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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
At one point up to 600 of them were living in a building on the grounds of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, without adequate food or sleep. The Fukushima workers – the men and women working round the clock to prevent the reactors deteriorating further – have been at the centre of world media attention, and now a trickle of emails and web postings from them is emerging.
This is incredible. We now have a nuclear zone where people will not be able to live for what must be at least years.
How much land are we talking about? Probably at least the twenty kilometer evacuation zone around the plant. That’s 1,256 square kilometers. Could it include some or all of the ten kilometer zone beyond that? If it does that’s 2,826 square kilometers. What if it keeps spreading? Your guess is as good as mine.
However, the radiation leakage is probably going to decide how much has to be evacuated for how long.
This is the part the advocates of nuclear power never seem to talk about, hundreds of square miles of what was once habitable land off limits to humans save for “safe” exposure times. Essentially a wasteland.
And this crisis is far from over.
James Pilant
From BBC News –
More than 70,000 people have been evacuated from a 20km (12-mile) evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Another 136,000 people who live in a 10km zone beyond that have been encouraged by the authorities to leave or to stay indoors.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the evacuation would be a “long-term” operation.
“So therefore, we are giving instructions on how to proceed with the continuation of children’s’ education, and the employment of people who are unable to work because of the evacuation order,” he said.
Highly radioactive water continues to leak at the plant; for the first time it has been found in groundwater 15m below reactor 1.
From further down –
The authorities are resisting calls from the UN’s atomic agency to expand the exclusion zone around the plant, after it found safe radiation limits had been exceeded at the village of Iitate, 40km away.
In case you are curious, that’s 5024 square kilometers.
Mr. Gunderson has a lot to say about the crisis at the reactors in Japan. I saw one of his videos today for the first time. I am impressed. However, first impressions are not always accurate. If any of my kind readers have any opinion or knowledge about Mr. Gunderson or his organization, Fairewinds Associates, I want you to tell me.
Here are two videos. One is from yesterday and the other is from a network show.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.