Really. Why piss in debates?
I probably didn’t realize this was a debate thread. Looking at the first page it certainly doesn’t appear to be a debate.
Yeah, I can see how being in Great Debates and the op asking:
would make you think this was a Cafe Society thread. And when some posters started actually providing facts and figures and cites, and offering reasons for having different POVs, I am sure that really threw you.
See? Like the comment above. That doesn’t sound like a debate at all to me.
In hindsight a lot of the bullshit that people simply made up, or bought hook line and sinker, seems ridiculous three months later. The people who were interpreting the early limited data turned out to be spot on. Not that such facts will sway anyone.
No, we know now Reactor one suffered damage from the quake and released radioactivity before the tsunami arrived. It’s why Japan has shut down all the plants to make damn sure that other reactors don’t do the same thing in the next big quake. It is starting to look like Reactor two also suffered damage from the quake.
Utter nonsense of course. It was at the time, but we now know just how wrong the reports were. That they lied and covered up data.
Even more wrong. The presence of heavy nuclei far from the reactors leaves no doubt that not only was there meltdown, fires in fuel rods, but also containment breach, well before the explosions.
Now that is really funny. I mean it’s funny it was said, it’s not funny at all in the real world.
The latest data is showing that reactor two seems to be the source of the really bad loss of containment. While the visuals of destroyed buildings is striking, the explosion in the torus of building two turns out to be the really bad one.
And reactor one is still a constant battle to keep from going boom.
And then there is reactor three, constantly steaming and venting radiation. They can’t even get a camera close enough to know where the radioactivity is coming from, but the best guess is the melted fuel in the basement. As well as the spent fuel pond. Which is so full of crap they can’t even get a look at what happened there.
New pictures just came out, and the mystery of what caused the explosion in three and four goes on.
[QUOTE=FXMastermind]
See? Like the comment above. That doesn’t sound like a debate at all to me.
[/QUOTE]
And yet you participate. True, your main contribution thus far has been ‘I just say “What a load of crap”, but then I don’t care that much’, so it’s not like you are really engaging.
As for the other, those posts were from Matt discussing the subject in March (from the first page of this thread…March 14th to be exact) when there wasn’t a lot known about what was going on. There was a lot of bullshit speculation as to what MIGHT be going on, and a hell of a lot of frantic handwringing, but there wasn’t a lot of data.
There is more data now. And the death toll from this event wrt deaths due to radiation is still zero. You can twist and turn however you like, you can wave your hands in the air and try and change the subject by pointing to posts from a poster from FREAKING MARCH, but you still can’t make this event more than it was. It wasn’t the greatest disaster ever, it wasn’t Armageddon on Earth™, Japan isn’t a Mad Max nuclear wasteland, and every day that those things don’t happen is another nail in your arguments coffin. Oh, to be sure, the public is still frightened and frantic, and the anti-nuclear types are still milking this for all it’s worth…and, lets be honest, the dark side is winning, and this was a huge propaganda victory for them and one that will kill nuclear energy in several countries, and kill any chance of a renaissance here in the US…but in the end the death toll from radiation is still zero, and the numbers of people who have been seriously injured due to radiation is numbered in a handful. In decades to come there will certainly be deaths from this, but those deaths will also be relatively small. Compared to the disaster that actually caused all of this the numbers will swamped by the greater disaster that has hit Japan.
How do you reconcile that? The second worst disaster in the history of nuclear energy and thus far the radiation aspect has killed NO ONE. It’s been a purely local disaster, and even that is mostly under control. And it took an extraordinary event, a natural disaster on a huge scale to get it to that point. This sort of event doesn’t happen on earth every year…or every decade. It’s more like every couple of centuries. And yet it took something that epic to cause this level of disaster…a disaster that has cost no lives due to the radiation, yet have cost 10’s of thousands from the actual event that caused all of this. I seriously can’t understand how anyone looking at that can’t see the difference, but I guess I have to accept that people really do look at the world this way, since you weren’t the only one who just couldn’t seem to grasp that difference, or look at the events that happened at Fukushima in the context of the larger disaster, and put it into some sort of perspective.
-XT
More complete crap. It’s easy enough to go back and see my posts in the thread. I started off with a link to an article about the dangers of Uranium mining. That’s right, my first post was to all scientific stuff about the dangers of Uranium mining.
I also said shit like
Which was almost prophetic looking back.
When the discussion turned to the ignorant disinformation of nuclear zealots I got sarcastic, for which I an still sorry.
