Do you have any examples of any countries that have effective laws preventing a "revolving door" between employment by a regulatory body and employment by a regulated business? Any examples at all?
Did I imply that I did? Finding additional places that need to improve certainly wouldn't lessen the need, so I'm not sure what you point is. The post is meant as constructive criticism, not something to raise or lower the opinion of some country relative to others. Calling attention to a problem seems a positive step in encouraging positive changes.
Knowing very few specifics of how these things are done in other countries I'm left mostly with impressions of what others do, and what logically seems like good policy based on problems with regulation in other industries. Hopefully the unfortunate events in Japan will drive positive changes everywhere. That's at a technical level. And looking at the causes and handling of problems (in energy and in industry/government as a whole) may encourage reforms in other areas as well. People should know about these things. Democracy depends on well informed citizens to drive desirable choices. When we've got too much influence of money in politics and what's portrayed in the media, we've got a problem. We also need more diversity in the media.
Without know much about how things are handled in the EU, the impression I get is that government/industry is being held to a higher standard. For instance the German defense minister stepping down because of things he did in his college thesis doesn't seem like something that would happen in the U.S. (the stepping down, not the copying). I think there is a better citizen to industry ratio when it comes to control over regulations, and I think industry in the E.U. acts more positively (things like less outsourcing, more being deeply devoted to the education of young people). Hopefully the nations transitioning to democracy will be much better for it. It's a vulnerable time. I hope that their democracies end up truly representing the people. If their media and elections processes are influenced too much by money (perhaps even foreign corporate interests), they suffer. Let's all keep a watchful eye and support healthy democracy in all nations.
Some of the things posted about nuclear power are disturbing. Some of the problems are with the industry instead of just technical issues. Again that's a sign that the watchful eye of an informed public is needed. Though there are still problems, an installation such as Diablo Canyon is built far better than it would have been had the public not brought pressure. 40,000 at a local rally/concert, protests that included 40 college professors and the entire San Luis Obispo city council getting arrested. People spoke. The plant was better as a result. It costs far more when things aren't done right the first time. Maybe that's why the industry backed away from building more plants after Diablo Canyon.
Although supposedly ready for disasters, a mere winter storm was enough to do millions of dollars in damage to the breakwater protecting the plants' salt water intakes in the early days. Clearly the industry makes potentially serious mistakes. Radiation monitors taken out by heavy rain? Maybe it's not ready for a real tsunami.
There's also information that while true, is formulated in a falsely alarmist way.
Like, true fact coming from authoritative measurements: the Iodine-131 levels in Poland have risen some 1000-2000 times above their usual level. Conveniently omitted fact: that's still about 500-1000 times less than levels causing any measurable increase of risk of thyroid cancer.
You should provide a link to the source so that we can tell how much of the issue is what the source said, and how much might be in how you read it. There are a number of issues with what you said.
First off, in a normal location there isn't any "usual level" of Iodine-131 because it is something that has a short half life. And since the noise that's at the threshold of such measurements isn't a stable constant, saying 1000 or whatever times that isn't specific. Provide levels with units, and know the difference between a dose and a dose rate.
And what you say about levels causing a measurable increase in thyroid cancer needs to be qualified too. The risk is not the same for all individuals. It's far far higher for a fetus or a child. Since cancer may not show up for 10 or 20 years, and there are other risk factors, it being difficult to measure the harm doesn't mean there isn't any.
The NRC generally recognizes a zero-threshold proportional model for long-term risk from exposure. The more the exposure, the more the risk. The risk level for a particular condition plots to a line offset at zero exposure because is usually risk from other causes as well (chemical etc.). So radiation at any dose carries risk, it just may be very small. Doubling a small dose of radiation still doubles the risk. A dose in a single glass of milk would be a fixed amount. The doses are additive. How much does it matter? Well if the milk in an area is only affected for a short time, a given dose per glass is far less significant than if you get that dose every day. Some of the abnormal levels seen in some places are continuing for a longer time period than emergency plans called for. So in some areas outside the previous evacuation zone (and shelter inside zone) in Japan, people have been told they'll have about a month to evacuate. It's not that the radiation being released from the plant is increasing. Levels have been going down. The problem is that the dose people are getting is adding up, and in certain areas will be more than they wish to allow if they continue to stay. That's because the length of time that levels are up is longer than was expected.
Levels spiking in Poland are likely said to be insignificant risk not only because of the level, but because it probably a transient event from a passing air mass carrying material from one of the fires or small explosions. It tends to be worse when there is rain. It can bring more of the material down fairly abruptly. The rain falls on the grass, the cows eat the grass, then it is in the milk. Studies have shown that most of the cancer in Sweden years after Chernobyl was from fallout that occurred on a single day. It was a matter where the air currents were going and when and where the rain fell.
Low levels of long term increased cancer can be small enough to be indistinguishable from that caused by food additives, chemicals in water, and other pollution including smoke exposure. If there was reason to panic, we should have been doing it already. Some, in certain cases most, of the so-called background radiation isn't some normal thing from the earth or space, it's what's still around mostly from earlier in the atomic era when there was atmospheric testing going on, some messy processing facilities, WWII and various accidents.
So make no mistake about it, less is better but there is no reason to panic. The Russians have lifted advisories on going to Japan after finding that levels in Moscow were twice that of Tokyo. Japanese products are being well screened. They could use our business.
Their not involving people as much as they could goes beyond the foreign media and bloggers not being let into press conferences.
"Japan nuclear commission fails to send experts to Fukushima
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan has failed to send designated experts to Fukushima Prefecture to look into the crisis at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant even though a national disaster-preparedness plan requires it to do so, many of the experts said Saturday.
A commission spokesperson said problems following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami such as blackouts had discouraged it from sending any experts to Fukushima Prefecture, but many of the specialists and government officials questioned the claim.
The commission designates 40 nuclear accident experts including university professors and senior officials of relevant institutions as well as five others as members of its panel on emergency technical advice.
The disaster plan requires the commission to dispatch members of the panel to a location near an accident site. (follow link for the whole story)
They're looking into "the flow of retiring ministry officials to senior positions at the country's electric companies"
It seems like Japan isn't the only country that needs to prevent regulators from later taking jobs with the companies they were supposed to be tough with. They shouldn't be allowed to be paid lobbyists either.
To a great extent democracies depend on the media to put corporations and government in the spotlight for the public good. Reporters shouldn't be going to work for those they are reporting on.
