Radiation Threat - Page 2

Yes they can, it is part of the regulations in this country.
As for Japan, they were not prepared and did not think. They have earthqaukes all the time and tsunamis as well. The only reason their reactors failed was not because of damage from the earthquake and tsunami itself. Rather, they lost power and had no way to shut down the reactors because the back up generators failed. They had no way to shut down the reactors and no way to cool them since there was no power to run the cooling pumps. With no cooling, you are at risk for a meltdown. Why did these generators fail?? Because they had no fuel. The fuel tanks were located above ground and got washed away by the tsunami. It an earthquake and tsnuami prone area, why on earth would they do that?? The fuel tanks in this country, US, are underground. There is a nuke plant in Northwest Ohio that was hit head on by an F2 tornado. They had minor damage, the reactor was scramed and there was no incident.
We can not compare the nuclear reactors in the US with Chernobyl. This should not even be brought up, other than to show how unsafe Chernobyl was built compared to the US nuclear power plants. Chernobyl had no protection whatsoever. The reactor was not contained, unlike the reactors in the US that are surrounded by concrete that is 4 feet thick and 8 inch steel. Does this incident in Japan serve as a wake up call? Of course. We should double check all safety precautions, but in no way abandone nuclear energy.

Here's one thing Japan has to look forward to:
Radioactive boars in Germany a legacy of Chernobyl

Now they don't know what to do with the contaminated water, and they're sandbagging to prevent it from... what, exactly? http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/04...ioactive-water

And also from the Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/03...n-13-US-states

It's a lovely ideal, but IMO not exactly practical anywhere in, well, my lifetime. (I'm 48). Germany is targeting 40% of its energy to come from renewable sources within 10 years - a very commendable and ambitious goal for sure.

The article mentions that the % of power provided by nuclear generated electricity is similar in the U.S. as it in Germany. What it doesn't mention is that Germany uses about 14.5% of the electric power that the U.S. does.

Renewable energy in the U.S. accounts for about 7% of total electric consumption. If you take out hydroelectric power, that number drops to less than 4.5%. There are still so many challenges to making renewable energy cost competitive, the biggest hurdles being its storage and transportation.

Understandably the initial concern involved identifying victims, removing bodies etc. although I also don't understand precisely why generators were not dropped in while the plants were fine operating on battery power...Perhaps because the place where connections to external power sources would have to be made was under water ?


TEPCO was presented any number of times with the latest seismological information,informed of the high level of risk, but refused to make the necessary changes. Didn't want to spend the trivial amount of money involved to move the generators and eliminate the risk, because the plants were not going to be in operation much longer. Pure criminal stupidity. :

What happened on March 11th was a natural, cyclical event. TEPCO was warned repeatedly by those experts that there was a high risk that it would happen again soon. The senile old codgers decided "hey this plant has only a few years left, so let's save the money and not do anything" when any kind of risk assessment or cost-benefit analysis would have screamed let's do this YESTERDAY!!!. The result is they have destroyed the reactors, destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of people, are in the process of starving out the local population unable/unwilling to evacuate, and maybe in the long-run destroyed the Japanese economy and financial system. How anybody can defend that level of stupidity is beyond me.

The most important thing to do IMO would be to cut any links between the regulatory bodies and the government, and insure their members are not associated with private companies (TEPCO, etc...). Therefore the government should create truly independent institutions. The regulatory bodies in Japan are currently under direct government control and they have unhealthy relationships with the private institutions they are supposed to regulate.

That would be a very interesting study, actually. When I read your post I found myself nodding when you were writing about the pre-packaged zucchini. They don't do that here - but they do for peppers and seedless cucumbers.

But it just occured to me... I assume the reason for the pre-packaging of vegetables is in some way to help reduce their waste. It has to increase the margins of the supermarket chain, or they wouldn't do it.

So which is more energy efficient? Wasting less vegetables? Or using less packaging? Don't forget - the production and transportation of food is one of the largest users of energy that exists. (And don't forget the fertilizers also used and transported in the process...).

What Gary and I are doing is buying into a local co-operative farm. We'll be getting most of our vegetables and meat locally grown. Organic - and the meat grass fed. (Tougher, but far better for you, especially re: the omegas (fats) balance).

Of course, that's not an option for someone living in an area that doesn't have decent farm land.

But it all requires a complete paradigm shift. However, it IS possible. Look at the attitude towards smoking today vs. 30 years ago, when I was 18. When I was growing up, Lake Erie was literally on fire. Things do change.

Just to be clear here, "scramming" a reactor means stopping the fission process. An uncontrolled fission chain reaction is for all intents impossible in the types of reactors used in Japan and the US. They're designed so that the laws of physics preclude it from happening. All of the reactors at Fukushima did scram when the earthquake hit. What can't be stopped immediately is the decay of fission products produced by the fission process. Those fission products have half-lives ranging from fractions of a second to hundreds of years, and their decay will continue to give off heat long after the fission process itself has been stopped. In order to keep the fuel elements cool, you need to circulate coolant around between the heat source (the reactor core) and some type of heat sink. That's what they weren't able to do in Japan. Just like the engine of your car will eventually seize up if the coolant leaks out, if you don't keep the core cooled off, the cladding around the fuel will eventually melt and then release the fission products that have built up in the fuel.

Not to mention that "The Grid" is highly inefficient with half of the energy being lost from the burning of coal before it even leaves the plant.

but, according to Ann Coulter, radiation is 'good for you'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rci3ElYLs4U

i can't believe there are people out there that actually believe this

The idea that low levels of radiation is actually beneficial is called hormesis. There is actually some evidence to suggest that it works - primarily studies with fruit flies and things like that. The idea is that the radiation causes a little damage to the cells in the body. Healthy cells recover quickly, but cells that are already sick or damaged are killed off by the radiation. The big problem is, of course, that nobody even knows if it works in humans. Assuming it does, at what point does it stop being beneficial and actually cause harm? Honestly, we'll probably never be able to answer that question because we just can't go out and exposing people to radiation to conduct studies. Since we don't know, the only safe course of action is the one agencies like the National Council on Radiation Protection uses, which is to consider that any amount of radiation, no matter how small, is potentially harmful.