Now we know that they did indeed know what was up, but lied, in order not to “cause panic”. For which all kinds of top people have apologized for, resigned and asked for forgiveness.
Yet the pro nukers still blindly want to believe it’s just not that bad, and try to convince everyone else of it.
Don’t get offended if somebody call you out on your ignorance. It is the internets after all.
With no snark implied or explicitly intended, where are you reading this, BTW?
[QUOTE=FXMastermind]
More complete crap. It’s easy enough to go back and see my posts in the thread. I started off with a link to an article about the dangers of Uranium mining. That’s right, my first post was to all scientific stuff about the dangers of Uranium mining.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah…post 151. A drive by link with a bit quoted. The article is about the dangers and environmental impacts of uranium mining in 3rd world countries, where regulation of mining is either non-existent or minimal. Is that a concern? No doubt. Of course, the same concerns go for just about every kind of resource that is being mined or extracted in 3rd world countries. It’s not limited to just uranium mining. The article is long on scary language but short on facts or cites, and, again, there is no perspective here. We know that thousands of miners die world wide extracting coal each and every year…and that says nothing about the environmental impacts that mining coal has on the populations in 3rd world countries. Oil is the same thing. Even something like gold and diamond mining have huge ecological impacts on 3rd world countries…and cost thousands of lives per year. Relative to that, where does uranium mining stack up? Your article doesn’t say.
Considering that it IS safe, relative to other electrical production methods of similar scale, I’d say that this wasn’t all that prophetic on your part.
And yet you’ve provided no counter cites demonstrating that what was being said was ‘ignorant disinformation of nuclear zealots’. You did go in heavily for the sarcasm, that’s true enough…but it didn’t exactly cover you in glory, considering you weren’t able to back up that sarcasm with a rational and provable position of your own.
Frankly, even your sarcasm wasn’t exactly top shelf, let alone your arguments.
Yet they managed to get people out of the area safely, and NO ONE DIED. As to their supposed ‘lies’, in March they didn’t know the extent of the radiation leaks or the damage. You never could grasp that the folks who were dealing with the disaster didn’t have perfect information. You kept going on and on about how they coulda/shoulda/woulda been sending drones overhead to look things over or magic robots in to tell them exactly what was going on, etc etc. You couldn’t grasp that it takes time and effort to make a real evaluation, and that while the crisis was going on getting you that information was well down the list of priorities, or what was even possible. You still can’t grasp that, or grasp the fact that gathering and analyzing data is not an instantaneous process, and that there are only so many resources to go around on any given emergency. Or that the entire area there was a mess, and it took a lot of time just to get resources into the area to start dealing with the problem.
I believe facts. How many people have fucking died from radiation? How many have been seriously injured due to radiation? Those are facts. When saying something is highly dangerous and lethal, it sort of helps if you can actually prove it IS dangerous and lethal, and show that relative to something else. If in a normal year 10,000 people die in the US from coal, but in an extraordinary EVENT zero people die from radiation exposure then it’s sort of telling as to relative risk, wouldn’t you say?
To convince me it’s bad you have to actually show some fucking evidence that it’s bad. You have to show some fucking evidence that the relative risk is higher for nuclear than other forms of electrical power generation. You haven’t done so. Even in this event which is by far the second worst nuclear disaster in the history of nuclear energy NO ONE HAS FUCKING DIED. The damage has been relatively light, compared to the gods damned disaster that spawned all of this! And this is the SECOND WORST DISASTER IN THE HISTORY OF NUCLEAR ENERGY! It’s caused less deaths due to radiation thus far than the annual deaths due to swallowing freaking tooth picks, and maybe, over the next 6 decades it might cause the number of deaths due annually to people falling off ladders! MAYBE!
Sure chief…whatever you say.
-XT
I’m temped to address each of your comments with “what a load of crap” but I’ll resist. Interpretations of early limited data were all over the place - the worst case doomsayers got a lot of stuff wrong, as did optimists like myself. For the record, the reactors did not blow up, there was no explosive ejection of core material outside the containment, no fuel rod fires in empty fuel pools, no plutonium contamination unless you count levels that require a mass-spec to even distinguish from decades-old bomb test residue. On the other hand there was early core damage, the early venting operations released fission products into the atmosphere, there is an area of caesium 137 contamination that will probably require quarantining for anything up to a century, and there was and is an ongoing loss of containment which is resulting in an increasing stock of contaminated water stored on site.
Do you have a cite for this? Because as far as I know, my statement was and is still correct.
