Personally, I have no issues with nuclear power but I consider placing a nuclear plant in a fault area where it might get hit by tidal waves extremely dangerous. The Japanese are famous for their highly developed technology but, at the same time, I believe they made a huge mistake when they built a nuke without thinking of the worst case scenario.
If Geithner wants to outlaw currency manipulation, the first stop would be his ol' buddy Ben Bernanke. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Currency manipulation and monetary policy that is heavily expansionary has been the bread and butter of the US strategy since Greenspan.
It's not China's planned economy that is besting the US. China continues to unleash the forces of capitalism and the free market while the US is moving towards ever more rigid wage, taxation, and regulatory regimes.
It is also the Keynesian policies of the US movers that demands consumer spending and squashing consumer savings to stimulate aggregate demand. You think that might play a part in perceived "savings glut" overseas and our lack of savings, which by definition effecs the current account deficit.
Also, if Bernanke would let the market set interest rates to their natural level and above 0, Americans would be motivated to save.
Solar energy today generates 0.1% of the electricity in the United States.
Wind energy generates something like 2.5%.
Nuclear energy today generates 20%.
To think that the existing 2.6% can be scaled up to cover the existing 20% nuclear energy is ludicrous, not to mention the horrendous cost.
A simple back of the envelope calculation reveals just how ugly it would be:
US electricity consumption in 2010: 3.74 trillion kilowatts hours (kwh)
US nuclear electricity generation: 748 billion kwh
Average 1 KW solar panel electricity generation in 1 year: roughly 1000 Kwh (1,470 in Los Angeles, likely lower in northern CA or NE US. Numbers from http://www.nrel.gov/rredc/)
Said 1 KW solar panel would be 6 to 7 meters in size, and would cost $6400 (http://www.affordable-solar.com/kaco-1kw-grid-tie-system)
Replacement of the 748 billion Kwh generated by nukes using solar panels = $4.8 trillion.
As for hydro and geothermal - there simply aren't that many sites available. Theoretically, if every single large site remaining were covered, it might be possible to generate 5% to 10% of the existing electricity demand.
Sorry, that won't cut it either.
Secondly MSM has continued to show its moronic tendencies.
The scale of energy we're talking about here is gigantic.
The Fukushima plants will require MONTHS to shut down; according to www.MITNSE.com - even in 1 year these reactors will be generating 7.8 Megawatts of heat.
This is 160 tons of TNT equivalent EVERY DAY.
In contrast, today (3/16/2011) there will be something like 390 tons of TNT equivalent in heat generated.
This is why hydrogen is being formed, and why the tsunami wrecking the diesel backup and electrical system was problematic.
The reactors are shut down, and the long process of winding down has started. 4.7 Gigawatt nuclear plants don't turn off with a flick of a switch, much like oil supertankers don't swerve around the ocean.
I'm not certain it's necessarily a net loss for the USA to have actually had labor laws and unionization that led to a middle class large enough to encompass the majority of its citizens during the 1950-1990 period. While the unemployment of extremely marginal workers *is* a real cost, I don't think the transfer of the "excessive" wages garnered from the labor laws to the owner class would make the USA today a better place to live for the majority of its citizens.
Tom misunderstands the effect of unions. As I noted in my post, "Do Labor Unions Promote the Middle Class?", the main effect of unions is not to strengthen the middle class but to transfer wealth from non-union to union workers.
I focused in that post on the effect of unions on relative wages. Let's look here at the effect of unions on owners of businesses that are unionized. Say a union forms and uses its monopoly power to get a higher wage. What happens next? It's true that the profits of the firms that are unionized fall. If the whole industry is unionized, then firms leave the industry until the industry returns to normal profitability. Prices of the output are higher. That means that the long-run effect of the higher wages union receive is not a transfer from capital but a transfer from consumers.
Level 7 is the worse, it's Chernobyl and there are rumors Japan will be upgraded to accident level 7.
The last 50 workers were evacuated from the plant, so it's looking really bad to be a "worst case".
Any credible news please post. We should update if the worst happens, myself I'm wondering about 6 reactors all together like this and what that means.
