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Organized Crime Cleaning Up With Nuclear Waste
mdsolar writes "The Mafia has been involved with waste disposal for forever but they seem to be getting very interested in nuclear waste disposal these days. In Europe they scuttle ships containing nuclear waste in the sea. Now in Japan, their Asian counterparts are angling for disposal contracts resulting from the Fukushima nuclear disaster."
So, when this starts happening in the US, I'm guessing Yucca mountain will sound a lot more appealing to all those naysayers. Just a guess, though.
...they keep pulling me back in...to the emergency room for more blood transfusions.
RAD +1!
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
So, again, the problem isn't the nuclear technology itself, but the lack of commitment and the problem with the model of management. And the question that I make to myself about nuclear reactors is: Is possible a good enough level of commitment and a almost perfect model of management (state managing have problems, corporations have other problems too. so...)?
Now that we finally have a free market solution to this problem, I'm sure that there's nothing to worry about and everything will be fine.
I think that if one aspect of the nuclear power cycle is a criminal enterprise, then perhaps the whole thing is. And, certainly the disposal of waste is one of the most risk ladened parts of the whole dirty business.
You know what is so funny. Any time you attempt to have a rational discussion about something like illegal immigration in the US you won't get very far. See, immigration is all about respecting a country's laws. It's about not trying to be where you are not wanted because no one owes you a goddamned thing. It's about not permanently moving to the US unless you plan to become an American, just like I'd never consider permanently moving to Mexico unless i planned to become a Mexican. I'd also never permanently move to Mexico unless I knew that its citizens, through their government, actually want me to be there and have allowed me to come.
But this is the only widespread criminal behavior that is routinely excused. Even drug users don't have legions of bed-wetters making excuses for them and telling you that you're a bad person for wanting our laws to be respected and the fucking drug laws don't make half as much sense as the immigration laws.
But the second you want the Mexican invasion to be stopped you're immediately a "racist". You're a "racist" even if you are happy to have Mexicans come to this country so long as they do it legally. Figure that one out. Just try. A real racist who had a problem with Mexicans wouldn't want them here under any circumstance. But the emotional nancyboys who scream "RACISM!" don't see the contradiction. They just keep talking about "brown people".
Well here's some facts about "brown people". Ever notice that all of the problem areas of the world are populated by brown people? Mexico, what a lovely place -- nothing like drug cartels with military hardware! The Middle East, well, need I say more? How are things in South America, places like Columbia and Venezuela, how'd you like a permanent visa and a free one-way ticket so you can go live there? How much free speech do you think you'd enjoy in Peru? What's wrong, got a problem with "brown people?"
Or hey, maybe it's got nothing to do with race and everything to do with appreciating that USA is one of the few non-shithole places to live in the world and maybe we'd like to keep it that way, Maybe we can take in thousands or even millions of people who want a better life but maybe, just maybe, we can't single-handedly save the entire fucking world from its own corruption and mismanagement. Maybe we already do more than our fair share of that. Maybe some of those "brown people" should try putting together a prosperous free nation so that sneaking over somebody else's border becomes less important to them. There's a thought. Oh but that's so racist, and so is anything else you don't want to hear that happens to be the fuckin' truth, it's all just horrible terrible racism. Yeah.
Ever think that the failure to face the truth combined with the childish tendency to scapegoat every real problem by blaming some kind of "ism" is the reason nothing ever gets better? Did you ever think that immediately bringing race into every possible issue makes YOU the racist? Do you bleeding-heart pansy-ass bed-wetters ever get enough contact with reality to entertain that notion? Would you know what reality was and have the guts to face it if you saw it?
This is one region Somali pirates were helping with. By scaring ships out of their coast, where a ton of the waste was being dumped, local fisheries had better catches and better business.
i thought the free market fairy took care of all problems, and government regulation is for freedom-destroying control freaks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Before when they were just involved with:
drug trafficing, murder, ransom, arson, extortion, robbery, money laundering, fraud, prostitution, theft, bribery, corruption... and who knows what else.
But now - NOW - they've gone too far! Some fish could be hurt by this!
(Yes - I'm fully aware what they did is very bad, but let get some perspective with their usual activities)
Namely, I would like to see B&W move from doing small nuke generators, to doing a small IFR. If they can build a small reactor to handle to the waste AND a small container room that goes with this, it could be put on sites that have been shutdown and then burn the remaining fuel. Many of those plants are close to cities, have cooling, transmission, generators, etc. Basically, they are ready to rock and roll and be used for another 50-100 years. Safely. And then once the current on-site waste is spent, then the sites are buried for 200 years or less, with none of it being useful for a bomb.
