We do agree then, good. A kill mission is not okay, a capture mission that fails and ends up with a kill is okay.
Now all that remains is the question whether the mission in question was or wasn't a kill mission. Some sources say it was, some sources say it wasn't. I guess we'll never know the truth.
If you bother to read through our little discussion again I think you'll find I never said that I question the outcome of the mission, only the intent. It was, and remains, my single point of contention that the US as a civilized nation should follow either the rules of war or the rules of civil justice (as you put it), but that on the face of it it seems that they chose to ignore both.
I'll make this short, maybe that'll make it easier to understand for you.
* What happened, happened. Bin Laden is dead, and that's good. It would have been better to have him stand trial before being executed, but it's a bit late now. * If the orders were to "capture if possible, kill if necessary", that's fine and good. Both the rules of war and civil justice require us to seek justice, not revenge. * If the orders were "kill", that's assassination, and not good. It ignores both the rules of war and civil justice. * Reports differ what orders the team had.
This is the only thing we differ on - you seem okay with a kill mission, I don't think that's okay. It is the responsibility of the civilized state to seek justice, not revenge. If, in the pursuit of justice, shit happens, that's fine because the intention was to seek justice. Sending a strike team with "kill" orders isn't justice, it's just revenge.
What you seem unable to understand is that I have no issue whatsoever with what actually transpired, I'm fine with Bin Laden being dead - the world's a better place now that he's gone.
However, that doesn't mean I'm okay with state-sanctioned assassinations, and that's why the mission parameters become important. If the orders were to go in and kill Bin Laden, that's an assassination and something we shouldn't be doing. If the orders were to go in and capture him and he ends up dead from resisting, that's A-OK. I don't know what's so hard to understand about this.
Now, from the reports I read the Seal team shot one of Bin Laden's wives (the only other person in the room) in the leg to incapacitate her, but Bin Laden himself got shot in the head (twice, "to make sure he's dead", if you want to believe some reports). I find it strange that they were unable to incapacitate Bin Laden and bring him to justice.
Again, if the orders indeed were to capture Bin Laden and he ended up dead anyway - shit happens and that's fine. But "capture him if he waves a white flag, otherwise kill him"? As you yourself clearly state, how likely was that? If those were indeed the mission parameters, then I do think that's akin to "go in and kill him". Everyone knew beforehand he wouldn't give himself up.
I'm sure you won't understand it this time either, and we won't know since the mission orders will never be published, so at this point I'll be happy if we could just agree that the US shouldn't be performing state-sanctioned assassinations. Rules of war or civil justice, remember?
Reuters: "The U.S. special forces team that hunted down Osama bin Laden was under orders to kill the al Qaeda mastermind, not capture him, a U.S. national security official told Reuters."
CBN News: "U.S. special forces set out to kill Osama bin Laden and dump his body in the sea to make it harder for the al-Qaeda founder to become a martyr, U.S. national security officials told Reuters on Monday. "This was a kill operation," one of the officials said."
CDN: "During the May 3rd interview of CIA director Leon Penetta by NBC Nightly News’ Brian Williams, Mr. Penetta all but admitted that killing Osama bin Laden was the intent of the mission."
The Telegraph: "Several US national security officials have briefed that there was in fact no intention to capture bin Laden, contrary to Mr Brennan’s statement. “This was a kill operation,” one official said. "
That was from 30 seconds on google, I'm sure you can find more if you want. These statements from US officials are why I'm questioning the motives of the operation - and so should you, my friend.
No matter how small the possibility, capturing Bin Laden should have been the intention. Bin Laden's motivations don't really come into play here unless you assume either that US special forces teams cannot take someone alive if they're under orders to, or that Bin Laden in fact shot himself. Both assumptions seem rather weak to me.
We all know shit happens. That's why I have no issue with the fact that the US killed Bin Laden - that's just a historical fact by now. What I am questioning is the motive behind and the intention with the raid - because if they went in with orders to capture Bin Laden and shit happened and he ended up dead, that's fine. But if they went in with orders to kill Bin Laden and no intention of bringing him to justice, that's just murder plain and simple - and again it's against both the rules of war and the rules of civil law.
I don't know about you, but I'd much prefer the US to stick with one or the other.
likewise, bringing osama bin laden to a courtroom was, agreed, the most useful resolution to his capture
I'm glad we agree on this, because that was my one and only point. The rest you've supplied yourself, along with a very interesting and detailed psychological profile of me - normally you'd have to pay good money for that, so thanks:)
Both according to the rules of war and the rules of civil justice, the goal should have been to bring Bin Laden to a courtroom. We both know this didn't happen. You seem uninterested in probing further whereas I question whether it was ever the intention.
