Japan quakes

[saaya]

Levels of highly contaminated water in the tunnels at fukushima is almost back to where they were before they started pumping it out.
They pumped out almost 700 tons of water... and within 24hrs almost as much leaked back into the tunnel? That's over 20 tons of water an hour... and that's a leak they overlooked? sigh...

[NEOAethyr]

This maybe the first time in years that you and I agree 100%..
I have friends in Japan that I've been trying my damnest to get them to leave but they won't.People on this forum that I consider good friends even though we haven't met.
Even offerred to put them up here till this mess gets straightened out.
The issue to me is partly cultural and pride.
I don't think the heads of the Nuclear plant upbringing allow them to admit defeat and ask for help.
That is a shame and IMHO someone, maybe many heads of state need to speak with them bluntly as friends and say "It is time to forget pride and admit you need help"

I totally agree.
Screw the costs, rep,. etc.


If this goes on, you can take that already high rate of sterility in japan and increase it 10x fold...

I was talking to my cousin the other day about this.
He says, it ticks him off how people think nukes are dangerous, it'll screw over dev of newer plants.
I said to him that there's one newer gen type that re-uses spent fuel rods.
Which I think is good.
But otherwise I'm not cool with it.

Say if the usa does end up shutting down all it's 1st gen plants.
Power costs will probably double, people will complain about lib's and demo's about it saying it's there fault.
Etc etc.
At this point I don't care if the cost doubles for electric if it means getting rid of 99% of the nuke plants ^^.
I can deal with it on my own.
I'll just have to.

Really though, at this rate things are gonna cost so much, that you won't beable to afford power or gas.
And therefor it'll be illegal in most area's to even live on your own land (it's illegal here if you don't have power and such).
Heck, it's illegal here to own a wind mill unless you pay for some kind of special permit :\.

It's 4$ for gas here right now, soon to be over $5...
Sucks lol...


I'm gonna find a doc on Chernobyl to watch tonights for the heck of it...

edit:
Just speaking about this stuff without actually living through it, I wonder how many we pissed off from japan with this thread...

Does anyone from japan want to say anything?, I'de like to hear the word form the streets and etc.
How things are going and stuff like that.


I apologize for going offtopic though.

[Sparky]

Say if the usa does end up shutting down all it's 1st gen plants.
Power costs will probably double, people will complain about lib's and demo's about it saying it's there fault.
Etc etc.
At this point I don't care if the cost doubles for electric if it means getting rid of 99% of the nuke plants ^^.
I can deal with it on my own.
I'll just have to.

Seriously?

Unlike Japan, which is over a fault line, the majority of the USA is not. So if the nuke plants are not around fault lines, there isn't a risk of severe damage caused by earthquakes. Other possible dangers are much more easily prevented and/or dealt with than earthquakes.

YOU may be ok with paying 2x electric cost because of a fear of nuclear plants, but many people I'm sure are not. Especially when budgets are already being stretched by other rising costs. Last thing we need is artificially raising electric prices (and possibly causing rolling brownouts due to not enough power available) because of irrational fear.

[saaya]

Well the entire west coast of the us is nothing else but a giant fault line, so...

Germany announced the return to their nuclear exit strategy. At least something good cane out of this disaster... too bad its not something good for japan. Ironic how tw German government learned from the mistakes of the Japanese government, while Japan continues with nuclear power and won't shut down a single reactor, even other fukushima style aged reactors.

[saaya]

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/16_09.html
Level of highly radioactive water has surpassed the level it was at before they had started pumping it out.
And it continues to rise... that's 700 tons of waterthey already pumped out, and now 700 more...... and threes more to come
where will they pump it? probably into the ocean again... and this is more than twice the amount of last time already, and a lot more contaminated... sigh... they don't even know where the leak is, let alone how to fix it...

Wth are they doing... damn you tepco...

[rogueagent6]

Well the entire west coast of the us is nothing else but a giant fault line, so...

Your point? Do the other 47 states not exist in your reality?

[miahallen]

Does anyone from japan want to say anything?, I'de like to hear the word form the streets and etc.
How things are going and stuff like that.

I live about 200 miles north of the plant. The US government offered an option for me to voluntarily evacuate my family on March 16th. But we did not evacuate, I felt the media was overhyping the situation, and the evacuation was a political move to make people feel better because the panic the media created.
- Do I feel the situation down there is serious? Obviously, yes!
- Do I feel any immediate threat? No.