But KSBY the NBC affiliate in San Luis Obispo county in California, home of the Diablo Canyon 2-unit power plant, has over the years had several of the newscasters hired by the utility P.G.& E. as PR people (including the one currently seen). KSBY is the only full power English speaking station in the county. Their reporting is very brief and lacks technical depth. They don't seem to do things like research NRC reports, mostly going . Although run by the same utility company, when the NTSB was starting hearings about the San Bruno gas pipeline explosion, all it got was a 20 second mention (Charlie Sheen got over 3 minutes the same day). No details of the streamed hearings or mention anything from the related documents documents (on the NTSB site) was broadcast. They say the plants says it can handle a tsunami, but didn't mention that three of the plants radiation monitors were taken out by "heavy rain". There is talk about more earthquake studies, but no mention of a local tsunami in 1812. Nice people at the station, but should they be allowed to work for things like the power plant? Are they doing all that's needed in "Americas' Happiest City"? (in fairness, smaller market t.v. has a lot of other competition for a slice of a fairly small pie. No doubt resources are limited. They let a well liked newscaster go to cut costs.)
"On December 21, 1812, one of the largest earthquakes in California history completely destroyed the first Mission along with most of Santa Barbara. With an estimated magnitude of 7.2, and a hypothesized epicenter near Santa Cruz Island, the quake also produced a tsunami which carried water all the way to modern-day Anapamu Street, and carried a ship a half-mile up Refugio Canyon." https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/History_of_Santa_Barbara,_California LA Times article on tsunami (pdf) http://www.usc.edu/
The problem is that they try to stitch everyone back to windows.
Well if it is just to watch video, being stitched to the xbox 360 may not be such an ideal thing either if you care about the environment and watch quite a bit. For light use it is fine, but beyond that it becomes a bit like using a power hungry Pentium 4 desktop to replace a 5 Watt router.
The xbox uses 150 Watts or so, the current generation of the Apple TV about 2.5 Watts (yes there's a decimal point in there!). Those figures don't count the displays of course. An iPad uses about 6 Watts including the screen. For a mobile device, it does surprisingly well with games. A Wii (without display) uses somewhere around 15 Watts. PS3 power consumption is quite high, similar to the xbox 360.
It's desirable to be aware of how much power things use so we can make the optimal choices to match our needs. It's interesting to entertain the idea of using technology that one might be able to sustain in a home with solar panels or in a city feed from low-impact sources.
In my opinion, it will come when we are projecting the image directly to the eyes...like wearing wrapping glasses with a separate image per eye.
Shutter glasses basicly do give you separate images for each eye. What's on the screen alternates between one and the other, and the LCD shutters rapidly alternate exposure to each eye in step with that. What someone with no shutters gets it a sum of the two perspective though, so things with depth information may look a bit off. Seems like a good thing for games, but too much focus on effects instead of the script when it comes to tv and movies. If they want to make existing sets obsolete, they should change U.S. broadcasts from MPEG2 to h.264 AVC and perhaps be able to pull off 1080p in the same bandwidth. (That really should have been just a firmware update) Get rid of the motion blur!
Or maybe what we really need is something totally new. How about a quadraphonic telephone? (use caution if you ask for 5 + 1 as the + 1 may be some kind of vibrating plug...). And could some genetic engineer please figure out how to give us four ears? Maybe an eye in the back of the head too. Be in the movie and see what's behind you. (Have fun producing that...) Just as bad as those critters that can point their eyes in different directions.
It would be interesting to see a comparison of their usage patterns. I suspect they're not as far along in the consumption curve, with few tablets and less of things like local native-language streaming HD video but I have not see stats. Hopefully they'll remain well served as time goes on.
On other advantage we could see from enhanced WiFi or similar supplementation is much lower costs. If it were really widespread, some might not have to pay the likes of AT&T at all for mobile service. Since Google is more into ads while Apple gets a cut of carrier revenue, such a development is more likely on Android. Google has the infrastructure to put in some of the network if they wanted to. We probably could have essentially free (ad supported) mobile telcom and net access. Now that's a way to sell a differentiated device!
T-Mobile has been one to embrace falling back on free connectivity. Who else thinks AT&T would be quick to kill that if they buy them???
They took our free (as in beer) tv spectrum, how about us getting some other great free service with some of that?
Amazon is a personification of the spirit of the Internet, which is one of true democracy, access to the means of distribution, and rapid evolution
Spirit of the internet? Some on seeing Amazons' passing judgement on Wikileaks might think it more aligned with a certain corporate spirit than a spirit of the internet. If they're really support democracy, which can't function properly with a poorly informed public, maybe they shouldn't be the ones to decide whether or not someone is a journalist.
Hardware doesn't make spirit. What people are doing, and the thoughts that drive the choices made probably do.
They are still contented to profit from the sale of books about WikiLeaks.
Hmmmm, so some of that valuable waste can be recycled into kitchen countertops.... sounds like more WSJ junk science to me. The author of a recent WSJ piece that was story here (possibly the same guy?) was on the BBC explaining that boric acid was used to clean debris from the water jets used for cooling in reactors. Wrong. Boron and boron compounds are used because they absorb neutrons which helps to stop fission in a quantity of nuclear material that would otherwise go critical (resulting in much more heat and radiation than that see from decay).
Recycling is a good way to come up with additional fuel, but even the French (the word leaders in the field) only recycle about 1% of their fuel rods. (that figure was reported March 18th 2011 on German Deutch Welle television) And even then, there is still considerable amount of highly dangerous material left afterwards to store. Even recycling involved expensive and energy intensive enhancement. The French are doing a great deal of research, but even for them, the breeder reactors which would more efficiently convert spent material into useful fuel are not yet commercially viable. (I have not seen any news reports saying one way or the other if the earthquake led to any issues at Japans' experimental breeder reactor which is in one of the hard-hit prefects)
Unit 4 at the troubled plant in Japan had an explosion blowing the concrete from the upper walls and roof, exposing the fire in the fuel pond to the environment. There is considerable concern now that the weight of added cooling water in the pond may be too much for the damaged building to support. With far more fuel in the pond than a reactor normally holds there is danger that fuel piling up on the bottom from damaged rods could reach criticality, greatly increasing the release of dangerous materials and complicating an already difficult clean up. All that from a unit that didn't even have fuel in the reactor.
Unit 3 contains MOX (mixed oxide) fuel apparently provided by the French. If I understand correctly, with the plutonium component it is more neutron sensitive (releases more neutrons when hit by a given number). That makes it a little harder to control. Some older reactors can only use a smaller portion of the MOX type, or need additional control rods added. It may also be harder to prevent criticality in fuel that piles up from damaged rods. With the very long half-life of plutonium it's also a very nasty thing to have in the environment. Recent NHK reports indicated testing was being done to measure levels, but no word of the results.
