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Japan's Nuclear Energy Industry Nears Shutdown
mdsolar sends this quote from an article at the NY Times:
"All but two of Japan's 54 commercial reactors have gone offline since the nuclear disaster a year ago, after the earthquake and tsunami, and it is not clear when they can be restarted. With the last operating reactor scheduled to be idled as soon as next month, Japan — once one of the world's leaders in atomic energy — will have at least temporarily shut down an industry that once generated a third of its electricity. With few alternatives, the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, has called for restarting the plants as soon as possible, saying he supports a gradual phase-out of nuclear power over several decades. Yet, fearing public opposition, he has said he will not restart the reactors without the approval of local community leaders."
...in the candle industry.
https://www.google.com/search?q=new+york+time+japan+shutting+down&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Li
Linking from google search always works.
And when (if) fusion becomes commercially viable what then? Japan was leading the world in fusion research and it was expected that they'd crack the break-even point first. I'd hate to see such an important development set back because a poorly maintained fusion reactor that was past its decommision date couldn't survive a simultaneous earthquake and tsunami...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
With the shutdowns, costs for electricity, etc, will go up due to law of supply and demand. And the people won't like it, and blame the government...will be wonderous.
I guess with 1/3rd of their power offline, they could mandate energy rations to everyone. If they get tired of that system they can, as a community, opt to re-instate their reactors and make a long term plan to switch to some other non-petroleum source for power. They have brilliant scientists, I'm sure they can figure this out. Greed seems like less of a hindrance there than here in the USA.
Danish television had a reportage on the effect of the Fukushima incident on the people living nearby.
After seeing the reportage, I can understand why they are shutting down the other reactors for the time being. It's one thing reading that nuclear power plants statistically kills very few compared to other sources of energy, it's another thing when you have to leave your ancestors home for 12 generations, or be stuck with a house that nobody will buy because even if it's outside the immediate danger zone and the authorities say it's safe, noone wants to take the risk.
Whether fair or not, the incident violated the trust people had in the administrators of the nuclear tech, and it's going to take something to earn that trust back.
And what are Japan, Germany, etc. going to do for energy once they've phased out their big, scary nuclear power plants? Unless they find a way to quickly and effectively implement large-scale solar plants/farms, geothermal, etc. they're going to resort to burning fossil fuel. A big step backwards because, under extreme circumstances, nuclear can be dangerous.
You know what's even more dangerous than an accident at a nuclear plant? A world-wide war over the planet's dwindling fossil fuel supplies.
My dad was saying that Tokyo is depressing, apparently there are power shortages so most of the signs and escalators are turned off and the city is dark. How are they supposed to make up their energy requirements if they stop using nuclear?
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
It's O.K, it's just another pathetic anti-nuclear article submitted by mdsolar, a known kook and scaremonger. It's unlikely the NYTime article says anything remotely like mdsolars summary implies. In fact, just assume the complete opposite of anything mdsolar has written in the summary.
Germany doesn't have the same environmental threats to a nuclear facility that Japan does (namely building foundation issues, geological activity, and the tsunamis that stem from that actiity). It makes sense for Japan to steer away from it - it doesn't make sense for Germany to - we are still laughing at Germany.
It's a shame, really. I'd love to see Japan eventually replacing the old reactors with the newer, safer ones. Especially in the more stable areas. I realize there's still a lot of hysteria in that area, still, but reason and logic could quell their fear. I think most people at with at least a modicum understanding of tech-- and most that I know, I've gathered from this site and the links provided-- realize the benefits newer reactors offer over the old.
Even so, if there are two nations with a history and will capable of innovating new tech for energy, it's Japan and Germany. I wish them the best in the effort. Who knows, the whole world might benefit from the research. Can you imagine a world not handicapped by the need for fossil fuels? Many oppressive regimes would lose the foundation on which they stand.
Except in one important area: Meeting demand.
... but probably not much more than some of the more +1 Insightful commenters here.
The core of their problem is arrogance and the influence business has over government regulators. The days of shoguns and daimyos are long behind Japan but somehow the mindset still lives on. There are a few very large companies in Japan with a rich and tight lineage that dates back to before the Meiji restoration. Their influence over government and their "job-for-life" filial piety along with their reluctance to challenge the people "in charge" of things has led to a poorly regulated nuclear industry which allowed the Fukushima disaster to occur.
