Making mountains out of meltdowns (in Japan)
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@marian said:
We offer freedom. Which should not be equated with happiness....but if people who now live in a society based on Sharia law, where women are sentenced to death or prison for the crime of being raped etc, won't be happier when they would be free then I think I may be part of another species.
Except we don't really offer 'freedom', only a western engineered version of 'democracy'. The answer lies in opening all borders right across the planet, where people can choose where they want to live or migrate to. If an Arab state wants sharia law, then fine (I too am not a fan, but some, including many women, feel that it is the way forward- for them). Those who oppose it can choose to live elsewhere.
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your takes on this ?
Youtube Video -
Sensationalism in the working.
Listen to what they actually say at 3.48.
Then there is the blip of iodine isotope that is turning up in milk in nyc. Up goes the cnn headline at the bottom of the screen- it's official, its a crisis! God help us all! Preposterous. Have these journalists got anything better to do?
And it's our friendly well paid American Astrophysicist Michio Kaku. Looks Japanese, actually is an American. And a very good self publicist. I'm sure he wants to get in on the action, feel the love (get paid $$$ for doing the job of the people). It's all so darn cynical!
Like Kaku, I'm anti-nuclear war, but unlike Kaku I'm not anti-nuclear energy, if nuclear science is used for humanitarian purposes.
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What happen if a new big earth quake arrives in Japan?
We are dancing on the volcano
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@unknownuser said:
What happen if a new big earth quake arrives in Japan?
We are dancing on the volcanoWell yes, you have a point there. But the origin of this thread wasn't about what happens after the next big one, it was about people in the west making a huge fuss about a crappy old nuclear power station- the exact same model that was also responsible for the 3 mile island accident in the USA (where again no one was killed), but more importantly, the emphasis made by hysterical liberals in the west while thousands of innocent men, women and children were either missing or dead in northern Japan.
For a nuclear power station that was only supposed to survive a wave that was only so many meters high, it fared pretty well. And the only death so far from within the power station has been one guy who apparently died from a heart attack. When you consider the ratio between this and what happened elsewhere, it wants to make me both puke and cry that we in the west can be so utterly selfish, as not really to be bothered about the real victims of this terrible catastrophe.
I think I've said far more than enough.
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That is reasonnable?
[flash=560,349:3boke862]http://www.youtube.com/v/qoyKe-HxmFk?version=3[/flash:3boke862] -
@unknownuser said:
That is reasonnable?
@unknownuser said:
Onkalo, a colossal underground tomb being built in Finland, 500 metres below the earth – supposedly impervious to any event on the surface and far away from any possible earthquake danger: its purpose is to house thousands of tonnes of radioactive nuclear waste. Onkalo is the first storage site of its kind, and Madsen interviews the various technicians, scientists, legislators and commentators involved in this awe-inspiring project.
If managed correctly, yes. If it will help us power the research needed to eventually reward us with the holy grail that is nuclear fusion,as well as power our schools, homes and hospitals, then a great big resounding YES!
Everyone loves a disaster flick don't they? What makes this latest green sensationalist monstrosity any different from any other environmental disaster movie that has proceeded it? Asteroids and spacemen falling to earth? Paul Ehrlich and his merryband of merry Malthusians? Next you'll be telling us that we need better birth control, and that we should be encouraged not to have children.
None of this baloney in this video has ever come true.....
....but as soon as Orson Wells announced that aliens had arrived from mars, many fled for the hills. That's no joke.
[flash=560,349:2qppydzu]http://www.youtube.com/v/OfpSXI8_UpY?version=3[/flash:2qppydzu]
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@tfdesign said:
Please 'stop it'? Are you a moderator? Why should I stop being able to use reason in a debate? That notion is ridiculous.
No, I'm not a mod. How's that even relevant? And I didn't say you shouldn't use reason in a debate. But then you know that.
@tfdesign said:
It also borders on the idea that the rules ("the science"?) are/is set in stone, and how dare anyone dare to challenge them/it. What sort of democracy is it we have if ideas cannot be raised as well as challenged?
