We can say, from what we know, is that TEPCO willfully ignored known lessons and colluded with the government regulator to prevent regulation being created. Therefore it is charitable to say the nuclear industry learned nothing.
We also know that this collusion was irrelevant to the Fukushima accident. We also know that collusion with regulators wasn't the cause of the accident at Chernobyl either. So no, "learned nothing" is an empty assertion.
Unfortunately TEPCO also neglected to make improvements to the sea wall precluding that option to themselves and effectively neutering the triple redundancy you speak of.
What neglect? The research that indicated this was a problem was done in 2001. The regulatory agency didn't get around to determining that was something to look at until around 2006 and TEPCO did the research a couple years later which I gather concluded that that the Fukushima sea wall was too low for a 1 in 500 year tsunami (IIRC). Which was kind of irrelevant in that the plant was originally going to be decommissioned starting in 2011. Seriously, step through this time line, keeping in mind that both they didn't have access to your amazing powers of hindsight and nuclear power decision making is very conservative and deliberate, precisely because hasty, impromptu decision making is considered extremely negligent.
I believe it is INSANE to point at those two reactor facilities and claim nuclear power is safe. What it shows is that the organizational systems that we have created are simply too prone to corruption to be trusted to run nuclear power stations. Maybe we need to step back from nuclear, not permanently, look at the industry as a whole and redesign it. Take a focused look at the waste storage issue, solve that, decommission a bunch of old reactors and figure out what infrastructure is required to operate nuclear sustainably.
Which just shows how little thought you put into your beliefs. Rare, infrequent accidents that just aren't that dangerous are far less harmful than the frequent, lethal accidents that plague most forms of power generation.
Alternatively we don't understand the full consequences of the nuclear industry yet.
It's a lot easier to conceptualize a person falling off their solar roof than to conceptualize the long term consequences of large scale industrial releases of radionuclides into the environment. It's fair to say that the nuclear PR machine plays on this which is why people don't trust those sorts of claims, people notice the inconsistencies amongst the motherhood statements and look for the gotcha.
Your observation is irrelevant since we can conceptualize "large scale industrial releases of radionuclides" even if it is a little bit harder than the idea of people falling off of roofs. More importantly, we can actually observe multiple such releases. They just haven't been that bad. The primary conclusion has been that you find more incidents of cancer if you look for it, than if you don't. World-shattering stuff that.
I described the fundamental principals of nuclear safety which you seem to want to ignore.
You should too. That's why, for example, Fukushima received prior to the earthquake a significant extension on life despite because an older, less safe design. Those same "principles" prevented newer, safer nuclear plants from being constructed (a whole generation of Japanese nuclear plants in design or under construction were wiped out in 1995-2005) while requiring older plants to continue operating beyond their design lifespan. Similarly, those "principles" delayed reevaluation of the tsunami threat when new research was published in 2001.
Second, actual risk analysis should be done including learning from the past. Here, it's worth noting that Fukushima had followed the very principles you claim are fundamental including at least two back up systems for tsunami (three actually, counting your hardening buildings as a system). And at the time the plant was constructed, Fukushima would have withstood a 1 in 100 year tsunami event and earthquake.
But it the end, this particular plant was not designed to withstand a tsunami.
Which remains bullshit. It was designed to withstand some pretty high tsunami (about 5 meters), but not one this high (as high as 15 meters). Please recall that a number of nuclear plants did withstand this particular tsunami and there were no other cases of partial inundation. So we know that nuclear plants can both be designed to withstand tsunami and succeed at that task.
Yes, a higher wall preventing the tsunami from hitting the plant could have averted things, and yes, higher generators could have helped in the response, but that doesn't mean either is good enough.
Either solution in isolation would have prevented all of the melt downs, long term mass evacuations, and clean up costs that are somewhere north of $10 billion. Saying that the stark difference between a non-accident and multiple reactor meltdowns isn't "good enough" shows the utter bankruptcy and absurdity of your position.