And in this case, intention matter. It's no revelation that people resist arrest and that sometimes things go wrong and people get killed, but that has to be the worst-case scenario, not the intended scenario if we are to call ourselves civilized.
From what I can read of this operation, capture wasn't the main objective. It wasn't "go capture Bin Laden" but "go kill Bin Laden". And that's an assassination. It's revenge, not justice. That's setting aside both the rules of war and the rules of civil justice.
He deserved to die, no question about that, and I'm not shedding any tears for anyone that died in that compound on that day, but I would have preferred justice. Not revenge.
You stated: "you can abide by the rules of war or or you can abide by the rules of civil justice you can't have it both ways". I said that both of these require a trial. No attempt seems to have been made to bring Bin Laden to a trial, so therefore I said that the US seems to have gone with the third option, ignoring both the rules of war AND the rules of civil justice.
You seem to have a problem with these statements, so I wonder which of them you object to?
And as an aside, you can continue with your personal attacks and insults if you like, but be advised that they are largely ineffective. I simply don't care about your (ill-informed) opinion of me, so if you don't mind I'd rather you stick to the subject at hand - whether the US did or did not abide by the rules of war and/or the rules of civil justice and what that means for public opinion.
Lots of assumption about what I do or not to do aside, there's the small issue that according to the reports he was shot twice - in the chest and in the head. Now if there was any intention of taking him alive, why the second shot in the head?
Several reputable news sources on all sides of the political spectrum categorize the operation as a "kill operation", several citing a US "national security official" claiming there was no desire to capture Bin Laden alive.
This might be why people are reacting, since that's not really what a civilized state should be doing. Again, justice not revenge.
Because the US is supposedly civilized, and it's the civilized thing to do? Because a trial, even if we all know the outcome, is mandated both by the Geneva Convention and civil law? Because dragging him in front of a court, letting him have a fair trial, and meting out the punishment would be justice? Because invading a sovereign country to assassinate someone is NOT justice? Because shooting him in the head with no witnesses creates more questions than it answers? Because killing him and getting rid of the body makes it look like a plain old murder?
There's lots of reasons if you start with the supposition that the US is a civilized state that is out for justice and not just revenge.
So either the Geneva Convention or a trial then? Seems the US decided to take the third choice; make sure nobody sees what goes on and claim "resisting arrest". Classic.
You can't see the leftovers from the landing via telescope from earth.
Maybe not from earth, but with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter we can get a resolution of 20" - and we can clearly see the descent stage of the Apollo Lunar Module, the Lunar Ranging Retro Reflector and the Passive Seismic Experiment to the south, and the tracks the astronauts made walking around.
The T-34 was anything but crude. The GP's notion that the "Soviets were always inferior to the West in military might" is equally laughable western propaganda. Do some reading, educate yourself.
What you don't seem to understand is that I speculate with the information that I have access too. I'm not willing to invent boogy-men; I was at some point this past week genuinely worried for my two little kids, although I live on the very opposite part of the planet.
I find this very sad. You've been told all your life that nuclear power is dangerous - life-threatening, planet-threatening dangerous - and you've swallowed this propaganda (yes, that's what it is) without question to the point where you start worrying about your kids halfway across the globe from a nuclear accident (that incidentally is yet to produce any deaths from radiation).
Open your eyes, please. You don't seem averse to do a bit of googling, so google for "energy production deaths" and read a few of the links. You'll see that nuclear power production has a historical death toll of four hundreths of a death per TWh, far lower than any other form of power production - solar, wind and hydro included. It really is the safest form of power production there is - and we can make it even safer. Google again for "pebble-bed reactor" and "molten salt reactor" and realize that these forms of nuclear reactors are passively safe - if the plant in Japan had been one of these types nothing would have happened at all.
Finally, some reading about nuclear fuel. The uranium/plutonium fuel used in today's reactors are only used about 5%, that's one of the reasons the "waste" fuel is so hard to handle. Thorium, on the other hand, as used in a liquid fuel thorium reactor, uses almost 100% of the fuel, leaving very little waste at all. Read about this on energyfromthorium.com. Thorium has two more wonderful properties when used as nuclear reactor fuel - it's dirt cheap (really, it's a byproduct from rare earth mineral mines and so cheap they have to give it away) and one of the byproducts of burning it in a reactor is uranium-233, an isotope that is very rare and that can be used in cancer treatments. It is also abundant, far more so than uranium and plutonium. The Thorium produced in a year at one single rare earth mineral mine (about 5000 tons) could cover the whole world's energy needs for that year - if only there were enough reactors to burn it.
