Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
- Scientists Confirm: Arctic Sea Ice 'Collapse' at Our Door
- Worse Than Obama's Kill List? American Support for It
- 'Let Us Not Be Deceived': Cornel West Names Obama as 'War Criminal'
- Genetically Engineered Meat, Coming Soon to a Supermarket Near You
- Nearly 50 Climate Activists Arrested Outside Obama's White House
- Quinoa: To Buy or Not to Buy... Is This the Right Question?
- Watch a City-Sized Glacier Collapse
- DOJ Kill List Memo Forces Many Dems Out of the Closet as Overtly Unprincipled Hacks
- A Presidential Decision That Could Change the World: The Strategic Importance of Keystone XL
- 'Let Us Not Be Deceived': Cornel West Names Obama as 'War Criminal'
Popular content
Today's Top News
No End in Sight for Nuclear Catastrophe in Japan
Japan nuclear firm aims to end crisis within nine months, but no word when - if ever - evacuees will be able to return
The company at the centre of Japan's nuclear crisis says it hopes to bring the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant under control in six to nine months, but cannot say when tens of thousands of people forced to evacuate the area will be able to return home.
Chair of Japan nuclear operator Tepco, Tsunehisa Katsumata, announces the 'cold shutdown' roadmap. (Photograph: Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images) In the first indication of how long it will take to stabilise the plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company [Tepco] revealed on Sunday a two-stage process it hopes will end with the safe "cold shutdown" of the stricken reactors.
Tepco's announcement came as the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, arrived in Tokyo to pledge Washington's support for Japan as it recovers from the worst disaster in its postwar history.
"Economically, diplomatically and in so many other ways, Japan is indispensable to global problem-solving," she said. "We are very confident that Japan will recover and will be a very strong economic and global player for years and decades to come."
Clinton pledged steadfast support for Japan in the face of "a multidimensional crisis of unprecedented scope".
Japan and the US announced the creation of a public-private partnership to spearhead reconstruction. "We wish to enhance co-operation between Japan and American businesses," Clinton said.
Tepco officials say the two most urgent tasks are to prevent hydrogen explosions at three of the six reactors, and to secure storage for tens of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water in the turbine buildings.
The firm has been pumping low-level radioactive water into the sea, angering neighbouring China and South Korea.
It says it needs three months to achieve a steady reduction in radiation, and another three to six months to bring levels firmly under control.
"We will do our utmost to curb the release of radioactive materials by achieving a stable cooling state at the reactors and spent fuel pools," Tepco's chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata, told reporters.
"The company has been doing its utmost to prevent a worsening of the situation. We have put together a roadmap and will put all our efforts into achieving these goals."
The prime minister, Naoto Kan, welcomed Tepco's roadmap as "a small step forward". Earlier, he said in a newspaper editorial that last month's natural disasters and the nuclear crisis presented Japan with "a precious window of opportunity to secure the 'rebirth of Japan' ".
Tepco says plans to stabilise the plant are subject to "various uncertainties and risks", and cannot give a time frame for the return of evacuees.
The trade minister, Banri Kaieda, suggested some residents would be able to return as soon as the the plant was stabilised.
But Katsumata, who admitted he was considering resigning over the crisis, said only that he hopes people will be able to return "as early as possible".
Tepco is to monitor radiation levels in affected towns and villages once the plant is stabilised and liaise with the government about a possible lifting of the evacuation order.
Pressure has mounted on Tepco and the government to give evacuees an idea of when they might be able to return to their homes. At the weekend, Kan was quoted as suggesting they may have to wait up to 20 years. He later insisted he had been misquoted.
"We would like to present the facts to help the government make a judgment and provide an outlook on when evacuees can go home," Katsumata said.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
80 Comments so far
Show AllHow do you evacuate the entire island of Japan? In 10-years, the island will be a shrine to the follies of arrogance of this doomed species called humans.
