I don’t think it’s that simple. There is something more going on here. It’s politics of some kind, I just can’t figure out the motive.
Considering the staggeringly wide range of political views of the people in these nuclear threads who have disagreed with you and called you a fucking idiot, I’d say you have your work cut out trying to pin a political motive on them all. 
I think it’s safe to say that there are posters in these threads who wouldn’t agree with me as to what the time of day or the color of the sky was, yet we are in agreement on this one subject. Well, two really, if we widen the scope to ‘is FXMastermind a blithering idiot?’…
-XT
Many folks here are allergic to abject stupidity…
Meanwhile, back in the real world.
It’s confirmed that there has been a meltdown in all three reactors. Something the nuclear experts were sure of a month ago. Building four also had a meltdown in the fuel pool, and there is radioactive material blown all over the plant by the explosions.
Radiation levels are too high for humans to actually get inside the plants to do anything, and there is shit ton of highly radioactive water, apparently all over the place. Inside the reactor buildings, in the containment areas, under the buildings, the turbine rooms, outside in many areas, and who knows where else.
In easy to understand terms, it’s by far the worse fucking nuclear mess ever. Radiation will continue to be released for at least 6 to 9months, if all parts of the plan to cover everything with new buildings goes as planned. (little is known about the leaking water, but hopefully they will stop that soon)
The good news, it’s really far away from my breathing tubes.
[QUOTE=FXMastermind]
It’s confirmed that there has been a meltdown in all three reactors. Something the nuclear experts were sure of a month ago. Building four also had a meltdown in the fuel pool, and there is radioactive material blown all over the plant by the explosions.
[/QUOTE]
As you say, something that’s been known about for weeks now, and is seemingly only news to you. Well, and to that strawman you keep near you where those opposed to you fervently deny this fact.
Of course, ‘meltdown’ is one of those really scary terms that people such as you key on, so…
Radiation levels are too high in SOME of the plants to have workers doing much in them right now. Of course, that water you mentioned? They are in the process of pumping it out right now. The only real issue is storage…they have been having an issue with that for weeks now. That’s why they dumped the low level radiation you were freaking out about last week (or was it the week before?) into the ocean. Have you forgotten?
You bring all this up as if it’s news. Have you actually been reading ANY of the stuff posted in these threads for the past few weeks?? All of it’s been known for quite a while now, and many of these issues are being addressed or at least they are attempting to address them. Again…it’s YOUR strawman that equates any opposition to you with denial that there is a mess there, or that the condition is still serious, with many issues still needing to be addressed and resolved. The reality is that no one, afaik, is denying any of these stunning revelations you so kindly put in this very informative post. 
The key part that you left out is that the radiation levels outside the plant are actually dropping in most cases (not all), and while it’s true that radiation will continue to leak out it will do so in decreasing amounts over that 6-9 month period…I assume you picked that period because that’s the time frame the company is giving to winding down this crisis, right? You left that part out as well.
Just keep concentrating on that breathing. If you lose focus, considering how abysmally stupid you are, you might just stop…and that would be really unfortunate.
-XT
If had been only for the next month, everybody would be real fucking happy at this point.
I mean, if all we had heard was “Nuclear power bad! Look what happened in Japan!”
It would be just fucking great if your fears had been realized, and the worst thing about it all was people saying, “Nuclear power bad! Look what happened in Japan!”
Reading back in the thread, the first few days of the event, it’s pretty enlightening, and sort of darkly humorous, that the nuclear cheerleaders had already jumped on the bandwagon. Sharing their fears that “this might be bad for the nuclear industry!”, and “Oh no people are going to try and use this to say nuclear energy is unsafe”.
Because it’s important that you get people to realize that the real danger is what might happen to nuclear power. That’s the important thing in all this. Oh sure some bleeding hearts might try to talk about people losing their homes and everything they own and dogs and cats and cows left to die and fear and stress and even all that radiation leaking into the ocean.
When what they REALLY should be concerned about is how this might effect other nuclear power plants. In other parts of the world. That’s the real tragedy in all this. That other nuclear power plants might suffer.
In related news, a tornado knocked out power to two nuclear reactors in Virginia.
The diesels kicked in and are cooling the plant. But if something goes wrong with the back up generators, pretty much any nuclear reactor running around the world is going to end up in the same situation as Fukushima.
Even the most advanced designs, (of which there are very few) won’t last for more than 48 hours with out a steady supply of a lot of electricity. It’s like there are all these incredibly dangerous bombs, and somebody has to constantly mind them, and keep power running to then, or they explode or melt, and release dangerous shit into the air, ground and water.