So please as a first request, since you sound to you have some insight on the subject, answer clearly this. My understanding of a plausible scenario, based on my limited grasp of the intrisics of nuclear plant, not necessarily nuclear energy, is that a major radiation leak on Fukushima site could have forced the company to evacuate and abandon the plant to its fate. Then a leak in a spent fuel pool could have emptied it, at which point a zirconium fire could have started (I dismiss re-criticallity as little plausible). At least it appeared that some people either at TEPCO or at the US government were worried about that. So in that very case, with all the zirconium going up in smoke, or maybe another bad scenario that according to you was possible at some point: what kind of radioactive cloud would have formed? How far would have it spread? How many people would have been seriously affected? What could the consequences have been?
Worst case scenario is pretty much what we've seen at Fukushima. A Richter 9+ earthquake, a 30ft tsunami, no power for the cooling systems and unknown or failed integrity of the different containment structures.
But it's not that we have a dearth of speculation on what could happen; google "fukushima worst case scenario" and read a bit.
Here's what John Beddington (UK government chief scientific officer) says:
In this reasonable worst case you get an explosion. You get some radioactive material going up to about 500 metres up into the air. Now, that’s really serious, but it’s serious again for the local area. It’s not s
First off, you speculating on what might have happened - while enlightening as to the depths you're willing to go to invent boogymen - has little to do with reality. None of the six reactors would go "full meltdown" - an event incidentally not even remotely as horrible as you seem to believe it to be. At TMI, the core suffered a partial meltdown and it didn't even breach the reactor containment. "a theoretical person standing at the plant property line during the entire event would have received a dose of approximately 2 millisieverts (200 millirem), between a chest X-ray's and a CT scan's worth of radiation." (wikipedia). Furthermore, now that we have had visuals on the spent fuel pools we also know that there wasn't a risk of any of them drying out, catching fire or in any other way exploding in a nasty way.
Secondly, holding the world's nuclear reactors as unsafe because of Chernobyl is also rather disingenious - nowhere but in Russia do these kinds of reactors even exist any more. They are quite poorly constructed and when Lithuania joined the EU they did so on the requirement that they shut down the reactors at Ignalina which run the same type of reactors as at Chernobyl. They are wholly incompatible with modern nuclear safety standards. The last Ignalina reactor shut off in 2009. It supplied about 70% of Lithuania's electricity demand. Now they're burning fossil fuels and importing electricity instead.
Thirdly, on just about any scale you care to mention, nuclear power has a better safety record, lower environmental impact, and lesser death toll than any other means of producing electricity. We need electricity, and on a scale that neither wind, solar, geothermal, or any other alternative energy source is able to provide. Fusion (hot or cold) would do it, but we're not even close to that yet. Nuclear isn't just the safest way to get the energy we need, at the moment it is the only way. Burning oil, coal and other fossil fuels isn't sustainable and traditional alternative energy sources just can't produce enough to cover demand.
Lastly, if you can keep a civil tongue I don't mind at all having an open, honest, sincere discussion on the subject "nuclear vs renewable energies" with you. I'll even start it off for you by claiming that modern Liquid Thorium reactor designs provide a cleaner, greener, safer means of producing electricity at a large scale than anything we've ever seen. Care to comment about that?
The international limit for radiation exposure for nuclear workers is 20 mSv per year, averaged over five years, with a limit of 50 mSv in any one year, however for workers performing emergency services EPA guidance on dose limits is 100 mSv when "protecting valuable property" and 250 mSv when the activity is "life saving or protection of large populations."
Well. I wonder. If the levels are that low as the guy thinks, why did the jp gov have to raise the allowed limit to 250mSv. I am sure the workers wear individual Dosimeters.
The international limit for radiation exposure for nuclear workers is 20 mSv per year, averaged over five years, with a limit of 50 mSv in any one year, however for workers performing emergency services EPA guidance on dose limits is 100 mSv when "protecting valuable property" and 250 mSv when the activity is "life saving or protection of large populations."
So really the Japanese government didn't raise the limit at all. They just said that what the workers at the plant is doing is "life saving or protection of large populations" and then the internationally agreed limit of exposure is 250 mSv.