I think it is more than a bit twisted to be describing spent fuel as valuable when there is so much that it is a great liability for nearly all. But PR folks would rather talk about the stored material as a vaulted treasure instead of the nuclear graveyard many see it as.
Union of Concerned Scientists report on 14 nuclear near-missing in the U.S. (PDF, includes Diablo Canyon back up water system being non functional for 18 months, doesn't mention the recent defective motor with rotor slipping on shaft that also affected another plant)
The report does not say if the motor slippage could have been triggered by excessive stress from it still running at the end of travel due to improper calibration of limit switches or some other control system malfunction (Stuxnet etc). The report only treats it as a manufacturing defect. There are a number of the motors at other plants and one other has previous been observed with the same failure. If it is something that is only needed in an emergency, some may not encounter a defect beforehand and have a backup system that doesn't work.
The technical issue really isn't one of competence either. It's a matter of the math... the number of people being served by a site, and the finite bandwidth. Reusing the same frequency spectrum with more and more sites covering less and less area each, is about the only way for THEM to handle a greater load.
Part of a practical solution should be done at the user end. Forcing lower use by things like charging extra or tethering doesn't go over very well. Lowering bandwidth with ad blockers would help some. Avoiding supporting older video codecs is desirable. If video that wasn't to be watched immediately could be intelligently fetched at off-peak hours or during dips, that would help.
There's generally a tendency among ISPs to keep people from sharing their WiFi. At this point that's counterproductive. While sharing isn't likely to be the viral or identity theft threat some consumers might be thinking of, some newer technology to authenticate guests taking advantage of voluntary shared use is needed to deter things like problematic P2P traffic and child content abuses. A new breed of routers designed to safely offload much mobile device traffic onto WiFi could help immensely. Give those hosting hot spots with some sort of approved hardware incentives for doing so, something like credits towards either their home or mobile data plans. A properly designed router can insure that the host still gets ample bandwidth prioritized for their own use, handle authentication and logging/reporting of traffic, restrict ports as needed etc. It's a far far cheaper way of handling much of the load of what mobile users do, than just building more cell site capacity. Use it when a user is in a stable location compared to the hot spot. In some cities it might be cost effective to subsidize suitable hot spots on buses or trains.
There is no such thing as nuclear waste, everything that comes out of a used fuel rod is extremely useful, rare and precious and very expensive.
If it is really so useful in practice, why is so much in "temporary" storage after years and years with the amounts stored growing ever larger? Why have the U.S., Japan and many other countries "re-racked" their fuel ponds to make room for more at spacing closer than what the original designs required for safety?
As of November 2010, Fukushima Daiichi had 1760 TONS of spent fuel in storage, using 84% of capacity. (That's taking re-racking into account)
The linked.pdf report gives some idea what a big deal it is to deal with the fuel stored in Japan.
Yes, they're done some recycling too. It wasn't many years ago that they had a criticality accident at such a facility. Even after bone marrow transplantation and experiment stem cell therapy, they still had workers die. And a number of non-employees living nearby got above normal exposure.
And when I said waste, I didn't just mean spent fuel. There are other contaminated materials to deal with. Flying insects that got into things left behind from the old Hanford Washington facility were so radioactive that 210 TONS of material later contaminated by the bugs at a regular landfill had to be hauled off as radioactive waste.
If there's technology to make ALL of that waste safe and useful, I haven't heard about it. Breeder reactors do turn some into more fuel (or weapons). While that may be a significant source for fuel, I haven't seen any citations showing a percentage and/or tonnage of total radioactive waste that actually gets recycled in that way. Citations please.
Easy to see why Intel thinks it's worth using X86 for Android devices. Hard to see why anyone else would think it's a good idea
What's the point of running it on x86 when all the app out there are compiled for ARM? Unless they're planning to ship with both families of CPU in one device and support both Windows and Android apps, it really doesn't make much sense. If x86 has been too power hungry, emulating ARM or something would likely be pretty poor in the performance per Watt department.
I'm saying they don't really have to do anything else, and basically aren't, besides keeping stasis until the thing cools off.
Uh no. They can't just keep doing what they're doing and wait. It's more urgent than that. With the rupture in unit 2 (believed to be in the suppression tank), that water they have to keep pumping in keeps coming out bringing highly radioactive particles from the damaged fuels rods along. They pumped over 100 tons of it out of one tunnel only to have it fill back up within two days. They may have briefly interrupted what's getting into the ocean, but it is piling up and needs to be dealt with soon.
They're injecting nitrogen into unit 1 hoping to reduce the chance of a hydrogen explosion, but the pressure not rising indicates a leak. They've said it may be venting contaminated gases. (but don't be too surprised if it turns out they are unintentionally pushing more contaminated water out somewhere)
For some pretty good articles check out what the media over there are saying.
Here's a six part series on how Tepco and the government have complicated matters. It has many details no covered by most U.S. media.
No injuries reported, according to NHK. This was in the vicinity of the 9.0 quake, 40 km below the sea bed off Sendai.
Uh, no. Actually, according to NHK, there were a number of people injured by falls, a number of them with broken bones, and some hit by things that fell.
There were also some significant power outages, one power plant lost two of three incoming grid feeds providing power for cooling, another is on emergency diesel. They're stable with no radiation leaks. No obvious changes at the troubled Fukushima units, which suffered serious complications after loss of power to the control systems and pure water circulating pumps, and had the secondary loop (salt water to cool the heat exchangers) pumps totally washed away by the March 11th Tsunami.
I was watch NHK when the 7.4 quake hit shortly before midnight there (morning on the U.S. west coast), with the tsunami alert going out quickly afterwards. The warnings were saying possible 1 meter height. For people to have to get out at midnight perhaps with no power, run for higher ground must have been very traumatic. Fortunately there wasn't a significant tsunami. Reports say they quake started with vertical jolts, followed by a long period of intense horizontal shaking.
For those that don't watch live feeds on the http://www.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ website which uses Silverlight for streaming, there is a Flash feed on livestation.com and a livestation iOS app.
Compared to the U.S. coverage, NHK reveals far more about the numerous aspects of what's going on there. The text articles on their website give current but brief info on things going on (nitrogen injection etc.).
Is making something legal and taxing it such a good idea? Then we've got both government and the private sector profiteering from something unhealthy.
I remember the calls to legalize some gambling and the Lotto in California. It was supposed to help fund education. The funny thing is, education has had far greater problems with funding than their were before. Some would blame it one having to pay teachers.