But Japan is not "unique" in this. It just so happens that they were the first to get tripped up with a natural disaster. But that said, they did a lot of things in the handling that simply made it worse and worse. (Still, they came in 2nd when you compare Fukushima to the BP oil spill and BP's handling of that.) In the US, the nuclear industry and been playing a pushing game where the NRC pushes the nuclear energy companies and the nuclear energy companies push back through various means not the least of which are lobbying and other forms of politics. One difference between the US and Japan is found in the success of independent watchdog groups who take personal interest in the environment and the safety of nuclear energy. Greenpeace is a huge annoyance, but they also serve an important purpose in that they can and do bring light to problems that would otherwise be swept under the rug. This exists less in Japan and problems that some people have knowledge of are often unheard and cannot speak. Their lack of openness is a critical problem.
My initial reaction to this turn is that Japan is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. They are an emotional and over-reaction group of people. But the US made them that way.... the US did it to Germany as well. When we 'pacified' them over the decades, we shifted their thinking and their sense of reason. So instead of saying "okay, here are the causes of the problem, let's fix them!" they are more concerned about who is to blame and are focusing on the fact that nuclear energy is an awesome and powerful source of energy which is also very dangerous. Well, yes... yes it is. But they forget that it's also controllable and containable with vigilant regulation and oversight.
Vigilance of regulation and oversight are expensive... and annoying... and definitely slow things down and make things cost more. But without it...?
Many of the Japanese nuclear plants are old unsecure BWRs, they should start working on safer ones so they can shut them down in 10 years.
At least he has a name.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Wow, that sounds like JUST want we need -- Germany and Japan starving for energy.
Certainly that will end well!
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
I'm not Japanese, but I'm pretty sure the only people opposing nuclear power in Japan are in politics and fearmongers from other countries. Sounds like a global politics issue, which is stupid.
I'm sure the citizens will be thrilled when they drop coal burning plants down right next to the nuclear plants that didn't emit any sort of noticeable byproducts.
Mmh looks like you mixed fusion and fission at least once in your reply.
It's a reasonable question. They are going to have to get their electricity from somewhere & generating capacity don't grow on trees.
They don't have a lot of fossil fuels, so they are going to be importing coal, oil or gas. Coal plants take time to build, although they are easier than nuclear. Gas turbines are relatively quick and cheap to commission but the cost of fuel is extortionate right now & unlikely to improve.
Germany are taking the route of pretending to get by with wind power by importing nuclear electricity from France. That doesn't work for Japan.
Fossil fuel power is even more expensive, generates toxic gasses and residue, and does contaminate large areas of land. It also has the problem that the fuel is running out.
Sometimes you have to pick an option that is not perfect, and nuclear was a perfectly good slice in the energy mix. Shutting it down suddenly just causes supply shortages.
... that they're currently shipping in in vast quantities? I'm sure thats doing wonders for their CO2 footprint.
Nuclear power is dangerous, coal/oil power is dirty, wind power ruins the scenery, solarpower too expensive/inefficient and waterpower is bad for the fish population. Seriously if we are the dominant species on Earth why are we being held back by these counter-evolutionary thoughts. Stagnation is death!
It's the NYT paywall - you just need to change the '_r' parameter in the URL to 0 instead of 4.
Dilbert RSS feed
They are going to have to get their electricity from somewhere & generating capacity don't grow on trees.
Unless they burn, um, err, apples? Yes, APPLES!
Man, I'm awesome!
So business created the tsunami?
Typically anonymous and cowardly comment. Business decided where to put the reactor, in a location they knew were unsafe, and government forced that decision through. So while business didn't create the tsunami, they deliberately created the situation in which a tsunami would cause a meltdown, and did so with government oversight.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've seen that talk, and - from the Fora web site:
"Summary [of talk]
Robert Whiting has written a number of books on Japan, including You Gotta Have Wa, The Meaning of Ichiro and Tokyo Underworld, which is being developed as a series for HBO. In this lecture, Whiting addresses the intractable role of yakuza in virtually all areas of modern day society in Japan. He discusses the sequel to Tokyo Underworld that he is writing, shares insights into the genesis of the HBO project and talks about the recent National Geographic documentary Crime Lords of Tokyo, in which he appeared."
