinkable to raise it further than that, considering the health of the workers,” the health minister, Yoko Komiyama, said at a news conference. There was also a suggestion on Wednesday that more workers may be brought to help save the power station.

Cesium is a semi-volatile material that has been detected in the air downwind of the Fukushima reactors. How many Hiroshima bombs worth of cesium-137 are contained in the fuel pool?

In work for the State of Nevada, we estimated that 10 tons of irradiated (what the industry calls "spent") nuclear fuel was equivalent to 240 times the amount of cesium-137 released by the Hiroshima bomb. … If Unit 4 operated for 35 years and produced 30 tons of irradiated fuel per year... then each fuel pool could contain on the order of 24,000 times the amount of cesium-137 produced by the Hiroshima bomb, if all the produced irradiated fuel remains in the fuel pool.

Y'know what's really sad? .... this incident need never have happened.

Experts Had Long Criticized Potential Weakness in Design of Stricken Reactor

In 1972, Stephen H. Hanauer, then a safety official with the Atomic Energy Commission, recommended that the Mark 1 system be discontinued because it presented unacceptable safety risks. Among the concerns cited was the smaller containment design, which was more susceptible to explosion and rupture from a buildup in hydrogen — a situation that may have unfolded at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Later that same year, Joseph Hendrie, who would later become chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a successor agency to the atomic commission, said the idea of a ban on such systems was attractive. But the technology had been so widely accepted by the industry and regulatory officials, he said, that “reversal of this hallowed policy, particularly at this time, could well be the end of nuclear power.”

[mantra]

In 1972, Stephen H. Hanauer, then a safety official with the Atomic Energy Commission, recommended that the Mark 1 system be discontinued because it presented unacceptable safety risks. Among the concerns cited was the smaller containment design, which was more susceptible to explosion and rupture from a buildup in hydrogen — a situation that may have unfolded at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Later that same year, Joseph Hendrie, who would later become chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a successor agency to the atomic commission, said the idea of a ban on such systems was attractive. But the technology had been so widely accepted by the industry and regulatory officials, he said, that “reversal of this hallowed policy, particularly at this time, could well be the end of nuclear power

And it's taken 40 years and another shocking disaster for the lobbyists advocating the safety of NP to prove themselves incompetent liars. Nations cut corners at the expense of the people. It will be interesting to see whether the UK pushes forward with their proposed plants, but I doubt whether there will be any more NP plants built anywhere. Hopefully the industry will collapse after this.

[Outlaw Yogi]

What did Chernobyl kill? 100?

Pales into insignificance, really.

Where did you get your figures .. Disneyland?

Chernobyl disaster effects
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_ ... th_effects

The Chernobyl Forum report

In September 2005, a draft summary report by the Chernobyl Forum, comprising a number of UN agencies including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), other UN bodies and the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, put the total predicted number of deaths due to the accident at 4000.[28] This death toll predicted by the WHO included the 47 workers who died of acute radiation syndrome as a direct result of radiation from the disaster and nine children who died from thyroid cancer, in the estimated 4000 excess cancer deaths expected among the 600,000 with the highest levels of exposure.[35] The full version of the WHO health effects report adopted by the UN, published in April 2006, included the prediction of 5000 additional fatalities from significantly contaminated areas in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine and predicted that, in total, 9000 will die from cancer among the 6.9 million most-exposed Soviet citizens.[29] This report is not free of controversy, and has been accused of trying to minimize the consequences of the accident.[36]

The April 2006 IPPNW report

According to an April 2006 report by the German affiliate of the International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear Warfare (IPPNW), entitled "Health Effects of Chernobyl", more than 10,000 people are today affected by thyroid cancer and 50,000 cases are expected. The report projected tens of thousands dead among the liquidators. In Europe, it alleges that 10,000 deformities have been observed in newborns because of Chernobyl's radioactive discharge, with 5000 deaths among newborn children. They also claimed that several hundreds of thousands of the people who worked on the site after the accident are now sick because of radiation, and tens of thousands are dead.[39]

The Ukrainian Health Minister claimed in 2006 that more than 2.4 million Ukrainians, including 428,000 children, suffer from health problems related to the catastrophe.[4]

According to the Union Chernobyl, the main organization of liquidators, 10% of the 600,000 liquidators are now dead, and 165,000 disabled.[34]

In the Czech Republic, thyroid cancer has increased significantly after Chernobyl.[44]

137Cesium exposure and spirometry measures in Ukrainian children affected by the Chernobyl nuclear incident.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20100677

RESULTS: Children living in villages with the highest quintile of soil 137Cs were 2.60 times more likely to have forced vital capacity (FVC) < 80% of predicted [95% confidence interval (CI), 1.07-6.34] and 5.08 times more likely to have a ratio of forced expiratory volume in 1 sec (FEV1) to FVC% < 80% (95% CI, 1.02-25.19). We found statistically significant evidence of both airway obstruction (FEV1/FVC%, peak expiratory flow, and maximum expiratory flow at 25%, 50%, and 75% of FVC) and restriction (FVC) with increasing soil 137Cs.

