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On top of TEPCO's floundering record and poor communication since the Fukushima disaster began, it doesn't help their cause that a lot of their photos don't feel all that "empirical."
In particular, this photo they issued last week would be hysterical, if not for the frightening knowledge (reported here yesterday and updated today) that the situation at the plant is near critical. What the worker is pointing out, by the way, is one specific leak that TEPCO was able to plug last Friday (with great fanfare, obviously), as if closing off a drip from a rotting roof could save a whole house (or town, or prefecture) from falling down. The other photo they released on Friday is almost as measly, showing workers spraying a super goo on the ground to try and prevent radioactive particulates from going airborne. Talk about putting a bandaid on a, well, gaping hole, and hoping the world felt reassured.
If "Hey Ma, we found the crack!" is supposed to make me feel better, it just makes me more shaky and convinced how way in over our heads we are.
>>See more takes on Japan earthquake photos here and at Tumblr.<<
(photo: TEPCO/Friday, April 1, 2011. caption: A Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), a TEPCO employee points at a crack newly discovered in a maintenance pit on the edge of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear nuclear power plant in Okumamachi, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan. The crack was apparently caused by the March 11 earthquake and may have been leaking since then, said the company's spokesman Osamu Yokokura.)
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http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/r/movie/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/06/us-japan-nuclear-health-idUSTRE7354H920110406
Oh wait, let me guess. UNSCEAR is lying.
You literally get more radiation from sleeping with someone in the same bed than you could get in the United States from Fukushima.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/facts.html
Global warming is an empirical observation, not a theory. A theory would be that it is caused by human activity or is caused by increased solar activity.
But the bottom line is: making light of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan is roughly like making jokes about the shooting of Gabby Giffords and the killing of six others in Tucson: if you are going to make a joke about such a subject, it had better be so damned funny.
Because in all honesty, this is beginning to look like The Three Stooges At Fukushima. And that always turns out so well.
If you had a point, it's not clear.
if nothing else they know how to die with dignity albeit somewhat stiffly comic dignity
http://www.change.org/petitions/urge-the-obamas-to-build-a-nuclear-free-future-for-our-children-now#?opt_new=t&opt_fb=f
It's not enough to point out a problem; we have to propose a solution too.
In the order of importance:
Energy Efficiency - we waste 66 percent of all electricity produced
Energy Conservation
Combined Heat Power - the most efficient way to produce electricity
Wind
Wave
Tidal
Geothermal
Solar
Landfill methane electricity production
The end of the investor owned guaranteed rate of return utility model
Freeing the grid so that everyone can sell their excess capacity of clean renewable into the
the grid and get paid full market rates.
Stop denigrating yourself, change your name and read some books. Have Fixed News removed from your TV. Fixed News is the leading cause of stupidity in America.
1. Taxpayer money gets to build them. We have so much extra taxpayer money these days.
2. They're so safe, they're uninsurable.
3. When they leak or break, they seem to self-coverup.
4. When they cause damage, taxpayers pay, not the corporations that benefited from them.
5. We spend a trillion dollars to stop foreign terrorists from bringing in suitcase bombs, and then ouselves build more than a hundred dirty bombs, each a thousand times more powerful than any possible terrorist device, within our own borders. Does that make the politicians that authorize nuclear power plants terrorists themselves? Should they be tracked down and questioned by the FBI?
6. Can we just change the title from nuclear power plant to "dirty bomb"? I'll bet that would slow the licensing process. How was the damage at Fukishima Daichi, less than or greater than, a dirty bomb?
Pro Nuke people argue that we can't do without the power they provide, but if we diverted that subsidy to alternate energies already poised to grow we could have abundant clean power in less time than it takes to build a 'safe' nuclear plant.
I didn't really use to care, and after the Gulf oil castatrophe, I was ready to consider nuke power. But the more I learn, the more I watch the cowboy engineering at work, the more I follow the money, the more I turn against nuclear power.
Time to end the Atomic Age for good.
Exactly right. Divert to green renewables. And soon.
2. Patently false: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/funds-fs.html
3. You cannot hide radiation.
4. See item 2.
5. Nuclear reactors are designed so as to try to prevent any radiation escaping. Dirty bombs are just the opposite. Should sellers of propane, gasoline, etc. be tracked down and questioned by the FBI.
6. Doesn't make any more sense than calling gasoline, napalm.
1.I advocate federal subsidies for wind AND solar and other renewables during the startup phase of their business cycle...still less than nuclear had/has. Now that we KNOW about Cherobyl, 3-Mile Island, and Fukishima-Daichi, I would be inclined to double those subsidies in order to get faster acceptance of green renewables such that we could begin the de-licensing of the GE reactor design, the plants near nuclear faults, and each of the older nuclear facilities. with an endgame of phasing out of nuclear altogether.
2.I seem to notice your insurance plan has CAPS. That suggests you are issuing placebo insurance. You think you're covered until you're not.
3.Sure you can hide radiation. The Tokyo electric company consistently hid the true dimensions of the radiation problem FROM THE JAPANESE PEOPLE AT RISK. They still are. The first sign of the real problem was when the American carrier commander moved his ship 50 miles MORE offshore from Japan. That's more detail than Japanese officials provided.
4.Once the caps are violated, taxpayers will pay. What percentage will insurors pay of the total cost in Japan?
5.True enough about the design, but once real radiation levels are admitted to in this case, we will find out whether a suitcase dirty bomb emits more radiation than has escaped the six reactors of Fukishima.
6.Yet "dirty bomb" more accurately describes the essence of Fukishima today than does nuclear power plant.
Yeah I know. Can't happen here. Heard that before?