Japan to fire top nuclear officials in wake of disaster (via 1 Real News)

This disaster happened in March. Virtually everything you can think of went wrong and now, they fire people. I’m not impressed. Once it became obvious that the people in charge were grossly incompetent, it might have been better to fire them immediately than waiting for months for what is apparently a better political climate.

James Pilant

ReutersAugust 4, 2011Japan will replace three senior bureaucrats in charge of nuclear power policy, the minister overseeing energy policy said on Thursday, five months after the world’s worst atomic crisis in 25 years erupted at Fukushima.The move comes as Prime Minister Naoto Kan calls for enhanced nuclear safety accountability and an overhaul of Japan’s energy policy, with the aim of gradually weaning it off its dependence on nuclear power as p … Read More

via 1 Real News

High radiation found at Japan’s Fukushima plant (via National Post | News)

Just when you think the Fukushima crisis had finally been scrubbed from the news by various interest groups and the Japanese government, it comes roaring right back at you.

James Pilant

TOKYO — Pockets of lethal levels of radiation have been detected at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in a fresh reminder of the risks faced by workers battling to contain the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) reported on Monday that radiation exceeding 10,000 millisieverts per hour was found at the bottom of a ventilation stack standing between two reactors. On Tuesday Tepco said i … Read More

via National Post | News

Japan Passes Law To Cleanse Internet Of ‘Bad’ Fukushima Radiation News (via THE INTERNET POST)

Predictable, I wonder why it took so long. As radiation is detected in larger and large amounts further and further away from the damaged nuclear plants, I guess things just started to get annoying. So, we’re just going to give all those nasty news agencies a good talking to!

James Pilant

'The supposedly free democratic nation of Japan, which supposedly values and promotes freedom of speech, has officially issued orders to telecommunication companies and webmasters to remove content from websites that counter the official government position that the disaster is over and there is no more threat from the radiation. The government charges that the damage caused by earthquakes and by the nuclear accident are being magnified by irresp … Read More

via THE INTERNET POST

Japan considers stress tests for nuclear reactors (via Financial Post | Business)

This is certainly a classic case of closing the barn door after the animal has fled. Yet, the measure is probably no going to pass, even in the face of solid evidence that the plant was already in partial meltdown from the earthquake before the tsunami hit.

James Pilant

TOKYO – Japan’s government is considering conducting stress tests on nuclear reactors to ease safety concerns which have blocked the restart of idled reactors since the March quake and tsunami, including several that have completed maintenance and complied with new, stiffer safety standards. Japan is struggling with a drawn-out crisis after meltdowns at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi atomic plant, site of the world’s worst nuclear incident in 25 … Read More

via Financial Post | Business

Shareholders hammer Tepco over nuclear fiasco (via MY VOICE)

My favorite sentence -

Another investor shouted that Tepco’s executives should jump into their stricken reactors and die to take the blame for the fiasco.

Enjoy the article and remember that TEPCO has paid out more than 19 billion dollars in damages but that if this happened in America, the responsible utility company would be out less than a hundred million dollars due to our government protecting them from losses.

James Pilant

By KAZUAKI NAGATA Staff writer Tokyo Electric Power Co. faced a six-hour barrage of heavy flak from shareholders Tuesday at their annual meeting, with management blasted over how it has handled the world’s worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Demonstrators gather outside Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Fukuoka Prefecture. KYODO Many investors demanded to know why Tepco failed to foresee the tsunami … Read More

via MY VOICE

Nuclear Plant, Left for Dead, Shows a Pulse (via Energy)

You cannot kill these things.

Christopher Lee as Dracula in a mid-sixties Hammer film has the life span of a mayfly by comparison.

This nuclear plant, little more than a pile of looted wreckage is under consideration for construction.

I call upon anyone and every one for a little respect for the facts of the situation. Surely, we can think better than this?

James Pilant

By MATTHEW L. WALD/NYT HOLLYWOOD, Ala. — Spider webs line the 50-story cooling towers, parts have been amputated for the scrap value of their nickel or copper, and the control room still has analog dials at Bellefonte 1, a half-built nuclear plant here that was shelved 23 years ago. This does not seem like a particularly opportune moment to breathe life back into a reactor that was designed before the computer age. But its owner, the … Read More

via Energy

Worries Over Two Nuclear Plants (via )

I think there is definitely some grounds for concern. If you buy the idea that corporations are only in business to make money and have no other responsibilities, the idea that they might skimp on protections becomes very viable.

Nuclear plants are indemnified by the federal government if they cause more than a certain amount of damage. Off the top of my head, I believe that amount is fifty million dollars. That’s not a lot of incentive to protect the public. For many corporations, fifty million dollars is small change.