Nuclear power is safe, efficient and cost effective. That is when it is operating, and after construction subsidized by government. It is not cost effective, when and if we ever insist that spent fuel be properly disposed, reprocessed, or stored off site. It is unable to pay for shutdown costs, as simple abandonment is not an option, and these sites need to be, and cannot be fully cleaned and restored. We live with the toxic effects. In a situation like the crisis at three mile island, in Japan or Chernobyl, there is no hope of recovery of costs. We need alternatives -- coal and oil a poor options, bio-fuel is limited and drives up the costs and availability of food, solar and wind cannot replace conventional sources yet, but could fill the needed expansion requirements as efficiency is gained through technological advance and experience. Let's hope they can protect the water supply (both fresh and the Pacific Ocean). Let's hope that the area of devastation remains limited and the will exists to see this battle through this critical period so that next year a many year program of containment and clean up is possible.
"bio-fuel is limited and drives up the costs and availability of food.' Ever hear of hemp?
We could have our oil, fiber, food and medicine too. Growing hemp takes no imputs other than sun and water and reconditions the soil as it is grown. There is a cultivar for almost any climate you could dream of, other than Antartica. And this is just one alternative. There are more things in Heaven and Earth... if we stopped putting resources to failed paradigms, it would free up exploration of other solutions.
Sorry, minnow, Net Primary Production of the whole planet is only about 3% of what humans use for energy now. So you can't have your hemp and eat it too. Unless you can reduce energy needs by 97% or find 32 earth-like planets to pillage.
I won't even get into the biology of how you can't extract resources from hemp and still "replenish the soil" with "no inputs other than sun and water".
Let's stop disinformation, or fantasy thinking, on the left too.
As a final note, you can argue if you wish, but you'll be wrong on thermodynamic grounds, so I won't get involved in a discussion.
Half of the petroleum used is for plastics and fibers that can be made biodegradable from hemp.
Plastic is filling the oceans and killing life.
Nobody is using hemp to burn for fuel but to burn for fun.
The war on hemp is just another non-winnable war that is killing civilization.
It is not just some on the "Left" that see the scam for the petrol chemical industry and the prison system, but many conservatives too.
It doesn't matter what you use it for. You can't get more biomass than the total net primary production of the planet, even if you covered the whole surface, including the oceans with hemp.
The total net primary production of the planet translates to only 3% of the energy equivlaent of the oil, coal, gas and nuclear we currently consume.
Read a thermodynamics text and an ecology text.
I have yet to see any figures that demonstrate there is not enough renewable energy sources to power the a minimum need of power.
Popular Mechanics did present a plan to power the USA on solar in 50-100 years.
Presently State wide Utilities in the Southwest have easily been on target to acheiving Mandated portfoilios of 20% renewable energy sources in twenty years.
Net primary production is the amount of sunlight equivalent fixed in green plants and phytoplankton, it has little to do with the energy available as a thermal pr electrical source, neither of which are considered net primary production.
Even so, the amount of energy we use is vastly greater than the amount we could conceivable collect efficiently. We couldn't run current industrial society solely on the power from the sun.
For one simple thing, which seems hard for almost all of you to understand is there isn't an EXCESS energy falling on the planet, it all goes into net primary production, providing ocean circulation, running the hydrological, carbon and nitrogen cycles and maintaining the overall heat balance. There's none just hitting the planet that is not a part of these considerations already.
The second law of thermodynamics can't be violated, at least by classical physics. If we were to trap every erg from the sun, and co-opt it for our industrial needs, we'd still vastly alter the climate system of the planet, for that would be that many ergs NOT going to primary production or maintaining the heat balance, etc..
Can't anyone understand that simple concept? Even if we could build the cillectors, the trapping and distribution of that much energy would be such a high percentage of the sunlight falling on the planet's surface we'd alter the temperature, wind, and oceean circulation anyway.
Here's one way of trying to understand it. We used up 100 million years of stored sunlight in about 100 years. We are using energy at 1 MILLION times the rate it is stored by plants as crude oil. Now, how are we going to replace THAT on just one year's worth of sunlight every year.
It's simple math, it doesn't take an advanced engineering or physics degree to understand it.
There is no miracle cure people. We've overshot our carrying capacity - we either do with a lot less per capita and/or we need a lot less people or we are cooked one way or another.
Nowhere do I imply that biomass, of any kind, is not useful. It is NOT, however, an endless supply of power - the rate energy is used - nor can hemp, or anything, be grown and it's biomass used for industiral processes without depleting the soil.
