Fukushima melting down?

[Dauntless]

Don't americans eat fish from that ocean? The coastal waters might be ok, but where are your fish coming from?

American coastal waters are a disaster. You see signs on the piers warning against catching and eating the fish. Americans are ignoring those signs.

 

[The fingers]

Most danger worldwide from mercury contamination in larger predator species, but eating coastal croaker can cause you to croak. Many fish caught locally have large tumors and such. Storm water flood control run off can close many nearby beaches due to sewer plant overflow; and all the dog crap, dirty diapers, syringes, used motor oil and feminine hygiene materials floating around. Add some radiation to the mix and toxic dawn patrol surfers will have to wear decon gear over their wetsuits. Many already get vaccinated to surf their favorite spot.

 

[Joseph C.]

It also can degrade your life expectancy and vigor. For example the ol' guy (me) has bronchial asthma. The doc's told me years ago that I was "the poster child for second hand smoke."

Both my parents smoked in the small 700 square foot home I was raised in. My mother was a registered nurse. I was sneezing constantly and getting more and more breathing/respiratory problems. My mother fastidiously cleaned the home, always telling me it was "the dust that is making you sneeze and cough." ... all the while smoking and wearing the carpet out vacuuming. We were all foolish, no one connected "the dots."

Things that are done everyday are causally taken for granted and never given a second thought. They are the last place you look when things go wrong. Hindsight is a fool's nostalgia. People used asbestos because they didn't know any better. There are a thousand similar stories.

 

[Giovanni LiCalsi]

http://readersupportednews.org

The unfolding multiple nuclear reactor catastrophe in Japan is prompting overdue attention to the 104 nuclear plants in the United States - many of them aging, many of them near earthquake faults, some on the west coast exposed to potential tsunamis.

Nuclear power plants boil water to produce steam to turn turbines that generate electricity. Nuclear power's overly complex fuel cycle begins with uranium mines and ends with deadly radioactive wastes for which there still are no permanent storage facilities to contain them for tens of thousands of years.

Atomic power plants generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity. Over forty years ago, the industry's promoter and regulator, the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that a full nuclear meltdown could contaminate an area "the size of Pennsylvania" and cause massive casualties. You, the taxpayers, have heavily subsidized nuclear power research, development, and promotion from day one with tens of billions of dollars.

Because of many costs, perils, close calls at various reactors, and the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, there has not been a nuclear power plant built in the United States since 1974.

Now the industry is coming back "on your back" claiming it will help reduce global warming from fossil fuel emitted greenhouse gases.

Pushed aggressively by President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu, who refuses to meet with longtime nuclear industry critics, here is what "on your back" means:

1. Wall Street will not finance new nuclear plants without a 100% taxpayer loan guarantee. Too risky. That's a lot of guarantee given that new nukes cost $12 billion each, assuming no mishaps. Obama and the Congress are OK with that arrangement.

2. Nuclear power is uninsurable in the private insurance market - too risky. Under the Price-Anderson Act, taxpayers pay the greatest cost of a meltdown's devastation.

3. Nuclear power plants and transports of radioactive wastes are a national security nightmare for the Department of Homeland Security. Imagine the target that thousands of vulnerable spent fuel rods present for sabotage.

4. Guess who pays for whatever final waste repositories are licensed? You the taxpayer and your descendants as far as your gene line persists. Huge decommissioning costs, at the end of a nuclear plant's existence come from the ratepayers' pockets.

5. Nuclear plant disasters present impossible evacuation burdens for those living anywhere near a plant, especially if time is short.

Imagine evacuating the long-troubled Indian Point plants 26 miles north of New York City. Workers in that region have a hard enough time evacuating their places of employment during 5 pm rush hour. That's one reason Secretary of State Clinton (in her time as Senator of New York) and Governor Andrew Cuomo called for the shutdown of Indian Point.

