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Explosion, Radiation Leaks from Japan's Quake-Hit Nuclear Plant
FUKUSHIMA, Japan - Radiation leaked from Japan's earthquake-crippled nuclear plant on Saturday after a blast blew the roof off, and authorities prepared to distribute iodine to people in the vicinity to protect them from exposure.
Smoke rises from Fukushima Daiichi 1 nuclear reactor after an explosion March 12, 2011 in this still image from video footage via Reuters TV The government insisted radiation levels were low because although the explosion severely damaged the main building of the plant, it had not affected the reactor core container.
Local media said three workers suffered radiation exposure at the plant in the wake of Friday's massive earthquake, which sent a 10-meter (33-foot) tsunami ripping through towns and cities across the northeast coast.
Kyodo news agency said more than 1,700 people were killed or missing as a result of the 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the biggest in Japan since records began in the nineteenth century.
Later it said 9,500 people in one town were unreachable, but gave no other details.
The blast raised fears of a meltdown at the power facility, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, as officials scrambled to contain what could be the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl explosion in 1986 that shocked the world.
However, experts said Japan should not expect a repeat of Chernobyl. They said pictures of mist above the plant suggested only small amounts of radiation had been expelled as part of measures to ensure its stability, far from the radioactive clouds Chernobyl spewed out 25 years ago.
Valeriy Hlyhalo, deputy director of the Chernobyl nuclear safety center, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying Japanese reactors were better protected than Chernobyl.
"Apart from that, these reactors are designed to work at a high seismicity zone, although what has happened is beyond the impact the plants were designed to withstand," Hlyhalo said.
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters the nuclear reaction facility was surrounded by a steel storage machine, which was itself surrounded by a concrete building.
"This concrete building collapsed. We learnt that the storage machine inside did not explode," he said.
Edano initially said an evacuation radius of 10 km (6 miles) from the stricken 40-year-old Daiichi 1 reactor plant in Fukushima prefecture was adequate, but then an hour later the boundary was extended to 20 km (13 miles). TV footage showed vapor rising from the plant.
Japanese officials told the U.N.'s atomic watchdog they were making preparations to distribute iodine to people living near nuclear power plants affected by the quake, the Vienna-based agency said. Iodine can be used to help protect the body from radioactive exposure.
The wind at the disabled plant was blowing from the south, which could affect residents north of the facility, Japan's national weather forecaster said, adding the direction may shift later so that it blows from the north-west toward the sea.
The direction of the wind is a key factor in judging possible damage on the environment from radiation.
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103 Comments so far
Show AllAlan MacDonald, perhaps this is the time to begin pushing the costs of "externalities." In Japan, at least, nuclear power no longer seems like the good 'cheap' solution to energy needs. With the vast contamination of the Gulf of Mexico by the oil well blowout and the likely coming contamination of water wells in vast areas of the US by hydraulic fracking with hundreds of proprietary chemicals in our quest for more 'cheap' natural gas, for holy fuckin' shits sake, it's time for people to pull their dumb-ass heads out of the sand, and come up with solutions to our problems that are in actual fact, "cheap." And I'm talking wind and solar, and huge tax increases to cover those damn "externality" costs that everyone ignores.
But we can't invest resources into solar and wind, because that would cut into the Koch brothers' profits, and those poor, starving boys only made nine billion dollars last year off the money they inherited from daddy. So we're stuck with the Obama/Cheney energy plan of "clean coal, safe nuclear, and drill, baby, drill."
We need to wake up.
Nukular Egerny: Too cheap to meter.
How many GigaWatts of solar arrays and wind turbines can $6 billion purchase?
How large a blast would be created by the collapse of thousands of distributed alternative energy "plants" in an earthquake, tsunami or terrorist attack? Aluminum, silicon, carbon fibre and steel are poor accelerants. They don't spill millions of gallons of toxins or emit radiation upon their destruction.
Wind turbine energy is one of those things that sounds good if you say it fast, but it poses an even greater environmental hazard.
Once you start building a lot of wind turbine plants offshore, they pose a threat to the sea floor. In a major quake, such as the one in Japan, most of the wind turbines in a large offshore wind turbine farm would collapse onto the sea floor. And you know what would happen next? Reefs would form! That's right boys and girls, the pristine sea floor would be covered with the unsightly clutter of reefs.
The damage doesn't stop with the reefs. It's a known scientific fact that reefs draw fish! How disgusting is that? The reason that W. C. Fields drank gin with breakfast, rather than water, was because he knew what fish do in water. Can it get more gross? Do you want your kids swimming in that?
