Japan Restarts Two of Its 50 Nuclear Reactors 224
Darth_brooks writes "Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda ordered the restart of two idle nuclear reactors Saturday, amid split public response. The Japanese government is trying to fill a summer power shortfall. According to the article, the two reactors supply power to the Kansai region near Osaka, where local officials were predicting a 15% shortfall in power capacity during July and August."
That's good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's good news (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That's good news (Score:5, Funny)
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Why don't they standardize on 55 Hz?
55Hz, 56Hz...whatever it takes.
(50 geek points to anyone who gets the reference)
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Most electronics these days would actually. The problem is anything that uses the grid as a time source such as old clocks, electric motors as well as UPS, generators and the like
Re:That's good news (Score:4, Informative)
Some older electronics with PSUs that use mains frequency transformers and whose design was close to the edge may have problems as may some stuff that uses mains as a time reference but mostly electronics should be fine.
Clocks (whether electronic or mechanical) that derive their timebase from the mains would be a nuisance but ultimately if it was the main issue I think they would have forced a transition through by now.
Afaict the real problem is the big stuff, big motors and generators are usually at least somewhat locked to grid frequency and a 10% change in operating speed is probablly not acceptable. Transformers can also be problematic as a lower frequency can cause core saturation leading to overheating. Replacing that stuff would be seriously expensive.
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Actually, that's not a problem, they use an HVDC line between the two grids.
Re:That's good news (Score:5, Informative)
You know, do at least *some* research before stating bullshit.
It is a HUGE PROBLEM. Any interconnect is very limited in size. If a significant portion of one grid is impacted, you can't easily move power from one grid to another. This is exactly the situation in Japan.
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+1 INFORMATIVE
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If they didn't use two different frequencies (must read up on how that WTF happened) they wouldn't need a half-assed workaround in the first place.
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Interconnects are part of the design of all electrical grids, not "some half-assed workaround".
Re:That's good news (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That's good news (Score:4, Informative)
after they lost the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini reactors
The Fukushima Daini reactor was not lost, and didn't even sustain damage. It shut down automatically during the earthquake, and was not restarted due to the unfounded fear/danger/hype that began about nuclear power.
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The Daini reactors did take some damage to peripherals such as external electrical equipment, the turbine halls etc. due to flooding from the tsunami. A level 4 emergency was declared to the IAEA over Daini reactor no. 3 which lost its backup power systems and took longer than necessary to achieve cold shutdown. All the other reactors on the Tohoku coastline at Onagawa, Tokai and Hamaoka suffered no ill-effects from the earthquake and tsunami.
The Daini reactors may never restart; the site is significantly
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Or maybe the fact that they realized there were serious design flaws in all their reactors. For example Daini was only built to withstand a magnitude 7.2 quake, so it was luck rather than design that saved it. Had the epicentre been closer it might have failed catastrophically. Plus no reactor had ever been in such a large quake before so despite limited testing back in the 60s a lot was learned from it.
The two reactors being restarted have been upgraded to survive a larger quake and to have better monitori
Yep... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't survive on renewable energy, and can't built the old coal power plants fast enough even when you're buying up coal as fast as Canada can dig it out of the ground for you. Not a surprise...not a damn surprise. Especially when you've got the idle plants just sitting there.
Re:Yep... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yep... (Score:4, Informative)
Supplying coal is one problem, dumping the toxic remains is another. Coal power plants are a disaster as bad as fukushima even when nothing goes wrong.
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You mean no-one can live within 20km of them?
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Show me a single citation that says no one can live within 20km of any Japanese power plant. The main concern is crops, not houses.
Re:Yep... (Score:5, Insightful)
If people get pissed about nuclear reactors and see building coal plants as a good alternative, I wouldn't care about the time it takes, those people are bloody idiots.
Yet... (Score:3)
ftfy
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Can't survive on renewable energy, yet,
I'll bet that we won't in our life time. Not unless we put giant solar arrays in orbit or built them on Mercury to beam energy back to earth in the form of microwave energy. Nuclear will be the wave of the future for us, our children, our children's children, and probably the next 6 or 8 generations.