250 mSv isn't a "new limit". The international limit for radiation exposure for nuclear workers is 20 mSv per year, averaged over five years, with a limit of 50 mSv in any one year, however for workers performing emergency services EPA guidance on dose limits is 100 mSv when "protecting valuable property" and 250 mSv when the activity is "life saving or protection of large populations."
You can argue whether or not what they're doing is "life saving or protection of large populations", but saying it's a "new limit" is a bit disingenious. It's an internationally agreed limit that was in place well before this disaster.
Yeah, did you even read that report you linked to? It's about how they think "[r]esources should be concentrated on mainstream services which have the greatest effect on life expectancy and general well-being, including primary health care, health education, clean water and economic development." It's goal is to promote "[i]mprovement of environmental policy planning, implementation and management at the local, national and transnational levels to build on lessons learned and develop innovative approaches to land use as the radiation threat diminishes over time"
In any case, I would like to see at least the same amount of money is being spent on windpower as on nuclear energy for the forseeable future, and it not being actively being sabotaged like in my country (Belgium).
Google for "liquid thorium reactor" and see what real sabotage action looks like. There ARE safer, cheaper, more environmentally friendly alternative reactor designs out there, but the reactor fuel companies don't want anything to do with these - it would put them out of business. Thorium is more abundant by a few orders of magnitude than uranium/plutonium, doesn't need to be refined, can be utilized almost 100% as compared to 5% for uranium/plutonium, and is a sideproduct of mining for rare earth metals. It's so cheap you can't even give it away. And best of all - a single year's production of thorium from a single rare earth mine is enough to cover the whole earth's energy needs for one year - if only there were enough reactors to use it.
Furthermore, a liquid salt reactor is passively cooled, has safety blowout valves that depend on the laws of physics and nothing else, can be run at atmospheric pressure and can be refueled without stopping the reactor. Did I mention it burns almost 100% of the fuel? - which means a lot less dangerous waste.
Really, go google it. It's the future of our energy needs.
I raise my glass to you and thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for keeping those reactors safely running in normal times and safely stopped in abnormal situations. You truly are heroes.
You do realize that the reactors scrammed the instant the earthquake hit, right? What they're dealing with is the secondary reaction and how to cool that in the aftermath of a 30ft tsunami knocking out all power.
it took me five seconds to locate the above articles on Google
Yeah, if you'd instead spent five minutes educating yourself about dry cask storage instead of going off on your nerdrage, you'd see that dry cask storage can't be used for at least a couple of years (in some cases up to 20 years) after the fuel is removed from the reactor. Those first years needs to be spent in - that's right - spent fuel pools.
Remember, this is a 40-year old reactor designed to withstand a magnitude 8.4 earthquake that got hit by a magnitude 9+ earthquake and several magnitude 8+ aftershocks as well as a 30ft tsunami waves - it's a testament to how safe these things are that it's not just a smoking hole in the ground by now.
Educate yourself on renewable energies [...], our kids and grand-kids might thank you once in the future for changing your mind.
Right back at you; educate yourself on nuclear energy, our kids and grand-kids might thank you once in the future for changing your mind.
Liquid oxygen on a submarine? That's insane-- where'd you hear that? Subs have a snorkel mast they use to draw air in from above the sea surface when operating the diesel submerged. It's called snorkeling. It's either that or run on the surface. I was a nuclear trained machinist's mate on an SSBN so I stood watch in the Auxiliary Machinery Room 2 Lower Level and ran the diesel when it was needed (usually for reactor scram drills).
Snorkeling, while easy and cheap, has the disadvantage of only being useful at periscope depth. Using a Stirling engine gives a diesel-electric sub almost the same submerged endurance as a nuke. Add to that the fact that the diesel-electric one is quieter than the nuke and you'll start to see why the Swedes (and the Aussies in their Swedish-built subs) keep sinking US carriers in wargames.
I thought a nuclear detonation was the only thing that causes this problem with EMP.
It's not an EMP that's killing the electronics, it's all the ionizing radiation:
A single charged particle can knock thousands of electrons loose, causing electronic noise and signal spikes. In the case of digital circuits, this can cause results which are inaccurate or unintelligible.
Slashdot Mirror
We do agree then, good. A kill mission is not okay, a capture mission that fails and ends up with a kill is okay.
Now all that remains is the question whether the mission in question was or wasn't a kill mission. Some sources say it was, some sources say it wasn't. I guess we'll never know the truth.