It gets worse! As if the fish don't create enough damage, they draw mammals! Let's see how much you like wading in the surf when you step in dolphin poop. Thank the lord that BP cared enough about us to clean up all the fish and dolphin pollution in the Gulf. I say that we shouldn't go back to that unsavory part of our past.
The best way to approach the problem is to build the nuclear plants offshore so that when they sink in an earthquake, the bright light from the Cobalt-Thorium-G will keep the fish away for its half-life of 68,000 years, thereby saving us from the danger of stepping in dolphin poop.
Does anyone know if we can get BP to start building offshore nuclear plants? Preferably in the Gulf of Mexico.
A few solar arrays on everyone's roof would take care of our power needs.
Ocean correct for Oh a wild guess, 50% of the land mass on the globe.
City buildings would have to be clad in solar wind and geothermal gound pumps plus using any nearby tidal or current energy.
Plus many rainyplaces need completementary to solar enery. Wind, Tidal, Ground Pump Thermal systems.
Those sorta of tibet prayer flag pole type of rooftop wind turbines are neat.
I did mention the first new nuke Oilybomber requested funds to finance is due to be built among Georgia Blacks.
How do you like that hill of molten uranium?
And industry would require vast parks of panels perhaps electrolising water using the catalyts devloped at MIT.
But its all doeable with a total conversion of all military and fossil fuel and Corporate welfare Funds.
The cost of the Roscoe Wind Farm in W Texas was more than $1 billion. Property owners are very please with the farm, since payments go to them. It is rated at 780 MW. So its peak capacity is as large as 5 of the 6 Japanese reactors. The cost to replace those reactors will run upwards of $7 billion each for reactors of 1000 MW.
None of the wind farms in northern Japan sustained any damaged from the quake.
All are happily running now or are operational and waiting for the local grid to be repaired.
Opening onto the heart rather than the harsh reality of the moment -
A video love letter to the Japanese people through the ethereal zeitgeist world of the internet presence of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.
A BBC special on one of Japan's most beloved writers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF4ZR7ALhls&feature=related
I agree. The sun keeps shining giving us solar power and moving the winds. The moon keeps moving the tides. If we wanted to, we could capture all this kinetic and radiant energy, and thermal energy flowing around the earth, and integrate it cleanly into a system to meet our energy needs.
Yet we stubbornly insist on burning fossil fuels and releasing energy from atoms, two dirty and dangerous methods. You may not agree, Greg R, but I consdier ethanol from plants is also diabolical, as it diverts food supply and still releases one CO2 into the air for every carbon burned.
It will be very difficult to dislodge the carbon based and nuclear power industries from their lucrative reign over our energy needs and our lives. But I truly believe that if we do not change, we face a future of decreasing supply, increasing toxicity of the environment including water, wars for oil and quite a bit of misery and disease. The "externality" costs will not be so abstract.
You may gauge corporate opposition to change by how much it will remove them from being the gatekeepers of our basic needs. This applies to clean energy versus finite fossil fuel, organic heirloom seed versus zombie/hybrid seed, herbal medicine versus patented derivatives from extracts, pot versus alcohol - good or bad, they are threatened by anything that people can easily handle for themselves instead of paying for their refined processes and putting money into their war chests.
We're stupid to play the game by their rules.
"We're stupid to play the game by their rules."
Right. And stupid is pandemic.
When I was younger, I remember thinking how lucky I was not to have been living during the "Dark Ages" when humans were so ignorant. I hope I'm smarter now than when I was younger.
"And stupid is pandemic." Yes and no. Stupidity is manufactured by those that profit from the ignorance and fear that it sows. The fact that it is pandemic points to the "success" of the manufacturing.
jclientelle, ethanol is of some value. It's rather like having electricity produced by mice running in caged wheels. It works, but not all that efficiently.
“but I consdier ethanol from plants is also diabolical, as it diverts food supply and still releases one CO2 into the air for every carbon burned”
Also don’t forget the massive amounts of groundwater needed to produce ethanol. For every gallon of ethanol produced, the procedure requires two gallons of groundwater. With political water wars in this county, this is certainly another downside to consider when discussing ethanol.
You're correct about the ethanol production for gasoline. The only beneficiaries of this folly are Archer Daniels Midland and other giant agri-business corporations. It has driven up the cost of corn and is causing food shortages globally. Obviously, it hasn't driven down the cost of gasoline at the pump.
