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Why the Japanese Government Should Take Over the Fukushima Nuclear Plant
Lasrick writes "The Japan Times has an opinion piece about the seriousness of the situation at Fukushima and the incompetence of Tepco. The article makes the case that it's time for the Japanese government to step in and take control of the plant to facilitate clean-up. Quoting: 'Japan has been very lucky that nothing worse has occurred at the plant. But luck eventually runs out. The longer Tepco stays in charge of the decommissioning process, the worse the odds become. Without downplaying the seriousness of leaks and the other setbacks at the plant, it is important to recognize that things could very quickly get much worse. In November, Tepco plans to begin the delicate operation of removing spent fuel from Reactor No. 4. There are 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies in a pool above the reactor. They weigh a total of 400 tons, and contain radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The spent-fuel pool, standing 18 meters above ground, was damaged by the earthquake and tsunami and is in a deteriorating condition. It remains vulnerable to any further shocks, and is also at risk from ground liquefaction. Removing its spent fuel, which contains deadly plutonium, is an urgent task.'"
The Japanese govt. doesn't feel the necessity to take this on to date, evidenced by their unwillingness to even consider it.
They've already blown oversight, transparency, and emergency response planning. They're not going to suddenly become competent.
Get the IAEA in there, use the UN to pressure them to accept international oversight. There are over 12,000 fuel rods 100 feet in the air.
There's really no more time for trusting the Japanese government.
Just build a Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor (WAMSR) next to the site, problem solved.
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/MIT-Develops-Meltdown-Proof-Nuclear-Waste-Eating-Reactor.html
Really now, any time nuclear anything is mentioned in comparison with Hiroshima, you know that someone is trying to scare you. I believe the SI unit would be Becquerels, not "Hiroshimas".
It is when a corporate entity want the mess taken over.
Is Japan going to resist the drive to socialize the loss of corporations that can't keep their shit together?
I don't think the government is very likely to take over from TEPCO. TEPCO itself is already practically nationalized due to the vast amounts of money the government has had to pump into it and pay out to those affected by the disaster. By keeping it independent there is someone external to blame for all the problems, which would otherwise be the direct responsibility of the government.
TFA is full of hype but one interesting point that is often missed is worth noting. The earthquake itself damage the plant, and even without the tsunami there would have been a serious accident.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
How about they ask the Americans for help? We have had a lot of experience with nukes, and could use a chance to prove that we can still do something in the world besides violate international law. If we fuck it up, then you can blame external powers for it.
Sometimes it is, actually.
Contrary to popular psychosis, the solution is not always "less government".
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Who are they going to have do it? I don't know, let's call in the experts at Tepco.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/1258/
There, FTFY.
TEPCO were just as responsible, if not more so. So "more corporations" apparently isn't the answer either. What do you propose to do?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The solution is more competance, government or otherwise, just fix it and don't make any more mistakes in the process.
Yeah, free enterprise can solve any problem. I am sure there are plenty of entities out there that would love to have a bunch of radioactive waste to play with. I bet they would pay top dollar for it. Only....I think we may not want them to have it. But hey! After they spread it all over Tokyo or NYC, maybe thats actually a business opportunity! Think of the manufacturing revenues we could accrue in coffins.
Quebec doesn't have a government. It has a large bureaucracy that exists only to collect as much as possible from its citizenry, and give as little as possible to its citizens. In Quebec we get steamed hot dogs but we get a filet mignon bill.
There is no way they are going to ask for help.
The thing we need to ask ourselves is not a question of is more/less government the solution, but rather, is this a job that the government can do more effectively? With something such as crucial as this, we must make sure that the means chosen have a good (ideally, the best) likelihood of reaching the ends desired.
Hipster libertarians? I get that that both groups are unlikable, but in what way does the "freedom solves everything" crowd reflect the slightest bit of hipster qualities?
And, of a company worried about their own profits and which has been doing a lousy job of the cleanup, or a government which is strongly motivated to get it done -- which would you trust?
Corporations do a lousy job of cleaning up messes like this because they're more worried about spin than actually doing the work.
So the whole time BT was saying "oh, it's only a little oil" they knew it was a load of crap -- but they were more interested in laying blame to contractors and spinning the PR.
Me, I'd put far more faith in the Japanese government than the company who operated the plant and has been doing such a bad job of cleaning it up.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The corporation is the government.
Well ideally, corporations should not exist at all. The trouble is that the corporations have very little true incentive to do "what's right" because of the limited liability nature of them. Furthermore, just because we have issues created by corporations does *not* mean that the solution is government. They are not opposites (and even if they were does not mean the opposite of a bad decision is a good decision). In fact, corporations cannot exist without government (it is government that defines a corporation and grants it its liability immunities).
France might help also. Areva has a lot of experience with nuclear reactors and wastes. They were willing to help during the meltdown, but at this moment Tepco seemed too proud to accept any help from the foreign countries.
They accepted later, as they bought some water filtering equipment to capture radionucleids.
Next time such a disaster occurs, I hope that the host country will not wait to aks help from the most competent companies in the world.
If the government would just stop interfering with the free markets the invisible hand and enlightened self interest would take over and do a much better job! We'd be living in a land of unicorns and rainbows in no time!
Also nuclear power is the only reasonable - and environmentally friendly! - solution to our energy problems. * /sarcasm
* - Excluding all those pesky externalities because we all know in the technologically advanced future we'll magically solve all those problems -- also using the power of the free markets! (some conditions and circular reasoning may apply, offer not valid in all states blah blah blah)
Sometimes it is, actually.
Sometimes. But probably not in this case. The government of Japan does not have an elite team of nuclear cleanup ninjas waiting in the wings. In fact, they have no expertise in this area. TEPCO's initial response was incompetent, but the government's response wasn't so good either. And the government was responsible for the regulatory system that allowed the accident to happen. TEPCO's constant underplaying of the severity, and withholding of information, is a Japanese cultural thing, and the government would have done the same if not worse. These statements were misleading to westerners, who are used to officials that normally exaggerate problems, but it was not misleading to the Japanese public, who just assume that whatever officials say, the reality is ten times worse.