If you bother to read through our little discussion again I think you'll find I never said that I question the outcome of the mission, only the intent. It was, and remains, my single point of contention that the US as a civilized nation should follow either the rules of war or the rules of civil justice (as you put it), but that on the face of it it seems that they chose to ignore both.
I'll make this short, maybe that'll make it easier to understand for you.
* What happened, happened. Bin Laden is dead, and that's good. It would have been better to have him stand trial before being executed, but it's a bit late now.
* If the orders were to "capture if possible, kill if necessary", that's fine and good. Both the rules of war and civil justice require us to seek justice, not revenge.
* If the orders were "kill", that's assassination, and not good. It ignores both the rules of war and civil justice.
* Reports differ what orders the team had.
This is the only thing we differ on - you seem okay with a kill mission, I don't think that's okay. It is the responsibility of the civilized state to seek justice, not revenge.
If, in the pursuit of justice, shit happens, that's fine because the intention was to seek justice.
Sending a strike team with "kill" orders isn't justice, it's just revenge.
Do you see the difference at all?
What you seem unable to understand is that I have no issue whatsoever with what actually transpired, I'm fine with Bin Laden being dead - the world's a better place now that he's gone.
However, that doesn't mean I'm okay with state-sanctioned assassinations, and that's why the mission parameters become important. If the orders were to go in and kill Bin Laden, that's an assassination and something we shouldn't be doing. If the orders were to go in and capture him and he ends up dead from resisting, that's A-OK. I don't know what's so hard to understand about this.
Now, from the reports I read the Seal team shot one of Bin Laden's wives (the only other person in the room) in the leg to incapacitate her, but Bin Laden himself got shot in the head (twice, "to make sure he's dead", if you want to believe some reports). I find it strange that they were unable to incapacitate Bin Laden and bring him to justice.
Again, if the orders indeed were to capture Bin Laden and he ended up dead anyway - shit happens and that's fine. But "capture him if he waves a white flag, otherwise kill him"? As you yourself clearly state, how likely was that? If those were indeed the mission parameters, then I do think that's akin to "go in and kill him". Everyone knew beforehand he wouldn't give himself up.
I'm sure you won't understand it this time either, and we won't know since the mission orders will never be published, so at this point I'll be happy if we could just agree that the US shouldn't be performing state-sanctioned assassinations. Rules of war or civil justice, remember?
Reuters: "The U.S. special forces team that hunted down Osama bin Laden was under orders to kill the al Qaeda mastermind, not capture him, a U.S. national security official told Reuters."
CBN News: "U.S. special forces set out to kill Osama bin Laden and dump his body in the sea to make it harder for the al-Qaeda founder to become a martyr, U.S. national security officials told Reuters on Monday. "This was a kill operation," one of the officials said."
CDN: "During the May 3rd interview of CIA director Leon Penetta by NBC Nightly News’ Brian Williams, Mr. Penetta all but admitted that killing Osama bin Laden was the intent of the mission."
The Telegraph: "Several US national security officials have briefed that there was in fact no intention to capture bin Laden, contrary to Mr Brennan’s statement. “This was a kill operation,” one official said. "
That was from 30 seconds on google, I'm sure you can find more if you want. These statements from US officials are why I'm questioning the motives of the operation - and so should you, my friend.
Look, monitors cost ~$200 once. Programmers cost ~$80,000/year. Just buy the second monitor.
Amen.
No matter how small the possibility, capturing Bin Laden should have been the intention. Bin Laden's motivations don't really come into play here unless you assume either that US special forces teams cannot take someone alive if they're under orders to, or that Bin Laden in fact shot himself. Both assumptions seem rather weak to me.
We all know shit happens. That's why I have no issue with the fact that the US killed Bin Laden - that's just a historical fact by now. What I am questioning is the motive behind and the intention with the raid - because if they went in with orders to capture Bin Laden and shit happened and he ended up dead, that's fine. But if they went in with orders to kill Bin Laden and no intention of bringing him to justice, that's just murder plain and simple - and again it's against both the rules of war and the rules of civil law.
I don't know about you, but I'd much prefer the US to stick with one or the other.
likewise, bringing osama bin laden to a courtroom was, agreed, the most useful resolution to his capture
I'm glad we agree on this, because that was my one and only point. The rest you've supplied yourself, along with a very interesting and detailed psychological profile of me - normally you'd have to pay good money for that, so thanks :)
Both according to the rules of war and the rules of civil justice, the goal should have been to bring Bin Laden to a courtroom. We both know this didn't happen. You seem uninterested in probing further whereas I question whether it was ever the intention.
