Can we agree Japan, and the Fukushima region, need hospitals right now? Patients were abandoned at one hospital I’ve already linked to. That hospital had doctors and patients and was still caring for, and sheltering patients after both the earthquake and tsunami.
It was the nuclear power plant that caused the staff to abandon their patients, and a hospital that was obviously still operational and staffed enough to be caring for sick and wounded.
Yes, that’s making matters much worse.
That is 100% true. But do you really think there was just one Hospital in the abandoned area? Over 200,000 people have evacuated.
Quoted for posterity.
It’s hard to tell if people are being serious or joking around.
Who is trying to convince people that nuclear power is safe and always has been?
Even with US military support they were still behind the transportation curve due to the damage caused by the earthquake and Tsunami. They were battling forest fires with helicopters in the early days of it.
It’s hard to imagine the abandonment of patients at a hospital. In my area I’ve personally watched a traffic accident victim airlifted from a highway that was a mile from a hospital. The medical care is such that we would rather airlift a patient to a hospital 7 miles away then utilize a hospital chartered for children. We also have a civilian core of volunteer pilots who fly people to destination. That’s what is available on a normal day.
But when you compare the tsunami to Katrina you get an idea of the kind of assets needed to deal with large scale destruction. We used 35% of the entire inventory of Coast Guard rescue copters and 46,000 National Guard troops. Because of the shear size of the United States we had the assets to focus on a small area which in this case would have been the size of Japan. The area affected by Katrina was roughly the size of Japan.
Lots of people. For example -
Nuclear power is still safe. Japan has only proved how safe.
A lot of people seem to think, and I actually believe they think this, they believe TMI was no big deal, and nobody ever was hurt by it.
And that a partial meltdown and loss of two reactor sites wasn’t that important.
The constant stream of claims that the Japanese disaster isn’t anywhere close to Chernobyl is so absurd I keep thinking it’s some joke, an Onion style report.
Like when CNN reports, with no pause, that “Nishiyama said there was no evident explosion, spike in radiation or injuries at the No. 3 reactor.”
\http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/21/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html?hpt=T2#
or “the origin of the smoke at either reactor was unknown.”
Are you fucking kidding me? And no media outlet even questions this shit, or raises the obvious point. “It’s been 10 days since multiple explosions, fires and radiation leaking from a site with 6 reactors, and you can’t tell either where smoke is coming from, or what is in it?”
Do you really think people are that stupid? You have TWO extremely damaged reactors, both spewing ‘something’ into the wind, and you DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS?
It’s so far beyond unreal at this point …
Well no, but then again, I do believe most people are not leaping all the way into low earth orbit to reach their conclusions - or any conclusions at all at this time, for that matter.
“We have two fires, smoke coming from reactor 3 and 4”
What is burning?
“we have no idea”
Where is the smoke coming from?
“we have no idea”
Is there radioactive material in the smoke?
“we have no idea”
Thanks. That certainly is reassuring.
(calls navy base. “move all the ships out, and evacuate the people”)
Good, because I’m dead serious. This isn’t the result of some flaw of nuclear power, it’s what can happen when a truly rare and devastating natural disaster occurs. Frankly, I’m impressed at the engineering skill that kept it from being far worse. But even if a truly unprecedented human disaster resulted (and it would take a pretty absurd and unlikely series of events for that to occur), nuclear is still a better option then continuing with fossil-fuels.
I’m close to being one of those people. What is completely missing in the anti-nuke camp is any sense of scale or comparison. Even factoring in the worst-case reporting of the accident, each of the individual humans being served power from the plant were constantly in far greater danger from their personal bathtubs, automobiles, local crosswalks, or prescription medicine than they ever were or have been from TMI.
I’m not impressed one bit by the engineering of these plants. They should have had a higher level of redundancy from day one.
Oh. I thought someone was arguing that nuclear is safe, and has always been safe, when you said:
I suppose I was also naive enough to think that you were attempting to debate with people in this thread, rather than knock down Seattle PI blogger straw men.
How bad could it theoretically get if the wind switched and started blowing nonstop toward…say Tokyo. Or how bad could it have been were the wind blowing toward Tokyo from the start?
You can 2nd guess it all you want. Congratulations on your 20-20 hindsight. They did what was considered prudent and acceptable at the time, and the stockholders did not make the call.
Of course, the coal plant that they are using to provide power to the nuclear plant right now.
Remarkable.
And one of my favorites
So three explosions, four destroyed reactors, two partial meltdowns, three fires and an unknown amount of radioactive release, and that is spun as “the plant didn’t fail”.
See why I find dark humor at work?
Science Fiction called. It wants you to stop jumping that shark.
Seriously, you just took a flying leap of the deep end. It’s gone past funny and amusing into being concerned for ability to reach out and touch reality.
Is that certain, the reason why the hospital was abandoned? Or were the staff fleeign the tsunami? Because when I first heard about it no one was sure which it was.
Actually, I’ve heard of a couple hospitals being found with patients and no staff, and not all next to Fukushima. I’ve heard of hospitals where the staff stayed, but couldn’t prevent a few floors of people being swept away - those who could reach the upper floors, or couldn’t be carried there, didn’t survive.
I’m interested in confirmed facts, not just rumor. Yes, we know some patients were abandoned. Are we sure we know why?
We wish we had a rational argument, but we are in a reasoned argument.
In a completely rational argument, empiricism is king. If the argument is about what temperature water boils, then we need only take a pan full of water, a thermometer, and a fire, and the answer becomes clear: 212 Good Old American degrees, or 100 Eurotrash degrees. Argument over.
We all love that sort of certainty, possibly more here. Whenever possible, we like to claim empirical certainty, because otherwise we are forced into the uncertainty of reason, of balancing conflicting data and interpretations.
For instance, we are comforted by empirical data about radiation, that it takes X amount of radiation to produce undesirable result Y. And, alternatively, it only takes X amount, etc.
But how much of that do we really know? Can we say, with authority, that we have enough examples of rampant irradiation to draw upon? Do we understand the nature of radiation sufficiently to have such precise epidemiology? Where would we have gotten it, given the relative paucity of such events as we are witnessing, the Goddess be praised?
We rightly put great faith in empirical evidence, we would all love to be as certain as a scientist can be, put the argument to experiment, and it is done. But to smack each other in the face with “empirical” evidence that is really an informed conjecture fails, it reduces our opportunity to a reasoned course of action.
Take, for instance, that chart outlining radiation doses/effects currently making the interrounds by the good grace of XKCD. It is remarkably precise, the hallmark of solid empirical evidence. But I have to wonder where and when the experiments were done? How much direct data do we have regarding the effect of radiation upon us water bags? I would hope not very much, and would want even less.
So, gentlepersons, pals and gals, let us set aside the pretense that we can solve this argument with direct experimental observation and the rock-solid solace of empirical data. We most likely cannot, we are forced into the realm of reason. Certainty is a sham in this discussion, we need to have ourselves a little slack-cutting party, even for the pro-nuke morons who are bent on irradiating our children till they glow in the dark and… Oops. Sorry. I’ll work on that.