Slashdot Mirror
Mitigating Fukushima's Dangers, 42 Days In
DrKnark writes "Tepco has released more information about their plan to stabilize the Fukushima reactors. They are basically facing 4 problems: ensure long term cooling of the cores; ensure cooling of the spent fuel pools; prevent release of radioactive material; and mitigate the consequences of the releases that will continue for a while."
Those reactors are 45 year old technology, took a direct tsunami hit right after an earthquake that was in the top 3 worst ever recorded, exploded, caught fire, and resulted in a grand total of... zero deaths.
IIRC two people were killed at the plant by the earthquake. Both the earthquake and tsunami were of much greater magnitude than anything considered by the designers.
It's interesting that no attempt has been made to compare damage at this plant with that at other industrial plants in Japan. The press has also been silent on toxic chemical spills resulting from the earthquake and tsunami.
Thousands of civilians killed? Yes.
Thousands of civilians killed by U.S.? Again, yes.
The IBC project released a report detailing the deaths it recorded between March 2003 and March 2005[72] in which it recorded 24,865 civilian deaths. The report says the U.S. and its allies were responsible for the largest share (37%) of the 24,865 deaths.
Thousands killed by DU ammunition? Possibly.
Thousands affected by the continuous effect radiation from DU ammunition? Almost certainly.
When you measure something in thousands of tonnes you can safely say that it WILL affect large areas of land and large numbers of people.
And 4.468 billion years is a long time.
The use of DU in munitions is controversial because of questions about potential long-term health effects.[4][5] Normal functioning of the kidney, brain, liver, heart, and numerous other systems can be affected by uranium exposure, because uranium is a toxic metal.[6] It is weakly radioactive and remains so because of its long physical half-life (4.468 billion years for uranium-238). The biological half-life (the average time it takes for the human body to eliminate half the amount in the body) for uranium is about 15 days.[7] The aerosol or spallation frangible powder produced during impact and combustion of depleted uranium munitions can potentially contaminate wide areas around the impact sites leading to possible inhalation by human beings.[8] During a three week period of conflict in 2003 in Iraq, 1,000 to 2,000 tonnes of DU munitions were used.[9]
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
No, he posted to the story he meant to.
You'll see this kind of trolling, using brand new accounts and very very long off-topic or nonsensical posts whenever there is a story that may have implications that could negatively impact a corporation or industry sector. I believe they are intended to disrupt discussion of those stories. You'll see them very often in stories that discuss telecom companies or energy industry.
I believe they are paid trolls, from organizations like New Media Strategies (or their darker cousins) who, instead of astroturfing or writing positive things about their clients, exist only to disrupt serious discussions of things that could be construed to negatively impact their clients.
I could be wrong, but I've been seeing this pattern. You'll also see a pattern where an offtopic post is followed by a string of anonymous or very new accounts being very repetitive and responding to the original offtopic post, creating a long section that many people just won't bother to scroll through and will just abandon the potentially hot story.
Yes, I'm paranoid. I believe paranoia is an appropriate reaction to life circa 2011.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well, nobody has followed up the story of the burning refinery of Cosmo Oil at Chiba, very close to Tokyo that burned for a week, or the other 2 refineries washed away by the tsunami in Miyagi prefecture, what stand was left to burn.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!