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The missing link in renewable energy (cheap scalable batteries). [ted.com]
solar reaching price parity soon [climatecrocks.com]
Wind at a crossroads [youtube.com]. The power output increases as a square of tower height -- so people are thinking about enormous off-shore towers, or towers in the great lakes.
There is really a lot more going on, including 20% of the US economy being under a re [rggi.org]
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Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont, and all of the craziness out in California is great news for us in Michigan, we need the jobs.
Watch the link -- it's a republican (Score:2)
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The plan is to run them over the summer and then perhaps idle them for the winter again. For the next few years Japan could run like that while other energy sources come on line.
Coal is seen as a stop-gap at best with massive opposition to the building of any new plants and a strong desire to run down the existing ones, which was the plan until Fukushima happened.
and this time they picked no disasters in the menu (Score:3)
and this time they picked no disasters in the menu
For successful technology, reality must... (Score:2, Offtopic)
For successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
No matter who you are, that's true for any technology.
Shortages are a solved problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
There's another way to fix the shortfall: simply raise the price of peak hour electricity until demand falls to the level of supply [wikipedia.org]. We've known for hundreds of years that prices set below the going rate determined by supply and demand [wikipedia.org] is the cause of shortages.
The increased peak hour revenue could be used to lower off-peak electricity prices so that people pay on average the same as before.
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The increased peak hour revenue could be used to lower off-peak electricity prices so that people pay on average the same as before.
So if the power is used for cooling then people can sit in +40C during peak and at -4C off-peak to make the average temperature a comfortable 18C?
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I react to current temperature, not average (or maybe 1 hour average). If it's +35C or hotter in the room, I cannot do anything, except sit while holding two fans. If it's colder than +10C then I get too cold after some time. If it's +14 - +20C then I'm great.
The building probably was built with AC in mind - if it is like the "modern" buildings (the walls are mostly glass) then it can heat up quite fast - when the sun is shining, every square meter of window lets in about 500W of heat. A building that is ma
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The usual "renewable" nutters' answer to this is that it is possible to rebuild all those buildings to have stable internal temperatures. And, like any insane argument, it's technically true.
Let's just evict, oh, about 100 million americans and rebuild their houses and apartment blocks from scratch, because that'll save us about 20% or-so electricity usage.
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And rebuilding won't cost anything :) Yea, right, for the cost of all the rebuilding it would be possible to buy a whole lot of coal or oil or whatever fuel for a power station. Also, solar power is not suitable for everyone - in my latitude, the shortest day is about 7 and a half hours. I would need a lot of panels to get the power or a lot of batteries (charge in summer, discharge in winter), especially since it's usually overcast and snowing in winter reducing the power even more. Wind power is not suita
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It's quite possible to build insulated skyscrapers. Insulation materials essentially prevent air movement. The more effective ones just lock a lot of air in plastic bubbles near the outer wall. The next thing is to prevent metals or other materials from touching both the outside air and the internal air, which again is not much of a technical challenge (ie. main thing would be to use plastic windows instead of metal ones), but it is expensive.
Of course, upgrading every building to the most recent technical
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Re:Shortages are a solved problem. (Score:4, Informative)
In alternative, they can simply turn on a couple of the 50 power generators they have just sitting there, that never exhibit a single problem in their entire existence.
I wonder what's the best option.
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All they have to do is shut down a few production machines during times of peak electrical usage. The workers can take a nap during that time, or that time could mark a shift change. It wouldn't destroy the economy.
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Machine are usually run as long as possible (assuming the people who run the factory are competent, and dont have too much unused machine time). There would definitely be an impact on productivity if they had to shutdown a few machines for few hours a day. The result would affect the company and country economically.
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I am an industrial engineer, and I would like to point out to you you are talking rubbish. Very few processes I have seen lend themselves to that sort of thing. Heck even the food industry here uses steam/coal/electricity at about the same rate 24/7. Almost all heavy industry runs 24/7 simply because it would be too expensive to shut down. At best places like this (normally on a notified maximum demand tariff) can barely avoid exceeding their NMD, let alone reducing it. Demand control on any significant po
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In the case of shaving the peaks, it is possible through variable pricing provided that theer is sufficient elasticity in demand. Certainly people can put off laundry and such, but in some climates, heat/ac are not really optional.
