HEY YOU! yeah you.. Japan needs your help!
- Thread starter Dee Jay
- Start date
Dee Jay
100 kW
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[youtube]B_ypb_udVaY[/youtube]
Yoshio Hachiro was not making jokes, he was stating his utter disgust at how FUBAR Japan really is. He didn't want to lie to the press. He didn't want to say things that the public want to hear, he said things that the Japanese public NEEDED TO HEAR so everyone can move forward towards REAL SOLUTIONS instead of covering this nuclear crisis with pretty wallpaper facade. Remember, in Japan, APPEARANCE is more important than SOLUTIONS.
Yoshio Hachiro resigned because he knew he wouldn't win against the bureaucracy, but his resignation shows how weak he is. If he truly loved his country he would've stuck to his guns and fought hard for his people.
Former Prime Minister Kan certainly didn't love his country, that Easy Money MotherFnCKER is having drinks at a golf resort. .
[youtube]3mFdrM0Klk8[/youtube]
Yoshio Hachiro was not making jokes, he was stating his utter disgust at how FUBAR Japan really is. He didn't want to lie to the press. He didn't want to say things that the public want to hear, he said things that the Japanese public NEEDED TO HEAR so everyone can move forward towards REAL SOLUTIONS instead of covering this nuclear crisis with pretty wallpaper facade. Remember, in Japan, APPEARANCE is more important than SOLUTIONS.
Yoshio Hachiro resigned because he knew he wouldn't win against the bureaucracy, but his resignation shows how weak he is. If he truly loved his country he would've stuck to his guns and fought hard for his people.
Former Prime Minister Kan certainly didn't love his country, that Easy Money MotherFnCKER is having drinks at a golf resort. .
[youtube]3mFdrM0Klk8[/youtube]
Dee Jay
100 kW
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for you aussies who think fear mongering, radiation and cancer is funny (you know who you are) let's see you laugh at this vid, Melbourne was getting up to 9 microseverts.. NINE. during a late September rain.
and I thought Tokyo's .2 was high ...
laugh it up
[youtube]enrLGH-dmvE[/youtube]
and I thought Tokyo's .2 was high ...
laugh it up
[youtube]enrLGH-dmvE[/youtube]
Lessss
1 MW
No thanks, apparently they are using aid money to refit an get the whaling fleet back out on the water, so in my opinion at this point Japan can go frock itself.
http://www.google.ca/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=japn+using+aid+money+for+whaling&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest
Dee Jay
100 kW
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Lessss said:
oh what, greenpeace making accusations?
http://news.discovery.com/earth/japan-uses-tsunami-funds-to-support-whaling-fleet-111208.html
After that Sea Shepard fiasco it's pretty clear they have zero integrity... I'm with you on japan's whaling and dolphin issues, tho
anyway, I wasn't really expecting donations, I was just testing how compasionate this community is :wink:
spinningmagnets
100 TW
A recent pic about radioactive seawater
Dee Jay
100 kW
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yeah... and we had a pretty big EQ the other day, too. Not the usual swaying but an up and down motion, weird..
Lots of people here still trying to play the contamination down, and those on other side of the planet think it won't affect them. what ticks me off are those that wanna commemorate the march 11 2011 EQ as if this crisis is over. They don't undertand this only the beginning. wtf
[youtube]rA2-6ZlOXeg[/youtube]
Lots of people here still trying to play the contamination down, and those on other side of the planet think it won't affect them. what ticks me off are those that wanna commemorate the march 11 2011 EQ as if this crisis is over. They don't undertand this only the beginning. wtf
[youtube]rA2-6ZlOXeg[/youtube]
dnmun
1 PW
at least now that you guys have shut down all the nuclear plants and reduced produced power by 30% you will be able to show the world what the future will be like as we run out of cheap energy. the LNG japan is now siphoning up off the world markets is helping make tons of money for the LNG exporters while impoverishing the japanese. it costs about 8 times as much for energy from natural gas in japan than it does here in the states. we needed that competitive advantage so we thank you for your loss.
there was never a good reason for you guys to have let the guvment and energy industry create such a cabal from the beginning but the imperial dynastic tradition of servitude to the guvment that followed on after the war is different from how it works over here. over here anybody can jam up progress just by saying it violates some clean air or clean water regulations. and use guvment power against the people it is meant to help.
there was never a good reason for you guys to have let the guvment and energy industry create such a cabal from the beginning but the imperial dynastic tradition of servitude to the guvment that followed on after the war is different from how it works over here. over here anybody can jam up progress just by saying it violates some clean air or clean water regulations. and use guvment power against the people it is meant to help.