One thing is that I would like to see ONE IFR be used to breed for plutonium for space operations. We need that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Standard Slashdot summary misinformation. The article talks about the yakuza and Chinese syndicates angling for construction projects. There's literally one line that mentions Fukushima.
From the first article linked, there is a single informant that claims nuclear material was aboard a scuttled ship. The article as linked provides no further information, but mere allegation is sufficient for mdsolar to blame nuclear power.
In the actual article, one will note that there is no actual speculation about the Yakuza having any ill-intent. Indeed, it seems to be a general article about how the Yakuza win contracts in construction and cleanup. And after a massive earthquake and tsunami, there's lots of cleanup to be done.
As an interesting aside, he article claims that the Yakuza get 3% of the total construction in Japan. I see no reason to suspect that wouldn't include projects related to all forms of energy. I trust mdsolar would agree with my "Japanese solar power in bed with organized crime" headline.
There are legitimate gripes about nuclear power. Indeed, the numbers I've seen suggest operating costs that aren't substantially below any other forms of energy. But the sort of fear campaign spread by mdsolar (someone who himself stands to profit from such fears, see his profile for links) is unacceptable.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
This is actually par for the course when it comes to Japanese organized crime syndicates. The Yakuza have always been quick responders to natural disasters and their cleanup efforts. Japanese criminal syndicates aren't entirely illicit operations and run a lot of legitimate businesses as well, and are heavily involved in the construction industry in particular. Being generally faster and more efficient than the bureaucracy-laden government, (and not restricted by those silly "laws") whenever there's a major natural disaster, the Yakuza have always been some of the first on the scene to distribute food and medical supplies, and do cleanup and reconstruction for really low rates. They gain goodwill in the community and an opportunity to expand their power base, and the government saves money and hassle in the cleanup effort. Heck, half of Kobe was rebuilt by Yakuza after the great Hanshin quake. The whole thing is an open secret really.
That they're doing this now is really to be expected, and not as alarming or terrible as the article would seem to suggest. This has been going on with criminal groups in Japan for generations, and isn't likely to stop any time soon.
or you'll find yourself six feet under in depleted uranium boots sleeping with the mutant fishes in the nuclear waste dump.
Sales, to prospective account: "Yeah, we can get rid of that for you, but it's gonna cost. That shit's dangerous, and there's a stack of regulations as tall as your beautiful daughter (whom it would be a shame for anything to happen to, by the way) that we have to follow to the T. Price per pound is gonna be three, four figures at least."
Engineering, to Capo: "Yeah, we can dump that for you. You want the barge back? Effectively cheaper to just sink the whole thing. Nickel a ton, if we don't have to buy a new chain cutter to hijack it, or the tug don't break down."
Consigliere, to Accountant: "Fuhgedaboudit." (Translation: Do it.)
Enough money there it'd almost be worth having to eat ricotta 5 meals a day to get into it.
Considering the time scale required to construct a large nuclear power plant the problems of scope creep and short term fads are going to be a problem unless serious long term adult supervision is applied. TMI is a classic example - it started with the best containment vessels of the time (which saved the day) but by the time construction had finished standards had slipped and it had control systems and sensors that would not have passed inspection in a fertilizer works (not an exaggeration - those things blow up too). For a while after TMI nuclear power was taken seriously again in the running plants, but attempts at applying adult supervision from the direction of government devolved into departmental empire building. By 1986 things were not pretty in the USA nuclear industry either but some degree of professionalism had been preserved after the scare of TMI, and was revived by the example of a real disaster. Fast forward to today and there have been so many generations of management since then that the problems of the past are put down to stupid Russians or idiots in the 1970s - the disaster in Japan could have happened in any of a dozen places given such a trigger of a sudden loss of cooling - too many people think that problems will never happen so many corners were cut thus increasing exposure to potential problems.
With the current situation of subsidised faux-commercial civilian nuclear power and very long construction times the odds of getting highly professional management for the entire time until commissioning instead of a well connected horse judge or two is very low. Running such a project is full of pork and prestige which tends to squeeze out the merely competant for those that are seen to deserve a reward. Because so much capital is at stake and expectations are high it generates a situation where the lies, evasions and shortcuts seen in Japan maintain the prestige of the position in the short term unless something goes wrong to expose how badly things are run, so such lies become the default. It's about the size of the project and the perceived commercial gains after careful cooking of the financial books - research reactors don't seem to suffer from it due to clear goals and not being as desirable as a nepotistic reward.