I do beg your pardon. I somehow overlooked how you're a one-man philosophical vanguard redefining the way we ought to interact with each other, operating in a realm jenseits von Gut und Böse. I just assumed you were having a passive-aggresive wank-a-thon. My bad!
@tfdesign said:
You too mate. You make some inflammatory comment on this forum elsewhere about how bad Americans are. You are no better.
Do post a link, will you? I've commented on American foreign policy a number of times, but I'm reasonably certain I've never stated Americans are 'bad' per se.
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All power is nuclear if you trace it back to its source. I just don't see the advantage of centralized power generation, when solar, wind and tidal are so abundant. Solar is not expensive, it is just over-priced while we go through the dark ages of nuclear-based petroleum. Have you ever heard the argument about overcast days and it being dark at night as an argument against solar. What is petroleum other than decayed plant material. Those plants were grown by solar energy and that energy was stored in the oil. And that solar energy came from our primary nuclear generating station which is the sun. So oil is a battery made of nuclear/solar generated biomass. In ten years we will go from 12 to 20 percent solar efficiency to near 80 percent efficiency. We have the knowledge and basic technology and the time lag is just a function of going through the phase of engineering refinement. The length of the lag will be moderated by the roadblocks raised by political conservatism. However, conservatism will fall harder than the Berlin wall as the floodgates of pent up energy demand and the rising price of oil collide. May not happen in my life time, but it could also happen in less than 10 years.
The problem with nuclear is the problem of trusting overly complex system to fallible humans and the vagaries of nature.
Also when designing for solar don't do your calcs solely on the energy created. Make sure your solar designs also use the panels to shade the roofs and walls of the buildings you are air conditioning and take full advantage of the passive solar savings. And use water systems to cool your panels and feed/that warm/hot water into your hot water heaters. Do your calcs on such integrated systems and I will listen to the results.
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Hi Roger, While I basically agree with you, we know that there is no free lunch. Off the Big Island (the island of Hawaii), some are considering the feasibility of heat exchange in a deep trench adjacent to the coast line. Sounds good, but I wounder about the environmental impact? How is the energy transmitted up the island chain? Is that kind of investment susceptible to earthquakes, and tsunamis? Before we jump, solid research needs to be done. In the mean time it appears that the US at least, might need to expand proven Nuclear technology. In any case IMO we should eventually move off the Nuclear standard, unless it can be made safer, and disposal taken care of.
There is the joke about the first moon lander vehicle, that it was built by the lowest bidder.:) I wonder what happened to Kevin Costner's oil clean up device in the Gulf disaster.
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Hono, If you want to do heat exchange, UPS me a cooler of onshore Hawaiian breeze and I will return it filled with some of our 114 degree desert air flavored with smoke from our forest fires.
I am not too worried about nuclear disaster here. The local newspaper printed a diagram showing a 48-mile evacuation zone around the Palo Verde Nuclear plant in case of disaster. Luckily I am 49 miles away so I have no worries.
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@unknownuser said:
Luckily I am 49 miles away so I have no worries.
And hopefully the wind never flows on your side
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OK, Frenchy you do have a point, but at least I don't have to worry about Tsunami.
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Our only nuclear plant (producing around 40-45% of the power needs of the nation) is about 100 kms away from me (and the wind generally blows in another direction) so I am not worried about tsunamis either.
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@gaieus said:
Our only nuclear plant (producing around 40-45% of the power needs of the nation) is about 100 kms away from me (and the wind generally blows in another direction) so I am not worried about tsunamis either.
Well, tsunami is the only thing that could shake things up in my godforsaken city. Otherwise we´re at the serious risk of dying of boredom
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Since retirement, I occasionally watch court TV. Whenever the party the Judge is going to rule against begins their nervous smiles, the Judge will always tell them to wipe the smile off their faces, then bring down the gavel down against them. No nuclear power in Hawaii yet (unless you count the Navy berth in Pearl Harbor), but all of our power plants (at least on the island of Oahu) are next to the ocean, or water connected and close by the ocean. If a Tsunami hits us, those that are not inundated will be without power for a long while.