"Robert Whiting
Robert Whiting is an author and journalist who has written several successful books on contemporary Japanese culture - which include topics such as baseball and American gangsters operating in Japan. He was born in New Jersey, grew up in California and graduated from Sophia University in Tokyo. He has lived in Japan for a total of more than three decades since he first arrived there in the early 1960s. He currently divides his time between homes in Tokyo and California."
PS Fora.tv is a subscription site (US$ 50.00 / year opens some content (including this talk); the rest is Pay to View)
Great... we have politics trumping both science and democracy.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Apples?? I dunno.. their pulp looks too bland to be useful.
Sounds to me like the juice from Japanese Cherries contains more anthocyanins to put into your el-cheapo Grätzel solar cell. (Are Anthocyanins actually any good for that? Could you use blueberry juice instead?)
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Maybe they need to see another demonstration?
Did that already with Nagasaki. You mean a third time?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Germany are taking the route of pretending to get by with wind power by importing nuclear electricity from France. That doesn't work for Japan.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/14/europe-power-supply-idUSL5E8DD87020120214
Yeah - my bad.
"poorly maintained fission reactor" is what I should have typed.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Local communities capable of running nuclear power plants but unwilling to do so will simply get little electricity from the grid. Their choice. An easy, democratic, just solution.
Ezekiel 23:20
Last year Japan’s trade balance fell into an annual deficit for the first time since 1980, driven by subdued global demand and soaring fossil fuel imports in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear power crisis.
I fully understand their desire to decrease dependence on nuclear power in light of the disaster, but quitting "cold turkey" obviously has had a strong negative impact.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
I love that Japan decided to move over 1/3 of their energy production away from the safest, most cost-efficient form of heat-power generation, and revert to something colossally terrible for the environment, with really no plan to do so in place. Clearly the best possible outcome, with the best results for everyone involved. /s
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
France relies heavily on shitty heating equipment, France's homes are, generally, pretty shittily insulated against the elements (they lost more to a warm month than we have in Iraq and Afghanistan), and Germany fired up coal plants to meet demand.
Where's the news here?
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Yes, I can imagine imagine a world not handicapped by the need for fossil fuels, but that's not going to happen in my life unless there are some truly astounding breakthroughs in alternative energy. The earth's population is increasing too rapidly for that. The global population may be as high as 10.5 billion by 2050 and the global energy demand will be proportionally higher. Although the use of alternative energy sources will increase, so will the use of conventional sources. The mix between oil, natural gas, and coal will change, but they will all still be used.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
From what I read in the western media, TEPCO is losing incredible amounts of money cleaning up the Fukushima mess.
The Japanese also seem less than happy ("Private panel blames TEPCO's 'systematic negligence'") [note to Slashdot readers: that Asahi Shimbun newspaper doesn't seem to have a paywall].
However, I also read that TEPCO was strongly involved in developing Sodium-Sulfur batteries to help solve the storage problem associated with large rollout of intermittent electricity generators (i.e. solar only when it's sunny and wind turbines only when it's windy). Anything else than Sodium-Sulfur or other cheap redox couples, is probably too expensive for real large-scale use.
So, I really hope that the battery division of TEPCO survives any lawsuits/bankruptcy procedures/government sanctions because they seem to be working on transitioning Japan away from the nuclear addiction and towards a very clean (but slightly explosive) technology that the rest of the world is probably eager to share.
Anybody in Japan please comment if this makes sense. I don't read Japanese and have never been there.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
It isn't a summary, it's a quote taken directly from the article. So yes the article does say exactly the same as the summary.
Japan must have a ton of redundancy to be able to handle having so many reactors offline and still have enough power for everyone. I doubt the US is so well prepared.
So business created the tsunami?
Typically anonymous and cowardly comment. Business decided where to put the reactor, in a location they knew were unsafe, and government forced that decision through. So while business didn't create the tsunami, they deliberately created the situation in which a tsunami would cause a meltdown, and did so with government oversight.
Business doesn't decide anything in Japan. Japan has one of the most rigid centralized governments anywhere in the world. If you want to move a local street sign, you have to get permission from Tokyo. The government decides everything over there. I don't want to call Japan fascist... since they do have free elections there... but the Japanese government certainly does pick winners and losers in their corporate field in the way that classic fascist governments did, and the corporations in Japan take their marching orders from Tokyo. This is by design, and it's been the model since post WWII. This model is supposedly why Japan was going to rule the world via business (instead of by military force) by the mid-90's. Several books in the 80's touted the superiority of this model to the American market system, declaring the US system obsolete. It didn't quite work out that way. Japan is now in its' third decade of economic doldrums, yet the government clings to this top-down model. One of the things that Japanese companies found when they started building factories and plants in the US and abroad was that they had much more freedom to operate locally than back at home.