Concerning the Japanese local whom I live near, they all seem very oblivious to what is happening, I'm sure they know, but they don't seem to talk about it much, I figure they feel that they don't have any real options anyway, so why fret? Maybe it's because the fact I could be on a plane home at will, maybe I'm just a bit more at peace with life in general, but I'm not stressing out about the situation.

US lifts voluntary evacuation advisory for Japan

.... "The department said on Thursday that the situation is dramatically different now than it was on March 16th when there were significant releases of radioactivity and the loss of effective measures to cool the reactor cores and spent fuel." .....

Since the US military has boots on the ground in the area, I trust they have our safety in mind, and typically they're over-cautious in situations like this.

[DarthShader]

Ironic how tw German government learned from the mistakes of the Japanese government,

No, you got it wrong. There are elections this year in Germany and and the curent coalition is about to loose and chancelor Merkel to loose her seat, while there is a strong anti-nuclear lobby in Germany, so they are grasping everything they can for votes.

[pcwhisperer]

Ironic how tw German government learned from the mistakes of the Japanese government, while Japan continues with nuclear power and won't shut down a single reactor, even other fukushima style aged reactors.

No, you got it wrong. There are elections this year in Germany and and the curent coalition is about to loose and chancelor Merkel to loose her seat, while there is a strong anti-nuclear lobby in Germany, so they are grasping everything they can for votes.

Correct , thats how governments learn

[Jumba]

I prey this unreal quake crysis won't be the doom of us all, but I fear it might.

Seriously, it's like a battlefield out there.

[endlesszeal]

Concerning the Japanese local whom I live near, they all seem very oblivious to what is happening, I'm sure they know, but they don't seem to talk about it much, I figure they feel that they don't have any real options anyway, so why fret?

Living in Japan, you probably have noticed or know of an often saying amongst the Japanese, "Shikata ga nai," or "Sho ga nai," meaning "It can't be helped."

As an Asian-American I dont agree with this sentiment all the time, but i feel this is an attitude shared among many other Asian cultures. "Just have to bite your tongue and endure."

I just pray this type of attitude doesnt dig them deeper in the hole they are already in.

[ferrari_freak]

I prey this unreal quake crysis won't be the doom of us all, but I fear it might.

Seriously, it's like a battlefield out there.

[saaya]

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_01.html

Contamination in sea water rises again... sounds like there is another leak from the tunnel network into the ocean?

[pcwhisperer]

TEPCO issues 6-9 month containment plan

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/17_15.html

Great, Thats long enough to have another catastrophy somewhere else where greed and bonuses and lack of conscious and denial rules. Maybe say goodbye to everything you love in the ocean.

[STEvil]

well, guess I better stock up on tuna...

[BeepBeep2]

So Jumba's post was left alone, mine was removed?
I quoted saaya and asked a valid question as well.

AGAIN:
Did they ever stop dumping contaminated water into the sea?

[saaya]

Your point? Do the other 47 states not exist in your reality?

huh? what?
somebody mentioned that this accident has no relevance to the US... and that this couldnt happen in the us... thats at least how i understood it

not sure what you mean...
IF the fault line in cali ruptures, and its overdue according to experts i read, and something like fukushima happens in the eastcoast, it would affect the entire US and not only cali i think...

fallout: new vegas here we come!

No, you got it wrong. There are elections this year in Germany and and the curent coalition is about to loose and chancelor Merkel to loose her seat, while there is a strong anti-nuclear lobby in Germany, so they are grasping everything they can for votes.

dont get it... IS germany exiting nuclear energy, yes or no?
then how can you start your post with NO?
i never said they do it because they believe its the right thing to do...
they do it because the voters want it...

thats why politians do anything to begin with... they rarely do much to begin with, and when they do, its cause they have to, not cause they personally think its the right thing to do...

in the end, the german citizens put the gov under enough pressure to do the right thing... in asia things are different, you do what your told and hope your superior knows what hes doing and will provide for you... in this situation the higher ups clearly dont take good care of their trustees...

about the 6-9month plan tepco announced now...
im sure people who live within the 30-40km evacuation zone will be reliefed to hear they will build a wall around the wrecked reactors and hang some dustfilters over the fuel rod campfire boiling within for a few years... yay!
im sure they cant wait to get back and raise their kids next to this marvel of human ingenuity, a true testament to modern technology!

ok, enough with the sarcasm already, but seriously...
thats all they could come up with? a make-shift cooling system under the open sky, using fractured tunnels that seem to be leaking into the ground water and ocean? (ground water radiation/contamination at fukushima below the reactors has increased 40 fold over the past days)
and then building walls around it with dust filters?
and then what, are they curious how long it will take for the reactor pressure vessels to fully rupture, rust and blow up?
how long do they plan to keep stuff boiling like this?
sounds like it will be years?