Mean while more bad news for Japan.
@unknownuser said:
Radioactive strontium detected in seabed
Radioactive strontium has been detected for the first time on the seabed near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Tokyo Electric Power Company says it found strontium-89 and -90 in the seabed soil. The company conducted a survey on June 2nd about 3 kilometers off the coast at 2 locations, some 20 kilometers north and south of the nuclear complex.
The substances pose a serious health risk because they can accumulate in the bones if inhaled, which could cause cancer.
Up to 44 becquerels per kilogram of strontium-90 were detected, which has a half-life of 29 years.
The substances had been detected before in soil on land and in seawater following the nuclear accident in March.
A member of the government's Nuclear Safety Commission, Shigeharu Kato, says more examination should be carried out to find out if or how the substances can accumulate in marine life.
The fishery ministry conducted separate surveys. It did not find radioactive strontium in fish and seafood samples taken off the coast of Ibaraki and Chiba prefectures. Both are located south of the Fukushima plant.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 08:54 +0900 (JST)
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@unknownuser said:
When we installed the panels on our house roof I had the expectation that we could allow them to sit there without a worry or care and to generate electricity during daylight hours for the next twenty-five years when the guarantee runs out. That they ought to be exposed to unshaded sunlight was obvious, but my early discovery that in order to achieve maximum output they need also to be rinsed periodically was an early lesson in the maintenance of solar panels. I have been more recently surprised that these two points are not fully appreciated by everyone, not even some "experts."
A really interesting report from this guy in SolCal who thought PV cells on his roof was "a great idea"
http://www.csudh.edu/oliver/smt310-handouts/solarpan/solarpan.htm
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You have a new provocative avatar
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Looks like someone shot tomcat
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@unknownuser said:
You have a new provocative avatar
Yes, however it's no more provocative than this image below is it...?
Towards the end of the last century. my family drove around English roads and up and down motorways in our cars, with an English version of this sticker in the back window. I remember it was really cool to have this sticker- even more cool if you had the one that was in German! "Atomkraft? Nein Danke!". How provocative was that?! Britain was still very mistrusting of Germany in the 60's and 70's, and this sticker represented so much more than just being anti-nuclear. It represented moving forward. Britain united with the rest of Europe. A new age. That was my interpretation of it in those days anyway. I was only a boy.
We made such a fuss over nuclear in the 1960's and 1970's. A nuclear scientist, to the intellectual middle classes was someone to have deep mistrust in. We were fed terrible images of the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all driven by a deep fear of the cold war- which was at its peak. My sister would for years have nuclear 'nightmares' and would often cry herself to sleep, because largely my parents were so prominent in the British anti-nuclear movement and would fill her head with propaganda. We actually almost had an all out nuclear war in 1979- but it wasn't a republican who was going to press that big strike button, it was sweet old democratic President Carter.
In the 1980's we demonstrated about the nuclear train. (Where did that go or end?). The nuclear train even crashed once. We're still here. There were mass demonstrations in Germany, where the green movement was strong. I was a member of the British green movement in the early 1980's. I was a young fallible 16 year old, who listened too much to others rather than making my own opinions. I became highly irritated with the green party, partially because they were doing there best to "kick out the anarchists" (but mainly because at heart, they were the vacuous upper middle-class). The greens found anarchists most distasteful, because essentially anarchists were marxists. Marxism didn't bode well with middle class green ideals. Then in about 1982/3 I was sitting outside a pub during local elections, when this guy walks up to me donning a badge of a green flower with an A in the middle of it. "I'm a green anarchist" he said. It was obvious that the greens had found kudos by posing as anarchists. And those who thought they were anarchists, but weren't and were actually middle class environmentalist posers, found a way to make themselves more acceptable to the dying left, the dregs of socialism, who were slowly watching the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was a burgeoning green 'new age' growing, and those who didn't carry on with their Marxist roots (like myself), joined this new age movement. Suddenly the accolade of being labeled an "anarchist", a 'free thinker' and especially to pose as a 'green anarchist' was just too tempting, too elitist to ignore.
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