You seem to think that businesses tell the government what to do over there. Quite the opposite. The government bureaucracy completely rules that country. If the reactors were built in a bad place, then Tokyo was just fine with that.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Actually, this is one of the rare cases where business is the force for "good", while public opinion is the force for "evil".
If public didn't hear associate "radiation" with "oh god, a HORRIBLE DEATH GLOWING GREEN!", reactor subsystems would have been upgraded to more modern ones quite a while ago. But they can't be upgraded, because "upgrades to nuclear power plants peripherals" will be spun as "upgrading nuclear power plants" which will be heard as "we are building more nuclear power, HORRIBLE DEATH GLOWING GREEN!".
So we end up having tech from 60s (when entire industry was born in 50s!) instead of modern reactors and modern peripherals that would have taken the punishment of that tsunami. Hell, we can't even research new tech because of public opinion, and are forced to use old tech. Fukushima was a great demonstration of how well plants were actually made - many forget that plants were built to withstand 7 magnitudes and reasonable tsunamis, and got hit by 9 magnitudes and biggest tsunami in a century and then some. And even so, the plant didn't cause a single death, even with tsunami wiping out essentially all infrastructure of the region and killing 30.000 people.
We really should make a name for "stupid, loud and opinionated people" as a concept. "Sheepism" maybe?
just to post high enough that it'll be read, not that anyone with an opinion would care about mine:
That's fucking retarded. Japan is afraid of nuclear power now, what with being the only nation ever to have been a-bombed. Officials pander to a scared public by shutting down nuclear power although it's demonstrably safer and ecologically better than every other alternative.
Wind and solar are too weak, end of story.
Burning stuff is stupidly dirty. Coal power plants release even more radioactive crap than nuclear disasters, and that's nothing compared to the footprint of their carbon emission, without even beginning to count the other reasons those plants should have disappeared.
Marine barrages genocide entire ecosystems. What do you think happens when you block the tides with kilotons of concrete?
What else is there?
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
they deliberately created the situation in which a tsunami would cause a meltdown, and did so with government oversight.
Is this like a plot from James bond or something? Youre saying businesses WANTED a meltdown and the issues that come with it?
The main reason Japan was stuck on Gen I reactor design was because the COMPANIES that ran the reactors didn't want to spend the money to upgrade and the GOVERNMENT thought that idea was just peachy.
It's called regulatory capture and the Japanese rewrote the book on it.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'll take bureaucratic overreactions to luddite alarmism for 100 Alex!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Could always just send them a video of the tests done at bikini atoll.
You have not been to Tsunami's R US yet? That place is a blast! You can choose form 3 meter tsunami waves to a whopping 150 meter high wave! The package deals only give you three 150 meter waves while the 3 meter set comes with fifteen waves.
Exactly why I made the statement-- with the cost of fossil fuels rising, the need growing, and the supply diminishing (somewhat), most countries have the foresight to realize that they are not the long term solution. It is also expensive to sustain their use if you're not the country producing them. So I believe Japan, at least, will have the highest motivation to create such an alternate energy. Without the safety net of nuclear energy to protect them, they'll have little choice otherwise.
I'm with you, though-- I doubt it'll happen in my lifetime. But, I didn't expect people to quit using nuclear energy in my lifetime, either. There's nothing like disaster and the threat of imminent collapse to spur breathroughs.
I think more likely it will be "hot" turkey this summer. Peak demand is A/C summer use, and with more plants offline this summer, it will be interesting. In the end, will being uncomfortably hot trump fear of nuke's? In the US, I know people would be screaming to turn them back on again so they can turn on their A/C.
Business decided where to put the reactor
Uh, no.
Technical reasons decided where to put the reactor. Like all nuclear power plants, Fukushima needed a massive body of water to assist in cooling the plant. Japan isn't known for its huge rivers or lakes, so the coast becomes the default location to place power plants.
Don't forget the strength of the Yen and the 2-3 months where the auto industry production was crippled in Japan.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Next we need to outlaw all fossil fuels and unwind the clock 200 years.