In the more general case, hiking prices prevents the condition of markets having no stock when customers want to buy. That doesn't mean there isn't actually a shortage, it just means that economists hammered on the square peg of reality until it fit the round hole of theory (or pe
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Before homes had air conditioning, we had social structure, city planning, and architecture in place to deal with it, including open porches and such. The thought of a high rise with non-opening windows was laughable. Due to less surface area being paved over, urban areas didn't form heat islands to the extent that they do today. Meanwhile, the infirm died off from the heat.
If there's so little food that you have to price it at a million dollars a meal in order to prevent a shortage, then you can't blame the price for creating a famine.
Nor can I claim that hiking the price fixes the problem. Lifting the moratorium on farming might make more sense than claiming that no
Re:Shortages are a solved problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's another way to fix the shortfall: simply raise the price of peak hour electricity until demand falls to the level of supply [wikipedia.org].
Yes that works quite well if you're an all consuming nation that has no industry and produces nothing. Quite the opposite is true for Japan. The real fears were that rolling blackouts would start to affect their manufacturing industry and that it would give rise to a second major crash in their economy.
That doesn't even take into account what happens to a nation which is unable to run cooling or heating. Treating people suffering a condition is many times less efficient on resources than preventing the condition from taking place in the first place. You only need to look to Europe to see what happens when gas supplies are suddenly removed from people, which is exactly what happens when you price heating or cooling out of reach of people who may suffer heat stroke / hypothermia.
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Yes, and that's what setting the price just high enough so that demand falls to the level of supply would prevent.
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This is going to sound heartless, but given Japan's popu
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Actually Japanese people probably most of all industrialized nations seem to want to work after retirement.
http://longevity.ilcjapan.org/f_issues/0602.html [ilcjapan.org]
Give this a read. might surprise you on the issue of retirement.
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There's another way to fix the shortfall
Normally, I'd agree, but this was an artificial shortfall caused because the Japanese government took all of the nuclear reactors offline. My take is that they shold bring those reactors back online, then let the price float.
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This is exactly what California power companies (well, PG&E) does. They "artificially" set power availability low, and as a result, you're paying over $0.50/kwh during much of the winter months due to heating - despite the fact that you're really not using all that much power to begin with.
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There is no need in Japan because Japanese people and businesses act responsibly and save energy when asked to. Last summer people avoided using air-con and went to work in casual clothing. They don't keep the TV on in the background. Train companies reduced non-essential services at peek times and turned off half the escalators when passenger numbers were low. Shops turned off much of their non-essential lighting and displays. There has actually been an economic boost due to sales of new energy efficient p
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You read the first paragraph that I wrote. Now read the second.
Re:Shortages are a solved problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry but your logic does not actually work well for hot areas. The peak need for air conditioning comes during the day which is also the peak overall electrical demand time. At night the need for cooling is less as would the electrical rates would be lower. So as the days get hotter an air conditioning user will be using much more peak priced energy than off peak priced energy and their electrical bill will go up.
What about businesses who only operate during peak price time? They will not get much discount from off-peak price because they do not use it.
There is a falsehood in tying every purchase to the supply/demand curve. Some commodities are considered discretionary purchases. In the case of orange juice one could purchase apple juice instead. The supply/demand curve works very well in such cases. In the case of electricity, the only option is to use less. Most people are already conserving as much as they can so electrical purchases are no longer discretionary. No matter how much you raise prices most people are still going to use what they use up to the point of no longer paying their electrical bill.
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And when summer ends, as the days get cooler, the reverse occurs. Over the course of a full year, the average electric bill would stay the same.
If they only operate during peak price, it's because there isn't
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Your original post said: "There's another way to fix the shortfall: simply raise the price of peak hour electricity until demand falls to the level of supply." Now you're saying this won't happen after all, since people can save money in winter and can thus keep on using electricity when they need it (peak hour). Either peak hour electricity use falls and people su
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A person who doesn't change his or her electrical usage patterns would pay the same, in the long term. But time of use pricing creates an incentive to conserve during times of peak demand.