6. Nuclear power is both uneconomical and unnecessary. It can't compete against energy conservation, including cogeneration, windpower and ever more efficient, quicker, safer, renewable forms of providing electricity. Amory Lovins argues this point convincingly (see RMI.org). Physicist Lovins asserts that nuclear power "will reduce and retard climate protection." His reasoning: shifting the tens of billions invested in nuclear power to efficiency and renewables reduce far more carbon per dollar (http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf). The country should move deliberately to shutdown nuclear plants, starting with the aging and seismically threatened reactors. Peter Bradford, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) commissioner has also made a compelling case against nuclear power on economic and safety grounds (http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf).
There is far more for ratepayers, taxpayers and families near nuclear plants to find out. Here's how you can start:

1. Demand public hearings in your communities where there is a nuke, sponsored either by your member of Congress or the NRC, to put the facts, risks and evacuation plans on the table. Insist that the critics as well as the proponents testify and cross-examine each other in front of you and the media.

2. If you call yourself conservative, ask why nuclear power requires such huge amounts of your tax dollars and guarantees and can't buy adequate private insurance. If you have a small business that can't buy insurance because what you do is too risky, you don't stay in business.

3. If you are an environmentalist, ask why nuclear power isn't required to meet a cost-efficient market test against investments in energy conservation and renewables.

4. If you understand traffic congestion, ask for an actual real life evacuation drill for those living and working 10 miles around the plant (some scientists think it should be at least 25 miles) and watch the hemming and hawing from proponents of nuclear power.
The people in northern Japan may lose their land, homes, relatives, and friends as a result of a dangerous technology designed simply to boil water. There are better ways to generate steam.

Like the troubled Japanese nuclear plants, the Indian Point plants and the four plants at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon in southern California rest near earthquake faults. The seismologists concur that there is a 94% chance of a big earthquake in California within the next thirty years. Obama, Chu and the powerful nuke industry must not be allowed to force the American people to play Russian Roulette!

 

[TheBeastie]

6. Nuclear power is both uneconomical and unnecessary. It can't compete against energy conservation

3. If you are an environmentalist, ask why nuclear power isn't required to meet a cost-efficient market test against investments in energy conservation and renewables.

Well just to be devils advocate I have been coming across these news reports that Japan would save $20 billion a year in energy costs if it could turn back on its nuclear power plants.
The cost of LNG has been rapidly rising due to Japan's demand and it's getting quite expensive using evil clean natural gas

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-01-22/japan-may-save-30-percent-on-power-by-restarting-reactors-ieej-says
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-27/guest-post-nuclear-restarts-spell-trouble-lng
http://www.the-weinberg-foundation.org/2013/01/23/the-20-billion-case-for-restarting-nuclear-in-japan/

 

[torker]

Seems I read that we have enough Geo-thermal energy in the west -think Yellowstone- to run the whole country. Is it all about the dollars? Because it costs more to tap this clean energy. It just seems like bullshit after what we know after 3 mile island and Japan.. :?

 

[John in CR]

Seems I read that we have enough Geo-thermal energy in the west -think Yellowstone- to run the whole country. Is it all about the dollars? Because it costs more to tap this clean energy. It just seems like bullshit after what we know after 3 mile island and Japan.. :?

You'd trust the government to oversee a bunch of holes punched in the top-cap of a super volcano that's already showing signs of increased activity??? They couldn't even manage getting a website up and running for $600 million.

 

[torker]

Seems I read that we have enough Geo-thermal energy in the west -think Yellowstone- to run the whole country. Is it all about the dollars? Because it costs more to tap this clean energy. It just seems like bullshit after what we know after 3 mile island and Japan.. :?

You'd trust the government to oversee a bunch of holes punched in the top-cap of a super volcano that's already showing signs of increased activity??? They couldn't even manage getting a website up and running for $600 million.

Haha yea you got that right. Yellowstone was just an example :wink: Plenty of geo energy in the west .. I think the private sector needs to handle it. I am damn tired of paying my tax money on crap they can't get right. Several nukes should have been decommissioned a long time ago.

 

[Giovanni LiCalsi]

The vulcanologists are saying that Yellowstone is way overdo to blow and when it does will cause a nuclear winter never seen in history. It could kill millions by starvation and disease epidemics.