This ethanol scam is just another vehicle to put more money in the pockets of the greedy-rich and their mouth-whores in WARshington.
God damn AmeriKKKa!
"The "externality" costs will not be so abstract."
The externality costs are not as abstract as you may think. People simply don't see them or don't look, but if you do they are as plain as day:
http://kiely-flashpoint.blogspot.com/2011/03/consumption-consumption-whats-my.html
One of the problems is "the grid" itself. Wind and solar can be solutions but we should be pursuing those technologies to provide small scale household energy independence not massive wind and solar farms controlled by some corporation.
Greg, thanks for the information and your insightful suggestion that this event rather dramatically shows a highly visible explosion of 'negative externality costs' being dumped on our small fragile world (and our children) ---- which, BTW, is far more visible, understandable, and shocking to average people than the quieted-down and covered-up explosion of Wall Street's 'debt bomb' explosion of what Warren Buffet rightly called "financial WMDs" (weapons of mass destruction) that the ruling-elite's global capitalist corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE dropped on the whole world in 2008 --- and which caused more deaths, pain and damage than this accidental, but more visible 'externality' dumping explosion in Japan will likely cause.
The global ruling-elite Empire's fully planned, and criminally executed nuclear/financial 'looting bomb' dropped from Wall Street in 2008 will actually cause more than $45Trillion of damage world-wide --- including massive numbers of deaths, suicides, starving, job-losses, lack of education, and utter destruction; very possibly causing even more wars for oil even as we speak --- will go down in history as a much more deadly, criminally contrived, but less visible (and certainly far less reported) disaster than this either real nuclear disaster in Japan today, or the LeMay/Truman global crime of dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in August '45.
In the scale of things, the secret and under-reported financial/nuclear holocaust purposely caused by the global financial Empire in 2008 is far worse than either real nuclear disaster in Japan --- because the nuclear/financial attack on the world, which was complicitly covered-up by Bush and Obama, has probably started a chain-reaction that will bring existential results to the whole world's extinction ---- AND it was done only to steal money and keep their friggin global EMPIRE alive for a few more years.
Anyway, Greg, maybe a fitting memorial to the financial/nuclear attack on the whole world of 2008 would be for the US to have a day like Hiroshima Day Peace Memorials during which the US would commit to 'never again' allow global Empire to wreck such unmitigated financial and human destruction via perverse and criminally plotted capitalism to be unleashed on our world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial_Park
But, hey Greg, the US "Vichy" faux-democratic government and media which are fully, but secretly, 'captured' by the global Empire would never allow such a truth-revealing memorial to take place each year on 9/15 when the first financial/nuclear bombs were dropped on the people of the world, eh?
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty over violent empire People's Party
Oh, BTW Greg, using this 'unpredictable' nuclear energy accident serving as an example of 'negative externality costs' (as you recommend) might also be seen as impolitic in comparison to the deified words of our finest President, Ronald the Reagan, when he famously said to the working people of America in the 1950's, while he was serving his then highest 'role' as the GE TV shill for nuclear power, "Folks, this new safe energy source will be so cheap that utilities will take away your meters".
Yes, what an insightful leader --- and so honest. No wonder that the grateful American citizens elected him by such a margin to his next and final 'role' as the faux-Emperor/president of the whole friggin world.
What a dummy he was --- and what divided, distracted, deluded, and outright lied to dummies we were to elect this pawn of Empire then --- and to continue electing such lying fools of Empire ever since.
"And I'm talking wind and solar, and huge tax increases to cover those damn "externality" costs that everyone ignores."
-- Huge tax increases for whom? And please specify who this everyone is.
I mean: do not tax the wages of the working man or any wages or income on the first $50 or $100 k. Tax the "externalities." Corporations can pay them, or consumers (either way, the consumer will pay). For instance, tax fuels as to their predicted "externality" cost (including ALL environmental costs from damages, both direct such as spills, and indirect such as co2 induced climate change).
Greg, yes, taxing externalities directly on those corporations that create such negative externality costs on society is the traditional (though not frequently enough used) remedial measure by governments, in order to make corporate externalizers pay the social costs that otherwise fall on government and the general population.
However, in today's corporate friendly world of little regulation and even less tax assessment for doing harm by corporations that dump their negative externality costs on society, the only large scale assessment of costs for dumping harmful externalities today usually comes later in judicial penalties for causing damage through negative externalites --- such as tobacco corporations' judicial settlement of billions for causing smokers' cancer, or Exxon's settlement for dumping oil on Alaska shores, etc --- and BP's penalties for similar visible damage, ro at least that which was not hidden by CorExit dispersants hidden in water columns throughout the world.
