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Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#141

Post by bad_user »

pdonis wrote: post #112
potatolicious wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "the fact that the backup diesel generators and the switchgear for them were sited behind a seawall that was overcome by the tsunami" Sure, but who's responsible for that? I don't mean to say that there must be many technical causes of incidents, but rather that it is almost impossible to find a situation where there is a singular human cause. The multitude of engineers that saw the plans before they went final? Th…

it is almost impossible to find a situation where there is a singular human cause. But if you can focus in on a single technical decision that had such a large impact, you can at least focus attention on how that particular technical decision got made. Yes, many humans will have been involved even in that single technical decision; but it's still a lot more manageable to look into how it got made than to look at how…

> Could he have reasonably predicted that he would fall asleep at the wheel?

Such things sometimes can't be predicted. If you fall asleep because of exhaustion, you don't necessarily see it coming (it happened to me several years back, one minute I was fine and the next I blacked out). You cannot criminally persecute a person for falling asleep. Only if he did something against the law, like also being under the influence of alcohol.

> Did the supervisor actually threaten him into taking an extra-long shift?

You know very well that supervisors rarely have to threaten their subordinates in low-end jobs. I have a personal acquaintance who's a truck driver. And he was explaining to me how when the new management came in, they first did some lay-offs based on silly reasons and after that nobody dared arguing.

Also do some reading on Japanese culture. Subordinates rarely question their bosses (or change jobs for that matter). It happens in many cultures. If you're from the US, then what's natural to you may not apply in other countries or cultures.

I'm not saying that blame cannot be assigned (it can clearly be, especially in the case of broken engineering designs), but seeing people here suggesting "ritual suicide"? OMG.

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#142

Post by toyg »

caf wrote: post #26
toyg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relationship between Japanese governments and corporations is much more incestuous than their Western counterparts'. In any case, I don't think Tepco is completely alone in the cleanup effort, otherwise you wouldn't have people like Schneider talking about it. In fact, the irritation here comes from the fact that Fukushima continues to be a clusterfuck and everybody knows it ... except TEPCO's PR people, who keep…

I think you mean Comical Ali (former Iraqi Information Minister) rather than Chemical Ali (former director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service).

You're, of course, right.

Ahh, the early '00s, when black was black and white was white, GWB bad / Obama good, Powell doing stand-up at the UN, Darth Cheney ruling with an iron fist over the applauding masses... There's a reason I forgot most of that.

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#143

Post by ajarmst »

This "story" is simply a press release from Mycle Scneider, who has a clear and consistent record as being anti-nuclear power and a probable agenda to elevate concern about it. I'd like to see a real "independent" report which cites multiple views and has real measurements, not meaningless twaddle like "tons of radioactive water."

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#144

Post by toyg »

rtpg wrote: post #41
panacea wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The relationship between Japanese governments and corporations is much more incestuous than their Western counterparts" On a scale of 1 to [citation needed], guess where the answer lies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)#Japan

Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaibatsu

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#145

Post by dspeyer »

veidr wrote: post #22
lmm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Except that the Fukushima disaster is about 100 times worse than the New Horizon spill. Really? Everyone is terrified of the radiation bogeyman, but I'd bet there were more injuries and deaths as a result of New Horizon.

Yeah, well, it's easy to make bets on events that will still be playing out hundreds of years after we are all dead, isn't it. Radioactive contamination of the food supply, the oceans, and tens of thousands of people exiled from their hometown for the rest of their lives. 17 injured and 11 dead rig workers is easily comprehended and instant. Doesn't really mean that disaster was worse, though. Just easier to contempl…

Last I saw, the Fukushima radiation had already dispersed to below the noise level.

The more potent chemical toxins pouring into the gulf will likely be killing people for a while, though.

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#146

Post by reddit_clone »

pdonis wrote: post #129
redblacktree wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I'm not a miner. Coal is much less dangerous for those who live near the power plant.

Coal is much less dangerous for those who live near the power plant. Oh, I should have added: this claim isn't really true either. The WHO estimates that a million people die each year due to air pollution from coal plants. This is many orders of magnitude higher than the annual average deaths related to nuclear energy. The difference is, there isn't a worldwide push to ban coal because of this; instead, there's a pu…

Its like motor vehicle accidents Vs airplane crashes. More people die on car accidents but infrequent airplane accidents get a lot more press and strict government regulation.

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#147

Post by RyanMcGreal »

furyg3 wrote: post #101
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulatory capture is a big problem. One of the more bizarre twists in the Japanese nuclear story is that a program to develop robots that could remotely work inside damaged nuclear generating stations was canceled out of fear that it would send a message that nuclear power isn't safe.

If that's true it's very interesting... Do you have any sources?

You'll find a lot of stuff if you search for the nuclear safety myth in Japan. Here are a couple of links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/world/asia/25myth.html?pag...

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/06/09/national/myth-of...

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#148

Post by pond_lilly »

bengrunfeld wrote: post #31

Honestly, internet snarkiness and 2 minute rages aside, I wonder what this will mean for us in the future. I wonder how US crops, the Australia climate, and Chinese drinking water quality will be affected. Is this so bad that Japan has essentially damned the entire region? Or are we going to see a mass die-off of fish around the world? It's just a really scary situation, and totally not cool.

We already see effects, read about bleeding herring in Canada: http://enenews.com/biologist-pacific-herring-in-canada-bleed...

Everything will be affected (and already is) but do not count on anyone to report it.

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#149

Post by throwaway_yy2Di »

DennisP wrote: post #55

Although it's possible this is really bad, I'm surprised by the lack of skepticism in this discussion so far. Mycle Snyder is described as an "independent consultant," with no mention of scientific or engineering credentials. There are quite a few people who make a living as consultants by exaggerating nuclear dangers. The article also didn't give any numbers at all. How much radioactivity are we talking about here?…

The article also didn't give any numbers at all. How much radioactivity are we talking about here? Talking about "tonnes of radioactive water" is meaningless.

80 MBq/L * 300,000 L = 24 TBq

Investigations showed that the level of water in the tank was about 3 metres lower than expected, indicating that some 300 cubic metres had escaped.

Tepco told WNN that the leaked water had already passed through the first 'SARRY' stage of decontamination, which had removed most of the radioactive caesium. It was yet to pass through the 'ALPS' treatment that would remove strontium and other beta-emitting radionuclides. As such its radioactivity is considered medium-to-low at 80,000 becquerels per cubic centimetre. Dose rates measured for gamma and beta radiation were high at over 100 milliSieverts per hour, while the dose rate for gamma only was low at just 1.5 milliSieverts per hour. Tepco did not specify if these were dose rates at the water surface or, more likely, a standard 1 metre above the ground.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Leak_from_Fukushima_tan...

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#150

Post by anon1385 »

MichaelGG wrote: post #130
rangibaby wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take some reassurance that the anti-nuclear guys say we're fucked and pro-nuclear guys say nuclear is still the safest. That means the truth is probably somewhere in the middle ;-)

Sorry if I downvoted sarcasm. Unless you meant "middle" literally as in anything exactly as written by the most extreme of either side, this is a bad way to reason about things. It's the kind of thinking that lets people say "well the anti-vaccine people are pretty strong about their views, but doctors disagree; it's probably somewhere in the middle" and slide about while being incorrect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

Argument to moderation (Latin: argumentum ad temperantiam; also known as [argument from] middle ground, false compromise, gray fallacy and the golden mean fallacy) is an informal fallacy which asserts that the truth can be found as a compromise between two opposite positions. This fallacy's opposite is the false dilemma.

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