I agree in concept, but apples are too delicious in pies. Instead, burn rhubarb (sick!). Now can I hold your Nobel for a minute?
The appropriate response would now be to do the following:
a) Fine the business for the cost of all cleanup (basically push them into bankruptcy, since the cleanup will take just about forever.
b) Prosecute the executives for negligence.
Do this a few times and any new powerplants will be much safer.
What this proves is that it is possible in the 21st Century to pull the plug and shut down a good part of the electrical grid.
Think of the possibilities in the US... we could turn off the coal plants tomorrow and the air might get cleaner. It would certainly reduce the CO2 emissions and we could all sit around and wait to see if it had an effect on the climate. It might be a little darker at night and there might be a lot fewer computers available, but some folks certainly think it would be worth it. We are getting ready to re-elect one of them for another four years of somewhat questionable guidance.
So, what would the US look like without coal plants? Would we just buy lots of power from Canada encouraging them to build coal generating plants to sell us the electricity? How about an economic boom for Mexico, building power plants? No, I think the clear way forward would be to just bite the bullet and live with a lot less. Electricity, to start and then shortly after that just about everything else.
One thing to keep in mind is that it is very difficult to charge an electric car when there isn't enough electricity to go around as it is. The US might be building a couple of nuclear plants - construction has started - but they aren't going to be going online for maybe 10 years.
Now, you want to be really bold and daring? How about shutting down the coal plants and the nuclear plants together? There are certainly some folks that think that would be a really good idea. That would cut what, 80% of the electricity supply in the US... might be a bit of a challange there.
that's because you fail to take the greenies into account in the environmental threats :)
Probably not....Japanese people are much more willing to put up with personal discomfort for the sake of the collective. A big part of their culture revolves around keeping harmony with the people around them, so speaking up with a complaint is unbecoming. Also having an idea that differs from other peoples' is frowned upon. This summer will probably turn out to be the same as last summer, with the rolling blackouts making a comeback. Although since more power plants have been shut down, the radius of blackouts might be extended. I don't know what my company will do during the blackouts if they come to our area, since we develop software and obviously can't do that with no power ;P.
For everything you describes, coal is worse.
I wonder what power the plan on using. I know I'm hoping they use their awesome engineering to make new renewable sources.
I didn't think that the reactors at Fukushima were poorly maintained. The disaster planning/design however did not address both an earthquake and a tsunami of that size. Now they should have anticipated both as the plant was located along a shoreline, but that's a different matter. When the earthquake hit, the reactors shut down immediately and the emergency diesel generators kicked in to provide power and cooling according to plan. But these generators were located either on the ground floor or basements. The sea wall around the plant would protect it against it a 25 ft wave. The problem was the wave was at least 40 ft. The diesel generators were wiped out and the plant lost all power. Disaster planning did not address this scenario and operators had to improvise. I would also say that the company TEPCO as a whole was slow to react and not forthcoming about the reality of the situation.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Handicapped? Is that like Washington D.C. speak in which a "cut" means that a program suffered a smaller increase than wanted?
There isn't room for exponential growth. Doesn't matter what we do, such growth can never be more than temporary. We've expanded hugely over most of our history, and become accustomed and habituated to seemingly unending growth. We'll have to decide how we want to live with the space and resources we have. Do we push beyond the limits (if we haven't already) until nature reins us in with a horrifying collapse? Eat our seed corn and then starve? That's how they do it in Haiti. Do we follow the Afghanistan model and have constant fighting, bringing our population down that way? Very manly, builds character. Can this happen without someone reaching for the nuclear weapons, bringing on nuclear winter, and killing us all off? Do we push population right to the edge of disaster and then hang there, living a miserable life in as much discomfort as we can bear while staying alive? Or are we going to restrain ourselves?
Global population doesn't have to exceed 10 billion, that is totally up to us all. You speak of population "increasing too rapidly" in a very passive way, as if there's nothing we can do about it and it's not even our fault! Of course, some groups will not restrain themselves, what will we do about that? Beat them up? Or join them in a massive Tragedy of the Commons?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
"Now it is a competition between Germany and Japan to innovate the non-nuclear market with their new technologies."
Germany will have to buy a good bit of nuclear power from the French.