First you should distinguish the plant from the siting characteristics. GE designed the plant, not the site. GE will tell you plants of that design are not intended to withstand such a tsunami. They will show how they can withstand earthquakes of a given magnitude (with margin), tornadoes and tornadoes missiles (with margin), etc, but NOT tsunamis that suddenly deluge the plant with destructive force. It is the responsibility of the licensee to put the plant where it cannot experience such an event, or in other words they must determine that event is not credible at the location.
You're still doing it. Really what is so hard to grasp about a sea wall high enough to prevent a 1 in 500 year event, which incidentally would prevent the 2011 accident? Why are we to blame site location? It's irrational.
Clearly the wall did not make the event non-credible. Even a higher wall might not.
Actually, yes, it does because it shows that they were designing the defenses of the plant for large tsunami. That means, in your lingo, that the tsunami event is credible.
Nuclear plant safety systems are built with layers of protection and redundancy against design basis events. A single wall, even if high enough, does not meet that criteria. Done properly there would need to be assurance that the plant would remain safe even with a wall failure.
Now, we're moving the goal posts. Even if we were to take your concern seriously, there are several additional ways to provide that redundancy and the Fukushima plant used at least one of them (emergency generators).
The engineering lesson learned is to not place the plant where it can be deluged by a Tsunami. If you want to count on a wall for that, you'd better get it high enough.
So why is the lesson move the plant rather than the more obvious build a higher wall that actually covers reasonable risks that the location has seen over appropriate time scales?
So you want the power plant operator to operate at break-even or even profit loss before you are satisfied?
I think it's rather obvious. They don't want the plant to operate at all. The concern over safety is just the pretext. Making nuclear plants too expensive to operate is the end goal.
You don't place a plant where it will experiences a credible event it is not designed for.
Fukushima has yet to experience a credible event it was not designed for. It is absurd to claim that Fukushima shouldn't be there just because the design was a bit inadequate for the credible event it experienced. There are two relatively simple fixes that would separately prevent further such accidents, a higher sea wall and better distribution of emergency power.
made worse by the destructive force of the tsunami (which is actually a different event altogether than simple flooding as it also comes with destructive force).
Simple flooding often does as well, sometimes considerably more than the tsunami brought to bear on Fukushima. And the existing sea wall would have absorbed or reflected a considerable portion of the energy of the tsunami. That's in part why the reactors were still there afterward.
My view is that this is normal engineering. Mistakes and unknowns happen. The wise person learns from it and implements the necessary adaptations and fixes, rather than merely deciding without even a shred of rational justification that the activity in question is completely unsafe for a given location merely because something bad happened.
If Greece were remotely socialist, they would have seceded from the EU and NATO five years ago.
Because...?
"Syriza" and "radical left" are frequently used in conjunction, but that means fuck-all when you go out of your way to pass even more draconian measures than the previous government.
Socialist governments do draconian measures too. Not seeing the point of the argument.
I guess you don't realize that the world economy is the driver for population reduction right now. Every developed world country has negative population growth of its native population. Women working and greater wealth is the universal answer to overpopulation. And the world economy delivers that.
The ability to save money is directly proportional to how much money one makes. If you don't make much money, you can't save much money.
Notice that the previous claimed that a $50k salary was saving $500 per year, a $100k salary was saving $3k a year and the $250k salary was saving $25k a year. I don't make anywhere near $50k yet I'm saving more than the alleged $100k salary is.
It doesn't take libertarian magic dust to note that the savings rates mentioned are horrifically bad.
Take the money held by the leisure class and move it into infrastructure and consumer spending
The thing is, that's where the leisure class's money already is. They're either investing it in businesses (the most common sort of infrastructure out there) or somebody else's wages (which apparently go almost exclusively into consumer spending, if the previous figure is to be believed). Government certainly hasn't shown a talent at moving money into infrastructure.
And what again is supposed to be the benefit of consumer spending?
A person earning $50k a year spends 99% of his income
A person earning $100k a year spends 97% of their income
A person earning $250k a year spends 90% of their income
Wow, that's remarkably bad, if true. They should be saving a lot more.
Money not spent on new goods is wasted in a consumer society therefore the top brackets need to be taxed heavily to compensate for their lack of spending
Dumb idea. A consumer society is a terrible thing to encourage. Just think about the consequences of having those high incomes above with virtually no savings. What happens when that person loses their job or wants to do something ambitious? Sorry, they consumed it instead.