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... and kills people who cannot afford it.
Energy generation is what allows humans to live north of, say, New York. Anything north of that, you're effectively killing people if you raise electricity prices.
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I know, but I don't buy it. It flies in the face of well-known economics. If you lower the supply of anything, prices will rise. There's no way around that.
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You're advocating not activating needed generation capacity. How exactly do you consider yourself not advocating lowering supply ? How do you expect throwing away this infrastructure not to drive up prices ?
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Off-peak supply will be raised in order to accommodate higher off-peak demand as a result of time-of-use pricing.
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You've been repeating that, but how does that change the fact that a resource is being artificially limited ? Prices *will* go up ...
Time shifting is not easy (Score:3)
Over the course of a full year, the average electric bill would stay the same.
Actually there is no "reversal" the bills just won't be as high. The will still be using some high priced day electricity and some lower priced night electricity. If electrical heat is used then they will be in the same boat as the high costs will be for heating during the day rather than cooling.That also does not help if you can not afford your summer bills. Many people live from paycheck to paycheck and can not afford high bills.
If they only operate during peak price, it's because there isn't enough of an incentive to shift their operating hours. This changes that.
How many businesses do you know that can shift their hours out of the 9AM to
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No, the sun (which is very very warm) comes out during the day.
Probably a lot, with the right incentive.
Even today, people work the graveyard shift whe
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No, the sun (which is very very warm) comes out during the day.
Not everyone lives in California. In the southern interior of BC there is a place called the Okanogan. Daytime temperatures range from 0C in winter to 27C in summer. The sun is not enough to heat a house from 0C in winter and air conditioning is needed on hot days in the summer.
Probably a lot, with the right incentive.
Name a few that can work when others are not working? Saying "probably" means you really don't know and are just speculating.
Even today, people work the graveyard shift when they could do the same job during the day for less pay.
True but those jobs are for businesses that are normally open 24 hours a day such as technical support, conv
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If you're trying to prove that demand for electrical usage during peak periods is perfectly inelastic [wikipedia.org], then the burden of proof is on you, because hardly anything has perfectly inelastic demand.
If you you'll notice, peak demand is at 6pm, and it drops from there. So if people can cook dinner at 5pm or wait until 7pm, they'll save money. Or if they can do it at 4pm or wait until 8pm, the
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Only certain parts of a business need to communicate with others...
For instance a company that sells mail order goods, they need to have people available on the phone to take orders when the customers are likely to place orders, but those orders could be packed and shipped late at night with no problem. Similarly backend functions such as finance, it, taking deliveries of stock etc which are not directly customer facing could easily be performed at different times.
Aside from spreading out the power requirem
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The demand is higher at peak times for a reason...
In hot climates, more cooling is needed during the day.
Society/business basically force you to keep certain hours, and power demand is therefore highest during those hours.
It's not just power thats like this, also look at transport... You have peak times when every transport method around a major city is over crowded, and you have off peak times when they are empty.
If working hours were staggered, you would be able to spread the demand for power and transpor
Or we could just (Score:2)
Make the problem worse ! (Score:2)
You want to make the problem worse ? How would that help ?
Yes, worse [wikipedia.org].
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instant water heaters
You need to do a lot more research before spewing things like this. And I'm only quoting the juiciest part.
Re:Shortages are a solved problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
I asked a valid question.
And you were asked if you were an idiot because even as far north as New York (and further) every summer hear wave comes with reports on the news of how many people died in their homes form the heat. Yes, these are predominantly the old and/or infirm and always the poor. I'm in no way OK with that. Are you?
not actually that unpopular locally (Score:5, Informative)
While restarting any nuclear reactors is currently quite unpopular in Japan nationally, the decision to restart this particular plant's two reactors was actually made with local input and approval. Local councils aren't normally required to approve such matters, but due to the current controversy, Japan's government de-facto made restart contingent on approval from the local government. After several months of safety studies and deliberation, the municipal council voted 11-1 in favor of restarting the reactors [japantimes.co.jp] in mid-May, which gave the national government some cover to go ahead with it.