CONCLUSIONS: These findings are unique and suggest significant airway obstruction and restriction consequences for children chronically exposed to low-dose radioactive contaminants such as those found downwind of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

Children affected by the Chernobyl accident
http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/r ... ildren/en/

The World Health Organization (WHO) and Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation (SMHF) have been carrying out a number of projects aimed at humanitarian assistance in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, the countries most affected by the Chernobyl accident, to alleviate medical consequences of this disaster. Medical examinations of about 210 000 children performed within the framework of the WHO International Programme on the Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident (IPHECA) and Chernobyl Sasakawa Project in the three countries since 1991, have shown a significant increase in the incidence of childhood thyroid diseases including thyroid cancer. In particular, evident for the Gomel region of Belarus, thyroid cancer incidence is about 100 times higher than before the accident.

Frequently Asked Chernobyl Questions
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/features ... -faq.shtml

There have been at least 1800 documented cases of thyroid cancer children who were between 0 and 14 years of age when the accident occurred., which is far higher than normal.

[AiA in Atlanta]

According to Ann Coulter it could be a cure for cancer:

Right-wing blowhard Ann Coulter took her incendiary views to a whole new level Thursday, this time finding the silver lining in Japan's nuclear disaster.

During a segment on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show, the conservative firebrand tried to calm jittery viewers by telling them "radiation is good for you."

Coulter went on to say that a growing body of evidence shows exposure to radiation above levels the government deems harmful actually reduces cancer.

The wannabe plutonium pundit cited her website's latest column, "A glowing report on radiation," in which she wrote, "With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan, the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer."

Coulter pointed to articles in The Times of London and The New York Times as proof.

"So by your account, we should all be heading for the nuclear reactor" leaking radiation in Japan, joked a skeptical O'Reilly.

Some 140,000 people have been evacuated from a danger zone around the country's damaged reactors.

"You have to be responsible," he added.

"The prevailing wisdom is there's a level of radiation that's gonna hurt you and perhaps kill you ... What you say may be true - there may be some doses of radiation that in the human body can ward off infection. But in something like this, you gotta get the folks out of there, and you have to report worst-case scenarios."

O'Reilly pointed to the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as proof that radiation kills, but Coulter wouldn't budge.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... z1Gy7wh78X

[mantra]

Right-wing blowhard Ann Coulter took her incendiary views to a whole new level Thursday, this time finding the silver lining in Japan's nuclear disaster.

During a segment on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show, the conservative firebrand tried to calm jittery viewers by telling them "radiation is good for you."

That's so funny. I'm sure plenty of her blowhard followers will believe her.

The danger seems to be escalating with Tokyo Electric Power Co. now being accused of huge coverups, incompetency and slackness. That comes as no surprise - the Japanese government has to blame someone. Governments believe they are relieved of all responsibility when private infrastructure fails regardless of the collateral damage and loss of life.

All our privately owned infrastructure should be strictly regulated.

The plodding utilities giant, whose plants supply about one-third of Japan's electricity, is a secretive nuclear behemoth that has been caught out for numerous safety violations dating back to the 1980s. But because Japan's nuclear industry is entirely run by the private sector, the government has had little choice but to let TEPCO handle the crisis.

The company cannot not be blamed for failing to anticipate a 7m tsunami that swamped its Fukushima plant after the March 11 earthquake, knocking out the power supply for its water cooling systems and causing fuel rods in three reactors to overheat.

But its response since then has been plagued by mistakes, confusion, secrecy and an apparent paucity of ideas about how to manage the unfolding crisis inside its own reactors.

That secrecy extended all the way to Japan's Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, who found out about an explosion at the Fukushima plant via television reports rather than through the plant's owner.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/mistake ... 6024311668

[skippy.]

boxy wrote:
What did Chernobyl kill? 100?

Pales into insignificance, really.
outlaw yogi wrote
Where did you get your figures .. Disneyland?

I hope boxy hasn't gone over to the dark side.
I heard Andrew Bolt on the TV twice this week, both times he claimed Chernobyl only killed 50 people.

[IQS.RLOW]

boxy wrote:
What did Chernobyl kill? 100?

Pales into insignificance, really.
outlaw yogi wrote
Where did you get your figures .. Disneyland?

I hope boxy hasn't gone over to the dark side.
I heard Andrew Bolt on the TV twice this week, both times he claimed Chernobyl only killed 50 people.

Collateral damage. Imagine how doomed we would all be according to the Church of Global Warmists if all the nuke plants in the world were coal fired plants. (Which BTW is far more likely now)
You should be thanking your lucky stars for nukes

[skippy.]

Oh look at spermys new avatar, I would have thought a fluffy bunny was quite foreign to a faggot like you though.