 

[Dauntless]

The U.S. Geological Survey says just the opposite, it is NOT due, to say nothing of overdue. Not sure what 730,000:1 odds of an eruption is supposed to mean, but I assume on any given day in the next thousand years or so it won't erupt. They say it's 2.5 times the size they had thought, so it'll be much bigger than they'd previously expected, but there's going to be a long lead time before we see it erupt.

 

[e-beach]

From the U.S National Park Service....

http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/volcanoqa.htm

Yellowstone Volcano Questions & Answers

Q: How imminent is an eruption of the Yellowstone Volcano?

A: There is no evidence that a catastrophic eruption at Yellowstone National Park (YNP) is imminent. Current geologic activity at Yellowstone has remained relatively constant since earth scientists first started monitoring some 30 years ago. Though another caldera-forming eruption is theoretically possible, it is very unlikely to occur in the next thousand or even 10,000 years.

The most likely activity would be lava flows such as those that occurred after the last major eruption. Such a lava flow would ooze slowly over months and years, allowing plenty of time for park managers to evaluate the situation and protect people. No scientific evidence indicates such a lava flow will occur soon.

Q: How much advance notice would there be of an eruption?

A: The science of forecasting a volcanic eruption has significantly advanced over the past 25 years. Most scientists think that the buildup preceding a catastrophic eruption would be detectable for weeks and perhaps months to years. Precursors to volcanic eruptions include strong earthquake swarms and rapid ground deformation and typically take place days to weeks before an actual eruption. Scientists at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory* (YVO) closely monitor the Yellowstone region for such precursors. They expect that the buildup to larger eruptions would include intense precursory activity (far exceeding background levels) at multiple spots within the Yellowstone volcano. As at many caldera systems around the world, small earthquakes, ground uplift and subsidence, and gas releases at Yellowstone are commonplace events and do not reflect impending eruptions.

*The YVO is a collaborative effort between the US Geological Survey, the University of Utah, and YNP to monitor and study the Yellowstone Volcano. Congress has given the USGS the responsibility of volcano hazard assessment, and YNP assists the USGS in their volcano monitoring effort.

 

[lbz5mc12]

Now this is just me spit-balling a little. I don't have all the technical and scientific knowledge most of you seem to have so bear with me. Now I was thinking of a volcano like a bottle of soda. If you shake the bottle and take the cap off it'll explode everywhere. However if you open it a little bit, let some of the air out and close it before it reaches the top then repeat, eventually you can safely open the bottle. Now apply that to a volcano. Wouldn't releasing some of the pressure in increments over a long period of time decrease it's likelihood of a catastrophic eruption? So tapping it as a source of thermal energy would relieve some pressure, wouldn't it? Hell why don't we plant some turbines over the top of some steam geysers. We waste so much natural energy then complain when we can't generate enough artificial/man made energy. If I'm crazy just let me know, I don't mind the criticism.

 

[Dauntless]

I don't think we HAVE a volcano expert here.

What I understand the issue to be is as soon as you release the pressure ANYWHERE, it will push in that direction and let go. You have a latex balloon stretching evenly as the pressure goes, as soon as there's the slightest tear in it the side is shredded. There was apparently once a theory about flooding the California earthquake faults to allow it to slowly move to release pressure, but it was concluded that would actually trigger THE BIG ONE. Maybe bigger than could happen on its' own. Ya gotta think these things through CAREFULLY.

Using a volcano for geothermal energy means taking the heat from the ground, which stops the flow of moten rock, right? Does that increase the pressure behind it? This is a far more sticky issue than people think. Several years back my mother obsessed over this "New Volcano" forming in somewhere between Death Valley and the California/Arizona border. Which is funny because not only in the history of the Earth has there NEVER been any volcanic activity there and it's considered the most absolutely impossible place on God's Green Earth for there to BE volcanic activity, but it's been made so and the area left below sealevel by the shift in the direction of Colorado and the mountains there reaching so high. Oh, mother.

 

[nechaus]

I hope it does not blow for another 10k years so humans can deal with it, or harvest its energy.

 

[amberwolf]

Several years back my mother obsessed over this "New Volcano" forming in somewhere between Death Valley and the California/Arizona border. Which is funny because not only in the history of the Earth has there NEVER been any volcanic activity there and it's considered the most absolutely impossible place on God's Green Earth for there to BE volcanic activity, but it's been made so and the area left below sealevel by the shift in the direction of Colorado and the mountains there reaching so high. Oh, mother.