I don't think we need to encourage or discourage consumption, but we sure do need to encourage savings and investment, because that goes beyond satisfying some near future need.
Demand is a buyer's willingness and ability to pay a price for a specific quantity of a good or service. Demand refers to how much (quantity) of a product or service is desired by buyers at various prices.
And we're specifying prices. Not the first time I've seen a Wikipedia article issue multiple definitions for the subject of the article.
Realistic conflict theory is much more than just "duh, ig/og".
Realistic conflict theory has nothing to do with this situation.
The complexity is of why competing cliques are formed in the first place - the explanations in terms of racial/gender (both left and right) theories appear indeed simple, but biased to the point those also completely contradict empirical research in social sciences.
Which, let us note, hasn't been relevant at all in this discussion. There's always going to be clique, identity, and ethnic formation. It's not even a bad thing since common tribulations and issues can more readily be dealt with and it's an important way to socialize and get a sense of the world and the past.
We aren't speaking of why clique formation happens, but enduring double standards in the name of equality. That's classic us-vs-them with a common hypocritical rationalization.
Does the Fairy Rand Grandmother come down and sprinkle Libertarian Magic Dust to ensure that people flying to a hearing/wedding/concert/meeting/operation do not get bumped from flights?
Of course, yes. For example, asking for volunteers and offering something valuable in exchange is how the magic Rand fairy gets people who don't mind getting bumped. For all the talk, it rarely happens that someone with a desperate need gets bumped. And even when it does happen, airlines will often go out of their way to assist truly desperate people.
Moving on, bumping happens anyway due to cancellations of flights. The magic Rand fairy has no more figured out how to make a broken down plane flight-worthy or fix the weather than any other fairies out there.
Price and demand can vary. Asserting that demand (not the demand curve!) won't decline when price is increased is completely missing the point of the supply and demand model.
Yea, all those Trump detractors are real douches for actually saying anything negative about the man. If you don't agree with a candidates views then don't vote for them. Simple as that. And they should shut up for the next four years because voting is the only time they should say anything negative about a candidate.
My view is that when we in the US stop saying negative things about candidates, even potential ones, is when democracy is over.
Yet you can't be bothered to explain this alleged complexity. My view is that it really is that simple.
it means a lot of people completely missed the point of having protected classes.
No, I don't think we're missing the point. You might be though. Here's the sort of protected classes I think should exist: children, endangered species. But when you start picking and choosing which ethnic groups to protect while other ethnic groups aren't even recognized, it's quite clear that's the usual in-group/out-group dynamics going on.
THEIR claim is that unused seats are inefficient and increase the price of seats.
Which is correct, let us note. Unused seats really are inefficient and do increase the ticket price.
NOT They can get more revenue by overselling seats if someone doesn't turn up. Which, by the way, is deliberate fraud.
Words have meaning. Fraud doesn't mean what you claim here since no misrepresentation of the business has happened for the past half century or more. But yes, overselling seats does reduce the cost per passenger and hence, in the usual competitive market result in a price decline of tickets.
No, the original poster is right. Revenue still counts even if it is from customers who didn't show up and that means a cheaper airline ticket for everyone.
The demand would not change at all if you change the price. It is only that more and more people can not afford the price anymore, so probably the inquiries and google searches for such a flight go down leading to your false assumption the demand would have vanished.
So the demand does go down as expected. You're conflating the demand curve with demand.
The problem is they don't bear the true cost of not honoring their contract with the flight. If the airlines had to pay the cost in lost wages, or deals gone bad, or job loss or whatever, they'd stop pulling this nonsense.
What "true cost"? If they had to bear such a "true cost", then you would have to pay such a "true cost". You and your employer could always just put some slack into your schedule so that a late flight isn't job ending or whatever.
Slashdot Mirror
We can say, from what we know, is that TEPCO willfully ignored known lessons and colluded with the government regulator to prevent regulation being created. Therefore it is charitable to say the nuclear industry learned nothing.
We also know that this collusion was irrelevant to the Fukushima accident. We also know that collusion with regulators wasn't the cause of the accident at Chernobyl either. So no, "learned nothing" is an empty assertion.