Well if we're to legalize drugs, would it help funding more effectively if the middleman was cut out? Have the teachers sell drugs. (I'm kidding, I don't want to see that)
I think I prefer a somewhat different approach, with decriminalizing use to a large degree, but continuing to prosecute ANY kind of profiteering. Those wanting drugs can only contribute time towards producing them (No, time as a prostitute or other type of slave shouldn't be allowed). Wanna smoke pot? Fine, grow your own or have friends that do and share it for FREE. Absolutely no cash payments. Illegal to buy, illegal to sell. Drive the criminals out of business by competition. After safety tests, GIVE AWAY what's confiscated (in tiny portions). Those that find some benefit/pleasure can work together settling on what's viable for them to produce, those who would be in it for the money get excluded. (Perhaps some would consider some kind of licensed totally transparent scheme allowing non-transferable gift vouchers a supplier could use for utilities)
Commercially produced drugs that are abused or reprocessed into something insideous (like allergy meds used to make meth) should be banned completely. We survived before they existed and can do so again. Quaaludes (sp?) vanished when that sort of pinching off the source approach was used. Reagan era pharm/chem industry lobbying blocked efforts to do the same to kill off meth. Too bad.
Much of the evil that goes on is tied to money. Separate that from the equation, things get a bunch simpler.
(Doing away with paid radio/tv political and drug ads is worth a deep discussion on its own. Make time for both free public affairs time that local-ownership broadcasters would voluntarily commit to providing a set amount of. TAKE THE MONEY OUT OF THE PICTURE)
I wonder if they were really being shut down, or if the licenses were ending and they planned to get an extension as has been done fairly routinely in many other places. (until now)
If they'd really planned to shut them down, I would have expected that something to replace them would be ready or nearly so. Japan does have a few odd issues with power that complicate things though.... The northern part of the country uses 50 Hz while the rest is 60 Hz. There are only a couple of places where they're doing the conversion (not sure if it is from DC or the other frequency).
If the output of the plant is DC, it would be okay to run the generators off-speed. If that were the case, I'd think they could actually remove some heat the way it happens in operation, by having steam go through the turbine, into the condeser, and water pumped back from there to cool the reactor.
If the fuel really has melted down, doesn't that mean it's all in one blob with no moderation by control rods (as in gone critical)? Unless it can be spread out, to not have critical mass, and maybe have accomplish that at a higher mass with the help of some boric acid to absorb neutrons, it'd seem that it'd keep burning down to where it hits ground/sea water then continually spew out steamy nasties...
There were reports of large amounts of boric acid being procured from France and South Korea, and I saw reports that about 25 tons was being transported from Diablo Canyon in California by Vandenburg Air Force Base personnel
This Reactor Concepts Manual from the NRC explains the various cooling methods for these reactors. Unit 2 uses the G.E. Mark I Containment as pictured on page 16.
One of the cooling methods involves "poisoning" which is adding water with boric acid. I've wondered if any of the water being injected had boric acid in it. I haven't heard it mentioned in the NHK reports or those from TEPCO.
Some of the U.S. data looks to be of questionable authenticity (but I believe that any nastier looking data still wouldn't reveal a serious threat since brief spikes don't add up to much long term) Look at various parts of the U.S. Some also show spike before the earthquake... and earlier quake or complications from other problems? (Stuxnet???)
But if you keep a garage full and wait years, you'll have the fun of rediscovering forgotten things.
It would be handy to have one to know where the cat wanders off to. And it would be nice to see if it is a busy day at Farmers' Market, or if any odd smoke is coming from the local power plant. It would be more than a little distracting to control one while driving a car, but with a co-pilot it might be good for picking an optimal route. Acting as a repeater, it might help with picking up that not so strong tv signal, or extending your WiFi so you can stream video from home without paying AT&T....probably not so good for finding that last empty seat at the theater. Good for finding lost people in a disaster? (Whatever happened to the RFID tags on Japanese school children? Use an RFID sniffing drone?)
A little helicopter might be better for things like picking up sandwiches at the local deli. Teach it to fly upside down and trim weeds.
It's interesting that they went after the guy over export. Would it really be okay to sell one to a neighbor? Given the high price, maybe selling it to many people like a time-share would work better. But it better be programmed to land somewhere safe before running out of fuel or someone will probably crash it. They might anyway.
Someone could go into business charging people to use these while playing paint-ball games along a U.S. border... How to balance the budget: Charge people to let them enforce the border!
Seems like I read somewhere the U.S. had done some close-up video from a drone in Fukushima, but the Japanese had chosen not to release it. I guess every television network (or blogger?) needs their own drones?
Well they still haven't measured up to that 1961 accident in Idaho in some ways... The 26,000 pound reactor jumped 9 feet in the air, one of the guy was found pinned to the ceiling. The dead were so radioactive they had to be buried in lead-lined coffins.
Lesson learned: Don't design a reactor that can go prompt-critical by accidentally pulling one control rod too far. (Prompt critical is a level beyond which the moderating effect of additional bubbles in the water can provide negative-feedback stabilization).
As soon as a reliable can-opening robot is developed, we will be unnecessary.
Perhaps the cats would still like our companionship, at their convenience?
I think we need robots more than the cats do. Some robots that have no trouble wandering around radioactivity could be really handy about now. And when we need to tell one what to do I guess there will be an app for that...
I hope they aren't dealing with Stuxnet messing with the cooling pumps in their nuclear facilities. Having it make it look like they're running when they're not would be more bad news. I hope someone in the know from the U.S. or wherever is in touch and ready to rule that out or help them quickly if they need it.
So many awful things there... a train washing away with more than 100 people on it... Those scenes seem to have everything but Rodan and Godzilla...
Slashdot Mirror
Do you have any examples of any countries that have effective laws preventing a "revolving door" between employment by a regulatory body and employment by a regulated business? Any examples at all?
Did I imply that I did? Finding additional places that need to improve certainly wouldn't lessen the need, so I'm not sure what you point is. The post is meant as constructive criticism, not something to raise or lower the opinion of some country relative to others. Calling attention to a problem seems a positive step in encouraging positive changes.
Knowing very few specifics of how these things are done in other countries I'm left mostly with impressions of what others do, and what logically seems like good policy based on problems with regulation in other industries. Hopefully the unfortunate events in Japan will drive positive changes everywhere. That's at a technical level. And looking at the causes and handling of problems (in energy and in industry/government as a whole) may encourage reforms in other areas as well. People should know about these things. Democracy depends on well informed citizens to drive desirable choices. When we've got too much influence of money in politics and what's portrayed in the media, we've got a problem. We also need more diversity in the media.
Without know much about how things are handled in the EU, the impression I get is that government/industry is being held to a higher standard. For instance the German defense minister stepping down because of things he did in his college thesis doesn't seem like something that would happen in the U.S. (the stepping down, not the copying).