Yea, pretty much it is. What do you think is going to happen if the government takes over the plant? Does the government have nuclear workers? Any expertise at all in this area? No? So they are going to hire whomever has the best knowledge of the facility... oh, Tepco. So now, not only is Tepco still in charge of the cleanup, they're now getting paid to do it and the responsibility for the result is now off their shoulders and there's endless layers of red tape they have to get through to actually do anything.
A more appropriate solution would be to send in government inspectors, have them on-site 24/7 and reporting back to government officials. Make Tepco pay their wages as well.
No, but they can hire those folks and have motivation to do so.
At this point the Fukushima site is a total write off. TEPCO has no reason to spend any money on it. What should happen is the government should bring in the right folks to fix it, and TEPCO should be forced to pay for it.
Or they could hire the best and brightest to oversee the engineers at TEPCO.
Do you think it was the engineers or the bean counters that fucked this up?
Of course TEPCO should pay the full cost of this, in addition to fines and possible criminal penalties.
The commentary is written by:
Andrew DeWit is a professor in the School of Policy Studies, Rikkyo University. Dr. Christopher Hobson is a research fellow at the Institute for Sustainability and Peace, United Nations University, Tokyo.
Not exactly credentials for someone who should be making the decision on who should do the clean up. Certainly, the government should be monitoring whatever action is taken, and if Tepco is screwing up give them the boot. But, I wouldn't be doing so on the recommendations of these gents.
Just another day in Paradise
Fixed that for you. It's like that everywhere.
The argument in favor of gov. takeover is that a government can spend money in a different way and plan in a different way than a company that has to look for profit. That is especially so in a situation like this that is just a costly mess.
Please, while that may be true on some level, on the level of the positions they directly assert, they clearly believe in universal freedom. Now whether that premise actually leads to the conclusions they claim it does, and whether the actual policy positions they support reinforce that universal freedom are up for debate(and are debated all the time), but you really don't need to resort to "The people I disagree actually believe something less respectable than what they claim to. Look at how easy to dismantle that position is."
I don't disagree with your claims about corporations doing a lousy job. In fact, just a few posts down I mentioned how the limited liability nature of corporations is one of the real problems. However, this is not a matter of who we trust, but in fact a question of what means reaches the desired ends best. Governments are notoriously inefficient in most areas. They may in fact generally do a better job of cleaning up such messes than corporations, in which case I think that may be a viable option. I do not know the answer, I am just raising the question. One thing to remember, though, is the incentive that we create for corporations by cleaning up their messes for them. If we continue to remove the risk (or some of the risk) from the corporation, we should expect them to partake in increasingly risky behavior.
the International Nuclear organization's crisis teams and resources should be brought in, given a drawer full of blank checks, and set after it without any more interference by the hacks that caused this catastrophe in the first place.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Sigh..the government does VERY little. Corporations do things FOR the government with government oversight often by people who used to work in the same corporations they have oversight for.
Giving it to the "Government" to do is not taking corporations out of the picture.
It's like having the discussion concerning the "private" sector launching manned space vehicles...as if NASA did it without the private sector to begin with.
The solution is more government!
No, the solution is complete deregulation. If achieved, the free market fairy will grant the commercial operators the wish of taking as much profit as efficiently as possible and, if something wrong happens, just do nothing ('cause that would go against their duty to shareholders).
You see, in spite of still existing regulation, Tepco is already heralding the new age.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
TEPCO will go out of business and can't afford the cleanup. New age capitalism requires you to privatize your profits and socialize the losses.
In Quebec we get steamed hot dogs but we get a filet mignon bill.
And you still complain? Then what will you do when Quebec runs out of steam?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Yep, it's about time the Japanese gov't steps in and takes charge of this mess. TEPCO has demonstrated they don't know what they're doing. Matters can and will get much worse. There are experts worldwide who can be brought in to help. The Russians have some experience with a meltdown. There are probably some TMI era consultants still around. It's going to get very expensive.
We might ought to help them. It's not just their problem. If those fuel rods catch fire, that radioactivity will be drifting towards our Pacific coast.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Then clean it up, charge them for the work and jail the heads of the corporations that failed in such a dangerous area.
Unlike the bailouts to corporate entities in the US, radiation actually has real world consequences, not the collapse of some hair brained greedy economic system we pinned together and keep propping up (which I'm all for collapse and restructuring). If the Japanese government need intervene, Tepco should be forced to pay all of the expenses to the point of full asset liquidation if needed.
Does anybody think our government could have managed the BP oil blowout?
Having some direct experience with both the culture and government of Japan and of the nuclear industry, I can say [opine] that the Japanese government is completely incapable of handling the task.
If you ask me, I say send the US NRC over to Japan to take the situation over and train Japan's NRC to operate in the same way as the US NRC.
The US NRC is a royal pain in the ass. But they are that for a very good reason. And believe me when I tell you, they aren't just up in the utilities' faces, they are up in EVERYONE connected faces. The Japanese regulatory agency will ONLY communicate with the Japanese utilities and not the manufacturers of equipment, not the people who did construction or planning or any of it. So for the Japanese regulatory agency to ignore those other factors? It convinces me they aren't prepared to see a much larger picture when it comes to nuclear safety.
I am told this aspect of the Japanese nuclear regulatory agency is changing, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Meanwhile, the Japanese habit of never saying more than they should and always holding back information leads me to believe it's actually worse than the mainstream media will say and likely MUCH worse.
Nuclear safety isn't just local. It's not just national. It's a global concern. And if some group of people internationally were to say "hey, this is a global concern. Let's make a global nuclear regulatory agency" I would actually agree to the idea simply because the danger knows no borders. And believe me when I say it's not easy for me to be in favor of -- I am against global government in general. Completely.
