Category: business ethics

Quake to force shutdown of all US Toyota plants (via CBS News)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I think the ongoing nuclear crisis certainly contributed. But as time goes by, disastrous economic effects will be ascribed to the nuclear disaster. It’s just a matter of time.

James Pilant

Toyota Motor Corp. said Monday that it’s inevitable that the company will be forced to temporarily shut down all of its North American factories because of parts shortages due to the earthquake that hit Japan.

 The temporary shutdowns are likely to take place later this month, affecting 25,000 workers, but no layoffs are expected, spokesman Mike Goss said. Just how long the shutdowns last or whether all 13 of Toyota’s factories will be affected at the same is unknown and depends on when parts production can restart in Japan, he said.

Sawdust and Radioactive Water Dumps: The Increasingly Desperate Options at Fukushima (via Time)

On By southwerkIn business ethics
Courtesy of The Daily Green

We have gone from contained to desperate and now we have arrived at the surreal. Maybe next they’ll try superglue or shopping carts. Neither will work but like the sawdust, they’ll give the impression that TEPCO, the Japanese utility, cares.

By the way, TEPCO’s shares are publicly traded. If you want to buy low, this is a good time.

James Pilant

Sawdust. It’s not the first thing most people would choose to put between themselves and highly contaminated radioactive water. But a mixture of sawdust — ogakuzu in Japanese — with chemicals and shredded newspaper is precisely what nuclear safety authorities and power plant officials turned to in trying to plug a 8-inch crack in a shaft near reactor 2 at the Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima over the weekend.

Unfortunately, like the concrete they tried before it, the sawdust didn’t work, and as of Monday, the flow of irradiated water into the sea from the shaft continued unabated. “We have not succeeded yet,” Ken Morita, director of the international affairs office at Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), acknowledged to TIME on Monday morning. “We will try again today.”

What will they try next? For the past three weeks, that has been the question hovering in the irradiated air above Fukushima, where each passing day seems to bring a new and unprecedented challenge for the ebattled Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to shut down the reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant safely.

Radiation Levels on the Rise (via Poison Your Mind)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment
Fukushima

A good take on yesterday’s news about the continuing massive leak at the Japanese nuclear facility. I wish these current events could be followed by more Americans.

It’s a nice blog. It would pay to look at some of the other posts there.

James Pilant

Even bearing this data on radiation exposure in mind, it’s hard to see how today’s news isn’t pretty terrifying. We don’t seem to know exactly what’s going on in these reactors, much less how to stop it, or where the dangerous material is going.  The operator of Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant said Tuesday that it had found radioactive iodine at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken near the facility, and governmen … Read More

via Poison Your Mind

Fukushima Info Part 2 Updated April 5 (via TrueNorthist)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

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

Fukushima Info Part 2 Updated April 5 This is a continuation of my previous Fukushima info post.  Links and comments continue below.  As always, feel free to discuss the event in the comments.  Approval may take a while, but I check frequently.  I run on Pacific Daylight Time which is GMT -8, I think!  Updates will be added to the end of the page and separated by a horizontal line.  This post will be bumped to the top every morning. Press Release (Apr 01,2011) Plant Status of Fukushi … Read More

via TrueNorthist

A BOOK IN PROGRESS [PART 3]: ON STOICISM, FREE WILL & FATE (via Pandaemonium)

On By southwerkIn business ethics
Zeno

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

My book on the history of moral thought, due to be published next year by Atlantic, is beginning to take shape (I should hopefully have finished writing it by late summer / early autumn). Every month I am posting small sections from the book. This excerpt is from the conclusion of Chapter 3, which begins in Aristotle’s moral thought and ends in Stoicism. THE PHILOSOPHER ZENO WAS ONCE FLOGGING A SLAVE WHO HAD STOLEN SOME goods.  ‘But I was fated t … Read More

via Pandaemonium

Seven Tons of Radioactive Water an Hour (via New York Times)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

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.

Possibly bogus prediction contest (via Gas station without pumps)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

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

The Heritage Provider Network (whoever they are) has announced a $3 million prize “to develop a breakthrough algorithm that uses available patient data, including health records and claims data, to predict and prevent unnecessary hospitalizations.”  They claim that they want this to benefit individual patients, but it seems to me that the most obvious use is to deny insurance or charge very high prices to those most at risk of hospitalization. I … Read More

via Gas station without pumps

Why Business Books Are Helplessly Helpless (via ringingtruenovel)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

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

Why Business Books Are Helplessly Helpless I’ve had a few real jobs that required me to read extensively in the genre of business books. Correction: I’ve had a few real jobs that required me to skim business books. It’s impossible to actually read a business book, because there’s so little there there. When I have to read one, I skip to the end of a chapter and pray that th … Read More

via ringingtruenovel

Engineers fail to seal leak at Japan nuke plant (via AP and Yahoo News)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

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.

Wolf Creek nuclear plant among three in U.S. that need more oversight, NRC reports (via McClatchy and The Kansas City Star)

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

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

By MIKE McGRAW From the Kansas City Star –

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.