We've had it very clearly demonstrated to us since the 1970s that big reactors that require active cooling are bad news for many reasons. Smaller reactors have the promise of greater safety and significantly shorter construction times - they have the potential to get built while the initial goal is still in sight and are not seen as such a big deal so may not attract the flies that will instead go to corrupt other pots of honey.
buy a used ship on the open market. One that barely floats and was about to be scrapped. Fill it with waste that you're getting paid to dispose of, to the tune of at least 100x the cost of the ship. If necessary tow it out to the Marianas Trench. Oops, the keel ruptured. There was a terrible accident but not to worry. Your waste problem is taken care of.
If one of those applied to civilian nuclear power there would not be an industry at all. Taxpayers money is behind every single nuclear power plant on earth. The high capital cost and very long construction times mean that the short term focused world of commerce is just not interested in financing nuclear power. That's not to say nuclear power is bad (although the clueless fanboys that only want to hear loud cheering will see it that way), just that it's a lot of money spent a very long time before there is any sort of return. Don't blame the hippies or others with no say at all for a lack of new generation plants - blame the bankers and governments.
Or perhaps even earlier to Maximus Recyclimus, who engineered the waste management system in the 2nd century B.C.E. Roman Republic.
Nuclear has been abused to the max. The underworld mutant people are revolting very soon.
Nuclear Power, No Thanks.
Fusion Power, Hell Yes !
The crime syndicates aren't thinking for now, it's 20 years from now what matters for them. Their interest in such a situation only exhibits their interest for more power. All power must vector from them and all power must gyrate around and finally usurp resistances slow and steady. Wrong or right, bad or good is a reality that far exceeds the rationale for this puny planet and midget head scratching thinkers, including us.
I believe https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Burakumin are being used/abused to cleanup nuclear waste in Fukushima.
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran
Hey, the mafia already have their own internal "waste disposal" procedures- for getting rid of bodies! Getting some actual toxic waste to dump alongside them just makes it that much more unlikely that anyone will go snooping around. :D
Just look at the waste turned environmental crisis in Italy thanks to the mafia having (not) done the job.
..their service will be the lowest cost bidder, which is all you need to win a bid. Expect glowing reviews :-(.
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If all the nuclear waste was sent to an island like hawaii that had a volcano, then all the materials were sent down inside the volcano, would that not sort of take care of all the crap we deal with such as contamination and all....I know it sounds stupid in sorts, but if someone gave me 10000 tons of nuclear waste to dispose of, and 10 millions dollars to do it, i would transport it there, and drop it in, no worries of barrels leaking, water being contaminated, etc....all would be disintegrated.
I know the hawai people would not be welcoming this ....but if the needs of the few are super seeded for the needs of the many, then we can maybe get a handle on the disaster....
Since the mafia and their ilk don't give a crap about how they dispose of it, I say make the punishment fit the crime. Make them live in it.
That's right, make them build their own houses of nuclear waste mixed with concrete, make them shower with radiation-tainted water, make them grow their own food in radiation-fouled soil. We'll see how fast they get out of the nuclear waste market.
I'm good with numbers -
thank www.bananadvd.com
The waste disposal business is a staple activity for the mob, ain't it?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
You should have continued because that's merely the quickest way to describe the situation where there is a lack of professional management because people have been placed in charge as a reward. It neatly sums up situations such as the less than competant political appointee in charge in the latter stages of TMI's construction (lack of adult supervision) as distinct from the early stages.
Face it - some important projects are plagued by party boys in the shape of men that are not in their management roles because they can do the job. Care has to be taken to keep them out of potentially dangerous projects - hence serious adult supervision, or more formally phrased, proper oversight by a professional body. These clowns don't get to run riot in oil refineries, but in nuclear at various times there has been a problem with regulators looking the other way when shortcuts are taken because so much capital is at stake.
Greenpeace etc would actually love nuclear power if it resembled your dream.
I suggest looking into the subject a little more so that you have a bit more of a defence against lying PR and don't come across as looking so out of touch with reality. The nuclear stuff in the kW range that goes into satellites is very interesting, would be a good starting point and may save you future embarrassment here. Nuclear probably does have a future with small reactors in the tens of MW but the status quo is huge incredibly expensive things that take a decade to build. As I tried to point out above, nobody is interested in tying up billions for so long before they get anything back.