I think there is a better citizen to industry ratio when it comes to control over regulations, and I think industry in the E.U. acts more positively (things like less outsourcing, more being deeply devoted to the education of young people).
Hopefully the nations transitioning to democracy will be much better for it. It's a vulnerable time. I hope that their democracies end up truly representing the people. If their media and elections processes are influenced too much by money (perhaps even foreign corporate interests), they suffer. Let's all keep a watchful eye and support healthy democracy in all nations.
Some of the things posted about nuclear power are disturbing. Some of the problems are with the industry instead of just technical issues. Again that's a sign that the watchful eye of an informed public is needed.
Though there are still problems, an installation such as Diablo Canyon is built far better than it would have been had the public not brought pressure. 40,000 at a local rally/concert, protests that included 40 college professors and the entire San Luis Obispo city council getting arrested. People spoke. The plant was better as a result. It costs far more when things aren't done right the first time. Maybe that's why the industry backed away from building more plants after Diablo Canyon.
The plant has a long history.
http://www.energy-net.org/01NUKE/DIABLO1.HTM
Although supposedly ready for disasters, a mere winter storm was enough to do millions of dollars in damage to the breakwater protecting the plants' salt water intakes in the early days. Clearly the industry makes potentially serious mistakes. Radiation monitors taken out by heavy rain? Maybe it's not ready for a real tsunami.
There's also information that while true, is formulated in a falsely alarmist way.
Like, true fact coming from authoritative measurements: the Iodine-131 levels in Poland have risen some 1000-2000 times above their usual level.
Conveniently omitted fact: that's still about 500-1000 times less than levels causing any measurable increase of risk of thyroid cancer.
You should provide a link to the source so that we can tell how much of the issue is what the source said, and how much might be in how you read it. There are a number of issues with what you said.
First off, in a normal location there isn't any "usual level" of Iodine-131 because it is something that has a short half life. And since the noise that's at the threshold of such measurements isn't a stable constant, saying 1000 or whatever times that isn't specific. Provide levels with units, and know the difference between a dose and a dose rate.
And what you say about levels causing a measurable increase in thyroid cancer needs to be qualified too.
The risk is not the same for all individuals. It's far far higher for a fetus or a child. Since cancer may not show up for 10 or 20 years, and there are other risk factors, it being difficult to measure the harm doesn't mean there isn't any.
The NRC generally recognizes a zero-threshold proportional model for long-term risk from exposure.
The more the exposure, the more the risk. The risk level for a particular condition plots to a line offset at zero exposure because is usually risk from other causes as well (chemical etc.). So radiation at any dose carries risk, it just may be very small. Doubling a small dose of radiation still doubles the risk. A dose in a single glass of milk would be a fixed amount. The doses are additive. How much does it matter? Well if the milk in an area is only affected for a short time, a given dose per glass is far less significant than if you get that dose every day.
Some of the abnormal levels seen in some places are continuing for a longer time period than emergency plans called for. So in some areas outside the previous evacuation zone (and shelter inside zone) in Japan, people have been told they'll have about a month to evacuate. It's not that the radiation being released from the plant is increasing. Levels have been going down. The problem is that the dose people are getting is adding up, and in certain areas will be more than they wish to allow if they continue to stay. That's because the length of time that levels are up is longer than was expected.
Levels spiking in Poland are likely said to be insignificant risk not only because of the level, but because it probably a transient event from a passing air mass carrying material from one of the fires or small explosions. It tends to be worse when there is rain. It can bring more of the material down fairly abruptly. The rain falls on the grass, the cows eat the grass, then it is in the milk. Studies have shown that most of the cancer in Sweden years after Chernobyl was from fallout that occurred on a single day. It was a matter where the air currents were going and when and where the rain fell.
Low levels of long term increased cancer can be small enough to be indistinguishable from that caused by food additives, chemicals in water, and other pollution including smoke exposure. If there was reason to panic, we should have been doing it already. Some, in certain cases most, of the so-called background radiation isn't some normal thing from the earth or space, it's what's still around mostly from earlier in the atomic era when there was atmospheric testing going on, some messy processing facilities, WWII and various accidents.
So make no mistake about it, less is better but there is no reason to panic. The Russians have lifted advisories on going to Japan after finding that levels in Moscow were twice that of Tokyo. Japanese products are being well screened. They could use our business.
Don't rely on sound bites
Their not involving people as much as they could goes beyond the foreign media and bloggers not being let into press conferences.
"Japan nuclear commission fails to send experts to Fukushima
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan has failed to send designated experts to Fukushima Prefecture to look into the crisis at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant even though a national disaster-preparedness plan requires it to do so, many of the experts said Saturday.
A commission spokesperson said problems following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami such as blackouts had discouraged it from sending any experts to Fukushima Prefecture, but many of the specialists and government officials questioned the claim.
The commission designates 40 nuclear accident experts including university professors and senior officials of relevant institutions as well as five others as members of its panel on emergency technical advice.
The disaster plan requires the commission to dispatch members of the panel to a location near an accident site.
(follow link for the whole story)
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110417p2g00m0dm009000c.html
They're looking into "the flow of retiring ministry officials to senior positions at the country's electric companies"
It seems like Japan isn't the only country that needs to prevent regulators from later taking jobs with the companies they were supposed to be tough with. They shouldn't be allowed to be paid lobbyists either.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20110419p2a00m0na012000c.html
To a great extent democracies depend on the media to put corporations and government in the spotlight for the public good. Reporters shouldn't be going to work for those they are reporting on.
But KSBY the NBC affiliate in San Luis Obispo county in California, home of the Diablo Canyon 2-unit power plant, has over the years had several of the newscasters hired by the utility P.G.& E. as PR people (including the one currently seen). KSBY is the only full power English speaking station in the county. Their reporting is very brief and lacks technical depth. They don't seem to do things like research NRC reports, mostly going . Although run by the same utility company, when the NTSB was starting hearings about the San Bruno gas pipeline explosion, all it got was a 20 second mention (Charlie Sheen got over 3 minutes the same day).
No details of the streamed hearings or mention anything from the related documents documents (on the NTSB site) was broadcast. They say the plants says it can handle a tsunami, but didn't mention that three of the plants radiation monitors were taken out by "heavy rain". There is talk about more earthquake studies, but no mention of a local tsunami in 1812. Nice people at the station, but should they be allowed to work for things like the power plant? Are they doing all that's needed in "Americas' Happiest City"? (in fairness, smaller market t.v. has a lot of other competition for a slice of a fairly small pie. No doubt resources are limited. They let a well liked newscaster go to cut costs.)