Re:not actually that unpopular locally (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. I also like how 32% opposed to the restart, and 38% with no opinions in public polls (numbers in the the same NHK feed they sourced) is "widespread public opposition".
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Naturally, they meant 2 people objected and they were as far apart as possible without one of them living on the water.
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32% isn't widespread. Not in the least, you want widespread? Take a look at the polling(nationwide for NHK) done for lay-judges, where 90% approve of it, but 68% would be hesitant of taking the position themselves in a trial.
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I think a better method would be to give the public the power to make the choice: have a referendum, with questions being something like "with summer coming, there is greater demand for power than we can supply without the nuclear reactors. please choose: 1) restart the newer-design reactors to provide this needed power, or 2) don't restart the reactors, and accept rolling blackouts during peak demand times".
If the public chooses #2, then just go ahead and have rolling blackouts. That'll solve the problem
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Sounds like you're a really smart person, and you always make wonderful decisions.
This has nothing to do with me. I'm just saying that if the populace is complaining, let the populace decide, for better or worse. If they make a bad decision, they'll have to live with the consequences, but they'll only have themselves to blame. The problem with something highly controversial like nuclear power seems to be these days is that no matter which decision the politicians make, good or bad, the people will still
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But I bet is has not even occurred to you that a large amount of the push to restart the reactors comes from shareholders in electric companies
So what? Just because they're trying to protect their wealth doesn't mean that they're in the wrong. Surely, you can come up with a better reason than because you want to screw over a certain group of people.
Re:not actually that unpopular locally (Score:5, Insightful)
In general, nothing trumps NIMBY quite like a threatened return to the dark ages.
No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
When you can't have everything your way, having some electricity is not a bad start.
the new nuclear site (Score:2)
And hire a 3rd party nuclear regulatory state like US NRC for consulting and oversight.
What an incredibly stupid argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Both Fukushima and the subsequent tests have clearly shown that nuclear power, especially when bought from an occupying power and built by a powerful oligopoly under a weak and corrupt government, is neither cheap, nor safe.
If you had even a single brain cell you would arrive at the opposite conclusion.
Fukushima survived a huge earthquake, and unexpected wave, and a disastrous internal failure.
DESPITE all that, very few people were killed, and almost no-one outside the plant had any exposure of significance to radiation.
And all this in a plant with a design that was decades old...
If you can't see how inherently safe nuclear is from this incident, nothing can reach your luddite mind.
Nuclear is the one green energy we truly have at our disposal, and backward bumpkins like yourself seek to rob humanity of the benefits that come from cheap and continuous access to power. How many more lives must perish under your cruel tyranny of unwarranted fear?
Re:What an incredibly stupid argument (Score:5, Insightful)
DESPITE all that, very few people were killed,
Thats not exactly true, I heard some 20,000 died from the tidal wave.
The mockery here is that everyone has their panties in a bunch over 2 hospitalized workers (no doubt very brave and much to be commended) and a handful who died @ fukushima, while a whole coastline was littered with dead and dying people who got about 5 minutes of airtime.
WOOO PERSPECTIVE! Way to have those priorities in line.
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You tackled main issue here - fear. Fear is primal instinct, and you can't sway it away with logic. People fear what they don't see. In fear people will justify any avoidance with any arguments. Heck, they will think that they don't have to justify it at all.
Hey, I have a brain cell! :) (Score:2)
The wave was expected (relevant studies/reports were buried), and the disastrous internal failure was completely avoidable. The nuclear regulatory agency responsible for overseeing the plants were in bed with the industry, and thus there was no accountability resulting in multiple safety violations.
When management's motivation is not aligned with the public's, no industry is inherently "safe". The only solution? Hold management and regulatory agency officials criminally liable for corruption/negligence.
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If there were no meltdown, these deaths would not have occurred. Playing with semantics to prove a minor point is pretty weak. :)
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That looks like a very good reason not to build power plants that may blow up as dirty bombs if not handed properly.