i dont get why they dont cut the reactors pressure vessels or reactor cores out of the base and submerge them in a newer, larger containment vessel with cooling system that can be sealed off?

or why dont they release the pressure inside the reactors, filter the gas or capture it and filter it later, open the reactors and move the fuel rods into a new pressure vessel one by one and then seal that and cool it?

sure, there will be a release of radioactivity, but i doubt its gonna be a lot compared to what has been released already and will be released over the months if not years if they keep this stuff boiling...
id prefer a sudden release of radioactivity and isotopes in a controlled manner and then its OVER!!! once and for all, the fuel rods are back in a safe vessel and nothing is leaking out anymore... nada... its over... they can start cleaning up the mess and people can return to their homes...

their plan almost sounds like they want to turn this into a museum people can visit and gander upon the marvel of a meltdown and take pics of it
look momy look! theres some "slightly" radioactive smoke coming out the filters! its glowing in the dark, cool!

[saaya]

Did they ever stop dumping contaminated water into the sea?

controlled dumping? yes...
uncontrolled? probably not...

they emptied water that was contaminated "lightly compared to the water in the tunnels" which they said was HIGHLY contaminated, iirc it emitted 100msv, enough to kill you if youd swim for it for a few hours if i remember those sievert numbers correctly

but they never said how contaminated the "lightly" contaminated water was exactly... but after they released it the sea water was measured at up to 7.x million times the safety limit...
they also didnt mention what isotopes it contained...

after they started pumping the highly contaminated water out of the tunnels into the basins they had emptied into the sea, they noticed it was leaking back into the tunnels, and it was more than they could possibly capture, so they stopped pumping it out... the levels then continued to rise and are going to spill over into the ocean soon if they dont do something.

and they are above what they used to be before they started pumping water out of the tunnels, and in the past days sea water radiation increased again, which sounds like there is at least one more leak from the tunnels into the ocean somehow... as there was no controlled release of radioactive water... at least none they announced... then again they only announced the big dump after it had happened already... and maybe next time they wont even announce it cause they got so many complains about it...

sad, but thats how tepco and the japanese government seem to act...
if people dont like to hear something, do it and just dont tell them...

another point is indirect leaks through the ground water.
ground water contamination below the reactors was only measured once every 7 days before
now they found it has increased 40 fold over last week and measure it daily
but they didnt mention what levels of contamination we are talking about here... 40 times more than last week, but last week was what, below safety limits? 10.000 above limits?
they didnt mention what isotopes they detected either...

so many unanswered questions...
and kan yet again adressed the public and reassured them that from now on they will REALLY release all important information...
save it... people stopped believing him when he said it the 5th time in a row without releasing ANY additional info whatsoever...


So to sum it up...
in half a year from now we will have a make shift contraption set up designed to LIMIT the amount of leaks and contamination.
awesome... thats the best tepco can come up with? 0_o

[Linchpin]

in the end, the german citizens put the gov under enough pressure to do the right thing... in asia things are different, you do what your told and hope your superior knows what hes doing and will provide for you... in this situation the higher ups clearly dont take good care of their trustees...

If putting the most industrially advanced country in western europe in a position where they'll have to rely even more on Russian gas supplies for power(with the gas running through all the joke countries such as Ukraine who can turn the tap off if the mood strikes) as well as having to burn even more fossil fuel is the right thing then I'm sorry but I'd rather stick to the wrong thing, abandoning nuclear power because of fear mongering from the media and because the clueless general public are getting their panties in a bunch is not sound government it's quite the opposite and will potentially cripple or at least severely impact Germany's future as an industrial nation as well as going to power sources that will certainly pollute more than a functional nuclear plant. And once again it was a bloody earthquake it didn't just break on it's own, I'd like to see you run a government and see how well you handle Tsunami's and all that other crap especially in a country that's got such a high population per square km. My bet is: you'll fail way worse than the Japanese government you criticize so much.

[NEOAethyr]

Germany used to have wood gas plants to make there own fuel out of burnables.

If it weren't for the UN, they could be growing hemp right now just for that.

After ww2 they probably got torn down.
Back in the day, the majority of there fuel was from wood gas, not from Russia.
They even flew there jets with it, it was called J2, it used the fuel from the wood gas and a touch of hydrogen peroxide to increase the octane.

They used to drive cars with coal or blocks of wood that turned into fuel to burned in the reg combustion engines.

It's an alternative fuel that has been around for so long, way way before we started making fuel from corn and algea.

