So much for safe nuke power

[FarmerChick]

now now
google queen
you should have that answer by now

heck even I checked into Japans past with earthquakes...frightening area

 

[Wifezilla]

Yes, and this was the worst one EVER. Not just a once in a lifetime event, but a once in several lifetime's event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Japan

 

[meriruka]

I know I will probably get metaphorically stoned for this but....
I think the fact that the 40 year old reactors withstood a large magnitude earthquake & aftershocks with the tsunami thrown in shows that this type of power is safer than we think.
All the reactors shut down when the earthquake began and site #2 is completely offline & safe at this point. Granted, a better design for the generators delivering coolant would have averted what is happening at site #1 right now but so far the only confirmed danger to people was some navy personnel having to be washed down with soap & water. (I have not heard of any injuries due to the hydrogen explosions, if someone has info on this please let me know).

Not trying to say this situation is rosy by any means, but at this stage there is no likelyhood of a repeat of Chernobyl and I'm more concerned about the refinery blazing away and the effect of no clean water, lack of sanitation, food shortages & lack of heat will cause for Japan's people.

 

[FarmerChick]

well like alot of people know, history eventually repeats itself...it took a few lifetimes to repeat....better than a monster quake every year huh?


the earth is going to go by her time schedule. no one elses.

 

[moolie]

To Moolieand anyone else that was offended. I am sorry if I offended you by restating something that was written by someone else on this forum in a post related to energy creation. I was also offended when I first read that and as such I should of made it clear that it was not my opinion and was meant in sarcasm. That's the reason I put "Or at least that's what I have read". At the time I first read that it was explained that Chernobyl only blew up because it was constructed by the guberment of the U.S.S.R. and was constructed poorly for the reasons included.

If you have ever read one of my postings you know that I am not bigoted. That statement was sarcastic and was meant to stop that line of reasoning before it even came up again. Thank you for expressing your displeasure on the thread vs complaining to the moderators as so often happens when someone is offended.

I hope this thread can continue and discuss the dangers of nuclear power instead of bigotry.

Thanks for understanding that I was not singling you out personally, and please accept my apologies for not reading your sarcasm--I have not read the thread you mention so had no idea. As I mentioned, I have always found you to be quite open-minded and enjoy reading your posts

I also apologize again for my thread hi-jack.

Everyone likes to gripe about energy conservation, but who is actually doing something about it?

How many of you buy only local?
How many go to the store only once per month?
How many drive your kids to LESS THAN 10 different places through the week?
How many of you have your TV's turned off?
How many of you walk to any destination ever?
How many can afford to have solar installed, or wind power?

Wonder how much one AVERAGE family uses per day? ...and how many windmills/solar panels/fossil fuels would it take to make that much juice just for one family every day?

Most other sources of power are just NOT feasible with the current demand no matter what we think of it.

This is a moot arguement

I live in a suburban neighborhood near the edge of a city of a million.

I drive a small, low-mileage manual shift car. We grow as much as we are able, and preserve much of what we grow. I only buy seasonal produce and shop at the local year-round farmer's market, I also purchase bulk freezer orders of meat (bison, some beef, chicken, and pork) from local farmers. I shop once or twice per month, and hit all stops in one afternoon--sometimes by car, sometimes by bike.

I do drive my kids to and from school to save $400/year on school bus fees and do drive them weekly to Girl Guides and Youth Group (we carpool to Youth with another family on the street--one family drops the kids off, the other family picks up), we also drive to church weekly. My husband takes transit (bus plus LRT) to work.

We don't watch tv and only burn 1 CFL lamp during the evening hours other than while the kids and then later we are getting ready for bed (we spend our evenings together in our family room--homework, board games, reading--when the girls are not out at Guides or Youth). We also have our electricity-stealing appliances on power strips to cut out phantom power usage. I cook in the crock pot 3-4 times per week and cook more than one dish or lot of baking when the oven is on.

We have rain barrels and we use household water on the garden, we compost and recycle, we buy second-hand (cars, clothing, furniture, appliances etc.) and avail ourselves of freecycle. We buy in bulk and re-use packaging, we use cloth grocery bags for both food and all other shopping (we love the used bookstore and library). We avoid plastic as much as possible, and we have small energy-efficient appliances (washer and fridge, the rest were bought second-hand).

We cannot afford to go solar and cannot install a small wind turbine because we have neighbors very close although we have researched both technologies. We do purchase our electricity from Bullfrog Power (100% wind-generated).

We are the equivalent of a one-income family in terms of what we earn, although I do work part-time from home.

It can be done, it just isn't.

Utility companies could be structured such that every household pays for the installation and maintenance of neighborhood solar and wind infrastructure along with whatever supplemental hydroelectric and wind-farm power is required. R&D on more efficient vehicles/fuels and better public transportation would benefit everyone. People need to start thinking outside the box, because the system is broken and we're running out of fossil fuels and time to switch the industrialized world over--it has to start now, and on a large scale if people want to maintain anything like the lifestyle to which they are accustomed.

We live quite comfortably and don't find our more frugal city life difficult than how our neighbors live, and even the neighbors have changed some of their ways since we moved into this neighborhood so we must be doing something right

 

[patandchickens]

Not to pee on anyone's parade regarding "safe" nuclear power, but Japan gets earthquakes ALL THE TIME. That's why many of their buildings are engineered the way they are. It's not a question on how safe nuclear power is, it's a question of WHY IN GOD'S NAME DID SOMEONE DECIDE TO BUILD NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS IN ONE OF THE MOST EARTHQUAKE PRONE REGIONS IN THE WORLD?!

