Pilant’s Business Ethics CBS NewsThere is something about a nuclear plant surrounded by flood waters that is more disturbing that a coal fired plant or any other kind of energy producing facility. What makes it more disturbing is that knowledge in the back of our skull that if things go wrong, the investors aren’t just out an investment, we all will pay a price for such a calamity.
May we live in a world where reason and knowledge are used to make energy decisions.
James Pilant
via Jewish Nerd
This is the state of affairs we can expect in every part of the world. The upkeep and safety precautions necessary for the use of nuclear power are expensive, time-consuming and require technical expertise and competence. In a world where corporate profit is the number one concern and where government secrecy is a primary defense against catching wrong doing ahead of time, we can expect these expensive, high maintenance, time bombs to be under protected, under maintained and overly dangerous.
It is likely that nuclear plants can be made safe and that nuclear power can be part of a nation’s energy plan. But can we trust the industry and the government after so many lies, so many deceptions and so many disasters that were not supposed to be possible? Nuclear energy is surrounded not by science but by a shield of lies.
James Pilant
From Radio Netherlands Worldwide -
Russia’s nuclear power plants are dangerously under-prepared for earthquakes and other disasters, said a state review conducted after Japan’s Fukushima accident and obtained Thursday by AFP.
The unusually candid survey was presented to a council chaired by President Dmitry Medvedev on June 9 and initially reported on its website by the Oslo-based Bellona environmental organisation.
Russia has until now steadfastly defended its 10 nuclear power plants and 32 reactors against criticism.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on April 30 pronounced the country’s nuclear safety system “the best in the world”.
But the State Council review revealed more than 30 weaknesses including reduced disaster safety standards and a lack of a clear strategy for securing spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste at many plants.
I present a new post from the ever crusading web site, The Crisis Jones Report. I want to remind my readers that the crisis continues. Fukushima is going to be with us for years and the crisis continues with bad things happening almost daily generating more solid evidence of government and industry incompetence. That the Japanese Prime Minister survived a confidence vote was astonishing.
James Pilant
This web site covers the Fukushima crisis on a daily basis. If you have any interest in this situation I recommend you subscribe. I do.
James Pilant
I feel a “Charlie Brown” good grief coming on. Those reactors have been venting radioactive into the sea for weeks now. All those scattered control rods are now going to be rained on and a good number of them have plutonium in them. Does the fun never end? Does this disaster have a half-life as long as one of the isotopes it produces?
Let us hope and pray for a better outcome that is likely.
James Pilant
via Losing Freedom
I try to comment for a few paragraphs at least on each post but this writer has an edge I admire. He’s got this story nailed. Please read.
James Pilant
via Jim Grisanzio
Accountability, how strange. I have doubts that such a poor performance would always cost the job of an American CEO. We have learned to insulate our governing and corporate classes from the petty pain of suffering for their actions.
Here’s a news story about the resignation.
Here’s another take on the issue, discussing whether or not the company can continue.
I fully agree with the author. Fairewinds has been the best source of information about the disaster that I have been able to find. I am a subscriber to the site and I recommend you sign up as well. It’s intelligent and full of information usually backed up by photography and films. I visit regularly.
James Pilant
Removing top soil from school grounds to reduce radiation is a positive step. It does however provide a small harbinger of the enormous cost this disaster is going to impose in Japan for as much future as humans can reasonably foresee.
Generally nations recover from floods, chemical spills, rock slides, etc. and dare I say it, combinations of tsunami and earthquakes. Japan may recover economically but the damage to the land is permanent unless you look at history in terms of periods like the Jurassic.
It is questionable business ethics to promote PR that claims such disasters unlikely or impossible. It is questionable business ethics to subvert the government into downplaying or covering up incidents at your nuclear plants. It is questionable business ethics to pretend certainty when you don’t have any.
I expect giant corporations to lie, exaggerate and steal if at all possible. (Small corporations are much less likely to have these faults and are in many cases, excellent examples of morality and patriotism.) But permanently destroying the landscape has to considered unethical in an extreme sense.
James Pilant
What are the business ethics problems revealed in this particular news article? First we have a with holding from the residents of critical information about their exposure to radiation. Second, we have worker safety issues on a very large scale. Workers have already died at the site. Third, we have a continuous underestimate of the radiation being released. It seems every time, TEPCO gives the public radiation numbers, it is later discovered to be too low.
It seems that the Japanese government and the utility, TEPCO, are in full damage control mode. They now hold one press conference a week. They invite only establishment press. They limit access to the site, not so much for safety’s sake but to prevent independent coverage.
As a business ethics disaster, these events will be featured in textbooks for generations.
James Pilant
