zerohedge | We’ve long said that the greatest short-term threat to humanity is from the fuel pools at Fukushima. The Japanese nuclear agency recently green-lighted the removal of the spent fuel rods from Fukushima reactor 4′s spent fuel pool. The operation is scheduled to begin this month.
The head of the U.S. Department of Energy correctly notes:
The success of the cleanup also has global significance. So we all have a direct interest in seeing that the next steps are taken well, efficiently and safely.
If one of the pools collapsed or caught fire, it could have severe
adverse impacts not only on Japan … but the rest of the world, including
the United States. Indeed, a Senator called it a national security concern for the U.S.:
The radiation caused by the failure of the spent fuel pools in the event of another earthquake could reach the West Coast within days. That absolutely makes the safe containment and protection of this spent fuel a security issue for the United States.
Hiroaki Koide – a nuclear scientist working at the University of Kyoto – says:
I’m worried about whether Tepco can treat all the 1,331 [spent-fuel] assemblies without any problem and how long it will take.
Award-winning scientist David Suzuki says that Fukushima is
terrifying, Tepco and the Japanese government are lying through their
teeth, and Fukushima is “the most terrifying situation I can imagine”.
Suzuki notes that reactor 4 is so badly damaged that – if there’s
another earthquake of 7 or above – the building could come down. And the
probability of another earthquake of 7 or above in the next 3 years is over 95%.
Suzuki says that he’s seen a paper that says that if – in fact – the
4th reactor comes down, “it’s bye bye Japan, and everyone on the West
Coast of North America should evacuate. Now if that’s not terrifying, I
don’t know what is.” Fist tap Big Don.
6 comments:
BD, what changed your mind about the hazard of Fukushima vs. all the Pacific nuclear testing?there have only been about a dozen H-Bomb detonations including both the US and the Soviet Union. I believe all of the bombs used in these tests had a "clean jacket" to avoid widespread contamination. In a H-bomb, the fuel is Lithium deuteride which does not produce long lasting radioactive isotopes. The H-Bombs use a small fission core that is used to set off the Lithium deuteride fuel.
The Spent Fuel Pool #4 contains more material than all of these detentions. A typical Fission core contains a mass measured in kilograms, where as SFP's contains dozens or even hundreds of metric tons of highly radioactive material.
I suppose if there is a diaster, they would probably have to somehow bury the exposed rods. but rain and ground water will carry contaminates into the sea for +10K years. I suppose they would build a massive sea wall with deep steel caissons pounded into the ground. I would suspect that any cleanup effort would costs in the hundreds of billions. something which Japan can't possibly afford, especially when more than half the population of Japan flees or gets very sick from exposure.
"Big Sexy" is visibly suffering from clinical depression, coming onto teevee all disheveled and looking like he's been buying clothes at the thrift shop rather than the Men's Wearhouse. Hopefully his 15 minutes of fin d'siecle Thomas Sowell-estry is nearing the end of its run.
BD is prudently prepared for anything (see zoomable image below). No matter WTF happens in Fuk-ville, you won't see BD heading for the Southern Hemisphere. We will stay put and pop Iodine pills. Unless you live next door to it. suspect the 'threat' is mostly hype to extract budget and wield power. Would be a slick secure job you could retire on, sort of like the Hanford Cleanup....
Bullying is pro sport culture. There's some form of hazing in any competitive endeavor. You just have to deal with it or not play. Let's throw millions of dollars into the mix. You really have a choice then. If it's not for you, they'll make you quit.
Jason Whitlock acts as if he's never played a sport. It's not a maximum security prison. That boy was getting paid to play football. There's no sympathy from my side of the yard. What's with some of these sports pundits?
coercive institutionalized feminization has become normative whether it makes sense or not - as you note - in a sport predicated on male pain infliction and pain tolerance, it makes nary a lick of sense, yet, the shrill and slack-jawed insist on forcing it down our collective throats, much the way they did when they ended corporal punishment and implemented "zero-tolerance" in schools. everybody and their cousin knows how that's worked out over the past three decades....,
Since when is physically defending oneself an act of barbarism? As Frederick Douglass said” “This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical…”
Perhaps more than “Oz” the Miami Dolphins are running a slave plantation. Only that the enslaved here are “Forty Million Dollar Slaves.” Slavery was a system maintained by fear, enforced by violence. Some people ran away from slave plantations. Others found subtle ways to resist, breaking tools, e.g. Some became brutal enforcers, aiding and abetting slavery, like Sambo and Quimbo in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Some rebelled like Boukman Dutty, Charles Deslondes, and Nat Turner. Most, however succumbed to fear and violence to survive.
It’s easy for people to say I would have done this or that under similar conditions, but the reality is most of these people talking, as history proves, would not have done jack.
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