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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.
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
I think that if one aspect of the nuclear power cycle is a criminal enterprise, then perhaps the whole thing is.
Just like the banksters.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
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.
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.
Just like the recycling industry, eh?
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.
uhh, offtopic much?
Construction is mentioned only twice, near the bottom of the article. The majority is about rubble removal. There are three mentions of the word "Fukushima", two of which are in sentences about contracts to remove radioactive waste/rubble. I agree that the article isn't about organized crime trying to remove the plant waste (unlike TFHeadline suggests), but I still believe that TFS is related enough that this calls for a "NO U".
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
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.
That will not work. What will happen is people will slow down on hiring 'brown people'. Too risky.
The national registry get 3 out of every 100 people wrong. Flags them as illegal. So that's 3 out of 100 people that can't get work.
Having the companies do more then check ID puts too much of a burden on the employer.
Here is the fix:
Stop caring about it. Now everyone competes at the same wage. No one can undercut wages because they aren't hiring Illegal that can't turn them in.
The response to that solution will tell you who is racist.
Also assuming only brown people come here illegally is a sure sign of stupidity and racism.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
Also assuming only brown people come here illegally is a sure sign of stupidity and racism.
And short memory. The entire furor died down back when they caught that hot russian spy woman and everyone realized that white people like them could be accused of being illegal too, and realized white Americans don't really carry around anything that proves their citizenship. Now everyone's forgotten about that, and the calls for people to carry their papers are coming back too.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
This is utter crap.
I know lots of white people that would love to have a Job right now. *ANY* damn job. And can't because someone that doesn't have the right has it instead.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Stop caring about it.
The IRS will like to have a talk with you.
"For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice" -- God
Or, maybe some group would pay them for materials to make a dirty bomb. President Carter got a job in nuclear clean up because he had a security clearance. Now you need the opposite I guess.
Or perhaps even earlier to Maximus Recyclimus, who engineered the waste management system in the 2nd century B.C.E. Roman Republic.
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
Sure, and the person who hired them for 50% of the wage of a documented worker because they know the person is illegal and can't complain, all the while pocketing most of the extra 40%, is blameless, right? It's only those brown folks' fault for wanting to leave a country with few economic opportunities or fleeing drug-war fueled violence pushed by the USA.
So here's the kicker, when global warming (that thing all the neo-cons and Tea Partiers are in denial about) really gets to messing with the livability in the tropics through more powerful tropical storms, flooding, heatwaves, etc., the migration from Central America through the Mexico border is going to make the last few decades look like a trickle.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
..their service will be the lowest cost bidder, which is all you need to win a bid. Expect glowing reviews :-(.
Insert
Sure, and the person who hired them for 50% of the wage of a documented worker because they know the person is illegal and can't complain, all the while pocketing most of the extra 40%, is blameless, right? It's only those brown folks' fault for wanting to leave a country with few economic opportunities or fleeing drug-war fueled violence pushed by the USA.
This is the natural pull of a Free Economy, New laws are being laid down to penalize these practices, and enforce existing Laws.
http://www.facebook.com/StandWithArizona
So here's the kicker, when global warming (that thing all the neo-cons and Tea Partiers are in denial about) really gets to messing with the livability in the tropics through more powerful tropical storms, flooding, heatwaves, etc., the migration from Central America through the Mexico border is going to make the last few decades look like a trickle.
Not a denier, and not a chicken little, but congressional hearings have exposed gore's financial interest and research bias. Where ice shelves melt on one side of the polar caps, they have been growing on the other. Furthermore there have been demonstrated cycles of temperature extremes going back thousands of years. Recordings with a variety of primitive equipment over the course of a handful of Millennia (sp) cannot come close to adequately explaining the current .7c shift. Especially when the impact of the Solar Cycle or other factors is not fully understood.
I will agree with you on the War on Drugs promoted violence at the borders. But everyone coming north 'cause people that have lived in a hot climate for generations suddenly cannot handle a little more than half a degree? Humans have proven to be far more adaptable than that.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
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....
The response to that solution will tell you who is racist.
Because clearly the only possible opposite viewpoint is racism. I'm glad you're here to tell us these things.
Thanks for giving us the 2011 version of "You're either with us, or with the terrorists."
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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 -
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.
And the thing is, when you repeat such things often enough, people will join the terrorists out of sheer annoyance. That's one of the reasons why nationalists parties are on the rise in Europe - they don't tell people they're evil racists who sould be ashamed of having a national or cultural identity. And any attempt to point out that the nastier far-right parties actually are evil racists meets the fate of the boy who cried wolf, and serves to feed the annoyance. And any attempt to point this out, and ask the self-appointed anti-racists to tone down their rethoric to the point where it doesn't directly contradict most people's experiences gets you called, you guessed it, an evil racist.
All of this would make for a wonderful farce if it didn't have such a huge potential for harm.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.