Yay for innovation!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
That would be a good reason to ask that they buy you some laptops, with good long life batteries...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Global population doesn't have to exceed 10 billion, that is totally up to us all. You speak of population "increasing too rapidly" in a very passive way, as if there's nothing we can do about it and it's not even our fault! Of course, some groups will not restrain themselves, what will we do about that? Beat them up? Or join them in a massive Tragedy of the Commons?
I was quoting facts, so yes, the passive voice is perfectly cromulent. As for it being "our" fault, do you have children? If so, you've contributed to the problem.
I don't have children since my wife and I decided that there are enough people on the planet already. I'm not part of the "our" that you are trying to blame.
The good news is that the rate of increase is decreasing; it is also expected to continue to decrease. 10 billion people by 2050 is a high estimate; it may be as low as 7.5 billion. No, we don't have to fall into some dystopian extreme to moderate population growth; education, women's empowerment, and economic growth will do it.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
Shutting off all the coal and/or nuclear plants wouldn't be as beneficial as you think...
As you already pointed out, it would pretty much kill the electric car and force people back towards using gas powered cars.
It would result in more power plants of other types to be built.
It would result in the price of fuels other than coal to go up.
The relatively cheaper price of coal would cause more people to burn it on a smaller scale, eg for home fires.
The higher price of fuel and power would push up the prices of virtually everything else...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Business decided where to put the reactor
Technical reasons decided where to put the reactor.
You're both wrong. Cost decided where to put the reactor.
The reactor didn't have to be directly on the beach. Had it been placed one or two rows of foothills off the beach you wouldn't know the name Fukushima today. This would have cost more because a canal system would have been needed to flow cooling water.
The business vs. government debate is pathetic. These reactors require so much capital and legal coordination between business, government and rate payers that attempts to isolate blame to one or the other are truly stupid. TEPCO is quasi government. Rates paid to fund the huge capital costs of nuclear power are negotiated with rate payers.
There are no innocents. There are only malcontents and partisans beating each other over the head with bullshit sticks.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
I agree 100%, but that puts it WAY too mildly. The trade imbalance went off a freaking cliff! Increased thier oil imports by 70% this year just to keep the lights on. The U.S. acted immediatley, not wanting to be outdone by the japanese: "While NFP dominated the headlines, the US Trade Balance (deficit) limped out and dropped far more than expected. At a $52.565bn Deficit, this is the worst trade balance since October 2008. Perhaps more shocking is the fact that the 3 month drop (rise in deficit) is the largest ever on record."
The Earth surface receives on average 116 petawatts from the Sun continually. Humanity as a whole uses less than 20 terawatts. We could power 7000 Earths with that energy.
We don't need to use less, we need to get smarter on how we capture it instead of burning through the reserves.
Dilbert RSS feed
Having children is not the only way to be part of the problem: the heads of the Catholic Church don't have them, yet they probably fucked up more than if they did by opposing contraception.
Dilbert RSS feed
A basic problem with some reactor designs is that a loss of control power causes core damage. The GE Mark 1 will suffer core damage after only one hour of station blackout, and a meltdown after about 14 hours. This was well known in the industry.
A few weeks ago, Slashdot posted transcripts of meetings after the Fukushima disaster. The NRC people immediately referred to the studies of the Peach Bottom plant (a GE Mark 1 in Pennsylvania), knowing quite well that a station blackout or loss of cooling water supply would cause a meltdown. There was no argument at the NRC meeting - everyone in the meeting was familiar with that risk.
You forgot your tags. So what's your beef here? That we don't know for sure that reducing CO2 emissions will reduce global warming? Let's not even talk about global warming then, eh? Think about how much soot, smog, acid rain, etc. is produced by coal plants. That alone I think justifies looking for an alternative. Electric cars are difficult, but remember that the alternative is oil cars--U.S. demand for oil helps boost the economies of oppressive fundamentalist regimes across the Middle East. Isn't it time we boost oppressive fundamentalist regimes right here in the U.S.A.? As for nuclear, nuclear fission is safe and efficient assuming we can trust that government and private industry will be competent in keeping it up to standards. But time and time again government and private industry have proven they cannot be trusted, that they are not competent (BP oil spill, Fukushima Daiichi, etc.). In addition nuclear would be better than coal, but if we were to try to convert over entirely to nuclear, the necessary isotopes of uranium, etc. would run out pretty quickly, so it could not be relied upon in a permanent way. Fusion on the other hand offers a lot more potential, because it only requires relatively light and abundant input chemicals.