Where does the conitnued replenishment of nitrates and phosphates - the limiting factors in any ecosystem - come from if you are taking the hemp, using the fibers, burning the oil and/or eating the seeds? Nothing is going back into the ground!
Yoiu can't get something for nothing!
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!
Entropy must increase!
Any way you say it, it can't be ignored and it can't be wished away.
Get a damn physics and/or ecology degree for Christ sakes.
Trapping the albedo or arrays of space born collectors, is, in essence, increasing solar insolation - adding to our present solar energy budget. It would, in theory, heat the planet, for even if we used it, the energy isn't destroyed, it eventaully ends up within the atmosphere as heat.
However, a quick "back of an envelope" calculation I and another engineer did once - he was a professor of theoretical ecology, seemed to show that increasing sunlight by say, 10% heated the atmosphere about 10000X less than adding 10% more CO2, so it seems we have a bit more wiggle room to add insolation as opposed burning fossil fuel.
But still, if we were to increase insolation artificially, such as by trapping outgoing reflected light, or beaming more sunlight into the atmosphere from space-based mirrors, we still will reach a new tipping point eventually. When that will be, and the result to the Earth's climate, depends on how greedy we are..
Notice I did not mention net primary production because I know you are correct on that issue as far as relying on NPP as a primary energy source.
Likewise I am aware that diversion of sunlight for energy use, as with wind and tidal and thermal ground pump will alter earth systems.
In the case of Solar perhaps a technology which might cause a cooling is exactly what is necessary.
Certainly renewable energy sources must be considered as potentially viable until proven otherwise, not dismissed because they will have an as yet unknown effect.
Nay sayers always ignore the examples of places where renewables have already become a large source of power with no known ill effects.
It wasn't my intent to say it was useless or shouldn't be considered.
Consider this:
The solar energy that is now falling on roofs and roads once fell on the ground, and, if that ground had plants growing on it, that solar energy once was fixed as carbon, and not heating the planet. Instead, now, falling on roof or asphalt, it is directly causing warming.
If that insolation was collected and used LOCALLY, it would be doing no more toward heating the planet than the roof and road presently is.
The trouble is when we think we're going to trap gigawatts in, say, the Sahara and transport the energy to, say, Europe. The result is we cool the desert, altering the ecosystem there, wind circulation, rainfall, ocean circulation, etc. And we warm Europe, resulting in similar changes. In essence, we moved the sun northward.
We can't do that on a large scale and not alter the climate any more than we can burn fossil fuels and not alter the climate.
The same goes for wind and tides. Taking energy out alters the wind patterns downwind or impacts the productivity of estuaries - the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. If we take out enough to run our industrial economy, we alter the local climates downwind, etc.
Another complication is, despite the vast amounts of actual sunlight hitting the planet, average about 1w/m^2, fully 80% of it falls on the oceans, where most goes to photosynthesis, and most of the rest falls in a thin band 20deg north and south of the equator. It really isn't distributed well in regard to where we need the energy and, as I said, if we start pumping it around the planet, and/or killing green plants to build collectors, we end up altering the climate drastically anyway,
It is useful, but must be wisely designed and managed, we simply can't just start taking quads out of the solar insolation any way we want to. In any case, I doubt it can amount to a large percentage of the quads we now use if we wish to maintain climate as it reasonable exists at present.
I apologize if anything I wrote seemed offensive or insulting, it wasn't my intent.
Solar panels in my mind as you say for the Sahara would cause a cooling effect if covering roofs, roads and ground elsewhere, for their shading, reflection and 20% conversion. Surely a total replacement of fossil fuel energy with renewables would not create more heat. Surely no energy source is hotter than combustion ( except nukes).
And the Sahara having been forest during personkinds existence would be a prime candidate for remedial alteration.
Alteration need not be negative.
Oh, you know, I'm not sure I want to consider terraforming the Earth. I'm not sure how "natural" the Sahara is, but I'm sure the law of unintended consequences is never far behind any human activity.
Theoretically, all solar insolation, minus what is fixed in green plants as carbon bonds, ends up as heat, just not evenly distributed, which is what drives climate - the unequal distribution. And solar collection doesn't ADD heat, just moves it about, and, perhaps alters the frequency of the IR.
