TrueNorthist has a daily update on the Japanese ongoing nuclear disaster. I appreciate those elements of the blogosphere that have not grown bored or moved on from the issue. The crisis produces new horrors every few days and these are literally history making events.
James Pilant
via TrueNorthist
I find stoicism an attractive philosophy. I suspect that has to do with the slings and arrows of an implacable fate falling with such regularity. Hanging tough may be the only thing many Americans (and all Japanese) can do.
It’s a nice essay. I hope you enjoy it. Maybe you can buy the book when it’s finished.
James Pilant
via Pandaemonium
My father tells me that the news from Fukushima is all over the cable news. I wouldn’t know. I’m careful not to watch. I prefer my sources, BBC, Reuters, the New York Times, McClatchy, AP and a few others. The 24 news programs generate a lot of nonsense and I only occasionally use clips.
For my taste there should be more news about these events in the more regular media.
James Pilant
From the New York Times –
Experts estimate that about seven tons an hour of radioactive water is escaping the pit. Safety officials have said that the water, which appears to be coming from the damaged No. 2 reactor, contains one million becquerels per liter of iodine 131, or about 10,000 times the levels normally found in water at a nuclear plant.
“There is still a steady stream of water from the pit,” Mr. Nishiyama said, but workers would continue to “observe and evaluate” the situation overnight.
The leak underscores the dangerous side effects of the strategy to cool the plant’s reactors and spent fuel storage pools by pumping them with hundreds of tons of water. While much of that water evaporates, a significant portion also turns into dangerous runoff that has been discovered in various parts of the plant, endangering workers at the plant and hindering repair efforts. On March 24, three workers were injured when they stepped into a pool of radioactive water in one of the plant’s turbine buildings.
In recent days, workers have tried to clear the contaminated pools, but have struggled to find places to store the water. Meanwhile, levels of iodine 131 that are over 4,000 times normal, as well as levels of cesium 137 that are 527 times normal have been detected in seawater taken 1,080 feet away from the plant, raising fears of damage to sea life.
Tokyo Electric has said it has little choice but to pump more water into the reactors at the moment, since the normal cooling systems at the plant are inoperable and more radioactive material would be released if the reactors were allowed to melt down fully or if the rods caught fire.
I liked the attitude here, a little anger, a lot of indignation and a skeptical attitude, all the things this country needs more of.
I’d give it a read if I were you.
James Pilant
I enjoyed this essay. I have never been impressed by most business books. The ones I generally read are stories of business collapse, business crimes and business biographies.
I teach business law and I find most of the “how to get ahead in business books” to be mainly nonsense.
The author doesn’t like business book much either and writes about it well.
I recommend you read it.
James Pilant
via ringingtruenovel
They were missing two workers since March 11th and didn’t realize they were gone? They are only reporting it now? Are there some other bodies they are not telling us about? Is the cycle of lies and evasions and pretended ignorance never to stop?
Do I need to discuss the ethics of this? This is pure corporate PR done badly. I imagine soon they will read the American newspapers and discover from pro-nuclear editorials that this is positive event since it will give us information that will help us prevent later disasters. In ten years they will be taking pictures of the wildlife in the restricted zone of radiation and explaining how these events made a nature preserve possible. With a few more accidents we can have the whole of Japan as a nature preserve. You will be able to pay to visit them for a few hours but don’t worry your exposure will only be equivalent to a chest x-ray.
James Pilant
From AP and Yahoo News -RYAN NAKASHIMA and MARI YAMAGUCHI –
Engineers failed to seal a crack where highly radioactive water was spilling into the Pacific from a Japanese nuclear power plant incapacitated by last month’s earthquake-spawned tsunami but said a search of the site found no other leaks Sunday.
The wave has carved a path of destruction up and down the coast and is believed to have killed 25,000 people. The first deaths at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant itself, though, were confirmed Sunday by the operator. A 21-year-old and a 24-year-old were believed to be conducting regular checks at the complex when the 9.0-magnitude earthquake hit March 11.
“It pains me that these two young workers were trying to protect the power plant while being hit by the earthquake and tsunami,” Tokyo Electric Power Co. Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata said in a statement.
It was unclear why the men did not evacuate when the quake hit.
The bodies were not discovered until Wednesday and had to be decontaminated. The announcement was delayed out of respect for the victims’ families, TEPCO spokesman Naoki Tsunoda said.
