How much alternative energy can you buy with 12 billion dollars over thirty years?

James Pilant

“Damaged reactors at the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant may take three decades to decommission and cost operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. more than 1 trillion yen ($12 billion), engineers and analysts said. Four of the plant’s six reactors became useless when sea water was used to cool them after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out generators running its cooling systems. The reactors need to be decommissioned, Tepco Chairma … Read More

via Mostly Tech

Most of America’s nuclear preparedness is based on obscene accumulations of pro nuclear propaganda and assurances that nothing bad can happen. That’s not enough.

There is simply too much profit, too many billions of dollars of influence and power to make any individual looking at the situation comfortable with the pronouncements of government and industry.

It is always the same.

We are told –
1. It can’t happen.
2. The situation is not serious.
3. Nothing like this has every happened before.
4. Radiation is not that big a deal – (at this point there must be discussion of chest x-rays)
5. The situation is under control.
6. The problem here is not the situation which is under control but the panicked response of a population not properly informed about the minimal danger of radiation.
7. That reactor was an obsolescent design.
8. Our new reactors have solved these problems.
9. Nuclear power is necessary. We cannot produce enough electricity without it.
10. Critics of nuclear power are alarmists, misinformed, treehuggers, radicals, rabble rousers, anti-industry, anti-corporate activists, etc.
11. What do you want us to do? Go back to living in the stone age!!

If you want to add some more, please do.

James Pilant

WASHINGTON – Most Americans doubt the U.S. government is prepared to respond to a nuclear emergency like the one in Japan, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows. But it also shows few Americans believe such an emergency would occur. Nevertheless, the disaster has turned more Americans against new nuclear power plants. The poll found that 60 percent of Americans oppose building more nuclear power plants. That’s up from 48 percent who opposed it in … Read More

via US General News

I thought I was going to read a brief analysis of American shortcomings in regard to nuclear disaster preparedness. What I got was a lengthy detailed report dealing with the problem from many different angles.

I recommend the post.

James Pilant

U.S. Health Care System Unprepared for Major Nuclear Emergency A Los Angeles police officer in a hazard suit keeps watch in a “hazardous material hot area” after the explosion of a “dirty bomb” during a simulated attack at a Port of Los Angeles dock on Aug. 5, 2004. (David McNew/Getty Images) by Sheri Fink, Special to ProPublica U.S. officials say the nation’s health system is ill-prepared to cope with a catastrophic release of radiation, despite … Read More

via INFOQUANDO

This is alarming. Still it is within currently recognized standards of safety.

James Pilant

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (KMOX) – Trace amounts of radioactive iodine has been found in air, grass, milk and rainwater samples in the Metro-East. The Illinois Emergency Management Agency said Friday the radiation found in Madison, Clinton and Bond Counties in Illinois is from the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan. However the agency stresses that these findings are still far below established limits and present no health hazard to citizens in Illi … Read More

via CBS St. Louis

A very reasonable, measured analysis of the crisis and its likely effects on future regulation.

Impressive.

James Pilant

Recent events have put a spotlight on the World’s nuclear engineering board and the safety mechanisms that have been instituted since the incident at Chernobyl. There seems to be one missing piece to the puzzle. There are world standards that demand all nuclear facilities to have multiple safety mechanisms in place. Such as in Japan’s case with the first mechanism being shock sensors that immediately pushed steel rods in-between the enriched uran … Read More

via ideainvestmentinnovation

I have discussed before the nuclear industries fascination with actual death tolls. When it comes to the actual death rate, nuclear power wins the debate over what is the best means of producing electricity.

Unfortunately, there are 10,800 square miles of land near Chernobyl no one can visit for more than some few hours and the families near the Fukushima plant will probably never be able to go home. You cannot measure the safety of one form of energy over another based purely on directly cause deaths. It is only one factor.

It is the difference between one sided, intellectually bankrupt propaganda and intelligent understanding.

James Pilant

I knew the nuclear apologists would get around to making this argument sooner or later, and sure enough, The Washington Post published a thoughtful and well-researched article by David Brown on April 2, 2011, entitled, “Nuclear power is the safest way to make electricity, according to study.” Brown made a good case for the overall safety of nuclear power plants as far as the workers are concerned. Coal-fired plants are responsible for five times … Read More

via Beneath the Oaks

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