The reality is not like you are trying to make, It is already clear that they could have done better, the robot example is a good one example of this, but it is not accurate at all to say that none are there.
And yes, I have to mention also that I’m still waiting for the images of the dead people by radiation from this incident as you claimed before.
Are you under the impression that TEPCO had a single robot on hand at the plant? Ready to go? Or that they had any robots anywhere at any plant? tested, ready for action?
Seriously? Is that what you think?
I am still waiting a cite confirming your claim that people have died of radiation at Fukushima. I am aware of one death caused by falling from a crane, but that had nothign to do with radiation, that had to do with an earthquake.
I’m sorry. Cancel the death thing. Nobody has died at the plant. Nobody is even injured enough to be in a hospital. All is well. Stay calm.
Everybody relax. Nothing to fret about. Everything is under control. There has been no leaking, or of there was, it doesn’t matter.
This is a minor problem. No fuel rods have burned. No nuclear material has been spread by explosions. And if it has, it is very little.
Stay calm.
Is that the best you can do?
Can you actually back up your position, with you know, facts?
That dog wont hunt, we already know and got sick of your sarcastic act, out with the source at least or it will be clear to all that that item was bullshit.
Those are the facts. The official facts. Stay calm. Nothing to worry about. Move along.
All reports of deaths and radiation burns are false. No workers have died from radiation. Injuries are minor. All is well. Go about your business. Stay calm.
If Yellowstone pops, or a giant meteor hits, nuke plants are going to be the least of our worries.
This situation in Japan was the result of an earthquake+tsunami that have killed 6000 with another 10,000 missing, most of whom will be found dead if they are ever found at all. Call it 15,000 dead more or less. Five 9/11s all at once basically. And yet looking at this discussion, TV news, and the internets in general, it seems that it is some radiation that is the REAL threat to Japan.
You don’t need to make nuke plants big-assed disaster proof, because when a big-assed disaster happens, it is already a big-assed disaster. Yeah, when you are in a head-on collision, the fact that your Big Gulp spills all over the interior of the car DOES make it worse…thus it would really be a good use of time and resources to make sure that soda can only be sold in containers that will survive head-on collisions without spilling…and if that can’t be done, or it is too expensive, then it is just plain stupid to allow soda in cars!
I’m thinking that we probably find more dead Japanese washed up on the west coast of North America than we have Japanese getting sick from radiation.
What Japan has shown us, is that the last thing you need during a devastating earthquake is a nuclear power plant making things far worse than they already were. People all over the world aren’t panic-buying doughnuts. They’re not panic-buying iodine because Japan had an earthquake.
You are just tap dancing here, you said “no robots”, the cite I mentioned deals with that howler and your cite points to others that are there (Most logical explanation why they were not deployed sooner, power was not available yet, but I can see that there were some cultural (and dumb) reasons why robots are not employed more in that industry in Japan). Now if you had mentioned that they were not available right away, you could have a point, but that was not alarmist enough so you had to embellish it by saying “no robots”.
We are still waiting for a source of your howler that “there are images of sick or dead radiation victims”
To the various extreme anti-nuke voices here: let us, for the sake of this discussion anyway, accept that TEPCO is run by a bunch of greedy lying bastards, who have lied before, who made poor decisions because they felt that avoiding further damaging their investment was worth risking massive radiation release, and who were hiding information from the public …
They of course would be the same people, or sort of people anyway, running any other power plant if there was no nuclear. And causing deaths every day from skirting emission controls there in the face of inadequate oversight.
If, hypothetically, this event ends in a Chernobyl like manner, but does so as a consequence of corporate malfeasance, rather than anything intrinsic to nuclear power. If in fact something like that happens but if the company had NOT cut corners and had followed all the guidelines as written, is that a ding on nuclear per se, or a consequence of poor oversight that could just as easily cause disasters and daily accumulated deaths and disease in other parts of the power industry?
I could, under that circumstance, understand your concluding that oversight has proven itself not up to the job in the face of determined greed and incompetence, and to not trust any future assurance of adequate oversight, and why the concern for a failure of oversight is greater when the consequence is a Chernobyl like event than a gas pipeline explosion, for example. A dramatic event is always more motivational than the daily drib and drab, no matter much greater the dribs and drabs end up being when all is added up.
But if, hypothetically, new plant designs were tested and approved that were idiot-proof safe, as stated up thread, safe by way of the physics of the design, safe even if a company intentionally ignored all usual protocols in the service of greed, and cost competitive - would you still be anti-nuke?
Would it be possible for any expert body to convince you that a current or future design (perhaps the liquid thorium design) was that safe? Or would you assume that no matter who said it, they were just bought off to delude us?
Sorry for quoting myself, but this reminds me:
Are there rules about how close a hospital can be to a nuke plant? If not, there probably will be now, which is just going to make it even harder to site nuke plants.
“Never attribute to malice, that which can be explained by stupidity.”
Just seems like the tree we’re barking up here.
Okay, would you presume that no matter wo said a new design was safe, no matter what expert body claimed it was physically impossible for a new design to have a catastrophic event, that they were just too stupid to realize that they were wrong and that they were?
The corollary to this discussion thread-wise would be the Gifford shooting a couple months ago: Time Re-think gun control? /// Time to re-think nuclear power?
It’s the whole reactionary knee-jerk mindset.
I’m not worried about modern well run reactors, as long as there is a vast peaceful society with experienced people in charge, and the reactors are in stable areas, far from major population centers, and they dispose of the spent fuel rods, rather than keeping 40 to 50 years of old fuel rods laying about in pools of water.
I haven’t even worried about the shitty run down ones in war torn areas with social strife and vast amounts of spent fuel rods just waiting for the mythical day somebody will figure out how to dispose of them safely.
But I am sure as hell worried when you have six reactors at risk, three have blown up, fuel rods are burning, radioactive fall out is coming down, and nobody can say when or if it will be resolved. I don’t like that a bit.
That they have 40 years worth of fuel rods stored there, that is really troubling.
The people who keep talking like this is no big deal, you are also disturbing. Not just the sheer ignorance and blindness, but your attempts to convince other rational people that you are right and they are wrong.
That’s insane.
FX I have read no one here claiming that this is not a big deal.
I have read several saying that it is not as catastrophic as some make out to be. The issue is not whether or not this is a big deal but whether or not there is a place that is “concern” without believing that Japan is complete toast.
The issues include debating what level of concern there should be, on what basis, and, to the op, how this disaster informs or does not inform us about the the safety of nuclear power as part of our mix going forward.