Any cooling of your roof would be offset by the waste heat of the processes the electricity powered. Of course, there is some complication of what frequency IR that heat was radiated at, and if it was in an atrmospheric window and radiated to space, instead of a building wall, it could, conceivably, cool the planet.
Though cooling your roof in summer wuld lower A/C usage, providing pehaps significant cooling of the armosphere.
A consideration I hadn't thought of when considering collection reflected visible light from the planet - the albedo. The structure necessary to collect the light reflected back into space would block the incoming solar radiation, so it wouldn't be a practical process, I think.
Replacing fossil fuels MUST create a cooling effect because you are eliminating all the heat created by fossil fuels and not creating any more.
Surely all mans endeavors amount to altering the earth, breathing breeding cultivating.
We must surely attempt to do the best we can. Our best efforts have not been as problematic as our poor motivations.
As far as PV systems I am not considering other than simple ground based PVTs
You know, I've wondered about that for a long time. In all these general circulation models for climate change, are they taking into account the CO2 is entering hot?
" We couldn't run current industrial society solely on the power from the sun."
Hmmmm. Another good reason to switch to Solar.
Actually more watts of sunlight hit the earth everyday than energy used daily by personkind. At this point we can only convert approxiamately 20% captured by photovoltaic cells and that would include capturing everyray everywhere.
But then again perhaps 100% conversion may happen and solar, even though it is the prime mover of the other renewables( gound pump thermal not being a power source but a vast reduction of the need to use energy for heating and cooling) is only one source of renewable power.
Is that at the top of the atmosphere, or at the ground? It's never obvious which value is being used. How much of that is in visible light wavelengths?
20% captured by photovoltaics amounts to 6% usable energy - the maximum theorectical limit of all insolation at all frequencies falling on the collector that can be converted to electricity is about 25% to 30%. This is due to the energy levels that exist in the junction. It's a hard limit due to quantum energy transitions You can't really collect usably anything in the infrared or UV range, much of the IR and UV is absorbed by the atmosphere and there isn't enough energy at those frequencies in the spectrum to begin with to make it financially worth attempting.
When I was working on PV designs, we were at about 10% efficiency.
Well it all boils down to a 3x4 panel producing 350 watts ( or more) of usable electricity per hour.
Plus if you have a German Photovoltaic Thermal Panel you get 5,000 BTU per (day/hour?} in the same 3'x4' panel.
I believe the quote was "sunlight striking then earth". a 5:7 ratio use of energy worldwide to sunlight watts
FIrst, watts is already energy/unit time, so there is no such thng as watts/pet hr.
is that 3x4 = 12 ft^2, or 3x4=12m^2. There's a big difference.
A square meter of solar cell will just about run a hair dryer at noon on a cloudless day in the summer at the equator.
Ironic, but I get your point, and actually agree.
Dr. Howard T Odum thanks you for this.
All of us 20th century kings and queens of energy just don't want to hear it.
I thought everything was gonna be A-OK!
The deterring concept here is that of fuel, I believe. We have waited far too long, if the global scientific consensus is correct, to be considering alternative carbon producers in our search for alternative energy sources.
The simple fact is, the carrying capacity and energy intensity of human society and cultures based on sunlight was exceeded 200 years ago. That is why we started using coal and then oil and then gas and then nuclear. It certainly wasn't because extracting these resources was easy and convenient. It was NECESSARY or we'd face the same extinction crises that drove us from simple, and relatively easy, hunting/gathering to the labor intensive methods of agriculture and animal husbandry.
Ask someone who lived 6000 yrs ago if they'd rather hunt and gather for a few hours a day or spend 12 to 16 hours breaking their backs in the hot sun trying to grow food.
Ask someone 200 yrs ago if they'd prefer chopping down trees for firewood or crawling into the side of a mountain and chiseling black rocks all day.
I think the answers would be obvious. But, by 6000 yrs ago, the human population couldn't survive on hunting and gathering - all the big game was gone and wild plants couldn't grow fast enough. By 200 yrs ago, the "Fertile Crescent" was a desert and the forests of Nothern Europe were gone - chopped down for firewood. There was no choice then, and there really isn't now.
Do you think human alteration of the planet is new?