"On December 21, 1812, one of the largest earthquakes in California history completely destroyed the first Mission along with most of Santa Barbara. With an estimated magnitude of 7.2, and a hypothesized epicenter near Santa Cruz Island, the quake also produced a tsunami which carried water all the way to modern-day Anapamu Street, and carried a ship a half-mile up Refugio Canyon."
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/History_of_Santa_Barbara,_California
LA Times article on tsunami (pdf)
http://www.usc.edu/
The problem is that they try to stitch everyone back to windows.
Well if it is just to watch video, being stitched to the xbox 360 may not be such an ideal thing either if you care about the environment and watch quite a bit. For light use it is fine, but beyond that it becomes a bit like using a power hungry Pentium 4 desktop to replace a 5 Watt router.
The xbox uses 150 Watts or so, the current generation of the Apple TV about 2.5 Watts (yes there's a decimal point in there!). Those figures don't count the displays of course. An iPad uses about 6 Watts including the screen. For a mobile device, it does surprisingly well with games.
A Wii (without display) uses somewhere around 15 Watts. PS3 power consumption is quite high, similar to the xbox 360.
It's desirable to be aware of how much power things use so we can make the optimal choices to match our needs. It's interesting to entertain the idea of using technology that one might be able to sustain in a home with solar panels or in a city feed from low-impact sources.
In my opinion, it will come when we are projecting the image directly to the eyes...like wearing wrapping glasses with a separate image per eye.
Shutter glasses basicly do give you separate images for each eye. What's on the screen alternates between one and the other, and the LCD shutters rapidly alternate exposure to each eye in step with that.
What someone with no shutters gets it a sum of the two perspective though, so things with depth information may look a bit off.
Seems like a good thing for games, but too much focus on effects instead of the script when it comes to tv and movies. If they want to make existing sets obsolete, they should change U.S. broadcasts from MPEG2 to h.264 AVC and perhaps be able to pull off 1080p in the same bandwidth. (That really should have been just a firmware update) Get rid of the motion blur!
Or maybe what we really need is something totally new. How about a quadraphonic telephone? (use caution if you ask for 5 + 1 as the + 1 may be some kind of vibrating plug...). And could some genetic engineer please figure out how to give us four ears?
Maybe an eye in the back of the head too. Be in the movie and see what's behind you. (Have fun producing that...) Just as bad as those critters that can point their eyes in different directions.
It would be interesting to see a comparison of their usage patterns. I suspect they're not as far along in the consumption curve, with few tablets and less of things like local native-language streaming HD video but I have not see stats. Hopefully they'll remain well served as time goes on.
On other advantage we could see from enhanced WiFi or similar supplementation is much lower costs. If it were really widespread, some might not have to pay the likes of AT&T at all for mobile service. Since Google is more into ads while Apple gets a cut of carrier revenue, such a development is more likely on Android. Google has the infrastructure to put in some of the network if they wanted to. We probably could have essentially free (ad supported) mobile telcom and net access.
Now that's a way to sell a differentiated device!
T-Mobile has been one to embrace falling back on free connectivity. Who else thinks AT&T would be quick to kill that if they buy them???
They took our free (as in beer) tv spectrum, how about us getting some other great free service with some of that?
Amazon is a personification of the spirit of the Internet, which is one of true democracy, access to the means of distribution, and rapid evolution
Spirit of the internet? Some on seeing Amazons' passing judgement on Wikileaks might think it more aligned with a certain corporate spirit than a spirit of the internet. If they're really support democracy, which can't function properly with a poorly informed public, maybe they shouldn't be the ones to decide whether or not someone is a journalist.
Hardware doesn't make spirit. What people are doing, and the thoughts that drive the choices made probably do.
They are still contented to profit from the sale of books about WikiLeaks.
http://www.amazon.com/Inside-WikiLeaks-Assange-Dangerous-Website/dp/030795191X
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/dec/11/wikileaks-amazon-denial-democracy-lieberman
Hmmmm, so some of that valuable waste can be recycled into kitchen countertops.... sounds like more WSJ junk science to me. The author of a recent WSJ piece that was story here (possibly the same guy?) was on the BBC explaining that boric acid was used to clean debris from the water jets used for cooling in reactors. Wrong. Boron and boron compounds are used because they absorb neutrons which helps to stop fission in a quantity of nuclear material that would otherwise go critical (resulting in much more heat and radiation than that see from decay).
Recycling is a good way to come up with additional fuel, but even the French (the word leaders in the field) only recycle about 1% of their fuel rods. (that figure was reported March 18th 2011 on German Deutch Welle television) And even then, there is still considerable amount of highly dangerous material left afterwards to store. Even recycling involved expensive and energy intensive enhancement. The French are doing a great deal of research, but even for them, the breeder reactors which would more efficiently convert spent material into useful fuel are not yet commercially viable. (I have not seen any news reports saying one way or the other if the earthquake led to any issues at Japans' experimental breeder reactor which is in one of the hard-hit prefects)
Unit 4 at the troubled plant in Japan had an explosion blowing the concrete from the upper walls and roof, exposing the fire in the fuel pond to the environment. There is considerable concern now that the weight of added cooling water in the pond may be too much for the damaged building to support. With far more fuel in the pond than a reactor normally holds there is danger that fuel piling up on the bottom from damaged rods could reach criticality, greatly increasing the release of dangerous materials and complicating an already difficult clean up. All that from a unit that didn't even have fuel in the reactor.
Unit 3 contains MOX (mixed oxide) fuel apparently provided by the French. If I understand correctly, with the plutonium component it is more neutron sensitive (releases more neutrons when hit by a given number). That makes it a little harder to control. Some older reactors can only use a smaller portion of the MOX type, or need additional control rods added. It may also be harder to prevent criticality in fuel that piles up from damaged rods. With the very long half-life of plutonium it's also a very nasty thing to have in the environment. Recent NHK reports indicated testing was being done to measure levels, but no word of the results.
I think it is more than a bit twisted to be describing spent fuel as valuable when there is so much that it is a great liability for nearly all. But PR folks would rather talk about the stored material as a vaulted treasure instead of the nuclear graveyard many see it as.
Union of Concerned Scientists report on 14 nuclear near-missing in the U.S. (PDF, includes Diablo Canyon back up water system being non functional for 18 months, doesn't mention the recent defective motor with rotor slipping on shaft that also affected another plant)
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nrc-2010-full-report.pdf
PDF NRC report of failed motor at Diablo Canyon (I believe this moves a valve)
http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1105/ML110590892.pdf
The report does not say if the motor slippage could have been triggered by excessive stress from it still running at the end of travel due to improper calibration of limit switches or some other control system malfunction (Stuxnet etc). The report only treats it as a manufacturing defect. There are a number of the motors at other plants and one other has previous been observed with the same failure. If it is something that is only needed in an emergency, some may not encounter a defect beforehand and have a backup system that doesn't work.
