So, from what I can tell in the major news outlets, the massive death toll (which is likely to get more massive by the day) of the Japan earthquake is not the “big” story. The “big” story is the nuclear reactors which were damaged and are creating nuclear “incidents”.
Up until this earthquake it looked like the nuclear power industry was going to be getting a major boost from all the Global Warming hoopla and doomsaying. Now, I have to bet, not so much. There will be immediate calls not only to stop allowing permits for nuclear power plants, but to shut down all the ones that are currently running.
The greenies won’t be satisfied until we are living in the stone age again.
8 users commented in " Nuclear renaissance is likely over… "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackCome on man! If a nuclear power can’t withstand something as minor as an 8.9 magnitude quake and 30 foot tsunami at once then it is onbviosly not a a reliable technology.
For that matter the death toll would have been lower if everyone lived in small, environmentally friendly huts!
Global Warming causes Earthquakes!
A rat is a pig is dog is a boy!
Free Bigfoot!
Agreed, CC. The media are going nuts with the reactor story, and the fact that many thousands of people just died from a natural disaster is now seemingly taking backseat to the possible spectacle of nuclear disaster.
These people would do well to go read up on the failures at Windscale, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl, and the immediate and long term health effects. The scale is much smaller than most people perceive, and certainly pales in comparison to the destruction caused by this quake.
I’ve been following the situation at the plants rather closely over the last few days. It looked like everything was under control until the hydrogen explosions – I hope they have a means of dealing with that.
The news has been worthless, absolutely nuts, and they are driving people into irrational panic, probably intentionally. Yesterday, I read 10 different times where they swore up and down that catastrophic meltdowns were underway – when I checked the Japanese news, nothing of the sort was going on!
If the fuel melts down, then there will be a significant radiation hazard at the plant – but that hasn’t happened yet. I think they’ve prevented the possibility of the reaction restarting with the boron nitride injections.
For some reason, unexplained so far, probably another hydrogen leak with the steam venting – the fourth building caught on fire. Radiation levels rose to dangerous levels last night – I think this morning they explained it happened because stored nuclear waste at the #4 building caught on fire. It peaked at 40 rem/hr, and is back down to 600 uSv/hr (60 mrem/hr) this morning at the plant.
Now our wonderful news media is jumping up and down shrieking about radiation being detected in Tokyo. My understanding is that the radiation levels detected in Tokyo are barely above natural background, and pose no conceivable health risk. Don’t let that stop them from trying to incite a panic though.
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*sigh* – the public perception damage from all this is twofold:
First, there are tens of thousands of people dead, and hundreds of thousands of people stranded and homeless. None of this is getting the attention it deserves because of one industrial accident (the burning refineries and gas leaks aren’t even making the news).
Second, yes – I fear the nuclear Renaissance is dead as a doornail. When this is finally over, regardless of the actual damage, we are going to see a revival of 70′s era techno-phobia that will dwarf everything seen to date. It’s a pity that we can’t deal rationally with the risks of nuclear power, because it is the only way we will be able to maintain civilization when fossil fuel energy runs out.
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I hope they get the hydrogen venting problem under control – they need a pilot light or something. Until they fix that problem, the plants will remain dangerous. They will need to be able to cool this reactor for at least a week to get it under control.
The Drudgereport headline is “Now Nuclear Snow” which is stupid.
The snow is significant, but not because of the events at the plant.
The snow is significant because 100′s of thousands of people will be freezing to death without shelter in it, you morons!
Argh! I absolutely despise journalists, after this week.
I’ve despised journalists for a lot longer than a week….
The US and international media is nothing but an ideologically driven doom prophecy machine. That’s all they do.
Oh, and Charlie Sheen.
I’ve been following this story pretty closely, looking to the japanese industry pages and nuclear agency media whenever some flashing headline proclaims the end of the world.
It is absolutely mind bending – most of what is being reported *isn’t happening at all*. We aren’t talking events being spun, or misinterpreted, or misproportioned – there are several events that were reported yesterday that *didn’t even happen at all*.
The actual news at the plant is that the situation is almost under control now. They have 130 new workers on site, they are restoring power to the cooling systems, they have fire trucks which are hosing down the spent fuel ponds (which according to my own knowledge, and NEI, *were never actually any danger to begin with*). The workers are not allowed to expose themselves to more than 10 rem, 100 being required for the onset of radiation sickness.
There is just another month or so of making sure water continues to be pumped where it is needed.
You would never know this from the western news.
For news sources, I recommend the Nuclear Energy Institute and the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum.
The Japanese news actually quantifies the radiation levels where and when they are. Throughout the vast majority of Japan, the levels are at background. Within 20km of the plant, they rise to microSv/hr, above background, but not enough to cause any health effects whatsoever. At the plant, it will still take weeks for the onset of doses which could cause radiation sickness if given acutely.
Also NHK isn’t bad – but the Japanese are beginning to get nervous – they see our news media claiming that things are being covered up and freaking out in California, and they are beginning to wonder what they aren’t being told. (They are actually being kept very well informed).
On CNN they kept refferringto a Japanese company which is known to have misled the public in the past. Which was ironic, since CNN is a American company which is known to have misled the public in the past.
Yours,
Tom
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