Doesn't anyone wonder why the Middle East is called "The Fertle Crescent" if it is now all desert? Most life forms alter the ecosystems they are involved in, many in ways that cause their own decline. Life started breathing sulfur and producing oxygen, until the original organisms poisoned themselves. Look at rain forests, they create their own weather, for their benerfit, but that is rare..
There is a great documentary from the 1980s by James Burke - can't recall the name, that describes the transition from wood to coal. It's available on the web, check it out.
Now, in the 21st century, 10,000 yrs after we crawled from the caves, we either reduce our industrial output and our population or we perish. It's the end of the road. There's nothing left that has the energy intensity and power output we require to maintain our industrial output, without further altering the planet toward our extinction.
I haven 't heard of either, though I know He3 is an end product of hydrogen fusion.
I haven't the first foggiest idea how a "magnetic" solar cell would theoretically work, though I spent a good number of my earlier years working in solar cell research.
Have any references?
Thanks!
I know about a decade ago there was a consortium of scientists trying to convince governments to conserve and stockpile helium, because our profligate use of it was depleting the stores on the planet.
I never heard how successful they were or what the helium situation at present is.
Really? Hemp cultivates, plants, cares for and harvests itself? And, it does not use any acreage that would have been used for food? How many acres would it take to satisfy 1/10 of our energy needs?
"How many acres would it take to satisfy 1/10 of our energy needs?"
That would be about 1/3 of the whole biosphere, including the mountainsides, the rain forests and the areas outside of hemp's natural conditions, as well as every acre used for food now.
What's your point? SO we make canvas form hemp. No one is saying hemp isn't useful, We are saying
1: it isn't a miracle plant that needs only H2O, CO2 and sunlight to groiw. It needs nutrients in the soil, which don't magically replenish itself if the old hemp plants don't die and decompose back into the soil from whence they came.
2: the amount of hemp that can be grown if every sq ft of the earth was planted in hemp is 1/30th the amount of energy and materials we get from oil now.
3:If you want to go back to sailing ships, and the lower energy intensity and material throughputs of that era, by all means, let's. TBut realize, those sailing ships took 3 months to cross the Atlantic and had to wait 6 months for the winds to shift for the 3 month return trip. Which proves my point. Industrial society is done, because it is based on using ancient sunlight at 1 million times the rate it can be stored.
Biomass fuels have only one purpose at present: economic speculation to extract short-term profit.
All the high tech stuff you imagine is a nice thought experiment but the energy and materials and time to create the technology and sustain it just isn't there. It's an 18 month round trip to Mars with chemical rockets coasting on the solar gravitation.
I agree, a less footloose popualtion dedicated to benign sustainability is the cultural evolution we must enact.
By industrial society, I meant as it is now executed. We can surely have some industrial base but the concept of free market, freewheeling capitalism and any right to reproduce must end, regardless of how that infringes on our sense of property rights and liberty. Every erg co-opted and every child born takes from the mouths of those already here.
I am not sure how to implement it wisely and equitably, but some system for limiting industrial growth and population must be decided upon, or we are truly no different than bacteria in a petri dish. The belief that we all can act in our own self interest to produce the best of all possibnle worlds must die.
I do fear, however, it is too late. The fat lady is on the stage, the orchestra is warmed up and the conductor is tapping the baton.
Los Alamos National Labs are working on "Traction Beams" to alter Asteroid trajectories, involves moving smaller asteriods to move larger asteriods. Scarily enough one can imagine the USA using a small asteroid as a weapon with this technology.
Also the greatest Biofuel investment today is in waste stream Biofuel production using oil exuding and synthesizing bacteria which consume the waste stream, sewage, sludge etc. A very positve way to produce power.This waste stream will eventually be used up and is included in the NPP limitations.
Most food providing NGO's say overpopulation does not exist as a problem for adequate worldwide nutrition ( a matter of distribution rather than production)
If you ever read Heinlein you'd know he envisioned using boulders dropped from the moon to subdue Earth in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".
Also, if we can alter an asteroid's trajectory by placing a small satellite in orbit around it to cause it to miss the earth we can surely cause one to hit the earth as well.
CURRENTLY most biofuels investment is in waste stream eating bacteria that exude or synthesize oil. The most popular plan is to bacterially canabalize all available and appropiate waste streams into oil
Filling "the needed expansion requirements" --How depressing, to see the expansion of population and development accepted as a "given" at Common Dreams. Why try to mitigate polluting, dangerous industries, if it only means ginning up world population to 10 or 12 billion crowded, limited lives, until the Earth's actual carrying capacity catches up with us in gruesome ways?
"Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and other to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish. Only when, in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the conquests made from the powers of nature by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers, become the common property of the species, and the means of improving and elevating the universal lot." J.S. Mill, 1848.
Where is my anti-gravity car to power me away? Is there any place to live on Earth that will not be affected if another nuclear power plant emits radiation? HELP!! Get me off this "third rock from the sun!"
Talk to me about Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant where they condemned land belonging to a friend and built the nuclear power plant despite there being an earthquake fault less than two miles away!
This makes the concept of "normal background radiation" seem silly. When such amounts of cesium 137 and strontium 90, with their 30 year half lives, and plutonium with its 24,400 year half life are injected into the biosphere and distributed, and add to the hundreds of nuclear "test" detonations since 1945, how could anyone know what "normal background" is?
Normal background radiation is the figure that allowed humanity to evolve into being, that's about half the modern level.
Let's be frank. That background radiation is the driving force of genetic variablilty - mutations - that fuels evolution. Most mutations are detrimental, whether produced in the next generation or within your own body.
Information encoded in the twisting of DNA is not something I had heard of. It is sort of like a palimpsest. Can you point us to an introductory text or paper?
Radiation is not the only means of producing variability, there are also chemicals that can alter DNA structure that can be replicated. Bacteria of different species are known to cross-fertilize, making all bacteria, essentially, one species with lots of varieties.
I guess you've read Lynn Margolis. I was very impressed with her work on symbiosis as the means of evolving eukaryotic cells. Her hypothesis that spirochetes became nerve cells in multi-cell organisms was pretty fascinating.
The Master Deception is comparing external backround radiation, etc. to isotopes lodged in various locations in your body having been ingested or inhaled.
Such as PU in fatty thigh tissue, next to the sperm production or in lungs, one grain PU equals one lung cancer.
Or Iodine isotopes in the thyroid.
Or Lukemia for children.
Something that seems lost on the general population, and seems to elicit yawns when I mention it, is the fact that lung cancer from smoking tobacco is caused by polonium 210 contamination of commercial tobacco fields from fertilizers. The polonium collects on the leaves of the tobacco.
The polonium lodges in the bifurcations of the bronchi. With a half-life of 29 years it's pretty much a high level radiator that is there for life.
Many tobacco producing states are now turning tobacco fields into organic farms, which is damn scary if you know about the polonium contamination
phineas:
You wrote:
'...is the fact that lung cancer from smoking tobacco is caused by polonium 210 contamination of commercial tobacco fields from fertilizers. The polonium collects on the leaves of the tobacco.
'The polonium lodges in the bifurcations of the bronchi. With a half-life of 29 years it's pretty much a high level radiator that is there for life.'
Not exactly. Polonium-210 is extremely toxic, and is in the decay chain of Uranium-238. Radon-222 (the only gas in the chain) escapes from the soil, and decays to Polonium-218, a very short-lived isotope). Further along in the series, another Polonium isotope is produced; it too has a very short half-life. But the last radionuclide in the chain is Polonium-210; it decays to stable Lead-206. Po-210 has a radiological half-life of 138 days, and (once inside the body) a biological half-life of about 40 days. That gives an effective half-life of about 31 days. Po-210 (after alpha emission) has an electric charge, and adheres to airborne dust particles, and also to tobacco leaves (which are sticky). But those leaves are most certainly thoroughly washed by tobacco companies.
I think that the evidence indicates that the Po-210 that stays in the soil winds up in phosphate fertilizers used in tobacco fields. And that the route of Po-210 to the tobacco product is not via the leaves. Buit non-smokers in areas of high radon levels
can inhale dust laced with Po-210. It deposits on the alveoli of the lungs; whence it fires alpha particles with high ionizing density. The mobidity and mortality of that process has been studied long before the dawn of the nuclear age (meaning the Manhatten Project).