The technical issue really isn't one of competence either. It's a matter of the math... the number of people being served by a site, and the finite bandwidth. Reusing the same frequency spectrum with more and more sites covering less and less area each, is about the only way for THEM to handle a greater load.
Part of a practical solution should be done at the user end. Forcing lower use by things like charging extra or tethering doesn't go over very well. Lowering bandwidth with ad blockers would help some. Avoiding supporting older video codecs is desirable. If video that wasn't to be watched immediately could be intelligently fetched at off-peak hours or during dips, that would help.
There's generally a tendency among ISPs to keep people from sharing their WiFi. At this point that's counterproductive. While sharing isn't likely to be the viral or identity theft threat some consumers might be thinking of, some newer technology to authenticate guests taking advantage of voluntary shared use is needed to deter things like problematic P2P traffic and child content abuses. A new breed of routers designed to safely offload much mobile device traffic onto WiFi could help immensely. Give those hosting hot spots with some sort of approved hardware incentives for doing so, something like credits towards either their home or mobile data plans. A properly designed router can insure that the host still gets ample bandwidth prioritized for their own use, handle authentication and logging/reporting of traffic, restrict ports as needed etc.
It's a far far cheaper way of handling much of the load of what mobile users do, than just building more cell site capacity. Use it when a user is in a stable location compared to the hot spot. In some cities it might be cost effective to subsidize suitable hot spots on buses or trains.
There is no such thing as nuclear waste, everything that comes out of a used fuel rod is extremely useful, rare and precious and very expensive.
If it is really so useful in practice, why is so much in "temporary" storage after years and years with the amounts stored growing ever larger? Why have the U.S., Japan and many other countries "re-racked" their fuel ponds to make room for more at spacing closer than what the original designs required for safety?
As of November 2010, Fukushima Daiichi had 1760 TONS of spent fuel in storage, using 84% of capacity. (That's taking re-racking into account)
The linked .pdf report gives some idea what a big deal it is to deal with the fuel stored in Japan.
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/6-1_powerpoint.pdf
Yes, they're done some recycling too. It wasn't many years ago that they had a criticality accident at such a facility. Even after bone marrow transplantation and experiment stem cell therapy, they still had workers die. And a number of non-employees living nearby got above normal exposure.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident
And when I said waste, I didn't just mean spent fuel. There are other contaminated materials to deal with. Flying insects that got into things left behind from the old Hanford Washington facility were so radioactive that 210 TONS of material later contaminated by the bugs at a regular landfill had to be hauled off as radioactive waste.
http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/1998/10/22/tec_242588.shtml
Radiation is still turning up from things that happened 40 years ago. Beware if cooking rabbit stew....
http://www.king5.com/news/environment/Radioactive-rabbit-trapped-at-Hanford-106761238.html
If there's technology to make ALL of that waste safe and useful, I haven't heard about it. Breeder reactors do turn some into more fuel (or weapons). While that may be a significant source for fuel, I haven't seen any citations showing a percentage and/or tonnage of total radioactive waste that actually gets recycled in that way. Citations please.
Maybe these guys can figure out how to bombard nuclear waste and turn it into something useful (and hopefully safe?) to put in iPads or electric cars?
Nuclear flux capacitors is where it's at baby!
Easy to see why Intel thinks it's worth using X86 for Android devices. Hard to see why anyone else would think it's a good idea
What's the point of running it on x86 when all the app out there are compiled for ARM? Unless they're planning to ship with both families of CPU in one device and support both Windows and Android apps, it really doesn't make much sense. If x86 has been too power hungry, emulating ARM or something would likely be pretty poor in the performance per Watt department.
I'm saying they don't really have to do anything else, and basically aren't, besides keeping stasis until the thing cools off.
Uh no. They can't just keep doing what they're doing and wait. It's more urgent than that. With the rupture in unit 2 (believed to be in the suppression tank), that water they have to keep pumping in keeps coming out bringing highly radioactive particles from the damaged fuels rods along. They pumped over 100 tons of it out of one tunnel only to have it fill back up within two days. They may have briefly interrupted what's getting into the ocean, but it is piling up and needs to be dealt with soon.
They're injecting nitrogen into unit 1 hoping to reduce the chance of a hydrogen explosion, but the pressure not rising indicates a leak. They've said it may be venting contaminated gases. (but don't be too surprised if it turns out they are unintentionally pushing more contaminated water out somewhere)
For some pretty good articles check out what the media over there are saying.
Here's a six part series on how Tepco and the government have complicated matters.
It has many details no covered by most U.S. media.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110416002672.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110415004983.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110414006040.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110413004031.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110412006319.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110411004567.htm
So was this one of those events that could have sent out a lethal burst of neutron radiation, killing life in distant systems?
Maybe we should be mourning the loss of life on planets we've never known?
No injuries reported, according to NHK. This was in the vicinity of the 9.0 quake, 40 km below the sea bed off Sendai.
Uh, no. Actually, according to NHK, there were a number of people injured by falls, a number of them with broken bones, and some hit by things that fell.
There were also some significant power outages, one power plant lost two of three incoming grid feeds providing power for cooling, another is on emergency diesel. They're stable with no radiation leaks. No obvious changes at the troubled Fukushima units, which suffered serious complications after loss of power to the control systems and pure water circulating pumps, and had the secondary loop (salt water to cool the heat exchangers) pumps totally washed away by the March 11th Tsunami.
I was watch NHK when the 7.4 quake hit shortly before midnight there (morning on the U.S. west coast), with the tsunami alert going out quickly afterwards. The warnings were saying possible 1 meter height. For people to have to get out at midnight perhaps with no power, run for higher ground must have been very traumatic. Fortunately there wasn't a significant tsunami. Reports say they quake started with vertical jolts, followed by a long period of intense horizontal shaking.
For those that don't watch live feeds on the http://www.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ website which uses Silverlight for streaming, there is a Flash feed on livestation.com and a livestation iOS app.
Compared to the U.S. coverage, NHK reveals far more about the numerous aspects of what's going on there. The text articles on their website give current but brief info on things going on (nitrogen injection etc.).
Ah, but the picture was upside down! A carefully placed content-copying inversion decrypting device, ãfYãf©ãf¼, was used. (That's mirror in English)
Is making something legal and taxing it such a good idea? Then we've got both government and the private sector profiteering from something unhealthy.