"How many people die of coal-mining related illnesses? "
From Japan's point of view, these people are Chinese and not Japanese, and don't vote.
I agree with most of your post but there is also evidence the plant was poorly maintained - Tepco admitted to falsifying maintenance records among several other misdemeanours.
TEPCO was also warned of the risk to the generators and did nothing to mitigate them - and still got an extension to their license (the 40 year old reactors' license had expired).
Hopefully something good will come out of this - Vermont (U.S. state) wants to refuse a request for a 20 year extension to the license of a similar design plant. A bit of backbone from our bureaucrats and politicians coupled with planning and foresight would go a long way in removing the stigma from nuclear (imo).
On a lighter note, we should take our manga comics more seriously - it appears one had predicted the Fukushima incident.
BM3
In fact, this winter it was the opposite most of the time (FR buying in DE).
Reason?
The French haven't gotten their act together in phasing out their hopelessly inefficient electric heatings - and the insulation of most houses is very bad. In contrast, Germany has worked hard to make heatings and houses fit for the 21st century.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
If you were GE or Westinghouse and had a duopoly lead in design and implementation of light water and fast breeder reactors because the government paid you billions to research it, you probably would do anything in your power to squash competition and keep your duopoly even though safer, more promising alternatives were available.
How else can you explain how Gen 4 LFTR designs have received _ZERO_ government funding and many based on revisions of current designs have received billions? It is not in the best interest of big energy for another model that they don't have a duopoly on to emerge. That is why they drop terms like "unproven to scale" (don't have a link, but have seen the claim), "proliferation concerns", "slight differences in the waste," (see the video) etc. Um, yeah... Thorium is 99% more efficient than Uranium fuel with continuous reprocessing, pollutes itself making it bad for weapons, and has zero risk of meltdown, so is MUCH safer than Uranium... The worst waste decays in about 300 years (not 10k) and most can be reused. This is all FUD by an industry that doesn't want to invest in a technology for the simple reason that they have working technology that makes them a lot of money already.
you, preferably.
And if you're going to cite locations, Three Mile Island is a joke - .017 Curies of radiation released (though as I recall it did scale higher on the nuclear events scale because it was a partial meltdown). The Idaho Falls disaster in the 1960s released more (5x I think). Compare that to the 7000 Curies at Chernobyl or the 2400 at Fukushima to get perspective. The Bikini Atoll tests probably dumped more radiation in the air than any of those disasters.
btw, which "God" are you referring to, the Old Testament one that smites everyone, or the New Testament one that forgives you even if you break his very important not to break rules? And if you mean God in the Torah, then you mean the Old Testament God, and if you mean God in the Qur'an, you mean the Old Testament God (really, that God is pretty much from the same place), and if you mean God in, um, other religions then I have no fscking clue. You obviously mean monotheistic, though, because you capitalized God.
You seem to think that businesses tell the government what to do over there. Quite the opposite. The government bureaucracy completely rules that country. If the reactors were built in a bad place, then Tokyo was just fine with that.
Don't know where you got that one from but sure as hell businesses run the place in Japan. You might be right for the street sign but for everything that is real life, forget it. The bureaucracy is intimately linked on all levels with businesses. Everything that goes contrary to businesses is simply not done. Help yourself a little by reading this: Amakudari.
G e o t h e r m a l
Help stamp out iliturcy.
it's amazing, that slashdot "readers" don't have anything to say about nukelies.com and probably never will. Sheeple are everywhere ; http://www.nukelies.com/ ; http://soundcloud.com/ewing2001/out-rageous-nukelies-com-nini http://soundcloud.com/ewing2001/megalomanico-the-bartender-who http://1649beginningofhumanz.tumblr.com/ http://tinyurl.com/occupybeyonce
Youre saying businesses WANTED a meltdown and the issues that come with it?
Is that equivalent to "did not want to spend tens of millions of dollars to prevent the meltdown since if it ever happened, it would happen long after the executive retired with a tens of millions of dollars bonus for saving the company money"?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
They had acceptable places to site the plant that would have simply cost a bit more. They knew that where they were putting the plant was unacceptable, and they knew there were acceptable places to site it, and they chose not to do so for economic reasons, that is to say, making sufficient profit. The Japanese government didn't really want to put it there, but GE got the USA to lean on Japan and they caved and now we have had a bunch of hot isotopes spread around the planet for no good reason, basically so some dickwads at GE could have a third or fourth yacht.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And even so, the plant didn't cause a single death, even with tsunami wiping out essentially all infrastructure of the region and killing 30.000 people.