There is enormous spin out there, misinformation, all directions. So finding credible stories, please post.
God Save the Japanese at this point, good god, a triple whammy!
It seems that we have to turn to articles like your's to get the information that we need. I really feel that we are only told by the "authorities" what they want us to know in order to avoid panic.
If we massed produced together solar panels the most reasonable efficient ones would cost much less than your starbuck coffee and once automated less than your home brewed cheapest coffee. With open grids where you do not need batteries to accummulate the power, you send power to the electrical utilty when at work and not need them, while they need it most, and draw some at night when at home everyone would be better off outside the profit margins of electrical utilities which should be public owned. The silicone needed to produce it is sand and we never really used efficiently non arid land before. We are talking pennies on footage with inverters included. However it is too commom sense and large bulk of money cannot be sipher to the richer individuals.
Yet, if Japan (and the U.S.) had used solar arrays, wind turbines, geothermal, and hydro power to generate electricity, we would only be discussing the natural disasters of the earthquakes and tsunamis. The dangers from radiation would be non-existent.
The explosion Tuesday at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has elevated the situation there to a "serious accident" on a level just below Chernobyl, a French nuclear official said, referring to an international scale that rates the severity of such incidents.
The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale -- or INES -- goes from Level 1, which indicates very little danger to the general population, to Level 7, a "major accident" in which there's been a large release of radioactive material and there will be widespread health and environmental effects.
"It's clear we are at Level 6, that's to say we're at a level in between what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," Andre-Claude Lacoste, president of France's nuclear safety authority, told reporters Tuesday.
Japanese nuclear authorities initially rated the incident at Level 4, according to Greg Webb of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Level 4 is characterized as a minor release of radioactive material that necessitates only measures to control food due to contamination. But in the latest information about the explosion, Japanese authorities did not give it a rating, Webb said, and the IAEA is not putting a number on it either.
Just as one example, a Nuclear Engineer, MIT prof was on CNN saying pretty much the same thing, first and foremost...
that said, this is just information because if something major happens, it's dependent upon the radiation levels at the source, i.e. Japan, but to get out of the way, would take major prep and possible travel.
No it hasn't happened yet but this information is credible, multiple experts are saying almost the same thing.
Not that there was necessarily a solution to this size quake accompanies by a tsunami, but these events, both of them were or should have been anticipated. The use of nuclear power, the placement of a plant in a fault area (like Diablo Canyon) is the height of folly and extremely dangerous.
Stoneleigh did NOT say that the reactor and radiation events were like Chernobyl. I quoted her as saying that, "Non-technical comparisons between Fukushima and Chernobyl are more apt..." Yet you imply that she compares the technical and after effects of radiation. What's that about?
We're in a dynamic recursive process as far as information goes. It doesn't look good now, it may in a few hours, but the reality will be more than apparent soon. This isn't BP's oil spill. There's no solution to cover these troubled waters and make the problem sink from view and experience.
Anyone with the slightest interest in research can find much more credible (as in "believable") information about this disaster. The "independent nuclear scientist" is completely off-base, and the so-called fallout map has been discredited about 800 times. It isn't even the CBC for the last half, just some whisper-voiced alarmist.
Be prepared, be cautious, be alert. Just don't be gullible. Every reliable and credible source says, "yes, there is some small danger but no, you aren't going to glow in the dark."
Seems that's what we have to go on is Chernobyl and radiation levels from WWII and later as well as clouds.
Right now we have another story saying the radiation is minimal, but frankly I don't believe a word governments say because they don't want to panic millions of people.
For example, the radiation in SW Utah caused cancer clusters and food was permanently poisoned...
But you sure heard things were "safe" continually and to this day you don't hear much about St. George Utah's cancer clusters.
Lots of denial on Chernobyl as well, so I'm not one to personally be conspiracy theory or unnecessarily panic....at the same time, I don't think we're getting accurate information generally here, like most nuclear events.
I live in the eastern part of washington state, we are. So screwed. On top of all this there was another earthquake in japan this morning hitting 6.2. This is going to be 800 times worse then chernobel. Prepare yourselfs and watch the weather.