TEPCO, the Japanese utility that runs the nuclear plants that have melted down would have loved to have a deal like the American government gives out to our nuclear utilities.

It should be obvious that indemnification destroys a lot of corporate rationale for safety. If the money damages aren’t that big a deal, why not cut corners?

James Pilant

As record floodwaters along the Missouri River drench homes and businesses, concerns have grown about keeping a couple of notable structures dry: two riverside nuclear power plants in Nebraska. Though the plants have declared “unusual events,” the lowest level in the emergency taxonomy used by federal nuclear regulators, both were designed to withstand this level of flooding, and neither is viewed as being at risk for a disaster, said a spokesman … Read More

via

Unsafe Radiation Found Near Tokyo, Vast Area of Japan Contaminated ! (via Socio-Economics History Blog)

I’ve been reading reports for some days now that radiation is being detected in “hot spots” outside the restricted in increasing amounts and in more places.

If you’ll examine a recent map of Chernobyl, you will find a phenomenon called “leopard stripes.” Hot radiation areas laid in patterns similar to leopard stripes on the map. Radiation does not spread evenly. So if we see hot spots popping up here and there, it is a new pattern forming.

I am uncomfortable with this. The tonnage of radioactive material is very large at these sites (Fukushima). Over long periods of time and with variations in wind and other weather, the radiation could contaminate countries in every direction.

James Pilant

To those of you thinking of a holiday in Japan, you may want to think twice about it. The radiation level reported in the MSM since the 11 March inciden … Read More

via Socio-Economics History Blog

NOAA Makes It Official: 2011 Among Most Extreme Weather Years in History (via madaboutthenews)

Facts are facts. Whether about evolution or climate change, the data is going to just keep accumulating in ever larger stacks of hard to ignore facts.

It’s getting hotter. Now, tornadoes are not very get indicators of climatic change – too many variable. Hurricanes are a little better but not much. The best indicators are average temperatures over time and weather volatility.

However, with the rise of “intelligent design,” more and more science is a matter of opinion. Thus, the United States is gradually losing that key part of the democratic process, critical thinking. If we don’t like what science or history or sociology says, we just get together with a few other disgruntled individuals and rewrite history or science. It’s easy. Pretend there is a controversy, and that you are God’s seekers after truth.

Will we be burning witches soon? Or giving faith healing status to collect insurance for services rendered? I don’t know. Let’s watch. The 14th century awaits.

James Pilant

Just past the halfway point, 2011 has already seen eight weather-related disasters in the U.S. that caused more than $1 billion in damagesAmplify’d from http://www.scientificamerican.comEXTREME WEATHER: Halfway through, 2011 has already seen eight weather-related disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damagesThe devastating string of tornadoes, droughts, wildfires and floods that hit the United States this spring marks 2011 as one of the mo … Read More

via madaboutthenews

RED ALERT: Japan’s Nuclear Disaster Is Still In Its Infancy (via The International Perspective)

You may have become tired of my endlessly repeated statement that the Fukushima crisis is a almost daily event which shows no sign of a cure. Here is another writer with the same point of view. There is also an excellent summary of the current situation at the four nuclear plants.

Here are the two key paragraphs from the article -

Fukushima did not happen. Fukusima IS HAPPENING… still.

Unfortunately, the economic containment by Japanese corporations and policy officials could not have been much worse – exacerbated by their deafening silence and sheer communication vacuum of information. Despite this being initiated by a natural disaster of epic proportions, it does not provide cover for the blatant failings of the officials, management and system as a whole. Japanese utilities, and this TEPCO’s Fukushima power plant in particular, were repeatedly warned that they did not have enough tsunami protection. The tsunami did not just tip the scale for breaching defenses, it completely overwhelmed and destroyed them – it was not a marginal miscalculation. Given the pump design-flaws I highlighted earlier, this bodes for more than just an engineering mistake. It is a structural issue within the industry as a whole. This has not been a moment of shining glory for the Japanese utility companies.

It is hard not to be astonished at the level of incompetence of the Japanese government and TEPCO, the Japanese utility in charge. However, the government of the United States and its massive loan gurantees and indemnification of the nuclear industry is acting in an equally bizarre fashion. This is definitely the time to re examine what mix of elements will be used in the future to generate power in the United States.

James Pilant

RED ALERT: Japan’s Nuclear Disaster Is Still In Its Infancy Firstly I’d like to thank Chris Martenson and Arnie Gundersen of Fairwinds Associates for producing the first assessments of the situation in, what I would call, a logical and easy-to-understand fashion. Martenson interviewed Gundersen a couple of days ago and you can catch it here, on Martenson’s free blog site. I’ll admit, since coincidentally writing about Japan’s structural challenge … Read More

via The International Perspective