What evidence do you have that "proves" this assertion? Do you know any material facts that differ from information provided by TEPCO or the Japanese government? There is widespread assumption that TEPCO have lied to the public, but what is the "proof?"
Do you want them to dwell on it, whether there is new information to report or not? Do you want editorial speculation? If there isn't new information to report, do you want them to make things up for you? Do you know anyone who is unaware that there was a nuclear accident following the Tsunami? What purpose is served by the news media continuously reporting a month-old incident as "news?"
I remember a lot of propaganda that implied that a nuclear plant would produce waste... a *very* small amount of *very* toxic waste. I remember the focus of the propaganda being that the spent fuel would be really dangerous for a really long time, but it reinforced the idea that the fuel pellets were really small... Until Fukushima, I never really thought of the nuclear waste problem as being on the scale of HUNDREDS OF TONS generated from just one reactor in the space of a human lifetime. I simply never processed the scale. I was, as a result of propaganda (and not studying physics), under the impression that nuclear plants were many orders of magnitude more efficient than they were, that we didn't burn through anywhere near that much fuel.
This. It has been broadcast loud and clear that there is no need to develop a dirty bomb. All that a terrorist has to accomplish is to put a big leak in a spent fuel pool.
It's pretty hard to imagine one of those spent fuel pools being intact, just from looking at the pictures of #3. The schematic diagrams of the buildings always imply that the top of the pool is near the roof line of these buildings, and in #3 we see the building collapsed to half its height. Supposedly the spent fuel pool in there is intact enough to hold water. I could believe it, but from the pictures that exist (or that we have been allowed to see), it's not easy to believe.
The MITNSE site is updated infrequently, and is not appreciated by people who desire a constant stream of speculation, who believe there is a purposeful information embargo on the part of the Japanese and US governments, and whose personal agenda is not served by mitigation of the disaster. So I end up trying to be a voice of reason on certain forums, which gets me dismissed as merely "cheerleader." It stinks, and it makes me wish that Japanese sources could do a better job of at least making it not *seem like* they were lying and covering things up. I think there's a fundamental difference in "flavor" for reporting of bad news that doesn't translate well from Japanese culture to American. There seems to be no Japanese equivalent to the raking-over-the-coals for government and company officials, or the demand for an updated-by-the-minute 24 hour news cycle with increasing speculation and broadcast techniques that are designed to generate advertising revenue. That doesn't appear to be the Japanese style, and it is received as *very* foreign to many Americans, who do not hesitate to simply note it as a conspiracy to keep information from the public.
>What does that mean? What got damaged? Looks to me like they were right, the damage was to stuff outside the reactor which was mostly superficial.
The problems with Fukushima have been mostly limited to cooling of spent fuel, which happens to be stored in those "mostly superficial" areas. While there's no criticality, and therefore no active fission products to deal with, they have decay heat which requires them to pump water that they cannot recirculate effectively, so the semi-stable state involves some release of steam and some runoff into the sea.
The problems of the *perception* of Fukushima are: 1. Lay people are conditioned to fear all things nuclear, and also conditioned to draw an equivalence between all nuclear incidents, 2. Many people seem to actually *desire* a worse outcome of the disaster, as different agendas are served by a more disastrous result, and 3. There appears to be an information embargo from the Japanese government and TEPCO. At best, it appears to be dissembling, and at worst, it appears to be an outright conspiracy of lies with complicity involving the Japanese, US, and European governments. All this leads to rampant speculation, and the spread of misinformation.
I don't see an information embargo, necessarily. I imagine that whatever resources would be devoted to English-language updates released solely for my voyeuristic and morbid interest, are being applied elsewhere. On the other hand, it would have gone a long way had they not suppressed the aerial footage, or if they didn't make it *seem* like they were unwilling to openly share information about the disaster. News reports, as they come, tend to be *very* terse, and definitely not satisfying to people who would prefer a flood of information. High-res images inside and out, or voluminous monitoring data would be cool. I'm surprised nobody has flown a camera into #3 or #4, to get a well-lit and detailed view of what's under all that rubble, for instance. But I admit I'm not willing to go there myself and get that picture, I don't expect anyone else to do it for me, and it really would be to satisfy my morbid curiosity and nothing else.
Others feel differently and actually believe there is an active, very aggressive information embargo that is purposely hiding the truth, in order to space out bad news over a period of weeks or months.
What is the practical significance of being "installed backwards?"