Sorry, but Stoneleigh has zero credibility in this issue.
Fukushima #1 is a 40 year old nuclear plant, and was 5 years away from being decommissioned.
The recent earthquake was 5 times stronger than the plant was designed to withstand, and furthermore the plant was not designed to also handle a subsequent 25 foot tsunami.
It is actually the tsunami that caused the present situation; the expected worst case loss of grid power from the earthquake normally was planned to be offset by a series of diesel generators. These generators were to complete the cooling process after shutdown - nuclear plants cannot be turned off at a flip of a switch, there is an appreciable downtime.
The tsunami destroyed all of the generators, hence the problems.
Whatever AE believes, what is going on isn't good but is nothing like Chernobyl - which is what a true reactor breech and worst case meltdown looks like.
As I posted in the other thread, the peak radiation level detected on site thus far is 100,000 times less than what were detected on site at Chernobyl.
Chernobyl had 30,000 roentgens; 1 roentgen multiplied by a 'quality factor' yields rems (roentgen equivalent man) - roughly 1 to 1.
1 microsievert = 100 microrems = .0001 rems
The 3000 microsieverts detected at peak thus far = 0.3 rems vs. the 30,000 for Chernobyl.
Containment apparently has been breached. Outer containment walls have been reported as destroyed.
If all 3 levels of containment have been breached, there would be far higher levels of radiation being detected.
The peak level of 3000 micro sieverts detected thus far for Fukushima #1 is nothing compared to Chernobyl: 30000 roentgens.
1 sievert is .001 roentgens.
Or in other words, the 'terrifying' radiation level detected on site at Fukushima #1 thus far is 30,000,000 times less than at Chernobyl.
Any radiation leakage is not good, but at least try to understand what is going on.
So yes, the MSM is moronic and anyone relying on them for information is...
The other thing to keep in mind is Japan is mind-bogglingly safe compared to anywhere else in the world.
Where else would an injury in a traffic accident in Tokyo, a city where 30,000,000 people transit one major train station in a day, be on the local news?
Thanks. The link makes it clear but I fixed it. On the larger risks, those are quite real. The Taiwanese government announced, with some satisfaction, that there's only a 10% chance of Japanese radiation releases hitting the island; that it would be the north coast. That's good news? 10% is a very real threat. The Japanese are evacuating people within a 13 mile radius of Fukushima I, about 50,000. If reactors 1-3 are finished (as in total meltdown) here's what happens:
If a full meltdown occurs, a huge molten lump of radioactive material would burn through all containment, destroy the building and fall to the ground, exposed. A toxic stew of exotic radioactive particles would then spread on the wind and rain.
But if luck turns south and the winds do, too, radioactive particles could be spread far across Honshu, Japan’s largest island, and beyond.Washington Post, March 13
The risks are then huge if the weather changes:
But if luck turns south and the winds do, too, radioactive particles could be spread far across Honshu, Japan’s largest island, and beyond.
Lyman said that simulations he has run on possible nuclear disasters in the United States estimate “tens of thousands of cancer deaths” from a total meltdown, although arriving at a figure is fraught with layers of uncertainty.
A 2005 census counted 103 million people on Honshu, including the population of Tokyo, which lies 150 miles to the southwest of Fukushima Daiichi. Washington Post, March 13
So 103 million people wait while the wind decides their fate. This technology is totally unacceptable.
How dare you take this superficial view of Unions. You don't stand for anything. Why should a Janitor be paid pennies to clean up after children as well as adults. How do you know they are un-educated? You my dear are uneducated and I hope you are soon unemployed and dejected by whom ever you are employed by now. This country was built on the Unions and GREED is what is forcing ingnorant people such as yourself to come to such a misguided conclusion.
I am a professional, college graduate and Union employee. And when your arteries clog up, and you have to come to an hospital. You Meet Union workers that could care less of your thoughts. We are here to do a job and we are well represented by great Unions. How dare you speak on something you have not ever been apart of. Hard working employees of Unions across these United States have employed Americans and have not bankrupt any government. Governments bankrupt governments. Stop playing the blame game. So you get rid of public Unions and you still come up short. It's still the middle class Union member that's the problem? You needed a fall guy and you fell down. Your local government let down so may peoplee, but it isn't over and by the time the smoke clears, hopefully none of the decision makers will be employed!