I remember the calls to legalize some gambling and the Lotto in California. It was supposed to help fund education. The funny thing is, education has had far greater problems with funding than their were before.
Some would blame it one having to pay teachers.
Well if we're to legalize drugs, would it help funding more effectively if the middleman was cut out?
Have the teachers sell drugs. (I'm kidding, I don't want to see that)
I think I prefer a somewhat different approach, with decriminalizing use to a large degree, but continuing to prosecute ANY kind of profiteering. Those wanting drugs can only contribute time towards producing them (No, time as a prostitute or other type of slave shouldn't be allowed).
Wanna smoke pot? Fine, grow your own or have friends that do and share it for FREE. Absolutely no cash payments. Illegal to buy, illegal to sell. Drive the criminals out of business by competition. After safety tests, GIVE AWAY what's confiscated (in tiny portions). Those that find some benefit/pleasure can work together settling on what's viable for them to produce, those who would be in it for the money get excluded. (Perhaps some would consider some kind of licensed totally transparent scheme allowing non-transferable gift vouchers a supplier could use for utilities)
Commercially produced drugs that are abused or reprocessed into something insideous (like allergy meds used to make meth) should be banned completely. We survived before they existed and can do so again. Quaaludes (sp?) vanished when that sort of pinching off the source approach was used. Reagan era pharm/chem industry lobbying blocked efforts to do the same to kill off meth. Too bad.
Much of the evil that goes on is tied to money. Separate that from the equation, things get a bunch simpler.
(Doing away with paid radio/tv political and drug ads is worth a deep discussion on its own. Make time for both free public affairs time that local-ownership broadcasters would voluntarily commit to providing a set amount of. TAKE THE MONEY OUT OF THE PICTURE)
Well it didn't become obscene until folks got too fat.
Of course that was before the Photoshop diet...
"Facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan during a speech at a convention
Perhaps some of these PC vendors think that people are so used to malware that a little more doesn't matter?
I wonder if they were really being shut down, or if the licenses were ending and they planned to get an extension as has been done fairly routinely in many other places. (until now)
If they'd really planned to shut them down, I would have expected that something to replace them would be ready or nearly so. Japan does have a few odd issues with power that complicate things though....
The northern part of the country uses 50 Hz while the rest is 60 Hz. There are only a couple of places where they're doing the conversion (not sure if it is from DC or the other frequency).
If the output of the plant is DC, it would be okay to run the generators off-speed. If that were the case, I'd think they could actually remove some heat the way it happens in operation, by having steam go through the turbine, into the condeser, and water pumped back from there to cool the reactor.
If the fuel really has melted down, doesn't that mean it's all in one blob with no moderation by control rods (as in gone critical)? Unless it can be spread out, to not have critical mass, and maybe have accomplish that at a higher mass with the help of some boric acid to absorb neutrons, it'd seem that it'd keep burning down to where it hits ground/sea water then continually spew out steamy nasties...
There were reports of large amounts of boric acid being procured from France and South Korea, and I saw reports that about 25 tons was being transported from Diablo Canyon in California by Vandenburg Air Force Base personnel
This Reactor Concepts Manual from the NRC explains the various cooling methods for these reactors. Unit 2 uses the G.E. Mark I Containment as pictured on page 16.
One of the cooling methods involves "poisoning" which is adding water with boric acid. I've wondered if any of the water being injected had boric acid in it. I haven't heard it mentioned in the NHK reports or those from TEPCO.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/teachers/03.pdf
The airborn radiation around Japan is not as high as is has been previously.
http://www.bousai.ne.jp/eng/index.html
TEPCO Daily reports
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/index-e.html
Some of the U.S. data looks to be of questionable authenticity (but I believe that any nastier looking data still wouldn't reveal a serious threat since brief spikes don't add up to much long term) Look at various parts of the U.S. Some also show spike before the earthquake... and earlier quake or complications from other problems? (Stuxnet???)
http://www.epa.gov/japan2011/rert/radnet-data-map.html
TEPCO has been slow at some reporting in previous incidents.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/07072001-e.html
Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo just shut down one of the two units due to a (secondary) cooling issue.
But if you keep a garage full and wait years, you'll have the fun of rediscovering forgotten things.
It would be handy to have one to know where the cat wanders off to. And it would be nice to see if it is a busy day at Farmers' Market, or if any odd smoke is coming from the local power plant. It would be more than a little distracting to control one while driving a car, but with a co-pilot it might be good for picking an optimal route. Acting as a repeater, it might help with picking up that not so strong tv signal, or extending your WiFi so you can stream video from home without paying AT&T. ...probably not so good for finding that last empty seat at the theater. Good for finding lost people in a disaster? (Whatever happened to the RFID tags on Japanese school children? Use an RFID sniffing drone?)
A little helicopter might be better for things like picking up sandwiches at the local deli. Teach it to fly upside down and trim weeds.
It's interesting that they went after the guy over export. Would it really be okay to sell one to a neighbor?
Given the high price, maybe selling it to many people like a time-share would work better. But it better be programmed to land somewhere safe before running out of fuel or someone will probably crash it. They might anyway.
Someone could go into business charging people to use these while playing paint-ball games along a U.S. border... How to balance the budget: Charge people to let them enforce the border!
Seems like I read somewhere the U.S. had done some close-up video from a drone in Fukushima, but the Japanese had chosen not to release it. I guess every television network (or blogger?) needs their own drones?
Well they still haven't measured up to that 1961 accident in Idaho in some ways... The 26,000 pound reactor jumped 9 feet in the air, one of the guy was found pinned to the ceiling. The dead were so radioactive they had to be buried in lead-lined coffins.
Lesson learned: Don't design a reactor that can go prompt-critical by accidentally pulling one control rod too far. (Prompt critical is a level beyond which the moderating effect of additional bubbles in the water can provide negative-feedback stabilization).
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Sl-1
I half expected those clever Japanese would have little robots working on this...
As soon as a reliable can-opening robot is developed, we will be unnecessary.
Perhaps the cats would still like our companionship, at their convenience?
I think we need robots more than the cats do. Some robots that have no trouble wandering around radioactivity could be really handy about now. And when we need to tell one what to do I guess there will be an app for that...
It'd be funny if they just removed his pix because of assuming the name "SS DVD" implied he'd ripped them from a DVD.
I hope they aren't dealing with Stuxnet messing with the cooling pumps in their nuclear facilities. Having it make it look like they're running when they're not would be more bad news. I hope someone in the know from the U.S. or wherever is in touch and ready to rule that out or help them quickly if they need it.
So many awful things there... a train washing away with more than 100 people on it... Those scenes seem to have everything but Rodan and Godzilla...