Government is great at doing things that aren't profitable (or that no one wants to do). Other than that, Government has no reason to be in that market. Good example; the USPS. Every year the price of first-class mail goes up, but the service goes down. They talking about pulling weekend services accross the board. First class price changes almost weekly, so they came out with the "forever" stamp, a stamp with no price, and they're already talking about doing away with that becuase they're talking about raising the rate again; its too much of a moving target and they lose too much money with a priceless stamp. Finally the USPS lost billions lat year. Meanwhile UPS, FedEx, etc run circles around the USPS, are highly efficient, and highly profitable. But only the Fed can deliver first class door-to-door, they have a monopoly on that.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Way too late for that. TEPCO is already virtually state owned. If the government hadn't bailed them out people wouldn't have been able to sue them for compensation. Plus the government has been paying benefits to those who lose their jobs and homes around the plant, and for extra healthcare costs, and a whole long list of other stuff.
Nuclear accident costs are always socialized, just like its development was in the first place. It isn't just Japan, in the US plants have $10bn of insurance by law but if you stuck an extra zero on that it would be a fraction of the cost of Fukushima.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You're right. Of course, without the government, we wouldn't have roads or the internet but I'm sure those things don't matter to you.
Just as much as the government is dependent on the private sector, the private sector is dependent on the government. It goes both ways, skippy.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
So the whole time BT was saying "oh, it's only a little oil" they knew it was a load of crap
BP, I think!
British Telecom may be a rubbish company, but they've never polluted the Gulf Of Mexico (as far as I know)
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
Commercial business can never be and has never been trustworthy when it comes to public safety. Everything from coal mining, gas/oil drilling, "fracking" all the way to nuclear energy requires safety and EVERY industry, when left to their own, has shown they will favor cost cutting/profit increasing over safety. EVERY time. We've seen coal miners killed. We've seen the "strange earthquakes" around areas where fracking has been going on. We've seen the whole BP oil spill issue. We saw Chernobyl (a name which literally means "nuclear disaster" to most people now) and now we are experiencing Fukushima.
It's all safety related and it's all because people didn't want to spend enough money on safety. Keep in mind that there is ANOTHER nuclear plant no too far from Fukushima which survived the same tsunami specifically because the wall was higher and stronger. It wasn't because they never expected a tsunami so large. They were advised to build as large in Fukushima as well. They didn't... or so I'm told.
Nuclear safety. There is NOTHING more important. Nothing.
LOL. You are right, of course ... apparently my fingers decided to do something else.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Please sign the petition over at Whitehouse.gov to get the US to act in getting the Japanese government to allow US/UN assistance in cleaning up the spent fuel pools. This is an urgent need.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/require-united-states-petition-un-and-japan-seek-assistance-removing-spent-fuel-fukushima/LHSB04r0
~ X
Contrary to popular belief, life is not a bitch. It is far far worse.
Have those who made the decision to build this global minimum spec engineered nightmare to publicly remove a finger?
The real question is does the government have the expertise to carry out this task better than the company which operates the plant? The answer might very well be yes, but it could just as easily be no. Perhaps the real answer is that they don't, but the company cannot be trusted either. To me that would point to a solution requiring increased oversight with perhaps the government bring in technical experts to assist in that oversight.
Should the government take over I would suspect all that does is transfer the cost to the taxpayer and replace the corporation with government as the entity that all of the contractors report too. As well as allowing said contractors to increase their price, since in my experience it always cost more for the government to do anything.
So I think more government might be the answer, but only more government oversight, not them stepping in to let the company bail.
No, but they can hire those folks and have motivation to do so.
There are no "folks" to hire. Government is not magic. They do not have a team of super-smart 007 agents ready to pounce on every problem. If they did, they would have used them fix the Japanese economy, which has been mismanaged so badly that it makes the Italians look competent. The half-life of tritium is not going to change by government decree, and there is no secret government issued super glue that is going to fix the leaking water tanks.
The severity of the problems at Fukushima are being publicized slowly, but the decisions that caused those problems were made either before the accident, or immediately after it. The government was either responsible or complicit in most of those decisions.
There are no engineers who would accept a higher salary for this project? What universe do you live in?
Sure you can't change what has happened but you can stop making stupid decisions.
The interesting thing here is that BP and TEPCO are the only groups who actually have a clue how to clean their own messes up. Despite the drama of a "level 3 serious incident", I don't see evidence that TEPCO should be removed from the clean up of the Fukushima site or the surroundings.
Your choice to compare the Fukushima clean up to the Deepwater Horizon spill is telling. While there was considerable incompetence and criminal actions going into the causes, that oil spill was competently handled after the fact. The US government wouldn't have done any better.
Totally irrelevant comment. Regulation in rail transportation is a federal responsability. I hope you aren't Canadian, neither Quebecer, otherwise you are showing how ignorant you are.
Then, to make my comment about more or less government. I believe it is not to Japan's governement to take over TEPCO and clean the place. Japan's governement responsability is to monitor closely the process, make regulations, enforce them and make sure TEPCO is doing ITS job.
Achille Talon
Hop!
dude, did you really give Chernobyl as an example of corporate screwup? I mean really? And do you really think that in state owned coal mines in the Soviet block there were no accidents ever? By that logic deadly accidents in military are unheard of and I am pretty sure that's not the case.
The accident is not due to deregulation. The train driver didn't secure the brakes. You can regulate and over-regulate and do whatever you want, if the guy responsible to secure the brakes fails to do his job, you are screwed.
Achille Talon
Hop!
TEPCO _is_ the government.
And Japan is bankrupt.
So let the world that so far ignores the disaster step in.
Make TEPCO leave.
Make Japan cede control.
Have the rest of the world fix it. It's be quicker and less euphemistic.
their assets are liquifying ... and flowing into our food.
Commercial business can never be and has never been trustworthy when it comes to public safety.
Compared to who? Government hasn't been trustworthy either. I see you mentioned Chernobyl which was government run.
It's all safety related and it's all because people didn't want to spend enough money on safety.
What makes you think more money would have spent effectively? There's so much misunderstanding about what was going on with Fukushima. The reactors were being decommissioned. Then they weren't because the next generation which was going to replace Fukushima was canceled all at once. This shuffling of future plans probably contributed since why should one build a higher seawall for nuclear reactors that are to be decommissioned?