A more favorable 'forward leaning' approach to catching 'negative externality cost dumpers' early enough to avoid disasters could be implemented by employing an Externality Assessment Commission (EAC) to investigate and scientifically assess products which are highly likely to cause the release of significant 'negative externality cost' dumping, and then early in the process assess differentiated capital gains rate taxes on the investors who choose to invest in such corporations.
This later approach scares the shit out of the Wall Street looters (ie. investment bankers) in that such an approach would voluntarily steer small, honest, public investors away from precisely the sort of 'designed to fail' "innovative" investment products and bad corporate actors, which are the primary source of Wall Street's big killings ---- since in America today almost all 'hot investments' from the perspective of Wall Street IBs, Hedge Fund Whores, and Private Equity Pirates (like Romney) are by definition situations where faux-profits are designed to be made entirely by dumping 'negative externality costs' on society.
In fact, just a year prior to the explosion of the giant financial looting (which was always referred to in the corporate MSM as the 'unpredicted' "financial crisis"), several of Wall Street's biggest and baddest IB's (only some of whom survived) came out with nearly identical internal research reports which all identified hidden "negative extennality costs" as the greatest threat to corporate 'market valuations' and profits of large firms (and investors) if such 'negative externality' liabilities were to be known and factored into investment decisions:
"Dr. Llewellyn of Lehman Brothers predicts that regulation will eventually correct this market failure and charge companies for the "social cost" of emissions, whether through carbon trading or carbon taxation. He also suggests that an "economically rational society" may choose to charge more than the social cost of emissions, because it cares about the environment in its own right (beyond simply balancing environmental costs and benefits), and because it wants to hedge against risk even further than this equilibrium. So companies may have to overcompensate with internalizations, essentially making up for their historical backlog of externalizations. "
Full report Feb 2007:
http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/2237.html
I have written that such a forward leaning EAC and differentiated capital gains rates on various levels of externalizing corporations could use the power to the small investor market itself to discipline 'bad actors' who plan and scheme to make profits primarily be dumping externality costs:
http://www.opednews.com/Diary/Externality-Assessment-Com-by-Alan-MacDonald-110110-603.html
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty over violent empire -- People's Party
Iwasbilly is a nuke troll so take whatever he says with a grain of salt. The video of that explosion looked incredibly severe, how that can just be scoffed at as a mere nothing is beyond me. There are too many conflicting stories but things are not looking good at all.
The report is that the reactor building exploded but the reactor vessel is intact. A Cs 137 release means at least some of the zirconium fuel-rod tubes have broken, but not necessarily that the pressure vessel has broken, because it would be released with the steam being let off. The speculation is that the explosion was caused by hydrogen accumulating in the reactor building. The cleanness of the blast (the plume is mostly dust not smoke) certainly suggests this.
It doesn't look good. I think a TMI-type scenario (partial meltdown - but contained in the reactor vessel) would be the optimistic outlook at this point. This is a boiling-water reactor, not a pressurized water reactor like TMI. I don't know what the implications of this are in terms of what can happen.
Everyone should refrain from name calling.
Tnx for the factual info.
Wait a minute. Not five minutes ago I responded to your post from yesterday that called for more nuclear energy. What gives?
After Bhopal, chemical manufacturers made safety improvements and continued to manufacture chemicals. After Farmington or Buffalo Creek, WV new safety laws were imposed and they continued to mine coal. After the failure of numerous dams through history, they made design improvements and continue to build dams. 50-55,000 people used to die in car crashes, they made road and vehicle safety improvements; now only 40,000 die (although in terms of vehicle miles the fatality rate is a quarter of what it was in the 1960's).
If an investigation shows something uncorrectable caused this nuclear accident, then of course they should stop the production of nuclear fission power, but this is unlikely.
Foolish beyond reason.
Are they still testing the sheep in Scotland for contamination from Chernobyl?
http://www.davistownmuseum.org/cbm/Rad7b4.html
No. The "acceptable level" of Bequerel (units of radiation) were raised instead.
But the Scottish Psilocybe Semilanceata (Magic mushrooms, Liberty caps) remain among the most potent per gram in the world... Surely no connection, but mushrooms - for being the connecting link between soil and organisms - are the organisms most susceptible to suck up radiation.
Thanks for information, I read that sunflowers have been used to lower contamination in some areas too.
Yes.