I have only seen references to this from a point of view of fearmongering and/or ridicule of the construction company, but never from a point of view of engineering risk assessment.
I'd settle for a copy of the letter offering him ${X} dollars for ${INVENTION} with or without the stipulation about suppressing the design. Who is the P.I. on the project at Queen's? Since it's an academic project now, there should be publications, or at least something to generate fund-raising for the project.
It's usually civil action unless the threats are accompanied by physical assault. The story in TFA is different because there are Federal laws in the US that specifically protect elected officials from these kinds of threats. These laws only apply to federal officials. Other situations are subject to laws at the state and local level, and it is the rare locality that criminalizes verbal threats.
It suits certain agendas to maintain a fantasy that there are ordinary Americans being rounded up and "shipped to GTMO", and that this happens routinely, to people who are being targeted as enemies of the state and disappearing as if taken by the Stasi as political prisoners.
There may or may not be people who have been wrongly imprisoned, whether in military prisons or civilian, whether in the United States or elsewhere, but the caricature that is so often painted of masses of completely innocent Americans being rounded up and taken to prison camps without recourse, is at best a fantastic exaggeration. Yeah, I know all about Khaled El-Masri, and I'm already tired of having that one thrown at me to explain how I'm wrong about everything.
Huh? Federal officials are protected from threats under Title 18. Federal law makes it a felony. Threats against ordinary citizens are covered under state and local statutes, usually as civil law. It's rare for a verbal or written threat, however credible, to be treated as a felony, unless the person making the threat also takes some physical action such that there is a reasonable apprehension of the threat being carried out. These laws vary tremendously by locale, so it's impossible to make generalized claims about them.
But if you make a threat against a sitting member of Congress, particularly if your threat has a reference to bullets which were actually fired at the target's office, you've committed a felony under Title 18 Sec 371-376. The threats to the target's family members is a separate crime, also covered under Title 18.
But if this bothers you, sure, you can reduce the whole thing to "cops are corrupt and only the rich get justice."
Well, this is generally only true if the threat is against a government official and if a reasonable person believes that the target has a reasonable apprehension of the threat being carried out. There are state and local laws covering stuff like "terroristic threats" and all kinds of civil statutes, but in order to rise to the level of a federal criminal rap, the threat has to be credible, specific, and targeted at a government official. This is why Pat Robertson got away with making a hit request against Hugo Chavez, for instance.
For some, it just shines a light on the fact that the federal government provides a lot of non-essential services. Some consider this to be the central problem with government.
Senate Republicans would not allow it. I agree that the House should have passed a bill and forced the Senate to go through the motions of their filibuster. I also think that when they threaten filibuster, it shouldn't be a ceremonial thing. They should have to go through with it. Sleeping on cots. Pissing in bottles. Speaking for their full allotted time, 24 hours a day. And the C-SPAN camera stay on.
I wouldn't lower the military budget at all. I might even raise it. But the priorities would be: Fair, competitive hourly wages for labor -- nobody would be cheated here, and the wages would be attractive, and fair, reasonable market costs for raw materials. Everything else that represents profit for the defense industry would be paid in the form of bonds. These bonds would bear interest at a decent ROI, but would have a vesting schedule. During wartime they would not be redeemable at all, but they would be paid with interest at the cessation of hostilities.
The point is, it's immoral and perhaps treasonous to take a large, immediate profit from one's own nation while that nation is at war.
"Federal shutdown" is much more effective as a threat, than its actual consequences.
If the federal government shuts down, it inconveniences a lot of people. There might even be some functionaries who experience some genuine hardship because of it.
But if your job is important (meaning that people die if you don't show up), it's really irrelevant whether you get paid (on time or at all) and even less important that the organization you work for is "functioning" politically.
What most people notice when these federal shutdowns happen is that the impact is not nearly as dire as the threats made it out to be. They notice life going on, since "nonessential" federal agencies tend to be seen as more of a nuisance than a necessity, and because most actual government that affects an individual is at a more local level anyway.
I definitely don't think Rep. Boehner expected President Obama to call his bluff.
Slashdot Mirror
>TEC have proven to be untrustworthy
What evidence do you have that "proves" this assertion? Do you know any material facts that differ from information provided by TEPCO or the Japanese government? There is widespread assumption that TEPCO have lied to the public, but what is the "proof?"