The american gov even pays people to grow corn for fuel down south.
Yet it doesn't actually do anything to affect our gas pricings, nor is a good idea to grow corn just to burn it, it tears the heck out of the ground it's grown in, needs tons of nitrogen to produce.

There are alternatives, and there are better ways of handling fossil fuels as well.
But no one cares.
At least no one cared when gas prices were under a dollar and everyone could afford ultra high octane gas, but those days are long gone...

Wood gas, algea gas, solar sterling dishes..., vertical wind turbines, etc.
There are some alternatives, just no one seems to care.

The other day when doing lawn work, I was thinking we could be ground down our leaves into wood pellets.

You can get steal red hot with just a handful of wood pellets with the right setup...
It has potential.
That's just off reg wood, not the enriched stuff you could be making out of hemp wood or oil.

Telling people this seems to be a moot point though.


If any of you smoke weed, have you ever noticed your weed sometimes has a flame of it's own?
The same goes for resin from it, if good enough it'll catch on fire and keep a flame, like it's fuel or something.
That's because it is..., it's low octane fuel (yeah you were essentially huffing gas lol, think about that next time you goto smoke resin lol).

Ah whatever though.
I'm just saying there are alternatives but they aren't taken seriously or haven't been for a very long time because of the oil industry.

Edit:
Here's an alright example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSgL0Ie4zrI

That truck is pretty darn old and still running good...
You could probably do alot better these days.

[Glow9]

Robots probe darkened reactor No. 3, Finally robots going in
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapc...ex.html?hpt=T2

[n00b 0f l337]

well, guess I better stock up on tuna...

First BP kills off all the mermaids in the gulf and now this.
Truly not looking good now though from the reports. Hopefully the robo's find the issue.

[Power5]

I live about 200 miles north of the plant. The US government offered an option for me to voluntarily evacuate my family on March 16th. But we did not evacuate, I felt the media was overhyping the situation, and the evacuation was a political move to make people feel better because the panic the media created.
- Do I feel the situation down there is serious? Obviously, yes!
- Do I feel any immediate threat? No.

Concerning the Japanese local whom I live near, they all seem very oblivious to what is happening, I'm sure they know, but they don't seem to talk about it much, I figure they feel that they don't have any real options anyway, so why fret? Maybe it's because the fact I could be on a plane home at will, maybe I'm just a bit more at peace with life in general, but I'm not stressing out about the situation.



Since the US military has boots on the ground in the area, I trust they have our safety in mind, and typically they're over-cautious in situations like this.

Not sure how you see no immediate threat. I thought I read that most of the crops are above safe limits of radioactivity? No idea where Japan has its drinking water but rain runoff from the area around the plant could easily widen the affected area by a vast amount.

Stay safe over there.

[saaya]

If putting the most industrially advanced country in western europe in a position where they'll have to rely even more on Russian gas supplies for power(with the gas running through all the joke countries such as Ukraine who can turn the tap off if the mood strikes) as well as having to burn even more fossil fuel is the right thing then I'm sorry but I'd rather stick to the wrong thing, abandoning nuclear power because of fear mongering from the media and because the clueless general public are getting their panties in a bunch is not sound government it's quite the opposite and will potentially cripple or at least severely impact Germany's future as an industrial nation as well as going to power sources that will certainly pollute more than a functional nuclear plant. And once again it was a bloody earthquake it didn't just break on it's own, I'd like to see you run a government and see how well you handle Tsunami's and all that other crap especially in a country that's got such a high population per square km. My bet is: you'll fail way worse than the Japanese government you criticize so much.

I'm not a chef either, does that mean I can't complain about a dead rat in my soup? This "you couldn't have done better" argument is deeply flawed. Let's turn it upside down, you're saying the gov did the best they possibly could have done?

I think you fail to see Germans exit from nuclear power for what it is.
Germany isn't an island and Europe features a very well developed grid. The percentage of nuclear power will remain about the same, and there won't be more fossil fules burned. What's the point then? Nuclear power will be imported more and more as reactors get phased out step by step, which will obviously cost more than producing it domestically. This whole thing will in practise work as a tax on nuclear energy in Germany, increasing price pressure to develop alternative energy sources. Long term this puts Germany in a very good position and its likely they will continue to be one of the leading nations in deploying alternative energy.

[saaya]

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/19_17.html
Bad news, 25.000 tons of highly contaminated water have accumulated in the tunnels.
Good news, it will now be pumped into processing facility.

I don't get why they pumped water into the ocean to begin with if they have a processing facility nearby???