Skip to main content

Fukushima perspective

Update: correction and contrition.  Friday August 14, 2015. 

I screwed the pooch on this one.



Japanese deference to corporate authority apparently caused the technicians in charge of the Fukushima power plants to withhold the truth of the dire circumstances of the Fukushima reactors from their corporate superiors, and to delay the emergency measures they knew were instantly required to save the reactors from total meltdown. They sat on their hands rather than “offend” their bosses, who in their culture are apparently seen as their god-like betters. No one wanted to be the messenger bringing the bad news. So all of the engineering work that went into making the reactors safe was thrown in the dumper because of a cultural twitch. As always the greatest danger lies in those human factors that lead to operator error.


I did not take that into consideration, and so: my bad.

Nippon's Nuclear Curse

Justin Raimondo -- mucho kudos for the man,... but not this time -- writes the following on the Antiwar.com blog

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/03/12/nippons-nuclear-curse/#IDComment135882114

And I respond:

Just to keep it sane, here. Those reactors are just fine. Their operation to produce electricity has already saved the planet from thousands of tons of carbon dioxide and other pollutants (coal for example emits substantial quantities of radioactive thorium and uranium when burned in power plants; there's your radioactive plume, folks; the nukes on the other hand are clean as a whistle).

Yes, Japan has earthquakes. They just had the biggest one in recorded history. And their nuke plants? Damaged? Yes. But what all you technically clueless people fail to realize is that real engineers take their jobs seriously, and design all sorts of multiply redundant safety features into these facilities, so that even in the event of damage, ***CATASTROPHIC FAILURE*** is prevented.

But the anti-nuclear hysterics, the Henny-Penny shriekers are only interested in political/emotional masturbation. In their ignorance and looming feeling of irrelevance, in their need to feel important, their desire to don the tiara of heroism, to be lauded for their crusader passion to save the world, they shriek against technology.  Grow up. The scientific types -- the geeks and nerds you so disdained in school because of their social incompetence, and to whom you felt oh so superior, well, they now own the world and your silly tra-la-la asses right along with it.

In ten or fifteen years when the Chinese have finished off your lunch, and the US economy craters totally, those geeks will be the new middle class, and you anti-nuke flakes with your degrees in French literature and sociology will be commuting to geek homes to clean the pool, mow the lawn, and scrub the floors.

*****************************************

Okay, a bit snarky, which is my way, but another commenter replied, and I "dialed it down":

"Jeff if the plants were really engineered to handle catastrophes that actually empirically happen in Japan as in the current moment they wouldn't be desperately pumping sea water and boron onto the likely already melted cores of these power plants."

I appreciate the civil and sensible nature of your remarks, and agree with everything except the implication that the plants aren't "really" engineered to handle catastrophes that actually happen.

If one assumes that a plant must survive intact and without significant damage, and thus be able to resume function with only minimal repair, then yes, these plants aren't designed to do that. What they are designed to do is absorb every level of assault except the very worst that nature can dish out, and then, smashed, blasted, and flooded, still not crack open and poison everyone with massive amounts of lethal radiation. I believe that when the dust has settled, we will see that the skilled and responsible engineers have succeeded in achieving that. This is what engineers at their best seek to do.

In the face of a giant earthquake AND a giant tsunami the plant has been reduced to garbage, yes, but the people are safe. That's success. Power plants can be replaced, lives cannot.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

re censorship at antiwar.com

Really, Thomas? Who is the drama queen here? You're embarrassing yourself with this name calling. My comment disappeared. What am I to think, you're on a coffee break? So I posted the link to my backup, my all-but-invisible, low-traffic,... make that no-traffic,... blog. The "rules" you cite give the Jews a free pass on their complicity in the Zionist project. It's ok to criticize Zionism or Israel, but not the Jews that make their crimes possible. That appears to be the rule, and it amounts to Antiwar.com caving to Jewish/Zionist intimidation. It may be discretion -- as in "discretion is the better part of valor" -- but absent the lethality of bullets-and-bombs-combat, it's cowardly. It was cowardly then, as it is cowardly now. That said, it ***IS*** Justin's website and he gets to decide on when "discretion" -- strategic restraint -- is called for. I've had this issue since before you were moderator. Someone Jewis...

Sunshine on the Suck-ups

In response to an article -- "a splendid little war could end Trump's presidency" --  by Jim Jatras https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/a-splendid-little-war-could-end-trumps-presidency-/ Jatras is a perfect example of the comprehensive cluelessnesss of the political class. Here, on display is the reason US foreign policy has been a flat out disaster for the last thirty years. Generations in the echo chamber of foreign policy "expertise", where the rule is bobble-headed yes-man servility and craven obsequiousness to the interests of the 1%, has lead US foreign policy to a place where an enforced and self-reinforcing notion of "expertise" is in fact zombified incompetence. Trump is in the big chair. That Jatras cannot see him except through the lens of "a shallow, superficial, unqualified Twitter-addicted unstable personality who never should have been allowed into the Oval Office..." clearly indicates that a war for the definition of ...

Right to exist, right to self-defense.....not!

The following is a post I made to The Algemeiner, an online Jewish publication, in response to "Golda Meir was no J-Streeter", http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/09/08/golda-meir-was-no-j-streeter/#comment-4474211. Like many Jewish publications The Algemeiner has a limited tolerance for the truth when the truth is critical of Israel and its supporters, and so, not surprisingly, the comment was deleted by "moderation". I reprint it here for your consideration. ************************** Make no mistake, I’m an American and a Jew. For those of you thoroughly infected with the Judiasm-destroying poison of Zionism, here is the antidote to your Kool-aid dreams. Drink deeply and wake up to reality. We often hear the phrase “Israel’s right to exist” and along with it, “Israel’s right to self-defense.” Hear them endlessly, by propagandists who repeat them endlessly. But endless repetition does not make a thing true. The phantom “legiti...