Dee Jay
100 kW
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well something's gotta give. it's what we all get for fudging around with power we can't even control.
David Suzuki @ 17:00 " a couple of hundred years ago people believed in dragons and monsters. But now we've got another monster, and it's called the economy. And if you read the wallstreet journal they treat the market and the economy as if they are a THING..Wait a minute now, the market is not some force of nature WE CREATED THE DAMN THING!"
[youtube]qpVEH-Bpdes[/youtube]
This applies to how we treat nuclear technology. We all need to slow down and think about what we're doing, you and your progress can kiss my ass. :lol:
enjoy your radioactive fish.. :wink:
You're always on about "you over there" and "us over here", you can't put your calculator down long enough to realize that we're all on the same boat. Hate to burst your bubble but you and your loved ones will suffer more than you know. We're actually sitting pretty here while the jet stream blows 80% of the poisons to you, it's why we flew back from Cali.dnmun said:
David Suzuki @ 17:00 " a couple of hundred years ago people believed in dragons and monsters. But now we've got another monster, and it's called the economy. And if you read the wallstreet journal they treat the market and the economy as if they are a THING..Wait a minute now, the market is not some force of nature WE CREATED THE DAMN THING!"
[youtube]qpVEH-Bpdes[/youtube]
This applies to how we treat nuclear technology. We all need to slow down and think about what we're doing, you and your progress can kiss my ass. :lol:
enjoy your radioactive fish.. :wink:
Lessss
1 MW
Japan doesn't need nuclear, it's sitting on geothermal paradise.
deepfraught
100 W
Is that because clean air and water are optional for life on the planet, is there now a patented synthetic alternative? "From the creators of I can't believe it's not butter... I can't believe it's not polluted! Take it away Dan!"dnmun said:
TylerDurden
100 GW
Concerns Grow About Spent Fuel Rods at Damaged Nuclear Plant in Japan
The New York Times
By HIROKO TABUCHI and MATTHEW WALD
Published: May 26, 2012
TOKYO — What passes for normal at the Fukushima Daiichi plant today would have caused shudders among even the most sanguine of experts before an earthquake and tsunami set off the world’s second most serious nuclear crisis after Chernobyl.
Fourteen months after the accident, a pool brimming with used fuel rods and filled with vast quantities of radioactive cesium still sits on the top floor of a heavily damaged reactor building, covered only with plastic.
The public’s fears about the pool have grown in recent months as some scientists have warned that it has the most potential for setting off a new catastrophe, now that the three nuclear reactors that suffered meltdowns are in a more stable state, and as frequent quakes continue to rattle the region.
The worries picked up new traction in recent days after the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, said it had found a slight bulge in one of the walls of the reactor building, stoking fears over the building’s safety.
To try to quell such worries, the government sent the environment and nuclear minister to the plant on Saturday, where he climbed a makeshift staircase in protective garb to look at the structure supporting the pool, which he said appeared sound. The minister, Goshi Hosono, added that although the government accepted Tepco’s assurances that reinforcement work had shored up the building, it had ordered the company to conduct further studies because of the bulge.
Some outside experts have also worked to allay fears, saying that the fuel in the pool is now so old that it cannot generate enough heat to start the kind of accident that would allow radioactive material to escape.
But many Japanese have scoffed at those assurances and point out that even if the building is able to withstand further quakes, which they question, the jury-rigged cooling system for the pool has already malfunctioned several times, including a 24-hour failure in April. Had the failures continued, they would have left the rods at risk of dangerous overheating. Government critics are especially concerned, since Tepco has said the soonest it could begin emptying the pool is late 2013, dashing hopes for earlier action.
“The No. 4 reactor is visibly damaged and in a fragile state, down to the floor that holds the spent fuel pool,” said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute and one of the experts raising concerns. “Any radioactive release could be huge and go directly into the environment.”
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, expressed similar concerns during a trip to Japan last month.
The fears over the pool at Reactor No. 4, amplified over the Web, are helping to undermine assurances by Tepco and the Japanese government that the Fukushima plant has been brought to a stable condition and are highlighting how complicated the cleanup of the site, expected to take decades, will be. The concerns are also raising questions about whether Japan’s all-out effort to convince its citizens that nuclear power is safe kept the authorities from exploring other — and some say safer — options for storing used fuel rods.