Do you want them to dwell on it, whether there is new information to report or not? Do you want editorial speculation? If there isn't new information to report, do you want them to make things up for you? Do you know anyone who is unaware that there was a nuclear accident following the Tsunami? What purpose is served by the news media continuously reporting a month-old incident as "news?"
I remember a lot of propaganda that implied that a nuclear plant would produce waste... a *very* small amount of *very* toxic waste. I remember the focus of the propaganda being that the spent fuel would be really dangerous for a really long time, but it reinforced the idea that the fuel pellets were really small... Until Fukushima, I never really thought of the nuclear waste problem as being on the scale of HUNDREDS OF TONS generated from just one reactor in the space of a human lifetime. I simply never processed the scale. I was, as a result of propaganda (and not studying physics), under the impression that nuclear plants were many orders of magnitude more efficient than they were, that we didn't burn through anywhere near that much fuel.
This. It has been broadcast loud and clear that there is no need to develop a dirty bomb. All that a terrorist has to accomplish is to put a big leak in a spent fuel pool.
It's pretty hard to imagine one of those spent fuel pools being intact, just from looking at the pictures of #3. The schematic diagrams of the buildings always imply that the top of the pool is near the roof line of these buildings, and in #3 we see the building collapsed to half its height. Supposedly the spent fuel pool in there is intact enough to hold water. I could believe it, but from the pictures that exist (or that we have been allowed to see), it's not easy to believe.
The MITNSE site is updated infrequently, and is not appreciated by people who desire a constant stream of speculation, who believe there is a purposeful information embargo on the part of the Japanese and US governments, and whose personal agenda is not served by mitigation of the disaster. So I end up trying to be a voice of reason on certain forums, which gets me dismissed as merely "cheerleader." It stinks, and it makes me wish that Japanese sources could do a better job of at least making it not *seem like* they were lying and covering things up. I think there's a fundamental difference in "flavor" for reporting of bad news that doesn't translate well from Japanese culture to American. There seems to be no Japanese equivalent to the raking-over-the-coals for government and company officials, or the demand for an updated-by-the-minute 24 hour news cycle with increasing speculation and broadcast techniques that are designed to generate advertising revenue. That doesn't appear to be the Japanese style, and it is received as *very* foreign to many Americans, who do not hesitate to simply note it as a conspiracy to keep information from the public.
>What does that mean? What got damaged? Looks to me like they were right, the damage was to stuff outside the reactor which was mostly superficial.
The problems with Fukushima have been mostly limited to cooling of spent fuel, which happens to be stored in those "mostly superficial" areas.
While there's no criticality, and therefore no active fission products to deal with, they have decay heat which requires them to pump water that they cannot recirculate effectively, so the semi-stable state involves some release of steam and some runoff into the sea.
The problems of the *perception* of Fukushima are: 1. Lay people are conditioned to fear all things nuclear, and also conditioned to draw an equivalence between all nuclear incidents, 2. Many people seem to actually *desire* a worse outcome of the disaster, as different agendas are served by a more disastrous result, and 3. There appears to be an information embargo from the Japanese government and TEPCO. At best, it appears to be dissembling, and at worst, it appears to be an outright conspiracy of lies with complicity involving the Japanese, US, and European governments. All this leads to rampant speculation, and the spread of misinformation.
I don't see an information embargo, necessarily. I imagine that whatever resources would be devoted to English-language updates released solely for my voyeuristic and morbid interest, are being applied elsewhere. On the other hand, it would have gone a long way had they not suppressed the aerial footage, or if they didn't make it *seem* like they were unwilling to openly share information about the disaster. News reports, as they come, tend to be *very* terse, and definitely not satisfying to people who would prefer a flood of information. High-res images inside and out, or voluminous monitoring data would be cool. I'm surprised nobody has flown a camera into #3 or #4, to get a well-lit and detailed view of what's under all that rubble, for instance. But I admit I'm not willing to go there myself and get that picture, I don't expect anyone else to do it for me, and it really would be to satisfy my morbid curiosity and nothing else.
Others feel differently and actually believe there is an active, very aggressive information embargo that is purposely hiding the truth, in order to space out bad news over a period of weeks or months.
What is the practical significance of being "installed backwards?"
I have only seen references to this from a point of view of fearmongering and/or ridicule of the construction company, but never from a point of view of engineering risk assessment.
I humbly submit the radical notion that instead of a need to produce more electricity, people could learn to use less.