And in this case, intention matter. It's no revelation that people resist arrest and that sometimes things go wrong and people get killed, but that has to be the worst-case scenario, not the intended scenario if we are to call ourselves civilized.
From what I can read of this operation, capture wasn't the main objective. It wasn't "go capture Bin Laden" but "go kill Bin Laden". And that's an assassination. It's revenge, not justice. That's setting aside both the rules of war and the rules of civil justice.
He deserved to die, no question about that, and I'm not shedding any tears for anyone that died in that compound on that day, but I would have preferred justice. Not revenge.
You stated: "you can abide by the rules of war or or you can abide by the rules of civil justice you can't have it both ways".
I said that both of these require a trial. No attempt seems to have been made to bring Bin Laden to a trial, so therefore I said that the US seems to have gone with the third option, ignoring both the rules of war AND the rules of civil justice.
You seem to have a problem with these statements, so I wonder which of them you object to?
And as an aside, you can continue with your personal attacks and insults if you like, but be advised that they are largely ineffective. I simply don't care about your (ill-informed) opinion of me, so if you don't mind I'd rather you stick to the subject at hand - whether the US did or did not abide by the rules of war and/or the rules of civil justice and what that means for public opinion.
Lots of assumption about what I do or not to do aside, there's the small issue that according to the reports he was shot twice - in the chest and in the head.
Now if there was any intention of taking him alive, why the second shot in the head?
Several reputable news sources on all sides of the political spectrum categorize the operation as a "kill operation", several citing a US "national security official" claiming there was no desire to capture Bin Laden alive.
This might be why people are reacting, since that's not really what a civilized state should be doing. Again, justice not revenge.
Because the US is supposedly civilized, and it's the civilized thing to do?
Because a trial, even if we all know the outcome, is mandated both by the Geneva Convention and civil law?
Because dragging him in front of a court, letting him have a fair trial, and meting out the punishment would be justice?
Because invading a sovereign country to assassinate someone is NOT justice?
Because shooting him in the head with no witnesses creates more questions than it answers?
Because killing him and getting rid of the body makes it look like a plain old murder?
There's lots of reasons if you start with the supposition that the US is a civilized state that is out for justice and not just revenge.
So either the Geneva Convention or a trial then?
Seems the US decided to take the third choice; make sure nobody sees what goes on and claim "resisting arrest". Classic.
You can't see the leftovers from the landing via telescope from earth.
Maybe not from earth, but with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter we can get a resolution of 20" - and we can clearly see the descent stage of the Apollo Lunar Module, the Lunar Ranging Retro Reflector and the Passive Seismic Experiment to the south, and the tracks the astronauts made walking around.
the crude T-34
The T-34 was anything but crude. The GP's notion that the "Soviets were always inferior to the West in military might" is equally laughable western propaganda. Do some reading, educate yourself.
What you don't seem to understand is that I speculate with the information that I have access too. I'm not willing to invent boogy-men; I was at some point this past week genuinely worried for my two little kids, although I live on the very opposite part of the planet.
I find this very sad. You've been told all your life that nuclear power is dangerous - life-threatening, planet-threatening dangerous - and you've swallowed this propaganda (yes, that's what it is) without question to the point where you start worrying about your kids halfway across the globe from a nuclear accident (that incidentally is yet to produce any deaths from radiation).
Open your eyes, please. You don't seem averse to do a bit of googling, so google for "energy production deaths" and read a few of the links. You'll see that nuclear power production has a historical death toll of four hundreths of a death per TWh, far lower than any other form of power production - solar, wind and hydro included. It really is the safest form of power production there is - and we can make it even safer. Google again for "pebble-bed reactor" and "molten salt reactor" and realize that these forms of nuclear reactors are passively safe - if the plant in Japan had been one of these types nothing would have happened at all.
Finally, some reading about nuclear fuel. The uranium/plutonium fuel used in today's reactors are only used about 5%, that's one of the reasons the "waste" fuel is so hard to handle. Thorium, on the other hand, as used in a liquid fuel thorium reactor, uses almost 100% of the fuel, leaving very little waste at all. Read about this on energyfromthorium.com. Thorium has two more wonderful properties when used as nuclear reactor fuel - it's dirt cheap (really, it's a byproduct from rare earth mineral mines and so cheap they have to give it away) and one of the byproducts of burning it in a reactor is uranium-233, an isotope that is very rare and that can be used in cancer treatments. It is also abundant, far more so than uranium and plutonium. The Thorium produced in a year at one single rare earth mineral mine (about 5000 tons) could cover the whole world's energy needs for that year - if only there were enough reactors to burn it.
