EPA To Raise Limits For Radiation Exposure While Canada Turns Off Fallout Detectors (via The Oldspeak Journal)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I like outrage. Much happens these days that produces legitimate anger but too many people divert themselves from the pain of reality by choosing vital moral topics like Charlie Sheen’s job prospects. This willful desire to escape the pain of national and international policy is not one I respect. As citizens we have a duty to our fellow man to act intelligently and at times forcefully to correct abusive policies and poor decision making.

This is some outrage, in fact, quite a bit of outrage. I enjoyed very much. I hope you do too.

James Pilant

EPA To Raise Limits For Radiation Exposure While Canada Turns Off Fallout Detectors Oldspeak: Yes! Brilliant way to deal with this monumental (and curiously underreported in corporate media) public heath and environmental disaster. Raise radiation limits and turn off radiation detectors! That’ll make it all better. 😐 With recent reports of IMMEASURABLE LEVELS of radiation at Fukishima, A meltdown at reactor #2, TEPCO dumping thousands of gallons of radioactive water into the sea, (that will end up in rain in the U.S.), radioac … Read More

via The Oldspeak Journal

Japan nuclear crisis ‘breakthrough’ (via Al Jazeera English)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

There has been progress but I do not consider this an end to the crisis. There are many elements of the crisis that still continues and considering the truthfulness of the Japanese government and TEPCO, I have doubts about the success of the current efforts.

James Pilant

Nanotechnology and public debate (via renevonschomberg)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I like this. Somebody that wants to discuss a controversial subject in an intelligent and reasonable way so that policies can be developed for the benefit of all.

No screaming, hair pulling, psychotic, religious zealots telling us how it has to be based on the most obscure and bizarre interpretation of bible verses or just church doctrine. No corporate flack, no corporate writing hack explaining the everything is fine, let the free market decide.

Just a call for actual policy development based on what we can figure out about the problem.

I like it.

James Pilant

I joined an international colloquium on the topic organized by the university of Brussels.(ULB) 4 April 2011 On the menue Philippe Busquin, former Research commissioner of the European Commission and Goran Hermeren, president of the European Group of Ethics (2002-2011), among other. there is significant agreement that Huge knowledge gaps concerning risks of nano particles Not sufficient knowledge on which risk identification methodologies to deve … Read More

via renevonschomberg

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