Keep in mind that there is ANOTHER nuclear plant no too far from Fukushima which survived the same tsunami specifically because the wall was higher and stronger.
No, it survived a smaller tsunami. It would have been inundated if it had been subject to what hit Fukushima Daiichi.
Nuclear safety. There is NOTHING more important. Nothing.
Yea, I'm sure empty slogan ranks pretty up on that list of important things. So how many deaths is nuclear safety worth?
There are no engineers who would accept a higher salary for this project?
There is no secret team on the bench. The most qualified people are already working on it. All that would change would be the bank account their paychecks are drawn from.
Sure you can't change what has happened but you can stop making stupid decisions.
If history is any guide, the decisions would become even stupider. In the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez accident, government pressure forced Exxon to divert limited personnel from using booms and skimmers on ships at sea (where they were not visible to the TV cameras) to the beaches, where they wasted their time wiping oil from individual rocks with paper towels. The government also pressured Exxon to use chemical dispersant that likely caused more harm that the oil itself. Governments have a long history of turning any crisis into a PR opportunity. Decisions are made based on political calculations rather than technical merit.
Of course, without the government, we wouldn't have roads or the internet
I don't accept that as fact. Linking to new markets and simplifying and lowering cost of supply chains would still be in many peoples interest and with all the tax dollars still in their pocket many might opt to fund the construction. It would be slower and probably more chaotic... organic in nature. There would probably be more toll roads, but that's just paying for it differently and more consciously. I would say we probably wouldn't have as "grand" a road system, but the trade off would be more localized economies, less dependence on oil, fewer greenhouse less and fewer wars for oil. Those seem like values the people who like government also tend to like.
Assuming any survived, that is.
Have gnu, will travel.
The most qualified people in the world for this all work for TEPCO? Excuse me if based on current performance I find that hard to believe.
I agree that was a terrible move. What should have happened was both. Then Exxon should have been fined nearly into the ground. Instead they still have not really cleaned up.
Pretty big assumptions there considering history is profoundly against you. Contrary to popular belief, there are somethings that are better when the government does them. I know that's a bitter pill to swallow but it's true.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
If the company is cleaning it up, you have oversight by the government, the government can force the revelation of inconvenient facts, the government can force them to not take unnecessary risks.
But who oversees the government if they're doing it?
The problem was caused by corrupt lying sacks of shit and now you want to let politicians run the show?
That's like exchanging AIDS for terminal cancer!
And believe me when I say it's not easy for me to be in favor of -- I am against global government in general. Completely.
So you probably want a global insurance pool, not a regulatory agency. The market forces would actually support this - potential payouts are so large that a global pool may be necessary.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk_River_Laboratories#1952_NRX-incident Protecting humanity's habitat for over 60 years.
Oh, you mean like this?? Or this?
How about this:
Sorry, but if you believe what BP has been telling you, you are gravely mistaken.
If by 'completely handled' you mean done badly, incompletely, and we get lied about it sure .. if you mean actually remediating the damage from it, well, you're either delusional or on the payroll.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I'd say that this is more of the privatize - nationalize cycle that is favored by big business.
Specifically, the big businesses -- through media shills and lobbyists they have hired -- request the nationalization of their competitors and regulation of the industry that is designed to prevent competition. In turn, when a government, loaded down with such dross, becomes top-heavy, then the big business requests privatization of the profitable sectors, at rock-bottom prices.
Happens all the time.
The real version of this is "steal from the small folks, give to the big folks. Tie them down, then repeat."
I'd favor Japan taking it over-- if they completely nationalized the company, fired the management and legally prohibited them from working in management again, and nationalized the majority of their property [say, in excess of the 50%ile mark]. Alternatively, they can open TEPCO and their managers and stockholders to complete liability. Alternatively, they can say to the managers and stockholders of the time when the mess happened, "clean your mess up, no matter what the cost, or go to jail."
Most of which violates the rule of law. But so does the nationalize / privatize cycle. And so does the nonenforcement of environmental and safety regulations.
Which leads to what they *will* do instead: nationalize, privatize. nationalize, privatize.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Actually, Idiot, you can reintroduce the regulation that requires two engineers to double-check each others work like they used to do before de-regulation.
The government also pressured Exxon to use chemical dispersant that likely caused more harm that the oil itself.
Do you have a source for that?
surely you jest. that's three lies in one thought.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Exactly. I love the idea that "government" can just swoop in and fix things it has no expertise on. Government's channel money. Government's don't even do their own jobs effectively...why in the world would you want the government to "take over" a mess like this.
You want the government to throw more money at the problem...fine. If this reflects the opinions of...anybody I sincerely fear for the future of the US.
"Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard." - Ron Swanson
There is no secret team on the bench. The most qualified people are already working on it. All that would change would be the bank account their paychecks are drawn from.
For the sake of the argument, lets assume that this is true. The thing is that right now they are acting in the best interest of the small group of TEPCO investors. If government hires them, they will be acting in the best interest of the government and -- presumably -- public. This is a critical difference.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
The government also pressured Exxon to use chemical dispersant that likely caused more harm that the oil itself.
Do you have a source for that?
No, because I chose my words poorly. The dispersants were certainly not (as I stated) worse than the oil spill. What I should have said was that dispersants likely made the situation somewhat worse. They are harsh, environmentally damaging chemicals. They make the problem look better by breaking up the oil slicks, but don't actually remove the oil from the environment. The proper role for government is this case should not have been try micromanage the cleanup by steering it toward publicity stunts. Instead they should have regulated the industry properly, and never allowed single-hulled tankers to operate in American waters in the first place.
They do accomplish some things "better", certainly for a short time. As with most monopolies that efficiency tends to wane, only the government doesn't fail and get out of the way for a newer efficient model. This progress also has costs, as I stated. Using "the government does things better" model the solution to symptoms is more government intervention, such as in my example. We now have an efficient cost to cost system of road that is, according to many, a big factor in destroying our environment. Now the government is subsidizing corporations, many of them failing to control the problem. Meanwhile subsidizing oil prices by securing our supply with our army. But hey, government made Walmart and it's cheap goods possible, so clearly it is a win for society as a whole.