Because that is where Japan IS (it is not exactly portable) and because if you are an affluent upwardly-mobile nation you want lots of things that require a substantial power grid. As many previous posters have noted, Japan is a little thinner on other options than many countries are (in particular, it lacks much of ANY domestically produced resource for generating lotsa power with existing technology); also, being in the past 60 years very cutting-edge-technology oriented, it would only be expectd to take that approach to power generation too.

I think it probably is true that the current way of life in Japan might not be achievable without nuclear power.

And unfortunately the decisions on these things -- made by EVERYONE, from the government to the private sector lobbies to "the people" -- are always so highly weighted by short-term factors.

Let's face it, when someone says "there is X chance of something real bad happening within the next <say> 100 years" people generally figure, hey, it might *not* happen, plus which a hundred years is a long time and I'm sure they'll have some newfangled futuristic solution to any problems by then". (Not stopping to realize that "in the next 100 years" means it is just as likely NEXT year as it is 99 years from now)

<shrug>

I still don't think it's absolutely unchangeable though. I mean, look at some things that HAVE changed in society over the years. Going up to someone and shooting them because they annoyed you used to be a whole lot more acceptible in some parts of the world (heck, some parts of the US) than it is now, and it does seem to be a reasonably lasting change. Recycling seems to have made its way into the North American subconscious in a fairly real and enduring way. And there are now a LOT of people who are leery of just flinging the chemical du jour around willy-nilly at weeds and pests and so forth, as compared to the heyday of the Green Revolution when pretty much everyone was like "whoopeee, look what DDT kills, gimme some more of that!"

(edited to add: or think about slavery. It used to be taken for granted as not just okay but *necessary*. If you read stuff that was written back in the 1800s by the wealthy whose a) wealth and b) lifestyle depended on slaves, they spoke about it in pretty much the same way as some of the comments on this thread about a high-power-input lifestyle today. 'Ok so maybe it's not pretty but it is necessary, we can't possibly live without it, our whole society would collapse without it'. Yet, not so much anymore with the slavery; and while the world changed and certainly some peoples *lives* changed, civilization did not roll back to the dark ages. So deeply-ingrained social institutions, and I'd include habits of power consumption in that category, clearly CAN change.)

I am not placing bets one way or the other on what the "fallout" so to speak of these events will be on worldwide power consumption patterns, although I expect there WILL probably be a backlash against nuke plants at least for a good solid while.

But I do firmly believe it is POSSIBLE for people to go "whoa, hey, we did not really think enough about the greater COSTS of our power consumption, we as a society really ARE going to figure out how to scale back down.

Not a certainty; but a real possibility.

Or so I choose to believe anyhow

Pat

 

[patandchickens]

Yes, and this was the worst one EVER. Not just a once in a lifetime event, but a once in several lifetime's event.

....and therefore you could figure there is a pretty nontrivial chance of it happening. A hundred-year or five-hundred year event is actually a fairly COMMON ONE, even compared to human lifespans, especially where something high-consequence is concerned.

(I have not heard of any injuries due to the hydrogen explosions, if someone has info on this please let me know).

REuters reports that 11 workers were injured in the most recent explosion. For whatever that matters, compared to the scale of other things.

I tend to agree that it's nice that they engineered things so that they "more or less, apparently, thus far" did not fail catastrophically despite this rather large quake. But even so, a) it remains to be seen what will actually happen as events continue to unfold [want to find out what happens to the seriously-damaged reactors if there is a large aftershock, Christchurch-style? no, I didn't think so. Yet there perfectly well could be) and as information continues to be slowly metered out, grandma's-on-the-roof style; and b) even just on the strength of what HAS been revealed to have happened, personally I think it's unacceptable (esp. when you include the other drawbacks of nuclear power e.g. the disposal issues)

JMHO of course,

Pat

 

[Wannabefree]

@moolie We're weird SS'ers though I do all that too and rarely leave the house due to being so busy, but most folks won't It is the new norm, and that was my point

I watched a vid on sustainable ag this afternoon and though everyone complains about the environment and factory stock houses...nobody hardly is willing to grow their own. It's just the way we have become accustomed to living. I have a hunch that even if we changed all that, and went back to sustainable ag, and serious serious energy conservation...brains to follow would still skip every other generation after that as long as anything more more more was still available. Ex. Kids who grow up on farms...generally can't wait to get away to the big city. humans aren't getting any less human by the day :/ We need a way to circumvent human nature FIRST, THEN we may be onto something

 

[savingdogs]

That is a very good point, WBFree, in order to be as self sufficient as we have been able to become, we had to invest a great deal of research and study, it is almost a lost art we are trying to revive. I doubt many of the people that I know would be willing to have the same energy goals.

 

[Wannabefree]

That is a very good point, WBFree, in order to be as self sufficient as we have been able to become, we had to invest a great deal of research and study, it is almost a lost art we are trying to revive. I doubt many of the people that I know would be willing to have the same energy goals.

Well a lot I know wouldn't have the learning capacity to self sustain either. We should all teach local classes and wake some folks up!