The venting operations were deliberate and controlled. They opened valves to vent steam and hydrogen into the upper parts of the reactor buildings, and then closed those valves again. What went wrong: Fukushima flashback a month after crisis started | Outra Política The hydrogen then blew the the top levels of the reactor building apart. It was not public knowledge that the cores had been damaged at that time and that the vented material contained fission products, and may not even have been known to TEPCO since the plants were without power at that time.
You have any cite for detection of “heavy nuclei” before the hydrogen explosions? The iodine 131 and caesium 137 contamination AFTER the explosions were evidence of meltdown. They were not evidence of containment breach (as in loss of containment integrity) unless you count the venting operations themselves as a containment breach. It wasn’t until radioactive water started showing up in the turbine halls that there was evidence of an ongoing, uncontrolled loss of containment. And even now, there is no evidence whatsoever of fires in fuel rods, and video footage online to the contrary. Cite: MANADOTOTO | Situs Toto Macau #1 dengan Jackpot Sensasional!
Why’s it funny? I said that on March 14th (7th post in this thread) and it was accurate. Seawater cooling was a problem. The claddings were ruptured, in fact we now know the cores had melted down. There were no further venting operations because the decay heat had subsided enough to do “feed and bleed” cooling without building up pressure. On March 15th, officials from the NNSA arrived in Japan and began monitoring the contamination over the surrounding area. The results of those surveys are shown here, running for several weeks and presumably ongoing: http://www.energy.gov/news/10194.htm They show no measurable deposit of anything from the air since March 19th, which I’m presuming was the first aerial survey. Nothing.
You see those links I posted above, supporting my points? Those are called cites. Try providing some. Reactor one is not as far as I know in a “constant battle to keep from going boom”, and the steam being emitted from the reactor 3 pressure vessel is within the containment, condensing on the walls and running into the basement with the other radioactive water.
Oh please. You really haven’t kept up at all, have you?
Good cite; I’m impressed.
Correction - the steam I’m talking about is from a pipe within the containment building of reactor 1. Video and information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=334I2ALOWUE
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1307179693P.pdf
Dear Matt,
Sometimes I wonder if somebody isn’t actually good at heart, and communication is the problem. That despite the appearance of perfidy and ill will, the real situation is more of common ground, perhaps deep down something like saving the planet. Maybe your nuclear love is actually a symbol of some deep fear that with out nuclear power plants the world will descend into darkness, or that the alternatives, even clean burning natural gas, will destroy the world somehow.
I don’t know of course because you won’t say. But at times I try to read through the muddled misdirection’s, try to fathom what you really want to say, filter out the pedantic nonsense and look for the deep truth. Hoping to find common ground. My basic distrust if humanity and ignorance battles with a faint hope that maybe, just maybe, you aren’t one of the terminally ignorant, and faced with reality, you might, just might, possibly do the unthinkable,
and change your mind.
If it helps, you can flip all that over and now imagine you are saying it to me, or somebody else that you find ignorant. To combat id quod plerumque accidit at the very least.
So when you demand, in a manner which almost seems petulant, for an act, but phrase it as an object, then pout when none appears, it makes me question your level of academic experience. Perhaps it is indeed a communication problem, and my blunt approach is terminally faulty. I may be dealing with iuris ignorantia est cum ius nostrum ignoramus, and by assuming at least a rudimentary skill set, I have done you wrong.
You can check the ngram viewer
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=do+you+have+a+cite&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3
Note the zero figure. Now try “can you cite”
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=can+you+cite&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3
See? Or “he cited”
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=he+cited&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3
You see the word “cite” is a verb, not a noun. It is used with an object, but it is not an object. You don’t talk about “a cite” unless you misspelled ‘site’, which amusingly enough does happen at times.
To convince you, I will cite a web resource, Google Scholar as well.
You can see just one example of where someone used the word in a faulty manner, but in his defense it was an honest mistake.
Under the brief you can see “Cited by 3”, which is how the word is used. It’s a fucking verb. OK?
It means to quote a source, especially an authority, as in “He cited the constitution in his defense”. Certainly I know what you want, you are demanding some support, proof, or confirmation to back up what you heard.
The word derives from the Latin citāre (you see that, that is more Latin, it makes you look smart to use Latin)
Cite was used to summon before a church court, It meant to hurry, set in motion, summon before a final authority, it is a frequentative of ciēre to move, set in motion.