I know it's a hard pill to swallow, but society is really complicated, and predicting and controlling the outcomes is hardly scientifically measurable in its success.
I've made big assumptions and so have you. Rather than provide more examples or explain how I was completely wrong in my assessment of your simplified generalization that there are currently roads and the government made them do government is good, You made a blanket statement that history is against me with no example.
Don't pretend that I am part of some deluded mass stumbling through life with a blind dedication to some vague unthoughtful hatred of government. Our system of government is based upon popular belief; it's existence and action in growing amounts of our lives is the antithesis of your statement that I am speaking for the masses. My starting point in my world view simple starts with a higher value to personal freedom and higher cost to the it's oppression. I suppose I should step back and say there are things in history that government does better: oppression, slavery, and slaughter. Though, I suppose your definition of "better" depends which side if the incendiary bomb you are on.
I don't think we need "medical insurance" for general use in the first place.
1. More money should be spent on prevention and better food standards in the US. We have some REALLY crappy standards.
2. Once prevention and standards are better addressed, the need for "constant" medical attention for so many will be gone leaving mostly weird cases, child birth and random emergencies.
3. Once demand for medical care drops the medical insurance industry shrinks to what it once was.
4. On top of that, the pharmaceutical industry would also shrink and their patents would expire without being replaced with something newer and more dangerous.
People like to think they live better lives because of increased medical care and technology. I changed two things in my life have have only gotten sick once in the past 25 years. ONCE and it lasted about 8-12 hours... (I slept it off so I don't know how long it really lasted.) What'd I change? I stopped drinking milk and I stopped being too focused on being "sanitary" all over the place. Suddenly my immune system was doing its job and I was happier and more energetic. Also, I stay away from too much corn and sources of extreme carbohydrates. (That's what I mean by prevention and better standards.) (Isn't it weird that we shove more corn down people's throats than any other place on earth and our diabetes rates are also out of control? I know... correlation/causation. Still. I avoid it when I know it's there and I'm healthier because of it.)
One of the big problems we have in the US is that people don't want to control their own lives. They just don't. They feel much more comfortable being a victim and blaming and complaining. Worse is people somehow feel empowered because they have the right to complain despite having less right or ability to do anything meaningful about it. And they go on eating what they eat which, incidentally, is NOT what we ate 25 years ago; not even close and living by standards and ideals created in the 80s when living in debt stopped being a sin.
Yes. People always look at me like I'm crazy when I say I don't spend money I don't have. But our debt-financed lifestyles are at the core of our problems and that includes the medical industry. When we are spending someone else's money, it's a lot easier to spend. People don't feel a connection between what they spend on credit and what they have to pay back. And people don't feel a connection between what they pay to insurance companies and what they (don't) get back. And people have been taking the social security scam up the ass for decades and decades. (I will be lucky to get back 15% of what I paid in to social security...LUCKY) We have absolutely horrible and wasteful systems in place -- things people have given up complaining about. I don't enter debt contracts easily. I don't. I have less stuff yet still more "stuff I don't need." Life's just not so bad as people think without all the excess.
We need less industry because industry serves its interests first and foremost.
Oh right... cause THAT will always happen. Ever actually work in a union? Ever been a Brakeman? Ever watch an Engineer sleeping with his feet up on the console while riding deadhead in the 2nd locomotive who's actually supposed to be watching the rails and looking for hotbox bearings on corners? People fuck up. Employees get complacent. They break rules. There's no track-nazi following them around checking off lists. One brakeman lining the wrong siding can cause a world of hurt. A badly set brake can feel engaged and yet slip 10 minutes later. Best efforts can still result in horrible results.... If you decided to regulate that people make mistakes and break the rules you might just have regulations that actually work. There's a saying in the railroad industry. Heavy metal always wins. And you call him an idiot. I shake my head. Fuck, what a comment, AC.
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
The free market will take care of problems like this... ...probably by building far away from it...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
If only we could somehow create a temporary miniature black hole at the site of the incident and suck the entire plant site and all its radioactively contaminants into a ball of matter no bigger than a pea, and then create a parallel dimensional portal and then send the pea through it and close the portal and just make this whole problem go away.
Well, if they do take over the cleanup, they should certainly keep the people who work in the plant on the job so that they have experts on hand, although bringing in more people to provide additional oversight would be a good idea.
Then the government needs to take charge at the top, bring people in to work on the field and make sure things are being done correctly, and keep the current experts on the payroll, then send BP and/or TEPCO the bill for actually doing things thoroughly and correctly instead of half-assing it to save money. Having caused damage to other peoples' property with these spills and leaks, the companies that are to blame are now liable for that, and they've shown repeatedly that they can't be trusted to clean things up on their own.
Legislation and criminal charges would be a good start, along with specific goals and measurement criteria for various preventative measures.
Well the answer to "why" is to prevent this very situation. Since it wasn't being decommissioned they should have built a higher seawall, there is no acceptable excuse for this. TEPCO are, as the article described, incompetent and proven incapable of running a Nuclear power plant as evidenced by the failure of TEPCO to follow the operating parameters as set down by the manufacturers. TEPCO have already demonstrated they have no will to run a Nuclear Reactor competently and the evidence is mounting that they have no will to resolve the issue using all available resources (including government) to resolve the situation to performance parameters acceptable to the community.
The occurrence of the earthquake and Tsunami are irrelevant as the reactor survived both. What it did not survive was the failure of TEPCO to operate the plant correctly before, during and after the disaster.
Your citing of BP demonstrates you have not examined all the available evidence for Deep Water Horizon. This suggests you maintain a level of dogmatic skepticism for industrial accidents as a function of the inquiry mode that dominates your thinking. You are converting a memory of failure into one of success concerning TEPCO's incompetence suggesting analytical traits are not a dominant characteristic when you evaluate information.
