Japan Doubles Fukushima Radiation Leak Estimate

DrBoumBoum writes "The severity of the Fukishima disaster continues to go up, from incident level 4 to level 5 to level 7, and now to 20% of total Chernobyl radioactive spill. The story is not over yet as the plant keeps on leaking radioactive material and may still do so for a long time."

Re:Nuclear Hologram.

[hedwards]

It's only inevitable when you cut down on regulatory authority to satisfy the whack job libertarian lobby. All forms of energy have possible downsides to them, and some of them can be catastrophic in nature, hardly seems fair to single out the nuclear energy industry when the oil industry has more or less led us to the brink of disaster and wants to keep leading into the abyss.

Re:Nuclear Hologram.

[discord5]

Japan has no whack job libertarian lobby.

They have Toyama Koichi [youtube.com] who tries to overthrow the government by running in the elections, smile doctor Mack Akasa [youtube.com], oh and Yuya Uchida [youtube.com] with his love ando peacu movemento. I think it's safe to say they have enough whack job politicians to be sure that some get elected, just like any other country.

There's more videos on youtube if you do a little searching on the political broadcasts for the elections, but most of 'm aren't translated.

Have fun

Re:Nuclear Hologram.

[DarkOx]

who tries to overthrow the government by running in the elections

Well we certainly would not want candidates with opposing view points participating in elections, that would be inconvenient.

Balance of Coverage

[StupiderThanYou]

Compare and contrast:
1. From the IAEA's preliminary report [iaea.org] (pdf):

To date no health effects have been reported in any person as a result of radiation exposure from the nuclear accident.

2. From Wikipedia's page on the 2011 tsunami [wikipedia.org]:

The Japanese National Police Agency has confirmed 15,365 deaths, 5,363 injured, and 8,206 people missing

Just sayin'.

Re:Nuclear Hologram.

[DDLKermit007]

WTH? Do you actually know anything about Japan? This is THE most real estate scarce country. Geothermal eats tons of realestate for the numbers it generates among other problems. Japan's solution IS the fission option. They need electricity, and boatloads of it. Most of the way people even get around that country comes from the gobs of elecricity the reactors produce. Plus really, if you knew a damn thing about spent material, the issue is finding another plant to reprocess it & use it because the current gens have been around 50+ years and wern't made with that in mind. Problem is, wackjobs stop the new reactors from going online so they can munch on the fuel you moan about sitting around. Truly spent fuel has very little radioativity left and thus, less of the need for difficult storage.

Hell, if you really wanna split hairs, the US? F-tons of weapons grade material laying around that HAS to be stored, or used, not to mention is aging. Which means the enclosures around them are going to crack eventually. Those material need to be used till the levels go down, and becomes a simpler task to store. But hey, I already know theres no changing your mind. Too much kool-aid has been drank on your part.

Re:Cliche but nuclear is far safer than anything e

[captain_sweatpants]

You make some good points here but I think your arguments would be much stronger if you discuss:

a) why the nuclear industry has consistently downplayed the severity of the incident at every turn (meltdowns more severe than 'expected', more radiation released than 'expected' - why aren't they honest and releasing worst case figures?
b) why the industry keeps talking about 'design flaws' instead of acknowledging irresponsible cost/risk management practices
c) discuss the social and economic impact of displacing 100,000 people and how this factors into the cost of nuclear

The way the vast majority of nuclear engineers and supporters ignore the negatives and focusing solely on the positives gives me the impression that the industry has a far too narrow focus on certain technical issues and are blissfully unaware of the real and perceived impacts of nuclear technology on the economy and society generally. Before and even after this incident I was a supporter of nuclear energy. However, the industries response to this disaster has pretty much convinced me the industry is incapable of running a nuclear enterprise responsibly.

Re:Nuclear Hologram.

[mcvos]

As for TFA...well...what did anyone expect? Wasn't that like the WORST tsunami and earthquake recorded there in like 100 years? You can only design structures that will last to a reasonable degree. I mean does anyone think if we had a quake the size of the great San Francisco quake close to one of our reactors shit wouldn't get broke? Hell what do you think the damage would be if a tsunami that size hit chemical row in the gulf?

It's a matter of risk management. In 1953, Netherland had a huge flood. After that, we started upgrading our coastal defenses, with the goal that a flood of that scale could only occur once in 10,000 years. 10,000 years is a pretty long time. On a human scale, it basically translates to "never", but as you know, you can never have 100% security, so we have to accept that the rare freak storm/high tide combination that occurs maybe once every interglacial period, might cause a flood. Everything on our coast is designed with this in mind.

In Japan, not so. A few years ago the IAEA gave Japan a warning that several of their coastal reactors were not safe enough. Fukishima was one of them. It may have been the worst earthquake/tsunami of the century, but centuries are not rare. If you expect your nuclear plants to operate for several decades, then you need to design them to withstand even the rare once-in-a-century freak earthquake+tsunami. They didn't.

Know what the dangers are, know what risks you're willing to face, and design for it.