John
My introduction to all things nuclear happened in the mid – seventies at an Honest John tactical surface to surface missile detachment in Northeastern Italy. In that area alone the US Army had many detachments with the Honest John – later the Lance, Nike – Hercules, surface – to air and 8 inch nuclear howitzer rounds. If that mean old USSR and their lapdogs in the Warsaw Pact attacked Italy we were trained to make them pay. At seventeen I was brainwashed with American Exceptionalism and actually believed that shit.
I began to question the morality of our policy and after a couple of years had my Secret clearance withdrawn and was exiled to a far away infantry battalion.
If we had fired we would have killed countless people and poisoned Italian air, land and water far into the future. That is insanity.
That insanity is what’s happening in Japan right now. All nuclear fueled electrical power generation plants are slower-motion wars against the earth itself.
It is my hope that this wake up call to the thrice attacked Japanese people will galvanize them to join with the German people and force their governments to reject Nuclear Power.
Thank you Liveitnow.
Observing the incredible mess at the Japan’s melting down nuclear plant as a undereducated on nuclear power plants “sidewalk superintendent”, this is how I see it from the official reports we are getting.
It is likely reactors 1, 2 and three have melted down to some extent, perhaps all the way down by now. So we have tons of deadly radio-active lava burning it’s way into the earth beneath the plant. How far that deadly poisonous molten lava will descend into the earth is unknown as it has never happened with this design of nuclear reactor before now.
Now let us imagine they finally are able to get the plant’s primary cooling pumps operating, which is not very likely any time soon if ever, and they begin pumping water into the reactor’s inner containment vessels. What will occur? No one knows, but what happen when water is poured onto moltel metal is an explosion of steam and hydrogen is produced. If cold water hit’s the molten lave I can picture it will cause an explosion and blow the unit up into the air. No more cooling water but a hell of a lot of deadly radiation now escaping into the atmosphere for a few years. That massive amount of deadly radio-active poison then circling the globe.
That’s how I see it but I’m just a “sidewalk superintendent”. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. And if any believe this cannot happen at ANY nuclear plant in the world, they are fooling themselves. Is such an event likely? No, it’s very unlikely, but it is very possible. There are many nuclear power plants near earthquake fault lines, and power outages due to storms or an earthquake are common, and backup systems sometimes fail. There is always the truth of human error, or a disgruntled employee who decides to kill himself and many others and cause a massive failure at a nuclear power plant.
There are much better alternatives for electrical power than as Albert Einstein had said, “Splitting atoms is a hell of a poor way to boil water”. There is more radio-active poison in those three power plant reactors than that which could be released by thousands of hydrogen bombs. The fictional story “on the Beach” may turn out to be non fiction. Gloom and doom? I guess so but reality is reality. I personally believbe they should begin pouring concrete. instead of trying to save reactors 4, 5 and 6. .
"We wish to enhance co-operation between Japan and American businesses," Clinton said.
When heads of state used to meet, they talked about the cooperation between the "people" of their countries. Now it's about business.
They've done it. Countries aren't about people anymore. Countries exist for the purpose of business. How about that?
Very true. When our government announces that it has been a good year they mean a good year for business. We have a US chamber of commerce, local chambers of commerce, hundreds of lobbyist for every one congressperson. Billionaires aplenty to pay whatever the traffic will bear in Washington. Business has all this with which to fight us.
We have the department of Labor.
Re: "The trade minister, Banri Kaieda, suggested some residents would be able to return as soon as the the plant was stabilised."
Imagine if the Russians had said that after Chernobyl. Ridiculous. What if no one wants to return? The MSM never asks that question of these corporate stooges because they themselves are corporate stooges.
We are a population dwarfed and intimidated by the monstrous corporations, emerging like a storm that will wipe us of the face of the planet.
" Tokyo Electric Power Company [Tepco] revealed on Sunday a two-stage process it hopes will end with the safe "cold shutdown" of the stricken reactors."
Tepco also revealed a two-stage process it hopes will end in a lottery win:
1) Purchase lottery ticket
2) Collect winnings.
Industry experts said the lottery plan has a greater chance of success.
Tepco's announcement came as the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, arrived in Tokyo to pledge Washington's support for Japan as it recovers from the worst disaster in its postwar history."
Great. Nothing to worry about.
Nookyaler Hillary will save the day.
Hard to believe that in just a few short decades, we have gone from a country with an actual nuclear engineer (Carter) as leader to a country led by a bunch of clowns.