So please as a first request, since you sound to you have some insight on the subject, answer clearly this. My understanding of a plausible scenario, based on my limited grasp of the intrisics of nuclear plant, not necessarily nuclear energy, is that a major radiation leak on Fukushima site could have forced the company to evacuate and abandon the plant to its fate. Then a leak in a spent fuel pool could have emptied it, at which point a zirconium fire could have started (I dismiss re-criticallity as little plausible). At least it appeared that some people either at TEPCO or at the US government were worried about that. So in that very case, with all the zirconium going up in smoke, or maybe another bad scenario that according to you was possible at some point: what kind of radioactive cloud would have formed? How far would have it spread? How many people would have been seriously affected? What could the consequences have been?
Worst case scenario is pretty much what we've seen at Fukushima. A Richter 9+ earthquake, a 30ft tsunami, no power for the cooling systems and unknown or failed integrity of the different containment structures.
But it's not that we have a dearth of speculation on what could happen; google "fukushima worst case scenario" and read a bit.
Here's what John Beddington (UK government chief scientific officer) says:
In this reasonable worst case you get an explosion. You get some radioactive material going up to about 500 metres up into the air. Now, that’s really serious, but it’s serious again for the local area. It’s not s
First off, you speculating on what might have happened - while enlightening as to the depths you're willing to go to invent boogymen - has little to do with reality. None of the six reactors would go "full meltdown" - an event incidentally not even remotely as horrible as you seem to believe it to be. At TMI, the core suffered a partial meltdown and it didn't even breach the reactor containment. "a theoretical person standing at the plant property line during the entire event would have received a dose of approximately 2 millisieverts (200 millirem), between a chest X-ray's and a CT scan's worth of radiation." (wikipedia).
Furthermore, now that we have had visuals on the spent fuel pools we also know that there wasn't a risk of any of them drying out, catching fire or in any other way exploding in a nasty way.
Secondly, holding the world's nuclear reactors as unsafe because of Chernobyl is also rather disingenious - nowhere but in Russia do these kinds of reactors even exist any more. They are quite poorly constructed and when Lithuania joined the EU they did so on the requirement that they shut down the reactors at Ignalina which run the same type of reactors as at Chernobyl. They are wholly incompatible with modern nuclear safety standards. The last Ignalina reactor shut off in 2009. It supplied about 70% of Lithuania's electricity demand. Now they're burning fossil fuels and importing electricity instead.
Thirdly, on just about any scale you care to mention, nuclear power has a better safety record, lower environmental impact, and lesser death toll than any other means of producing electricity. We need electricity, and on a scale that neither wind, solar, geothermal, or any other alternative energy source is able to provide. Fusion (hot or cold) would do it, but we're not even close to that yet. Nuclear isn't just the safest way to get the energy we need, at the moment it is the only way. Burning oil, coal and other fossil fuels isn't sustainable and traditional alternative energy sources just can't produce enough to cover demand.
Lastly, if you can keep a civil tongue I don't mind at all having an open, honest, sincere discussion on the subject "nuclear vs renewable energies" with you. I'll even start it off for you by claiming that modern Liquid Thorium reactor designs provide a cleaner, greener, safer means of producing electricity at a large scale than anything we've ever seen. Care to comment about that?
The international limit for radiation exposure for nuclear workers is 20 mSv per year, averaged over five years, with a limit of 50 mSv in any one year, however for workers performing emergency services EPA guidance on dose limits is 100 mSv when "protecting valuable property" and 250 mSv when the activity is "life saving or protection of large populations."
Well. I wonder. If the levels are that low as the guy thinks, why did the jp gov have to raise the allowed limit to 250mSv. I am sure the workers wear individual Dosimeters.
The international limit for radiation exposure for nuclear workers is 20 mSv per year, averaged over five years, with a limit of 50 mSv in any one year, however for workers performing emergency services EPA guidance on dose limits is 100 mSv when "protecting valuable property" and 250 mSv when the activity is "life saving or protection of large populations."
So really the Japanese government didn't raise the limit at all. They just said that what the workers at the plant is doing is "life saving or protection of large populations" and then the internationally agreed limit of exposure is 250 mSv.
250 mSv isn't a "new limit". The international limit for radiation exposure for nuclear workers is 20 mSv per year, averaged over five years, with a limit of 50 mSv in any one year, however for workers performing emergency services EPA guidance on dose limits is 100 mSv when "protecting valuable property" and 250 mSv when the activity is "life saving or protection of large populations."