Unfortunately TEPCO also neglected to make improvements to the sea wall precluding that option to themselves and effectively neutering the triple redundancy you speak of.
What neglect? The research that indicated this was a problem was done in 2001. The regulatory agency didn't get around to determining that was something to look at until around 2006 and TEPCO did the research a couple years later which I gather concluded that that the Fukushima sea wall was too low for a 1 in 500 year tsunami (IIRC). Which was kind of irrelevant in that the plant was originally going to be decommissioned starting in 2011. Seriously, step through this time line, keeping in mind that both they didn't have access to your amazing powers of hindsight and nuclear power decision making is very conservative and deliberate, precisely because hasty, impromptu decision making is considered extremely negligent.
I believe it is INSANE to point at those two reactor facilities and claim nuclear power is safe. What it shows is that the organizational systems that we have created are simply too prone to corruption to be trusted to run nuclear power stations. Maybe we need to step back from nuclear, not permanently, look at the industry as a whole and redesign it. Take a focused look at the waste storage issue, solve that, decommission a bunch of old reactors and figure out what infrastructure is required to operate nuclear sustainably.
Which just shows how little thought you put into your beliefs. Rare, infrequent accidents that just aren't that dangerous are far less harmful than the frequent, lethal accidents that plague most forms of power generation.
Alternatively we don't understand the full consequences of the nuclear industry yet.
It's a lot easier to conceptualize a person falling off their solar roof than to conceptualize the long term consequences of large scale industrial releases of radionuclides into the environment. It's fair to say that the nuclear PR machine plays on this which is why people don't trust those sorts of claims, people notice the inconsistencies amongst the motherhood statements and look for the gotcha.
Your observation is irrelevant since we can conceptualize "large scale industrial releases of radionuclides" even if it is a little bit harder than the idea of people falling off of roofs. More importantly, we can actually observe multiple such releases. They just haven't been that bad. The primary conclusion has been that you find more incidents of cancer if you look for it, than if you don't. World-shattering stuff that.
I described the fundamental principals of nuclear safety which you seem to want to ignore.
You should too. That's why, for example, Fukushima received prior to the earthquake a significant extension on life despite because an older, less safe design. Those same "principles" prevented newer, safer nuclear plants from being constructed (a whole generation of Japanese nuclear plants in design or under construction were wiped out in 1995-2005) while requiring older plants to continue operating beyond their design lifespan. Similarly, those "principles" delayed reevaluation of the tsunami threat when new research was published in 2001.
Second, actual risk analysis should be done including learning from the past. Here, it's worth noting that Fukushima had followed the very principles you claim are fundamental including at least two back up systems for tsunami (three actually, counting your hardening buildings as a system). And at the time the plant was constructed, Fukushima would have withstood a 1 in 100 year tsunami event and earthquake.
But it the end, this particular plant was not designed to withstand a tsunami.
Which remains bullshit. It was designed to withstand some pretty high tsunami (about 5 meters), but not one this high (as high as 15 meters). Please recall that a number of nuclear plants did withstand this particular tsunami and there were no other cases of partial inundation. So we know that nuclear plants can both be designed to withstand tsunami and succeed at that task.
Yes, a higher wall preventing the tsunami from hitting the plant could have averted things, and yes, higher generators could have helped in the response, but that doesn't mean either is good enough.
Either solution in isolation would have prevented all of the melt downs, long term mass evacuations, and clean up costs that are somewhere north of $10 billion. Saying that the stark difference between a non-accident and multiple reactor meltdowns isn't "good enough" shows the utter bankruptcy and absurdity of your position.
First you should distinguish the plant from the siting characteristics. GE designed the plant, not the site. GE will tell you plants of that design are not intended to withstand such a tsunami. They will show how they can withstand earthquakes of a given magnitude (with margin), tornadoes and tornadoes missiles (with margin), etc, but NOT tsunamis that suddenly deluge the plant with destructive force. It is the responsibility of the licensee to put the plant where it cannot experience such an event, or in other words they must determine that event is not credible at the location.
You're still doing it. Really what is so hard to grasp about a sea wall high enough to prevent a 1 in 500 year event, which incidentally would prevent the 2011 accident? Why are we to blame site location? It's irrational.