>Coal releases tons of radiation
1. Radiation isn't measured in tons.
2. Radioactive coal has been mined, but this is not as common as you have apparently been led to believe.
I'd settle for a copy of the letter offering him ${X} dollars for ${INVENTION} with or without the stipulation about suppressing the design. Who is the P.I. on the project at Queen's? Since it's an academic project now, there should be publications, or at least something to generate fund-raising for the project.
Evidence goes much further with me than insults.
It's usually civil action unless the threats are accompanied by physical assault. The story in TFA is different because there are Federal laws in the US that specifically protect elected officials from these kinds of threats. These laws only apply to federal officials. Other situations are subject to laws at the state and local level, and it is the rare locality that criminalizes verbal threats.
It suits certain agendas to maintain a fantasy that there are ordinary Americans being rounded up and "shipped to GTMO", and that this happens routinely, to people who are being targeted as enemies of the state and disappearing as if taken by the Stasi as political prisoners.
There may or may not be people who have been wrongly imprisoned, whether in military prisons or civilian, whether in the United States or elsewhere, but the caricature that is so often painted of masses of completely innocent Americans being rounded up and taken to prison camps without recourse, is at best a fantastic exaggeration. Yeah, I know all about Khaled El-Masri, and I'm already tired of having that one thrown at me to explain how I'm wrong about everything.
If you have some kind of specific evidence that you can apply to some specific elected police chief, then maybe you are onto something.
I will go out on a limb here and say you are just guessing, confusing your assumptions for evidence.
Huh? Federal officials are protected from threats under Title 18. Federal law makes it a felony. Threats against ordinary citizens are covered under state and local statutes, usually as civil law. It's rare for a verbal or written threat, however credible, to be treated as a felony, unless the person making the threat also takes some physical action such that there is a reasonable apprehension of the threat being carried out. These laws vary tremendously by locale, so it's impossible to make generalized claims about them.
But if you make a threat against a sitting member of Congress, particularly if your threat has a reference to bullets which were actually fired at the target's office, you've committed a felony under Title 18 Sec 371-376. The threats to the target's family members is a separate crime, also covered under Title 18.
But if this bothers you, sure, you can reduce the whole thing to "cops are corrupt and only the rich get justice."
Well, this is generally only true if the threat is against a government official and if a reasonable person believes that the target has a reasonable apprehension of the threat being carried out. There are state and local laws covering stuff like "terroristic threats" and all kinds of civil statutes, but in order to rise to the level of a federal criminal rap, the threat has to be credible, specific, and targeted at a government official. This is why Pat Robertson got away with making a hit request against Hugo Chavez, for instance.
So environmental cleanup is more efficient in places where large numbers of people are desperate for building materials.
For some, it just shines a light on the fact that the federal government provides a lot of non-essential services. Some consider this to be the central problem with government.
Senate Republicans would not allow it. I agree that the House should have passed a bill and forced the Senate to go through the motions of their filibuster. I also think that when they threaten filibuster, it shouldn't be a ceremonial thing. They should have to go through with it. Sleeping on cots. Pissing in bottles. Speaking for their full allotted time, 24 hours a day. And the C-SPAN camera stay on.
It's a good thing active military work isn't a career whose principal motivation is money.
I wouldn't lower the military budget at all. I might even raise it. But the priorities would be: Fair, competitive hourly wages for labor -- nobody would be cheated here, and the wages would be attractive, and fair, reasonable market costs for raw materials. Everything else that represents profit for the defense industry would be paid in the form of bonds. These bonds would bear interest at a decent ROI, but would have a vesting schedule. During wartime they would not be redeemable at all, but they would be paid with interest at the cessation of hostilities.
The point is, it's immoral and perhaps treasonous to take a large, immediate profit from one's own nation while that nation is at war.
They are probably contractors, not regular employees. They will get paid...
When were there sixty members of the Democratic Party seated in the Senate all at the same time?
"Federal shutdown" is much more effective as a threat, than its actual consequences.
If the federal government shuts down, it inconveniences a lot of people. There might even be some functionaries who experience some genuine hardship because of it.
But if your job is important (meaning that people die if you don't show up), it's really irrelevant whether you get paid (on time or at all) and even less important that the organization you work for is "functioning" politically.
What most people notice when these federal shutdowns happen is that the impact is not nearly as dire as the threats made it out to be. They notice life going on, since "nonessential" federal agencies tend to be seen as more of a nuisance than a necessity, and because most actual government that affects an individual is at a more local level anyway.
I definitely don't think Rep. Boehner expected President Obama to call his bluff.