“It was taboo to raise questions about the spent fuel that was piling up,” said Hideo Kimura, who worked as a nuclear fuel engineer at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the 1990s. “But it was clear that here was nowhere for the spent fuel to go.”
The worst-case situations for Reactor No. 4 would be for the pool to run dry if there is another problem with the cooling system and the rods catch fire, releasing enormous amounts of radioactive material, or that fission restart if the metal panels that separate the rods are knocked over in a quake. That would be especially bad because the pools, unlike reactors, lacks containment vessels to hold in radioactive material. (Even the roof that used to exist would be no match if the rods caught fire, for instance.)
There is considerable disagreement among scientists over whether such catastrophes are possible. But some argue that whether the chances are small or large, changes should be made quickly because of the magnitude of the potential calamity.
Senator Wyden, whose state could lie in the path of any new radioactive plumes and who has studied nuclear waste issues, is among those pushing for faster action. After his recent visit to the ravaged plant, Senator Wyden said the pool at No. 4 poses “an extraordinary and continuing risk” and the retrieval of spent fuel “should be a priority given the possibility of further earthquakes.”
Attention has focused on No. 4’s spent fuel pool because of the large number of assemblies filled with rods that are stored at the reactor building. Three other reactor buildings at the site are also badly damaged, but their spent fuel pools held fewer used assemblies.
According to Tepco, the pool at the No. 4 reactor, which was not operating at the time of the accident, holds 1,331 spent fuel assemblies, which each contain dozens of rods. Several thousand rods were removed from the core just three months before so the vessel could be inspected. Those rods, which were not fully used up, could more easily support chain reactions than the fully-spent fuel.
Mr. Koide and others warn that Tepco must move more quickly to transfer the fuel rods to a safer location. But such transfers have been greatly complicated by the nuclear accident. Ordinarily the rods are lifted by giant cranes, but at Fukushima those cranes collapsed during the series of disasters that started with the earthquake and included explosions that destroyed portions of several reactor buildings.
Tepco has said it will build a separate structure next to Reactor No. 4 to support a new crane. But under the plan, released last month, the fuel removal will begin in late 2013.
The presence of so many spent fuel rods at Fukushima Daiichi highlights a quandary facing the global nuclear industry: how to safely store — and eventually recycle or dispose of — spent nuclear fuel, which stays radioactive for tens of thousands of years.
In the 1960s and 1970s, recycling for reuse in plants had seemed the most promising option to countries with civilian nuclear power programs. And as Japan expanded its collection of nuclear reactors, local communities were told not to worry about the spent fuel, which would be recycled.
The idea of recycling fell out of favor in some countries, including the United States, which dropped the idea because it is a potential path to nuclear weapons.
Japan stuck to its nuclear fuel cycle goal, however, despite leaks and delays at a vast reprocessing plant in the north forcing utilities to store a growing stockpile of spent fuel.
“Japan did not want to admit that the nuclear fuel cycle might be a failed policy, and did not think seriously about a safer, more permanent way to store spent fuel,” said Tadahiro Katsuta, an associate professor of nuclear science at Tokyo’s Meiji University.
The capacity problem was particularly pronounced at Fukushima Daiichi, which is among Japan’s oldest plans and where the oldest fuel assemblies have been stored in pools since 1973.
Eventually, the plant had to build an extra fuel rod pool, despite suspicions among residents that increasing capacity at the plant would mean the rods would be stored at the site far longer than promised. (They were right.)
Tepco also wanted to transfer some of the rods to sealed casks, which have become a popular storage option worldwide in recent years, but the community was convinced that it was another stalling tactic.
In the end, the company was able to load a limited number of casks at the plant. Unlike the fuel pool at Reactor No. 4 that has caused so much worry, they survived the disaster unscathed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/asia/concerns-grow-about-spent-fuel-rods-at-damaged-nuclear-plant-in-japan.html?google_editors_picks=true
The New York Times
By HIROKO TABUCHI and MATTHEW WALD
Published: May 26, 2012
TOKYO — What passes for normal at the Fukushima Daiichi plant today would have caused shudders among even the most sanguine of experts before an earthquake and tsunami set off the world’s second most serious nuclear crisis after Chernobyl.