Clearly the wall did not make the event non-credible. Even a higher wall might not.
Actually, yes, it does because it shows that they were designing the defenses of the plant for large tsunami. That means, in your lingo, that the tsunami event is credible.
Nuclear plant safety systems are built with layers of protection and redundancy against design basis events. A single wall, even if high enough, does not meet that criteria. Done properly there would need to be assurance that the plant would remain safe even with a wall failure.
Now, we're moving the goal posts. Even if we were to take your concern seriously, there are several additional ways to provide that redundancy and the Fukushima plant used at least one of them (emergency generators).
The engineering lesson learned is to not place the plant where it can be deluged by a Tsunami. If you want to count on a wall for that, you'd better get it high enough.
So why is the lesson move the plant rather than the more obvious build a higher wall that actually covers reasonable risks that the location has seen over appropriate time scales?
Every location with have something wrong with it.
They did not design them to be suddenly deluged, add all the margin you want and it won't matter.
You miss the obvious. Enough margin and the deluge doesn't happen.
So you want the power plant operator to operate at break-even or even profit loss before you are satisfied?
I think it's rather obvious. They don't want the plant to operate at all. The concern over safety is just the pretext. Making nuclear plants too expensive to operate is the end goal.
You don't place a plant where it will experiences a credible event it is not designed for.
Fukushima has yet to experience a credible event it was not designed for. It is absurd to claim that Fukushima shouldn't be there just because the design was a bit inadequate for the credible event it experienced. There are two relatively simple fixes that would separately prevent further such accidents, a higher sea wall and better distribution of emergency power.
made worse by the destructive force of the tsunami (which is actually a different event altogether than simple flooding as it also comes with destructive force).
Simple flooding often does as well, sometimes considerably more than the tsunami brought to bear on Fukushima. And the existing sea wall would have absorbed or reflected a considerable portion of the energy of the tsunami. That's in part why the reactors were still there afterward.
My view is that this is normal engineering. Mistakes and unknowns happen. The wise person learns from it and implements the necessary adaptations and fixes, rather than merely deciding without even a shred of rational justification that the activity in question is completely unsafe for a given location merely because something bad happened.
If Greece were remotely socialist, they would have seceded from the EU and NATO five years ago.
Because...?
"Syriza" and "radical left" are frequently used in conjunction, but that means fuck-all when you go out of your way to pass even more draconian measures than the previous government.
Socialist governments do draconian measures too. Not seeing the point of the argument.
The Five Eyes isn't an obvious attempt at cleaning house
Yet.
I guess you don't realize that the world economy is the driver for population reduction right now. Every developed world country has negative population growth of its native population. Women working and greater wealth is the universal answer to overpopulation. And the world economy delivers that.
The ability to save money is directly proportional to how much money one makes. If you don't make much money, you can't save much money.
Notice that the previous claimed that a $50k salary was saving $500 per year, a $100k salary was saving $3k a year and the $250k salary was saving $25k a year. I don't make anywhere near $50k yet I'm saving more than the alleged $100k salary is.
It doesn't take libertarian magic dust to note that the savings rates mentioned are horrifically bad.
Take the money held by the leisure class and move it into infrastructure and consumer spending
The thing is, that's where the leisure class's money already is. They're either investing it in businesses (the most common sort of infrastructure out there) or somebody else's wages (which apparently go almost exclusively into consumer spending, if the previous figure is to be believed). Government certainly hasn't shown a talent at moving money into infrastructure.
And what again is supposed to be the benefit of consumer spending?
A person earning $50k a year spends 99% of his income
A person earning $100k a year spends 97% of their income
A person earning $250k a year spends 90% of their income
Wow, that's remarkably bad, if true. They should be saving a lot more.
Money not spent on new goods is wasted in a consumer society therefore the top brackets need to be taxed heavily to compensate for their lack of spending
Dumb idea. A consumer society is a terrible thing to encourage. Just think about the consequences of having those high incomes above with virtually no savings. What happens when that person loses their job or wants to do something ambitious? Sorry, they consumed it instead.