And that doesn’t even count the fuel ponds, of which there are far far more.
In retrospect, it’s hard to believe anybody thought it was a good idea to put multiple reactors next to each other.
What the fuck are you smoking man? if something goes seriously fucked wrong with one reactor, you can lose them all. What kind of fucked up design is that?
Let’s assume that Japan is going to stay nuclear oriented in generating their power. Small physical area with limited natural resources and all that. Do the Japanese build new reactors? What new safety measures? What to do to make the old ones safe? I suppose one question to ask is were the measures put in place reasonable at the time in the opinions of the posters asking those questions. I’m going to start with no, they were not reasonable to place reactors on the coast within 125 feet of sea level and not built to withstand a 9.5 quake (those are minimums) with multiple back up cooling systems.
What do others think?
It’s an interesting issue. There are still a bunch of other reactors at three other power plants that aren’t out of the woods yet.
How much does it cost and are the customers willing to pay for it (and that applies to both government run and private enterprise utilities).
You make it sound like I’m proposing a whorehouse, or new chamber of Congress. Not that they are different.
Someone has to pay for it. I’m quite sure that you could make something that would withstand a 1KM wide comet striking the Earth at 50KM/sec. It may cost the entire output of the earth for generations to build it, but it would be safe. What is the cost vs. the benefits achieved or risk removed?
Then it would be the only thing surviving a 1 km 50 km per sec impact.
Well, you pulled a 9.5 figure out of your ass. When the earthquake hits that is 9.6 your ilk will be bleeting on about designing for a 10. So, why not prepare for all eventuallities now and not build any sort of power plant ever again. We’ll all live under the open sky, not move an inch, and be perfectly safe (until we quickly die of thirst, hunger, exposure or some other form of death that the usage of electricity helps immensely to protect us from).
Or, as most people who operate in the real world will do, they will build for most reasonable eventualites and, hopefully, plan for what happens when things go wrong outside of that. And as most people are not omniscient (other than the Monday morning quarterbacks around here), they will inevitably make mistakes along the way. Sucks to be human, but there you go.
No, I did not pull a 9.5 figure out of my ass. The largest earthquake on record anywhere, which also happens to be on the same pacific rim I live on was a 9.5 in Chile in 1960. I’ve mentioned it a number of times in this thread. There really isn’t a reason earthquakes cannot be larger than that, but it is the biggest ever measured to date. The largest tsunami wave in Japan has reached an elevation of 125 feet. That’s where I got that figure. There are mega tsunami events where the waves reach much higher, but that requires a very specific configuration of mountain and bay to fall into. Of course a large asteroid crashing into the ocean could easily exceed those parameters and most geologists thing that a large underwater landslide could exceed normal tsunami heights when moving several cubic miles of material underwater in such a landslide.
And yes, it sucks to be the human left holding the bag. That’s why nuclear power companies are corporations, so if they go bankrupt the rich people pick up and go and the not so rich people are homeless.
The largest anything on record is only there until something larger comes along. Given how short a time period we’ve been collecting data, it should not be surprising that something bigger may come along and when it does the whingers will be whinging away about how it wasn’t ‘planned’ for. Which is my point. You plan for what makes sense.
And in case your brain is failing, corporations work under the regulations of the governments that license them. The governments that those people who are ‘not so rich’ elect because they make up the majority of the population. These are the same people who benefit from a reasonably priced electrical system. How much will it cost to provide for the largest earthquake ever recorded and who do they expect to pay for it other than themselves? If you ask someone if they are willing to pay twice their electrical costs to prevent a one in a dozen lifetime event, what do you think they’d say (remember how many people keep rebuilding on flood plains every year, btw)?
The following is an interesting article on one possibility:
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/348
Basically, reactors can be designed that need external energy to keep the reaction cycle rolling. In the event of a disaster such as an earthquake, the powercut will actually stop the cycle. Furthermore, as thorium is non-fissile, you don’t have the same concerns about cooling and critical mass.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=smaller-cheaper-faster-does-moores-2011-03-15
Lots of sun energy available. Costs going down.
Using the link you’ve provided that would be a minimum of 85000sqKm of land area, or a patch 291KM along a side, assuming 100% efficiency. As even the most efficient solar cell is no more than in the 29% range, it would require over 3 times more area than that. Hopefully, there is enough rooftop surface area to make it work. It would be great if it could, but you’d still need a way to store the energy during the night.
In Calgary, Enmax is installing rooftop solar power onto houses. It will help with the major peak loads during the day time as the company with buy back the power assuming you don’t use it (unlikely).