Personally, I have no issues with nuclear power but I consider placing a nuclear plant in a fault area where it might get hit by tidal waves extremely dangerous. The Japanese are famous for their highly developed technology but, at the same time, I believe they made a huge mistake when they built a nuke without thinking of the worst case scenario.
If Geithner wants to outlaw currency manipulation, the first stop would be his ol' buddy Ben Bernanke. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Currency manipulation and monetary policy that is heavily expansionary has been the bread and butter of the US strategy since Greenspan.
It's not China's planned economy that is besting the US. China continues to unleash the forces of capitalism and the free market while the US is moving towards ever more rigid wage, taxation, and regulatory regimes.
It is also the Keynesian policies of the US movers that demands consumer spending and squashing consumer savings to stimulate aggregate demand. You think that might play a part in perceived "savings glut" overseas and our lack of savings, which by definition effecs the current account deficit.
Also, if Bernanke would let the market set interest rates to their natural level and above 0, Americans would be motivated to save.
Solar energy today generates 0.1% of the electricity in the United States.
Wind energy generates something like 2.5%.
Nuclear energy today generates 20%.
To think that the existing 2.6% can be scaled up to cover the existing 20% nuclear energy is ludicrous, not to mention the horrendous cost.
A simple back of the envelope calculation reveals just how ugly it would be:
US electricity consumption in 2010: 3.74 trillion kilowatts hours (kwh)
US nuclear electricity generation: 748 billion kwh
Average 1 KW solar panel electricity generation in 1 year: roughly 1000 Kwh (1,470 in Los Angeles, likely lower in northern CA or NE US. Numbers from http://www.nrel.gov/rredc/)
Said 1 KW solar panel would be 6 to 7 meters in size, and would cost $6400 (http://www.affordable-solar.com/kaco-1kw-grid-tie-system)
Replacement of the 748 billion Kwh generated by nukes using solar panels = $4.8 trillion.
As for hydro and geothermal - there simply aren't that many sites available. Theoretically, if every single large site remaining were covered, it might be possible to generate 5% to 10% of the existing electricity demand.
Sorry, that won't cut it either.
Secondly MSM has continued to show its moronic tendencies.
The scale of energy we're talking about here is gigantic.
The Fukushima plants will require MONTHS to shut down; according to www.MITNSE.com - even in 1 year these reactors will be generating 7.8 Megawatts of heat.
This is 160 tons of TNT equivalent EVERY DAY.
In contrast, today (3/16/2011) there will be something like 390 tons of TNT equivalent in heat generated.
This is why hydrogen is being formed, and why the tsunami wrecking the diesel backup and electrical system was problematic.
The reactors are shut down, and the long process of winding down has started. 4.7 Gigawatt nuclear plants don't turn off with a flick of a switch, much like oil supertankers don't swerve around the ocean.
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/03/effect_of_monop.html
Tom West writes:
I'm not certain it's necessarily a net loss for the USA to have actually had labor laws and unionization that led to a middle class large enough to encompass the majority of its citizens during the 1950-1990 period. While the unemployment of extremely marginal workers *is* a real cost, I don't think the transfer of the "excessive" wages garnered from the labor laws to the owner class would make the USA today a better place to live for the majority of its citizens.
Tom misunderstands the effect of unions. As I noted in my post, "Do Labor Unions Promote the Middle Class?", the main effect of unions is not to strengthen the middle class but to transfer wealth from non-union to union workers.
I focused in that post on the effect of unions on relative wages. Let's look here at the effect of unions on owners of businesses that are unionized. Say a union forms and uses its monopoly power to get a higher wage. What happens next? It's true that the profits of the firms that are unionized fall. If the whole industry is unionized, then firms leave the industry until the industry returns to normal profitability. Prices of the output are higher. That means that the long-run effect of the higher wages union receive is not a transfer from capital but a transfer from consumers.
Level 7 is the worse, it's Chernobyl and there are rumors Japan will be upgraded to accident level 7.