You can argue whether or not what they're doing is "life saving or protection of large populations", but saying it's a "new limit" is a bit disingenious. It's an internationally agreed limit that was in place well before this disaster.
so I had a bad source of information. I can still quote another report saying that 'Chernobyl disaster still hurting millions'
http://www.un.org/ha/chernobyl/docs/dev2373.htm
Yeah, did you even read that report you linked to? It's about how they think "[r]esources should be concentrated on mainstream services which have the greatest effect on life expectancy and general well-being, including primary health care, health education, clean water and economic development."
It's goal is to promote "[i]mprovement of environmental policy planning, implementation and management at the local, national and transnational levels to build on lessons learned and develop innovative approaches to land use as the radiation threat diminishes over time"
In any case, I would like to see at least the same amount of money is being spent on windpower as on nuclear energy for the forseeable future, and it not being actively being sabotaged like in my country (Belgium).
Google for "liquid thorium reactor" and see what real sabotage action looks like. There ARE safer, cheaper, more environmentally friendly alternative reactor designs out there, but the reactor fuel companies don't want anything to do with these - it would put them out of business. Thorium is more abundant by a few orders of magnitude than uranium/plutonium, doesn't need to be refined, can be utilized almost 100% as compared to 5% for uranium/plutonium, and is a sideproduct of mining for rare earth metals. It's so cheap you can't even give it away. And best of all - a single year's production of thorium from a single rare earth mine is enough to cover the whole earth's energy needs for one year - if only there were enough reactors to use it.
Furthermore, a liquid salt reactor is passively cooled, has safety blowout valves that depend on the laws of physics and nothing else, can be run at atmospheric pressure and can be refueled without stopping the reactor. Did I mention it burns almost 100% of the fuel? - which means a lot less dangerous waste.
Really, go google it. It's the future of our energy needs.
I raise my glass to you and thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for keeping those reactors safely running in normal times and safely stopped in abnormal situations. You truly are heroes.
You do realize that the reactors scrammed the instant the earthquake hit, right? What they're dealing with is the secondary reaction and how to cool that in the aftermath of a 30ft tsunami knocking out all power.
it took me five seconds to locate the above articles on Google
Yeah, if you'd instead spent five minutes educating yourself about dry cask storage instead of going off on your nerdrage, you'd see that dry cask storage can't be used for at least a couple of years (in some cases up to 20 years) after the fuel is removed from the reactor. Those first years needs to be spent in - that's right - spent fuel pools.
Remember, this is a 40-year old reactor designed to withstand a magnitude 8.4 earthquake that got hit by a magnitude 9+ earthquake and several magnitude 8+ aftershocks as well as a 30ft tsunami waves - it's a testament to how safe these things are that it's not just a smoking hole in the ground by now.
Educate yourself on renewable energies [...], our kids and grand-kids might thank you once in the future for changing your mind.
Right back at you; educate yourself on nuclear energy, our kids and grand-kids might thank you once in the future for changing your mind.
Liquid oxygen on a submarine? That's insane-- where'd you hear that? Subs have a snorkel mast they use to draw air in from above the sea surface when operating the diesel submerged. It's called snorkeling. It's either that or run on the surface. I was a nuclear trained machinist's mate on an SSBN so I stood watch in the Auxiliary Machinery Room 2 Lower Level and ran the diesel when it was needed (usually for reactor scram drills).
For a submariner you seem awfully ignorant of submarines. The Swedish Navy has been running their diesel-electric subs on Stirling engines powered by liquid oxygen for over 20 years now. See Gotland Class Submarine, Södermanland Class Submarine, and Näcken Class Submarine..
Snorkeling, while easy and cheap, has the disadvantage of only being useful at periscope depth. Using a Stirling engine gives a diesel-electric sub almost the same submerged endurance as a nuke. Add to that the fact that the diesel-electric one is quieter than the nuke and you'll start to see why the Swedes (and the Aussies in their Swedish-built subs) keep sinking US carriers in wargames.
I thought a nuclear detonation was the only thing that causes this problem with EMP.
It's not an EMP that's killing the electronics, it's all the ionizing radiation:
A single charged particle can knock thousands of electrons loose, causing electronic noise and signal spikes. In the case of digital circuits, this can cause results which are inaccurate or unintelligible.
No, it's a redirect page for a common misspelling. It shows the page for the Stirling engine.