Fourteen months after the accident, a pool brimming with used fuel rods and filled with vast quantities of radioactive cesium still sits on the top floor of a heavily damaged reactor building, covered only with plastic.
The public’s fears about the pool have grown in recent months as some scientists have warned that it has the most potential for setting off a new catastrophe, now that the three nuclear reactors that suffered meltdowns are in a more stable state, and as frequent quakes continue to rattle the region.
The worries picked up new traction in recent days after the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, said it had found a slight bulge in one of the walls of the reactor building, stoking fears over the building’s safety.
To try to quell such worries, the government sent the environment and nuclear minister to the plant on Saturday, where he climbed a makeshift staircase in protective garb to look at the structure supporting the pool, which he said appeared sound. The minister, Goshi Hosono, added that although the government accepted Tepco’s assurances that reinforcement work had shored up the building, it had ordered the company to conduct further studies because of the bulge.
Some outside experts have also worked to allay fears, saying that the fuel in the pool is now so old that it cannot generate enough heat to start the kind of accident that would allow radioactive material to escape.
But many Japanese have scoffed at those assurances and point out that even if the building is able to withstand further quakes, which they question, the jury-rigged cooling system for the pool has already malfunctioned several times, including a 24-hour failure in April. Had the failures continued, they would have left the rods at risk of dangerous overheating. Government critics are especially concerned, since Tepco has said the soonest it could begin emptying the pool is late 2013, dashing hopes for earlier action.
“The No. 4 reactor is visibly damaged and in a fragile state, down to the floor that holds the spent fuel pool,” said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute and one of the experts raising concerns. “Any radioactive release could be huge and go directly into the environment.”
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, expressed similar concerns during a trip to Japan last month.
The fears over the pool at Reactor No. 4, amplified over the Web, are helping to undermine assurances by Tepco and the Japanese government that the Fukushima plant has been brought to a stable condition and are highlighting how complicated the cleanup of the site, expected to take decades, will be. The concerns are also raising questions about whether Japan’s all-out effort to convince its citizens that nuclear power is safe kept the authorities from exploring other — and some say safer — options for storing used fuel rods.
“It was taboo to raise questions about the spent fuel that was piling up,” said Hideo Kimura, who worked as a nuclear fuel engineer at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the 1990s. “But it was clear that here was nowhere for the spent fuel to go.”
The worst-case situations for Reactor No. 4 would be for the pool to run dry if there is another problem with the cooling system and the rods catch fire, releasing enormous amounts of radioactive material, or that fission restart if the metal panels that separate the rods are knocked over in a quake. That would be especially bad because the pools, unlike reactors, lacks containment vessels to hold in radioactive material. (Even the roof that used to exist would be no match if the rods caught fire, for instance.)
There is considerable disagreement among scientists over whether such catastrophes are possible. But some argue that whether the chances are small or large, changes should be made quickly because of the magnitude of the potential calamity.
Senator Wyden, whose state could lie in the path of any new radioactive plumes and who has studied nuclear waste issues, is among those pushing for faster action. After his recent visit to the ravaged plant, Senator Wyden said the pool at No. 4 poses “an extraordinary and continuing risk” and the retrieval of spent fuel “should be a priority given the possibility of further earthquakes.”
Attention has focused on No. 4’s spent fuel pool because of the large number of assemblies filled with rods that are stored at the reactor building. Three other reactor buildings at the site are also badly damaged, but their spent fuel pools held fewer used assemblies.
According to Tepco, the pool at the No. 4 reactor, which was not operating at the time of the accident, holds 1,331 spent fuel assemblies, which each contain dozens of rods. Several thousand rods were removed from the core just three months before so the vessel could be inspected. Those rods, which were not fully used up, could more easily support chain reactions than the fully-spent fuel.
Mr. Koide and others warn that Tepco must move more quickly to transfer the fuel rods to a safer location. But such transfers have been greatly complicated by the nuclear accident. Ordinarily the rods are lifted by giant cranes, but at Fukushima those cranes collapsed during the series of disasters that started with the earthquake and included explosions that destroyed portions of several reactor buildings.
Tepco has said it will build a separate structure next to Reactor No. 4 to support a new crane. But under the plan, released last month, the fuel removal will begin in late 2013.
The presence of so many spent fuel rods at Fukushima Daiichi highlights a quandary facing the global nuclear industry: how to safely store — and eventually recycle or dispose of — spent nuclear fuel, which stays radioactive for tens of thousands of years.