The last 50 workers were evacuated from the plant, so it's looking really bad to be a "worst case".
Any credible news please post. We should update if the worst happens, myself I'm wondering about 6 reactors all together like this and what that means.
There is enormous spin out there, misinformation, all directions. So finding credible stories, please post.
God Save the Japanese at this point, good god, a triple whammy!
It seems that we have to turn to articles like your's to get the information that we need. I really feel that we are only told by the "authorities" what they want us to know in order to avoid panic.
If we massed produced together solar panels the most reasonable efficient ones would cost much less than your starbuck coffee and once automated less than your home brewed cheapest coffee. With open grids where you do not need batteries to accummulate the power, you send power to the electrical utilty when at work and not need them, while they need it most, and draw some at night when at home everyone would be better off outside the profit margins of electrical utilities which should be public owned. The silicone needed to produce it is sand and we never really used efficiently non arid land before. We are talking pennies on footage with inverters included. However it is too commom sense and large bulk of money cannot be sipher to the richer individuals.
For a real map showing I131 and Radioactive Cesium levels, see;
http://www.zamg.ac.at/aktuell/index.php?seite=1&artikel=ZAMG_2011-03-15G...
Yet, if Japan (and the U.S.) had used solar arrays, wind turbines, geothermal, and hydro power to generate electricity, we would only be discussing the natural disasters of the earthquakes and tsunamis. The dangers from radiation would be non-existent.
Chernobyl. Oh SHIT!
Just as one example, a Nuclear Engineer, MIT prof was on CNN saying pretty much the same thing, first and foremost...
that said, this is just information because if something major happens, it's dependent upon the radiation levels at the source, i.e. Japan, but to get out of the way, would take major prep and possible travel.
No it hasn't happened yet but this information is credible, multiple experts are saying almost the same thing.
Not that there was necessarily a solution to this size quake accompanies by a tsunami, but these events, both of them were or should have been anticipated. The use of nuclear power, the placement of a plant in a fault area (like Diablo Canyon) is the height of folly and extremely dangerous.
Stoneleigh did NOT say that the reactor and radiation events were like Chernobyl. I quoted her as saying that, "Non-technical comparisons between Fukushima and Chernobyl are more apt..." Yet you imply that she compares the technical and after effects of radiation. What's that about?
We're in a dynamic recursive process as far as information goes. It doesn't look good now, it may in a few hours, but the reality will be more than apparent soon. This isn't BP's oil spill. There's no solution to cover these troubled waters and make the problem sink from view and experience.
Anyone with the slightest interest in research can find much more credible (as in "believable") information about this disaster. The "independent nuclear scientist" is completely off-base, and the so-called fallout map has been discredited about 800 times. It isn't even the CBC for the last half, just some whisper-voiced alarmist.
Be prepared, be cautious, be alert. Just don't be gullible. Every reliable and credible source says, "yes, there is some small danger but no, you aren't going to glow in the dark."
So, yeah, just don't jump on the scared bus.
Seems that's what we have to go on is Chernobyl and radiation levels from WWII and later as well as clouds.
Right now we have another story saying the radiation is minimal, but frankly I don't believe a word governments say because they don't want to panic millions of people.
For example, the radiation in SW Utah caused cancer clusters and food was permanently poisoned...
But you sure heard things were "safe" continually and to this day you don't hear much about St. George Utah's cancer clusters.
Lots of denial on Chernobyl as well, so I'm not one to personally be conspiracy theory or unnecessarily panic....at the same time, I don't think we're getting accurate information generally here, like most nuclear events.
Although I'm not sure what to believe, BBC latest, noon, EST.
I live in the eastern part of washington state, we are. So screwed. On top of all this there was another earthquake in japan this morning hitting 6.2. This is going to be 800 times worse then chernobel. Prepare yourselfs and watch the weather.
Sorry, but Stoneleigh has zero credibility in this issue.
Fukushima #1 is a 40 year old nuclear plant, and was 5 years away from being decommissioned.
The recent earthquake was 5 times stronger than the plant was designed to withstand, and furthermore the plant was not designed to also handle a subsequent 25 foot tsunami.