It's not a criticism, just an observation that you are probably better at big picture stuff than the details, which are opaque to you and mostly not required. This makes you prone to the very kind of misunderstanding you cite.
Yours, because if it was you or someone you care about, then you would be bleating like sheep to slaughter about Nuclear safety. However since the danger is distant and crosses generations it is not something you are capable as recognizing as danger so, because of that, you have no incentive for capacity to understand what the danger is.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You can't retroactively legislate penalties for things that were done in the past. See the Gulf oil spill. You give an industry a get out of jail free card this is exactly the sort of situation they're going to use it in. And before you get all upset, that sort of legislation IS important. If there had been no cap on damages BP would have gone belly up before the first week of that leak and there would have been no one left to sue, or cap the well. If you drive Tepco out of business with fines, then there's no Tepco to nail to the cross down the road. If you fix the plant for them, when you sue them for damages they'll just say the government screwed up the cleanup.
Where in the U.S. Constitution do you see an obligation for the USPS to deliver everywhere?
The USPS isn't even mandated by the U.S. Constitution. One of the enumerated powers of Congress found in Article 1, Section 8 is
Note there is no requirement that Congress exercise this power - any more than
requires Congress to borrow money if the Federal government had no debt.
As well, the USPS does not deliver to every address. I don't recall the criteria they use, but if you live in an area that is too sparsely populated the USPS won't deliver to your property and you may be required to go quite some distance to pick up your mail from another location.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Ok, where's your evidence for your assertion? I glanced through the links and while there was some complaining and a little grandstanding, I didn't actually see any evidence of incompetence on BP's part.
Then the government needs to take charge at the top, bring people in to work on the field and make sure things are being done correctly
What makes you think that didn't happen? Everything I've read on either accident indicates that both TEPCO and BP were on tight leashes.
then send BP and/or TEPCO the bill for actually doing things thoroughly and correctly instead of half-assing it to save money
The respective governments don't have a clue what is "thoroughly and correctly". I don't see any evidence that the respective governments would have handled this any better than the businesses did.
Well the answer to "why" is to prevent this very situation. Since it wasn't being decommissioned they should have built a higher seawall, there is no acceptable excuse for this.
Sure, there is. This is 2013. It's not 2008. Get into your time machine and provide that absence of an excuse. In the meantime, hindsight != foresight. All this thundering about "no acceptable excuse" ignores that in the absence of foreknowledge of the earthquake, it would have happened anyway, because as I noted, the plant was being decommission. There's no case to be made for spending a lot of money to prevent a small chance of failure.
However since the danger is distant and crosses generations it is not something you are capable as recognizing as danger so
I go off of evidence. Show the evidence for this alleged danger. I get really tired of people ranting about "distant dangers" who couldn't even figure out basic risk management. Risk management can handle long term risks as well as short term ones. You just haven't shown that there's a long term risk to consider here.
Our anonymous friend would propose then that we need a third person to watch the first two, and then a committee of three or four more to supervise the supervisor. When an accident inevitably happens, it will be everybody's fault, and in that regard it will be nobody's fault. The train would crash, and not a single person would have done anything wrong.
As a West Coast resident, I really hope that's exactly what happens. I shudder when I think of the possible consequences to our food chain in the long term.
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
Sigh... The real world doesn't work that way. It's really that simple. As long as there is a human element involved there is room for mistakes, for incompetence, for that one guy that was supposed to check the other guy's work but didn't because it's been a long day and he's tired and his partner always got it right before, or they've never worked together, or he's a rookie, or...whatever. I get what you're saying, but I suspect that you haven't worked in a field that has grave consequences for mistakes. Through training and discipline you're able to minimize risk factors, but at some point the stars align and something you didn't anticipate happens. Look at Corrections and early parole. The PO reviews the case, makes a decision to release to the community, the parole board reviews that, approves, and out the con goes. How many times have we all hard about recidivism (in some cases really nasty stuff) where someone re-offends and ends right back in the slam? Regulation helps, but enforcement has to come through audits and response. The 1st is usually random and the 2nd is after the fact. How does that stop the Boogyman from showing up?
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
Ha! Hahahaha! BWAHahAHAHahAHaHAAHaHahAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAhaa
(breaks down into weeping)
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Well that would be the instant death of the Nuclear industry then.
Hip replacement, heart surgery, cancer treatments, etc etc etc.
PS. I'm willing to entertain the notion of the benefits of paleo-like diets ... but blaming so much of the current generation's problem on carbs in general is just plain revisionist, my great grand parents already had bread and potatoes as staple food. What has changed is things like salt, sugar intake (soft drinks), trans fats, overeating etc ... if anything the percentage of calories from carbs might have decreased due to increased meat consumption.
Why do you hate Freedom?
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Not just carbs, but incompatible carbs. Real sugar is better than HFCS or even eating processed grains. They aren't all that compatible with our surgar processing organs and lead to strain on them. Another effect is those foods take longer to trigger our satisfaction response signaling us to stop eating which leads to overeating.
Cancer will reduce when our food intake becomes better... also as people learn to avoid other problems. Hip replacement and others are under the category of weird cases. They are, relatively speaking, rather rare. But also, some problems associated with bodily wear and tear? I have mixed feelings about those in the first place. The whole point of being healthier is managing things better. Being too sterile leads to a weaker immune system. A large mix of carbs and fats lead to choleterol which leads to heart problems. Lowering carbs reduces strain on sugar processing organs. (Carbs from fruits and real sugars are better because the body processes them more easily and more quickly)
Still, industry wants what is best for industry's bottom line, not what's best for people. It doesn't matter than industry is run by people. It kind of makes it worse because competition forces a game of chicken among them where the first one who makes a healthy or humanitarian change in the way they do things loses because the profits and prices of the others will attract more buyers -- people don't shop with conscience. They shop with as few dollars as possible. Only government can force quality changes on industry without harming competition too badly since (in theory) what affects one, affects them all.