It’s acceptable to say “Can you cite your sources?”, but that also is quite formal, and smacks of you having some authority, the ability summon, to demand action. But your use of a verb in a repulsive manner does not persuade one to answer.
Especially in regards to a very public series of events, which are documented and reported on daily, and live cameras are trained on the smoking gun, if you will.
Now I used logic, reason, sources and the vast resources of the internet to try and convince you to stop committing a terrible crime against language, which is a small thing. And quite easy to do.
If you (and others) can’t make that leap of logic, that reasonable change, do you think there is any chance you will be moved on larger contentious issues?
I certainly don’t. Hence the short tempered and snarky response at times. Because I have faced the essential truth, it probably just doesn’t matter.
I would love to see you prove me wrong of course. While a small victory, helping you learn how to wield the English language, even if you are going to turn it on me, it still brings a thrill.
Thanks for listening
sincerely,
FX
Now please don’t misunderstand, even on these forums the rampant abuse of language is busy at work. Like a cancer it seems to have spread all over the internet, mostly in forums argumentums, but it even creeps into the blogosphere.
You see that?
“A cite is requested”. It makes one cringe. All the more so when the writer of the vulgar phrase is trying to put them self forth as an authority, the bringer of truth, and their demands are from the pulpit, speaking down to their opponents.
Is as if a SC Judge demanded of a witness that he “compose himself in a manner deflitting[sic] of the court”, and didn’t blink and eye, much less notice the stares of every member of the proceeding. One’s authority is diminished when one is unaware of his own actions.
I don’t love nuclear. I think we can engineer the risks of using nuclear to an acceptable level, but I don’t like the stakes. I do however think we’re stuck with it for the next century barring a major advance in solar technology, a subject on which I have commented on at length in this thread and others. With calculations, and with cites (which is used on this board as an abbreviation for the noun citation. Apologies if that offends you.)
Okay. Nice set of veiled insults, well done. They may pass moderation on Great Debates or they may not. Another thing about Great Debates is, if you make declarative statements, you should back them up with citations.
Now, as it happens, Fukushima is a great big nuclear disaster that probably wouldn’t have happened if TEPCO had been on the ball in the past decade, and is a failure of the nuclear industry and a black mark on their record. The specific details of what was damaged when, and how much was released where, won’t change any of that. How much caesium 137 (and possibly strontium 90) will hang around on land and on the nearby seabed and enter food chains will be a matter of observation for years, but if there’s any good news there it’ll be pure luck.
However, the details of the event are nevertheless of interest to me, and presumably to you too since you specifically claimed “The presence of heavy nuclei far from the reactors leaves no doubt that not only was there meltdown, fires in fuel rods, but also containment breach, well before the explosions.” Now maybe I’m parsing your statement incorrectly and the “well before the explosions” refers only to “containment breach”. Perhaps you could clarify. My understanding of the chain of events does not match that, and if there is new information I’m interested in it. Some level of meltdown occurred before the hydrogen explosions since the hydrogen was generated by overheated zirconium cladding reacting with steam, and I acknowledged cladding damage way back in post 7, in March. The (deliberate)venting released fission products, rather than just neutron-activated water, as a result of that meltdown. Is that what you’re referring to as “containment breach”? However, it wasn’t until long after the explosions that there was any evidence that the drywells weren’t holding, as far as I know. There is also no evidence for fuel rod fires having occurred, as far as I know, and the rods in spent fuel pool 4 have suffered little or no damage according to video footage. So if you have cites (citations, see above) for those, please post them. Otherwise I may pout and point out that you misused an apostrophe in “misdirection’s”.
Oh I quite agree. Sadly you didn’t lead by example, and I skipped over the rest of your opinion, but fear not, when life gets dull I will read it at length.
OK that made me laugh. I also threw in two other typos, which I very upset you didn’t pounce upon.
The internet is awash with people looking for every last clue to the past, and analyzing each new report or scientific data almost as it comes in.
The footage of the balst that destroyed most of building three is an example.
http://gyldengrisgaard.dk/fuku_expl3/index.html
Easy to look frame by frame at one of the most iconic images of the two thousand teens.
matt, honestly why are you bothering even responding to this obvious baiting?
(And yes, “cite” as commonly accepted shorthand for “citation” is fine, as is “script” for “prescription” and “quote” for “quotation”. Few ask for “citations” on message boards.)
[QUOTE=DSeid]
matt, honestly why are you bothering even responding to this obvious baiting?
[/QUOTE]
Seconded. Don’t bother with him Matt.
-XT