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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.
The biggest problem with nuclear power is exemplified by a headline I saw when the earthquake happened: "NUCLEAR REACTOR BLOWS UP! 10000 DEAD!". In very small letters underneath: "Earthquake was the biggest in Japan history".
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.
Never mind the fact that the 10000 dead was the earthquake, not the reactor. Sensationalist media is the biggest contributor to stupidity in this world.
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.
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.
truth:
the free market is best in some things. example: grocery store
the government is best in some things. example: health care
not truth:
the free market solves all problems
the government solves all problems
are we clear now?
don't read into my words a position i didn't take and then react to that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
scuttling ships full of dangerous waste is pretty terrible even if it's not radioactive.
There's no shortage of non nuclear mutagens which aren't radioactive and they'll fuck you up just as badly, there's no shortage of industrial wastes which don't have any half life at all.
it's more disgusting that this appears to only really be getting attention when the word nuclear is attached.
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.
I've seen such sensationalist headlines with my own eyes
this is a slashdot comment about CNN headline from one of the earliest entries about fukushima
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2036214&cid=35478190
It's disgusting; CNN.com's current main page headline is "Japan's reactor problems mount; death toll rises."
WTF?
which was a reply to another post saying that summary makes it look like the deaths are the direct result of fukushima (which it did).
iamrmani was one of several people reporting updates on the Fukushima Nuclear plant that has been struggling following last Friday's disaster. A third explosion (Japanese) has been reported, along with other earlier information. MSNBC has a story about similiar reactors in the US. We also ran into a story which predicts that there won't be significant radiation. But already Japan is facing rolling blackouts, electricity rationing, evacuating the area around the plant, and thousands dead already.
example of article
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/blast-at-japan-nuclear-plant-death-toll-rises/145722-2.html
The fact that it has a half life as old as the universe demonstrates that it is very very very mildly radioactive - any less radioactive and it would be considered stable. The "depleted" term is a giveaway.
The main risk is that it is a heavy metal, like lead, and can bioacumulate. We just need to bury it somewhere with no liquid water and it will be fine.