Seriously and honestly though, I didn't stop drinking milk because I thought it would make me not sick any longer. My brother recommended it because my allergies resulted in a lot of mucous and he informed me stopping milk reduces mucous. It did. And other benefits were merely a surprise. And on top of that, my seasonal allergies essentially disappeared! Weird right? It was only later that I learned about the antibiotics in common homogenized bovine milk. And it explained a lot as well.
The proof is in the pudding -- did this catastrophe happen before or after the system was deregulated and the second engineer was removed? It's nice to talk about the "real world" -- perhaps we should base real-world discussions on, I don't know, the real world?
Further to this, Japan is known for its tight regulatory systems. If this can happen there, then how long until it is repeated in other nuclear plants in countries with weaker regulation? To me, this that nuclear is economically infeasable -- I don't know much Fukushima has cost, but if it's $100B like you say, how many years' investment in renewables does this represent? Perhaps it suggests that we're not putting our money and effort in an optimal place?
That doesn't change my point. Tell me how there wasn't and isn't room for human error in either argument. Your point is merely convenient. Nice having a non-AC commenting btw,
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
IMO they should never have put dangerous stuff in the hands of a for profit company.
Removing its spent fuel, which contains deadly plutonium, is an urgent task.
I won't claim to be an expert on nuclear waste but I can read Wikipedia like everyone else. Plutonium is taken up very slowly by the human body, it's radiation cannot penetrate the skin, and the half life is so long that it's nearly stable. I'm not saying it's something you'd want to play with, but calling the plutonium on site of the Fukushima some sort of urgent task is exaggeration.
The plutonium created in any modern fission reactor is very small. They are specifically designed to burn it up as fast as it is created. Plutonium is only a real hazard if it is airborne, which should not happen unless these people decide it's a good idea to take concrete saws to the mess to cut it up into smaller pieces. Or if they eat it. If the workers are eating the corium then the cesium and other nasty stuff in that will kill them before the plutonium will.
Also, if we turn this over to the Japanese government who are they going to have work on the site? So TEPCO fires all the people there and the government goes looking for out of work nuclear power experts from where now? Yep, the same people working on it now will be working on it then.
This would be just like when the TSA took over airport security in the USA. All those security people were given fancy new uniforms, and now collect a pay check from the government instead of the airport, doing the same thing they were before. The incompetence from the TSA comes from the people that they chose to hire, and those people came from the pool of those willing to do airport security.
Where would the Japanese government find a pool of people willing to work at Fukushima? From the pool of people that work there now. Changing who pays the bills is not going to fix this.
Sorry folks, this is the best we got.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Ever engage in histrionics?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If the engineer is uncompetent, he will cause the train to crash, perhaps killing hundreds of people. Not ot worry though, bcause the free market will kick into action, and the survivors and relatives of the survivors will select for different railways. If these railways have poor engineers, with similar fatality rates, the process will continue untl the free and unregulated market gives us a competent railroad, staffed by those engineers who were not so incompetent as to kill all their passengers.
I don't know why those stupid socialists cannot understand the infallibility of this.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They talk like all of the 6 units are equally damaged. Units 5 and 6 are, if not intact, in a good enough shape to be returned to be returned to commercial service like the surviving reactor from Chernobyl. The pool of unit 4 as been reinforced, and the structure, after having all the debris from the explosions removed, have a better chance to survive another quake. The building of Unit 2 is almost intact. Unit 3 is the one with the most damage, and have the crane and many large pieces of equipment and debris inside the spent fuel pool; that will be a real challenge. The good thing is that in Unit 4 they don't have to deal with the makeshift cooling equipment to the damaged cores and the radiation coming out from them. The task to clean up the mess in Fukushima I is actually easier in Unit 4, thats why they starting with the fuel removal from the spent fuel pools there.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Hm, I was trying to make the point that the company should have hired a competent engineer in the first place, and that no amount of thought by committee would substitute for that. For the most part, that is exactly what railroads do in the United States. Becoming an engineer is an exceedingly rigorous process, and remaining one is the same. There is a federal license involved, but only having one of those is about like applying to the job and just calling yourself an engineer. Railroads have a huge monetary interest in trains never crashing, and staff is hired accordingly, before accidents happen.
You should really read a bit more text on the difference between liberty and oppression than Ayn Rand. Your ignorance is chilling. Arguments based on such ignorance typically appear to be straw man at best (present a mindless Objectivist as characteristic Libertarian, lambaste Libertarianisim, rinse, repeat), but I suspect that you consider this argument to be in earnest. Would you like to change somebody's mind instead of preaching to your proverbial choir? Spend some time learning the difference between Objectivisim and Libertarianisim, and how they overlap in some trivial areas, but mostly are totally different things. Then you can criticize each philosophy separately, in an honest way.
Again, I see no evidence for the assertions made. Where is that evidence?
Before coming to terms with what's happening now, you need to understand the history. Look at the historical evidence yourself and then consider what is happening now. Photographic and other evidence
Even the notoriosly inefficient Soviet government managed to contain the Chernobyl accident much quicker than Tepco has. The government has access to powers that come handy in an emergency such as this.
I have no idea what this incoherent ranting is.
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The alternative to private is government, which aren't exactly known for allowing the people to know the screwed up stuff they're doing.
always the same, ultra-capitalist companies (banks, nuclear power plant operators) mess stuff up big time and once the profits are reaped by the bosses and the system crashes, they cry for the government to help and patch everything up again - spend billions of our all money - because the companies and people who pulled out literally billions upon billions of profits cant be bothered to do their share.
I wasn't laughing at his/her nuclear terminology; on the Internet it's difficult to see if people are joking sometimes (it's called Poe's law) and especially on Slashdot people can sometimes say quite sick things. I thought he/she was referring to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is also a likely interpretation of the sentence "We have had a lot of experience with nukes", and my first reaction was "what a sick bastard!".
Do you like Harry Potter? I'll try to elaborate:
In "the Goblet of Fire", there is a scene in ch. 14 where the faux Mad-Eye Moody talks to Neville Longbottom in class:
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Well the answer to "why" is to prevent this very situation. Since it wasn't being decommissioned they should have built a higher seawall, there is no acceptable excuse for this.