I don't think we need to encourage or discourage consumption, but we sure do need to encourage savings and investment, because that goes beyond satisfying some near future need.
Demand is a buyer's willingness and ability to pay a price for a specific quantity of a good or service. Demand refers to how much (quantity) of a product or service is desired by buyers at various prices.
And we're specifying prices. Not the first time I've seen a Wikipedia article issue multiple definitions for the subject of the article.
Why are you saying "demand" instead of quantity demanded?
Because I'm lazy. And since when did that level of pedantry matter? Why am I "saying" when clearly, I'm "typing".
Realistic conflict theory is much more than just "duh, ig/og".
Realistic conflict theory has nothing to do with this situation.
The complexity is of why competing cliques are formed in the first place - the explanations in terms of racial/gender (both left and right) theories appear indeed simple, but biased to the point those also completely contradict empirical research in social sciences.
Which, let us note, hasn't been relevant at all in this discussion. There's always going to be clique, identity, and ethnic formation. It's not even a bad thing since common tribulations and issues can more readily be dealt with and it's an important way to socialize and get a sense of the world and the past.
We aren't speaking of why clique formation happens, but enduring double standards in the name of equality. That's classic us-vs-them with a common hypocritical rationalization.
Does the Fairy Rand Grandmother come down and sprinkle Libertarian Magic Dust to ensure that people flying to a hearing/wedding/concert/meeting/operation do not get bumped from flights?
Of course, yes. For example, asking for volunteers and offering something valuable in exchange is how the magic Rand fairy gets people who don't mind getting bumped. For all the talk, it rarely happens that someone with a desperate need gets bumped. And even when it does happen, airlines will often go out of their way to assist truly desperate people.
Moving on, bumping happens anyway due to cancellations of flights. The magic Rand fairy has no more figured out how to make a broken down plane flight-worthy or fix the weather than any other fairies out there.
You haven't even shown there is a problem. Buzz off.
Price and demand can vary. Asserting that demand (not the demand curve!) won't decline when price is increased is completely missing the point of the supply and demand model.
Yea, all those Trump detractors are real douches for actually saying anything negative about the man. If you don't agree with a candidates views then don't vote for them. Simple as that. And they should shut up for the next four years because voting is the only time they should say anything negative about a candidate.
My view is that when we in the US stop saying negative things about candidates, even potential ones, is when democracy is over.
It's more complex than in-group/out-group.
Yet you can't be bothered to explain this alleged complexity. My view is that it really is that simple.
it means a lot of people completely missed the point of having protected classes.
No, I don't think we're missing the point. You might be though. Here's the sort of protected classes I think should exist: children, endangered species. But when you start picking and choosing which ethnic groups to protect while other ethnic groups aren't even recognized, it's quite clear that's the usual in-group/out-group dynamics going on.
THEIR claim is that unused seats are inefficient and increase the price of seats.
Which is correct, let us note. Unused seats really are inefficient and do increase the ticket price.
NOT They can get more revenue by overselling seats if someone doesn't turn up. Which, by the way, is deliberate fraud.
Words have meaning. Fraud doesn't mean what you claim here since no misrepresentation of the business has happened for the past half century or more. But yes, overselling seats does reduce the cost per passenger and hence, in the usual competitive market result in a price decline of tickets.
No, the original poster is right. Revenue still counts even if it is from customers who didn't show up and that means a cheaper airline ticket for everyone.
The demand would not change at all if you change the price. It is only that more and more people can not afford the price anymore, so probably the inquiries and google searches for such a flight go down leading to your false assumption the demand would have vanished.
So the demand does go down as expected. You're conflating the demand curve with demand.
The problem is they don't bear the true cost of not honoring their contract with the flight. If the airlines had to pay the cost in lost wages, or deals gone bad, or job loss or whatever, they'd stop pulling this nonsense.
What "true cost"? If they had to bear such a "true cost", then you would have to pay such a "true cost". You and your employer could always just put some slack into your schedule so that a late flight isn't job ending or whatever.
Because they tend to be more resource constrained and hence to spend more money (which is good for the economy) than the lenders.
Why is spending more money good for the economy? Is it good to force you to borrow as much as possible and then spend it rather than lend it?