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Wind and power are so unsafe that their total deathtoll already far exceeds the deathtoll from nuclear accidents.
Citation requested. I'd really like to have a good citation on this point.
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Really?
http://www.macrowonders.com/storage/JP%20vs%20EU%20money%20supply.gif?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1334089891603 [macrowonders.com]
Japan is printing money, except they put it all into domestic useless projects.
Cognitive dissonance (Score:2)
Keynesian economics HAS NEVER WORKED FOR ANY COUNTRY IN ANY SITUATION
In the voice of Donald Rumsfeld, "That's a known unknown."
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence either way. Case in point -- when European economies tightened the books, every economy predictably contracted. Proof? Absolutely not.
Cut the cognitive dissonance, and enter the conversation =)
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European economies, USA economy, Japanese economy, former USSR economy, Zimbabwe economy, Argentina economy, Weimer Republic economy, and many others have done this - borrowed, printed, spent money by the government.
All the evidence points that it didn't make their economies stronger, it made them weaker.
OTOH Swiss economy (before this year, when they turned Franc into Euro), former USA economy (before 1913), have not done this, haven't printed money, prevented government spending, they were doing very well
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Switzerland turned Franc into Euro this year and nobody told me ?
Check your facts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_franc [wikipedia.org]
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Man, why is this place so full of ignorant people, who believe they actually know or understand something, anything around them? [wordpress.com]
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Japanese are printing Yen like crazy, it should be much stronger than it is today and prices in Japan must be much lower than they are today and there should be restructuring.
Looking at relative values between currencies ALL of which are being debased is useless.
Here is an example of their printing plan: 4 year printing plan that started in 2001 [frbsf.org]
Here is part of their plan description from 2010 [fxmadness.com]
Here is the result of the third time BoJ 'eased' in August 2011 [cnn.com]
Here is some more in October 2011 [reuters.com]
2012, April, the hea [ritholtz.com]
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Saying that "all currencies are debased" is ridiculous.
- ha ha ha.
20 year trends:
gold [infomine.com]
silver [infomine.com]
platinum [infomine.com]
palladium [infomine.com]
copper [infomine.com]
aluminum [infomine.com]
lead [infomine.com]
nickel [infomine.com]
tin [infomine.com]
zinc [infomine.com]
iron ore [infomine.com]
manganese [infomine.com]
potash [infomine.com]
phosphate rock [infomine.com]
oil [inflationdata.com]
Orange Juice [tradingcharts.com] - here you have to switch from year to year to see that prices are growing, it shows one year at a time, so in 2012 the prices are about 180, in 2005 the prices are around 100, in 2001 they are about 85, it's an interactive chart.
coffee [tradingcharts.com] - 2012, prices are about 250, in 2010 it's about 160, in 2006 it's about 110, in 2004 it's about 80, in 2001 it's about 55
etc.
The govern
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Maybe NIMBY's should remember this the next time they cockblock replacement of aging 60 year old 1st generation reactors that have exceeded their operational lifespan.
Re:Nuclear disaster nearly shut down Tokyo (Score:5, Insightful)
(with the disaster spreading to nuclear reactors closer to Tokyo) this would have happened.
What possible mechanism could have caused that? Radioactive leaks aren't like an infectious disease, they don't cause distant power stations to become damaged.
Re:Nuclear disaster nearly shut down Tokyo (Score:4, Informative)
Source: NY Times article [nytimes.com] on top-level report reviewing the disaster.
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Source: NY Times article [nytimes.com] on top-level report reviewing the disaster.
I am surprised they did says the ripple effect would result in requiring whole of Asia to evacuated and soon the world. What makes them think that reactors around the reactor would not be shutdown, before they are evacuated. Or that given the prediction, they can think ahead and shutdown the reactors near Fukushima ahead.
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(with the disaster spreading to nuclear reactors closer to Tokyo) this would have happened.
What possible mechanism could have caused that? Radioactive leaks aren't like an infectious disease, they don't cause distant power stations to become damaged.
Godzilla.
Remember the radioactive mutant monsters in Tokyo Bay,