SaboCat
Pressurized water reactor allows water to not boil at normal atmospheric conditions. Water can be heated up to 600 deg. without boiling if pressurized. BWR reactor is not pressurized and boils at lower temperature.
Boiling water brakes down into H2+O an explosive mix. They have been releasing steam into the containment building which built up H2 and then exploded destroying containment building.
Both PWR and BWR are in trouble when boiling happens in the reactor vessel. The rods are then not in water for cooling but in water and air bubble mix which provides poor cooling at the rods. They have said that in one reactor water levels dropped 30 CM below the rods exposing them. Not good.
They are now pumping sea water into reactor vessel to keep water above rods and attempting to cool it down. It may work or not.
"Pressurized water reactor allows water to not boil at normal atmospheric conditions." <- doesn't make any sense. Did you mean to say "Pressurized water reactor allows water to not boil at temperatures greater than those it would boil at at normal atmospheric conditions"?
"Boiling water brakes down into H2+O an explosive mix." <- Really? You mean if I go over to my stove and boil water, and then light a match above the boiling water, there will be an explosion? Learn something new every day...
The higher the pressure the higher the boiling point temperature. I too did not understand the statement that boiling water would break down into H2 and O.
It will be interesting to see how Obama and the other Power-whores will take this catastrophe as a reason to build more nuclear and coal plants at a faster rate.
The power-whores will not have time to play around (as they see it) with "unreliable" sources of power. There is too much money to be made, for them.
I don't think your post is entirely fair. I do expect our leaders to lead, however what percent of Americans want to significantly cut their energy use? What percent of pickup and suv owners want to switch to tiny cars or trains? How do you convince greedy humans to want less? We can but try to educate, while the powerful and the idiotic blend their voices in cacophonous siren song.
Give me a friggin break, the Gov. subsidizes renewables and taxes fossil, it ain't Nuclear Science.
USAans could care less what form of energy they use, if bannanas came out of the service station pumps they would power their vehicles with bannanas.
The ONLY PROBLEM and again the ONLY PROBLEM allow me one more time, the ONLY PROBLEM is Fossil Fuel Fools multinational corps will not let us convert to renewables and have been preventing conversion for almost 50 years.
I admit initially there may be less energy available but given the choice of not living and living with less, I believe most people would choose less.
glenn, to borrow from you the phrase, "the ONLY PROBLEM" is that the answer to your implied assumtive question, "given the choice of not living and living with less, I believe most people would choose less" --- that choice is not currently a choice of the "people", but entirely a choice of this GD ruling-elite's global EMPIRE, and the EMPIRE's choice is to live with MORE and to see MORE of us die-off (either through what they call in their work/slave corporate settings "attrition", or by more pro-active corporatist actions).
Until the global EMPIRE is exposed, expunged, and excised (like the global cancer that it is) the choice is not ours, the vast majority's, the citizens', the "Multitude's", but is going to be the choice of the EMPIRE --- which AGAIN is dedicated to having MORE, but not more of us.
Best,
Alan
Alan we agree, the Only Problem is we have not been allowed to convert by the Global Oligarchy.
What the people want or believe is irrelevant since they do not make the mega choices.
If given a choice to live with less or not live inthose stark terms people woud choose to live but again as we both agree people are not allowed a meaningful choice.
That said I am attempting a 400sq ft home with ony Ma Bell as corporate energy input.
But due to my rural location and financial inability to create a solar powered truck I must use gasoline for transport.
Congrats, Glenn, on your level of commitment to saving our earth --- and lives.
BTW, I understand that in a new program to provide some level of energy support for the working-class poor (which is basically everyone today) some of the more humanitarian and empathetic among corporate executives have recently taken to ordering their pilots to idle their corporate jets a bit longer at the end of runways so that the poor might roast their hot dogs on the jet exhaust.
Apparently Rex Tillerson of Exxon and Donald Trump came up with the idea for this 'trickle down' cooking program, while Jack 'the knife' Welch ex-CEO of GE, who was previously most famous for saying, "my ideal factory would be on a barge that I could have towed to the lowest wage country", is now feeling some remorse and has talked GE allowing their retailers into having their delivery trucks leave GE refrigerator boxes outside any ParkWest mansion apartments for poor people to live in --- provided, of course, that the Investment Bankers redoing their kitchens have no objections.
It may not seem like much, but such "shared sacrifices", as Obama likes to talk about making, but it is certainly nice to see that some of the rich who have come by their own comforts by looting society are beginning to respond by the best of our ruling-elite 'betters' today.