It is actually the tsunami that caused the present situation; the expected worst case loss of grid power from the earthquake normally was planned to be offset by a series of diesel generators. These generators were to complete the cooling process after shutdown - nuclear plants cannot be turned off at a flip of a switch, there is an appreciable downtime.
The tsunami destroyed all of the generators, hence the problems.
Whatever AE believes, what is going on isn't good but is nothing like Chernobyl - which is what a true reactor breech and worst case meltdown looks like.
As I posted in the other thread, the peak radiation level detected on site thus far is 100,000 times less than what were detected on site at Chernobyl.
Chernobyl had 30,000 roentgens; 1 roentgen multiplied by a 'quality factor' yields rems (roentgen equivalent man) - roughly 1 to 1.
1 microsievert = 100 microrems = .0001 rems
The 3000 microsieverts detected at peak thus far = 0.3 rems vs. the 30,000 for Chernobyl.
@ 2OLD4OKEYDOKE
You said:
Containment apparently has been breached. Outer containment walls have been reported as destroyed.
If all 3 levels of containment have been breached, there would be far higher levels of radiation being detected.
The peak level of 3000 micro sieverts detected thus far for Fukushima #1 is nothing compared to Chernobyl: 30000 roentgens.
1 sievert is .001 roentgens.
Or in other words, the 'terrifying' radiation level detected on site at Fukushima #1 thus far is 30,000,000 times less than at Chernobyl.
Any radiation leakage is not good, but at least try to understand what is going on.
So yes, the MSM is moronic and anyone relying on them for information is...
The other thing to keep in mind is Japan is mind-bogglingly safe compared to anywhere else in the world.
Where else would an injury in a traffic accident in Tokyo, a city where 30,000,000 people transit one major train station in a day, be on the local news?
Not a death, an injury.
Thanks. The link makes it clear but I fixed it. On the larger risks, those are quite real. The Taiwanese government announced, with some satisfaction, that there's only a 10% chance of Japanese radiation releases hitting the island; that it would be the north coast. That's good news? 10% is a very real threat. The Japanese are evacuating people within a 13 mile radius of Fukushima I, about 50,000. If reactors 1-3 are finished (as in total meltdown) here's what happens:
If a full meltdown occurs, a huge molten lump of radioactive material would burn through all containment, destroy the building and fall to the ground, exposed. A toxic stew of exotic radioactive particles would then spread on the wind and rain.
But if luck turns south and the winds do, too, radioactive particles could be spread far across Honshu, Japan’s largest island, and beyond.Washington Post, March 13
The risks are then huge if the weather changes:
But if luck turns south and the winds do, too, radioactive particles could be spread far across Honshu, Japan’s largest island, and beyond.
Lyman said that simulations he has run on possible nuclear disasters in the United States estimate “tens of thousands of cancer deaths” from a total meltdown, although arriving at a figure is fraught with layers of uncertainty.
A 2005 census counted 103 million people on Honshu, including the population of Tokyo, which lies 150 miles to the southwest of Fukushima Daiichi. Washington Post, March 13
So 103 million people wait while the wind decides their fate. This technology is totally unacceptable.
How dare you take this superficial view of Unions. You don't stand for anything. Why should a Janitor be paid pennies to clean up after children as well as adults. How do you know they are un-educated? You my dear are uneducated and I hope you are soon unemployed and dejected by whom ever you are employed by now. This country was built on the Unions and GREED is what is forcing ingnorant people such as yourself to come to such a misguided conclusion.
I am a professional, college graduate and Union employee. And when your arteries clog up, and you have to come to an hospital. You Meet Union workers that could care less of your thoughts. We are here to do a job and we are well represented by great Unions. How dare you speak on something you have not ever been apart of. Hard working employees of Unions across these United States have employed Americans and have not bankrupt any government. Governments bankrupt governments. Stop playing the blame game. So you get rid of public Unions and you still come up short. It's still the middle class Union member that's the problem? You needed a fall guy and you fell down. Your local government let down so may peoplee, but it isn't over and by the time the smoke clears, hopefully none of the decision makers will be employed!
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