In the 1960s and 1970s, recycling for reuse in plants had seemed the most promising option to countries with civilian nuclear power programs. And as Japan expanded its collection of nuclear reactors, local communities were told not to worry about the spent fuel, which would be recycled.
The idea of recycling fell out of favor in some countries, including the United States, which dropped the idea because it is a potential path to nuclear weapons.
Japan stuck to its nuclear fuel cycle goal, however, despite leaks and delays at a vast reprocessing plant in the north forcing utilities to store a growing stockpile of spent fuel.
“Japan did not want to admit that the nuclear fuel cycle might be a failed policy, and did not think seriously about a safer, more permanent way to store spent fuel,” said Tadahiro Katsuta, an associate professor of nuclear science at Tokyo’s Meiji University.
The capacity problem was particularly pronounced at Fukushima Daiichi, which is among Japan’s oldest plans and where the oldest fuel assemblies have been stored in pools since 1973.
Eventually, the plant had to build an extra fuel rod pool, despite suspicions among residents that increasing capacity at the plant would mean the rods would be stored at the site far longer than promised. (They were right.)
Tepco also wanted to transfer some of the rods to sealed casks, which have become a popular storage option worldwide in recent years, but the community was convinced that it was another stalling tactic.
In the end, the company was able to load a limited number of casks at the plant. Unlike the fuel pool at Reactor No. 4 that has caused so much worry, they survived the disaster unscathed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/asia/concerns-grow-about-spent-fuel-rods-at-damaged-nuclear-plant-in-japan.html?google_editors_picks=true
TylerDurden
100 GW
Radioactive bluefin tuna crossed the Pacific to US
ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer – Mon May 28, 3:48 pm ET
LOS ANGELES – Across the vast Pacific, the mighty bluefin tuna carried radioactive contamination that leaked from Japan's crippled nuclear plant to the shores of the United States 6,000 miles away — the first time a huge migrating fish has been shown to carry radioactivity such a distance.
"We were frankly kind of startled," said Nicholas Fisher, one of the researchers reporting the findings online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The levels of radioactive cesium were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years. But even so, that's still far below safe-to-eat limits set by the U.S. and Japanese governments.
Previously, smaller fish and plankton were found with elevated levels of radiation in Japanese waters after a magnitude-9 earthquake in March 2011 triggered a tsunami that badly damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors.
But scientists did not expect the nuclear fallout to linger in huge fish that sail the world because such fish can metabolize and shed radioactive substances.
One of the largest and speediest fish, Pacific bluefin tuna can grow to 10 feet and weigh more than 1,000 pounds. They spawn off the Japan coast and swim east at breakneck speed to school in waters off California and the tip of Baja California, Mexico.
Five months after the Fukushima disaster, Fisher of Stony Brook University in New York and a team decided to test Pacific bluefin that were caught off the coast of San Diego. To their surprise, tissue samples from all 15 tuna captured contained levels of two radioactive substances — ceisum-134 and cesium-137 — that were higher than in previous catches.
To rule out the possibility that the radiation was carried by ocean currents or deposited in the sea through the atmosphere, the team also analyzed yellowfin tuna, found in the eastern Pacific, and bluefin that migrated to Southern California before the nuclear crisis. They found no trace of cesium-134 and only background levels of cesium-137 left over from nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s.
The results "are unequivocal. Fukushima was the source," said Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who had no role in the research.
Bluefin tuna absorbed radioactive cesium from swimming in contaminated waters and feeding on contaminated prey such as krill and squid, the scientists said. As the predators made the journey east, they shed some of the radiation through metabolism and as they grew larger. Even so, they weren't able to completely flush out all the contamination from their system.
"That's a big ocean. To swim across it and still retain these radionuclides is pretty amazing," Fisher said.
Pacific bluefin tuna are prized in Japan where a thin slice of the tender red meat prepared as sushi can fetch $24 per piece at top Tokyo restaurants. Japanese consume 80 percent of the world's Pacific and Atlantic bluefin tuna.
The real test of how radioactivity affects tuna populations comes this summer when researchers planned to repeat the study with a larger number of samples. Bluefin tuna that journeyed last year were exposed to radiation for about a month. The upcoming travelers have been swimming in radioactive waters for a longer period. How this will affect concentrations of contamination remains to be seen.
Now that scientists know that bluefin tuna can transport radiation, they also want to track the movements of other migratory species including sea turtles, sharks and seabirds.