Radiation has been spewing from the plant, leaking into the air, ground and sea. On Saturday, authorities discovered a crack from which radioactive water was spilling into the Pacific — the first time they identified a direct source of sea contamination.
You might want to make a copy of this post. When someone is carefully explaining to you as if to a small child that while there have been problems, this kind of thing (meltdowns, leaks, etc.) couldn’t happen in the United States – While he is consigning you to the ranks of the unrealistic tree huggers who unlike him don’t deal with the “real world,” you might wave this in front of his often unseeing eyes and watch a momentary doubt pass like a wedding veil briefly over his face. He’ll think for a moment about claiming that the NRC is also a bunch of tree huggers but decide against it. Then smiling he will regain the offensive by saying, “Thats why it can’t happen here. Our guys are better than there guys when it comes to safety. See right there in the paper. You’ve proved mycase.”
At this point, give up on persuasion. Give up on logic and reason. You are dealing with a religion, a belief that the real world involves cruel often vicious decisions and when someone raises a moral or ethical question or even a simple fact, they are to be considered, “unrealistic.”
They believe that we must be cruel and unflinching, ever striving to be tougher and less principled than our enemies, who are everywhere.
I am willing to consider nuclear power as a part of an energy policy but I want careful safeguards and real assurances. The PR nonsense and hack formulaic writing gives me that impression that once I am consigned to the anti-nuclear wackos, my concerns are irrelevant.
If that is going to be the level of discourse, then I don’t want any nuclear power anywhere on this planet.
The concerns of many that there were problems in safety have been ratified cruelly by events. And yet I read over and over again how this is just a bump in the road while listening to the insults directed against those who committed the greatest crime possible in the dispute over nuclear power, being right.
James Pilant
The Wolf Creek nuclear power plant is among three in the United States that need more intensive oversight, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Congress on Thursday.
NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko stressed that all 65 nuclear generating stations, which have a total of 104 reactors, are operating safely. But Jaczko said Wolf Creek and two others need a higher level of review because of continuing problems with safety systems and unplanned shutdowns.
Jaczko told a House Appropriations subcommittee that the three plants “are the ones we are most concerned about.” The other two are the H.B. Robinson plant in Hartsville, S.C., and the Fort Calhoun plant near Omaha, about 180 miles northwest of Kansas City.
This crisis just keeps on going. I want an end to it. I want everybody to be okay, unhurt, undamaged. But I am not going to get my wish. The people who created this disaster were so smart, so well placed and so well financed that all warnings no matter how factual bounced off of them.
Those who opposed nuclear power from the fringe to the most respectable were consigned as unrealistic tree huggers.
Well, the treehuggers got it right.
But I tell you, I feel pain every time I come across another article that talks about how this is just like getting another chest x-ray a year and that compared to stepladders and animal attacks the casualties have been few.
There comes a point at which this kind of commentary moves from the average to the mediocre, from opinion writing to caricature.
Even when they admit some unfortunate fact, they still conclude with, “It can’t happen here.”
It can’t happen here. It can, does and will. Human stupidity is a common characteristic. Add human stupidity to the semi-eternal capabilities of radiation and you have a very bad mix indeed.
Tens of thousands of Japanese may never be able to return to their homes and possessions. A thousand of the dead from the tsunami and earthquake cannot be gathered from the area. They rot uncared for.
This is the reality, a reality which will be denied over and over again. It’s already being denied.
The advocates of nuclear power will hope that in time this will all go away. Memories will fade, new PR, friendly hack articles will appear and nuclear power will be heralded as the cure for our problems.
And then some more will be built – until the next “accident.”
James Pilant
From McClatchy –
Radiation levels spiked inside and outside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Thursday, slowing work on the facility once again and once more throwing into doubt the integrity of the containment vessels that hold the fuel rods.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials said levels of radioactive iodine in water at the plant spiked to levels 10,000 times permissible limits, preventing workers from getting near the water.
Engineers have been pumping water out of the tunnels in the basements of the facilities and into holding areas in an attempt to permit access to areas where workers are trying to restore electricity to the cooling pumps that could ultimately bring the situation at the stricken facility under control. But they cannot do so when radiation levels are that high.
A lot of people have problems with their credit report. This is a succinct intelligent analysis of how to approach the problem.
James Pilant
via JV Law
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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