Glenn, I continue to find that it takes some of the edge off current economic conditions, which one is sometimes tempted to selfishly call economic oppression, if I just repeat, "I am so privileged to live in a free-market capitalist democracy (even if it is an oxymoron) where I can someday dream, and dream, and dream, and am allowed to dream with unlimited freedom, about being rich myself someday --- either in this world or some other."
"The American Dream" is there anything better?
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty over violent empire -- People's Party
Appreciate the knowledge being shared--I"m learning. Your question who is goiing to stop driving SUV's etc. well gov't has been passing laws to change our behaviour since the founding. Time to give people ECONOMIC (nothing else seems to work for most people) incentives to get rid of this stuff. Almost every conversation (not this one) starts with how to get MORE energy or more stuff or more blah, blah, blah. This country is spoiled and abusive and we need to get by with less. Less energy, less stuff but we're always trying to find more sources of energy instead of conserving or evaluating our own behavior (generalizing about the whole country--sorry).
I took college level environmental classes in the late 70's that pretty much explained what we were doing wrong and what we needed to do to fix it. Other than some breakthroughs in technology and more knowledge we haven't done anything. It used to be that people could say I didn't know any better well that hasn't been true for about 40 years now--based on my old text books.
Steve Woodward I couldn't put it better myself. More evidence our Uncle Tom in the WHITE House is simply there to serve his white masters in the homicidal energy industry.
Obama is the typical example of what Malcolm X used to call the house Negro.
I think you should do some more research on Malcolm X and what his philosophy was before you make knee-jerk (heavy on the 'jerk') comments about your President.
Don't attack the messenger because you don't like the message. Malcolm X would be repulsed at 'my' war criminal sellout president and at apologetic Obamabots like you.
"A nuclear reactor damaged by Japan's biggest earthquake may be starting to melt down"
Mother Nature fighting back. It doesn't take any specific vengefulness for Gaia to do this. Only what she's always done (following the laws of her Nature), and we haven't caught onto and respected well yet.
Since the "youth-revolt" and ecological criticism of the early 1960'ies, population of humans on earth has DOUBLEd - from 3.5 bn to now 7 bn. This doubled mass of people all has infrastructure and consumption. Plus the size of this infrastructure - roads, energy-delivery systems, food-production, housing, etc. - per capita has also grown. That exposes all our systems including our selves, a lot more to the vulnerabilities we always have and will have towards Nature and her huge processes and laws.
No shielding in cities will stop this. No shielding in denial will stop this. No shielding in arrogance will stop this. Nature's laws are always so much bigger than us - mainly because we're results of those laws ourselves.
The truly dangerous (to us - not so much to Earth and her biosphere) vulnerability of nuclear energy is steadily more exposed. That exposure is not so much to "forces of Nature" - other than us - as the exposure is to OUR vulnerabilities.
This means nuclear energy plants (bad plants, as opposed to good plants, like hemp) undermine the functions they're supposed to serve: our functioning.
We - humanity - is currently killing off a huge part of ourselves. Billions of us are so exposed that they or we cannot be saved by us. Some half of us will die unnatural deaths - only we don't know who that half is. It could be you. It might even be me. As the Japanese earthquake shows, it could be any half of us.
This is a "2012" end time of our own making. Not pretty.
Time to get away from the grid of human exposure to mother Nature's tossings and turnings, and live simple. In harmony with Nature, as it's called. It used to be a choice - now it's fast becoming a necessity for survival.
Nuclear power is always a disaster waiting to happen in spite of the nuke troll apologists who plague this site with their misinformation. It should be phased out, killed and a stake should be placed through its heart. It's corporate welfare at its worst, it could not survive without our tax dollars, subsidies and financial guarantees. When a huge disaster or TMI type event does occur, tax payers are stuck with the bill or most of it. Some European countries are phasing out nuclear power or have banned the construction of nuke plants in favor of renewable energy. This cannot be done over night, it will take decades but we have not even started the process.
Yes.
I was horrified decades ago to learn what we did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it looks like these folks have a hankering to be radiated (not that the rest of the world doesn't, particularly us, but it is hard not to see some irony in this tragedy).
This is twisted.
As twisted as the rest of us. - Better the damage we know?
One would think the Japanese were wise to the dangers of nuclear power more than the rest of us, refraining from basing their energy-supply on it. But no. It does rather seem the opposite. However twisted that is. "Yeah, nuclear radiation we know all about. We can handle that" ? - Not an impossible interpretation. However twisted.
We humans are so twisted that we have a (DNA-)spiral for our core.