Sure, there is. This is 2013. It's not 2008. Get into your time machine and provide that absence of an excuse. In the meantime, hindsight != foresight. All this thundering about "no acceptable excuse" ignores that in the absence of foreknowledge of the earthquake, it would have happened anyway, because as I noted, the plant was being decommission. There's no case to be made for spending a lot of money to prevent a small chance of failure.
Even the small chance of a massive failure?
I go off of evidence. The evidence for this danger was in geological science and historical data. I get really tired of people ranting about "hindsight != foresight" who couldn't even figure out basic risk management. Risk management can handle long term risks as well as short term ones.
Your replies highlight contradiction. On one hand you assert that I must do risk analysis for a disaster, that should never have happened, with such long and far reaching consequences and on the other assert that TEPCO, who have many Nuclear reactors, could not have possibly foreseen this occurring otherwise why would they take such a massive risk. Whilst risk analysis is not my core profession it's hard to believe that a Monte Carlo analysis, for example, didn't reveal the current state as a potential consequences of a lack of action on the seawall or backup-generators. The implication is that TEPCO didn't perform any risk analysis or, they did and just didn't deem it neccessary to take any action on the seawall and the back-up generators. Either one would have prevented this situation, ergo NONFEASANCE ergo criminal negligence. As I have said even after decommissioning, the reactor still requires seawall and backup generators for another decade to prevent the same situation.
And I don't need a time machine, the science was available well before 2008, the evidence suggest it just wasn't used, so even if I did have a time machine the current state of affairs suggests I would have been ignored as this is simply an example of TEPCO not being prepared to mitigate the risk they faced operating the reactor. "Thundering" - well not really. Whilst I understand basic risk analysis, I also understand the operating parameters of the machine and, the basic biology of the consequences. That's why there is no acceptable excuse. GE told TEPCO how to run the reactors. They didn't do it and now the west coast of the US and the entire Pacific Ocean will carry the radio isotopes in increasing volumes until this situation is permanenty resolved.
And the longer it takes the worse it will be which is why we need not only Japanese Government intervention but assistance from every nation that shares the pacfic ocean as this is no longer just a Japanese issue.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Ok, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
If there is no danger why do anything at all? So there must be some danger otherwise why not just bull doze the entire thing into the ocean?
You're probably not aware that radioactive elements accumulate in the food chain like some other dangerous chemicals like Poly Chloride Biphenyls. However radioactive isotopes also analogue a variety of elements that living creatures need to survive. Compounding this further they are emmiters of alpha, beta and, gamma radiation at various energetic levels.
So, pu-239 presents to the metabolism as a micro-nutrient. In Plutonium's case it presents as Iron to a metabolism. In the ocean a *lack* of iron is what stops metabolic processes, so Iron is readily absorbed ergo Plutonium is readily absorbed. So a small sea creature absorbs the plutonium and it gets eaten by steadily larger creatures, like a fish and then it's in the human food chain. Considering the size and variety of the human food chain, this is inevitable more than once.
This is the main reason to arrest the flow of Fukushima cooling water into the ocean, as plutonium is only one of the elements that it contains that has this property - but I'll follow with this single radioisotope as an example.
As we've discussed previously, a single micro gram of plutonium is a fatal dose to a human being when ingested. As more isotopes are released into the environment the likelihood of exposure increases. The amount of time it takes to move through the food chain introduces a random amount of time before eventually ingested - by an actual person. From there a gestation time passes, like the flu is approximately 7 days, cancer is approximately 6 years. So even if someone ingests something immediately from Fukushima you still have a 6 year wait before you notice aything wrong.
Depending on the radionuclide, there are different cancers, radon 220 that causes lung cancer, or radium 226 that causes bone cancers, strontium 90, americium, iodine 131, cesium 137, the list goes on. The exposure vectors are many and varied. What has protected us is the likelihood of encountering one was low. Everyday this continues the possibility increases.
For airborne fallout, say just like TMI, the jetstream was the perfect carrier to the west coast of the US ensuring good coverage of land based produce. A cow eats radioactive grass, accumulates, say, strontium 90 in the milk, the milk is made into chocolate and you eat it in one of those multi-colored candy covered chocolate treats you so enjoy. Do you enjoy sushi? You can be exposed one or multiple times and after you die cremation makes the radioisotope airborne fallout amd decay allows it back into the watertable.
As for the risk, it's somewhere above 0% that some people will be exposed. However using an established case of Chernobyl. 5% of a 160 ton Nuclear reactor core that was about to be refueled - let's call it 100 tons, that's 5 tons of radioactive core into the atmosphere. At conservative estimates thats 5000,000,000,000 fatal doses. If we accept that an extremely conservative estimate of 1% of this makes it into the food chain via bio-accumulation and of that a conservative estimate of 1% of people are exposed and a conservative 1% of those exposed actually get some sort of fatal cancer that's 5,000,000 fatalities.
The difference is Chernobyl was land locked, but Fukushima is right next to the ocean and radio isotopes are finding their way into the Pacific ocean everyday. Fukushima is a slower disaster than Chernobyl, the difference is that the risk of a plutonium fire exists - which is why so much water is being used
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Going back to school and learning to read is an option. Have you considered it? The source is quite clear to me...
It's not a matter of not being able to read; it's a matter of reading clownshoes logic with no basis in reality and barely a fixed basis in any coherent form of bullshit. It's like the words have meaning, but the meaning is disconnected from anything sane and sensible.
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and many more questions to be answered, but most conveniently ignored by the ignorati-media...
How do you explain the thermonuclear-scale explosion of Krakatoa? I mean ridiculous, sea water running into hot lava causing a steam release that detonated the island? Everyone knows steam is harmless. It's not like nuclear piles are hot and could have caused a pressurized steam build-up in a reactor.
And of course, you're right. The government can create earthquakes with their magic space beams that they got from unicorn aliens.
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