I am beyond fucking tied of hearing this lie. You have no idea how many man-hours of life will be lost due to the release of radioactives from fukushima. As such you simply can not say there was no loss of life. "It didn't kill anyone the day it failed" is not repeat not sufficient justification for the dangers of nuclear power.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
India's investing heavily into Thorium-based reactors (India has thorium in spades), and there are modern reactor designs which can feed off (perhaps slightly-processed) waste from previous reactors, and you can use U-238 instead in breeder reactors.. long story short, we have *PLENTY* of fuel for nuclear fission reactors to produce enough energy for hundreds of years.
The trick is in *NOT* trusting that government and private industry will be competent in keeping safety standards high, but rather by them being compelled to *PROVE* that such is true (and no, not prove it to emotional nutjobs and enviro-whackos. to reasonable people. engineers, scientists, lay folk -- NOT accountants, politicians, and causeheads).
Shit be safe, yo. Shit be safe, shit be available, shit be able to provide so very much power to so very many people -- and shit be stopped by people who hear the word "nuclear!" and start sputtering out protests on points only tangentially related to the discussion at hand.
I don't know anyone who refuses to use automobiles as transportation, despite there having been many designs of cars in the early -- even later! -- years of the automotive industry which were, unquestionably, Unsafe At Any Speed. Public distrust of nuclear fission plants is akin to the public shitting on the, let's say Ford Focus (a successful and safe car design for many years now, while also being quite economical) all because they heard about the Pinto catching on fire. Reasonable people would call that insanity, but that's exactly what is happening and what is holding back fission power around the world. It's irrational and downright *stupid*.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs.
Is that true, or is it another fallacious argument aiming at representing nuclear industry as the poor, benevolent guy trying his best to go good but being thwarted by crazy, enraged, hateful, irrational, almighty hippies, luddites and joe-six-packs? Honest question here. I have a hard time figuring out how a bunch of idealist activists did prevent the development of safer nuclear reactor designs and, if they were so powerful as to be able to do that, how were people demonstrating in the streets by the thousands all over the world incapable of preventing the Iraq invasion for instance? This just doesn't cut it.
My feeling is that there is at least as much lies, blindness and dishonesty on the proponent side of NP than on the opposing side. In any case the condescending, contemptuous attitude towards NP skeptics that is so common here on slashdot in particular makes me strongly think that the issues at hand are definitely not as simple and clear-cut as the nuclear fanatics would like to make it appear.
I read also that one of the reason to put them on the quake-threatened east coast rather than on the seismically more quiet west coast was that the dominant winds blowing eastwards meant that normal gaseous radioactive emissions were to be blown over the Pacific ocean rather than over populated areas. And it happened that during the Fukushima accident, the winds blowing mostly offshore did in fact prevent a much more serious outcome.
Indeed. Low level radiation is known to increase life expectancy in rats. It has no known effect on human life expectancy, mainly because it wasn't properly tested. That said, a great example is Mexico City, where background radiation is much greater then there ever was in Tokyo during "elevated radiation periods" when Fukushima was actively emitting radioactive clouds.
Did I mention there is absolutely no statistical spike of radiation-related increase of deaths or shorter life span in Mexico City when compared to other, less radioactive locations?
Now can we stop being stupid and claim things we don't know jack shit about?
Full disclosure: I have zero contact of any kind with any part of nuclear industry. I have a close relative that holds an advanced degree on nuclear engineering and had some practical experience building and testing breeder reactors designed to produce special durable materials for space satellites which is what drove me to study this stuff in my free time. He does not work with nuclear power plants, and never has. Most information I use is based on publicly available information, often peer reviewed studies and I use the aforementioned close relative to ask about things I'm not sure of.
As far as I know I have no one in my close circle of family and friends who are in any relationship with nuclear power generating industry or any kind. I do have at least one close family member who's fanatically against nuclear power, and is quite noticeably half-illogical half-hysterical about it.
> In contrast, Germany has worked hard to make heatings and houses fit for the 21st century.
Yep: we are coming up to 10 years in our PassivHaus in central Germany: not only is there little need for active heating, but it is incredibly comfortable to live in: draught / sound proofing, no hot/cold spots, ...