Did she mean the Ubehebe volcano? Or something else?

 

[Gow864]

This is what tropical paradise looks like these days.... my cousin is a marine biologist, I haven't eaten salt water fish for ten years.... You're mad if you do...

 

[nechaus]

You see there is a part of the ocean that collects all the junk from all the currents around the world, i forget what it's called now but you can see the collection of rubbish in the ocean from google maps, I really hate it. Its such a danger zone for boats...

I still eat sea food, But i also enjoy home grown Jade perch

I always fish in clean waters, never any highly polluted areas

edit found it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Great_Pacific_garbage_patch&safe=off&espv=210&es_sm=93&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=SP7uUvuBDaaziQf-_oGoBA&ved=0CDcQsAQ&biw=1517&bih=741&dpr=0.9#q=Great+Pacific+garbage+patch&safe=off&spell=1&tbm=isch <PICS

 

[Dauntless]

What Mom meant was that Dr. Feel Good had been really taking care of her in his final days of his medical license, so she was dreaming up all kinds of things. Telling me "CNN is saying . . . ." and I'd remind her she DOESN'T WATCH CNN. This was supposed to be somewhere barely east of the State line, gorwing larger at I guess a thousand times the rate of a normal volcano, darkening the skies, doing ALL these things, 'Ma-that's-200-miles-from-me-and-I'd-KNOW-if-that-was-happening. . . .' Ubehebe is a crater, I understand a neat place but I've never quite found it.

The word you're looking for is 'Gyre.' Most of what people say about it is WRONG. There are several oceanic gyres around the world, the pattern of currents. Things collect in those and move to the center, if they're in the ocean. So there's all sorts of man made things winding up in the ocean, much of which will end up in the whirlpool of a gyre. Things we really don't want out there mixing in with nature.

Junk in the gyres is not a good thing. Bacteria that eats plastic is not a healthy thing for fish to be eating, etc. People act like this 'Gyre that's forming' is the new and deadly thing. No, it's just the particular WAY things end up from the ocean getting polluted. All the wild tales of new continents being formed from the piles of garbage accumulating are simply ridiculous. It's another example of causing people to doubt concerns because of the OVERSTATING matters in an insane manner, which they discover aren't really true.

http://5gyres.org/

http://www.expeditiongyre.com/

 

[e-beach]

.... i forget what it's called now but you can see the collection of rubbish in the ocean from google maps, .....

They are called Gyres. There are 5 of them in the world. The sea currents spin in a circle and all the floating garbage gets stuck in them. Plastics are a big problem. The garbage from the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami is circulating in the one in the pacific between Japan and California USA.

That garbage patch is over 100 miles wide.

http://5gyres.org/

 

[nechaus]

looking at all the photos of all the wildlife that has been affected, it really is such a sad thing.

 

[e-beach]

BTW the reason I know the Pacific Gyre is 100 miles across is because I know one of the Ph.D's from 5gyres.org who has been diving in and around that gyre studying it. When I asked him how big it was he said that is hard to know because it stretches about 100 miles across and gets denser as you move to the center. He showed me a jar that was full of plastic and water. He said all he did was open the jar and scoop what was there floating next to the boat he was diving off of. There was as much warn bits of plastic as water. It was gross!

 

[Giovanni LiCalsi]

The ingested plastics have a far reaching effect by destroying the hormonal balance of the sea life and causing less sea life being born.

 

[dnmun]

it really is too bad that the entire core mass did not go into the ocean so the ocean would be so radioactive that they would have to stop killing all the fish. i think it is the only way the ecosystem could survive, if the tuna became radioactive. it would not do much harm to the animals but the public hysteria would save the fishes.

 

[Giovanni LiCalsi]

It's all ready showing its effects. There were conjoined grey whales that washed up on the Baja Peninsula, Mexico.

 

[Arlo1]

It's all ready showing its effects. There were conjoined grey whales that washed up on the Baja Peninsula, Mexico.

So you telling me this was born in the last couple years?