CSpec

Looks like they'll be joining the rest of us in the race to the bottom.

lol

This is what happens when you don't allow immigration.

Washington Post says fear of nuclear accidents is worse for your health than the radiation:

This thing is awesome.

From an email I got today:

Dear Friend,

Last Friday’s earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan was a tragic reminder of the earth’s destructive power. The death toll is expected to be in the tens of thousands.

What is occurring, however, at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is no natural disaster, but a human-made one.

You are no doubt reading reports of the situation in Japan. As of late-afternoon today, at unit two, an explosion has ruptured the primary containment vessel, and at two other units there have been partial meltdowns; emergency personnel have been evacuated; over 200,000 people have been evacuated from the area; radiation from damaged reactors has set off radiation detectors seventy-five miles away; the American fleet, including the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, is moving to safer waters, after 17 personnel tested positive for radiation exposure.

The environmental community must be able to speak credibly about nuclear power, so, at minimum, a cursory knowledge of physics and medicine is helpful.

In a nuclear reactor, heat is harvested to create steam, in turn, the steam spins the turbines that create electricity. The heat is created by an atomic chain reaction of neutrons striking and dividing uranium atoms. Fission divides atoms into small atomic components, thereby releasing tremendous energy in the form of heat. Loads of heat. A core of a nuclear reactor reaches temperatures of 5000 degrees Fahrenheit — half the temperature of the surface of the sun.

This super hot chain reaction cannot be turned-off like a light-bulb. Once ignited, the atomic chain reaction keeps going. At Fukushima, the heat exchange between seawater and the uranium fuel rods is expected to continue over many years. But that’s not the end of the story, the radioactive decay of uranium fuels rods continue for hundreds of thousands of years, and remain deadly for the duration.

Back to today. The reports are sketchy, but thus far it appears that there has been a full meltdown at unit two, and other radiation releases from the deliberate venting of vaporized coolant. Unfortunately, highly dangerous radioisotopes have been released into the environment, including cesium-137, strontium-90, iodine-131 and plutonium-239.

In a failed effort to prevent a meltdown, utility workers had dipped fire hoses into the ocean and pumped in seawater to cover the reactor core. (Apparently, at unit two a valve stuck, leaving the rods are fully exposed, leading to a full meltdown.) The containment vessel has been breached. A horrible witches brew of radioactive contaminants is being unleashed. (The mixed-oxide fuel in Unit 3, uranium blended with weapons-grade plutonium, is also troubling.) Another worry is the decades-worth of spent fuel rods stored on site — these pools appear to be failing.

The Fukushima meltdown not only impacts Japan but the entire world as well. The Chernobyl plume traveled around the globe and especially affected Scandinavia – over a thousand miles away the site. Chernobyl was responsible for tens of thousands of cancers.

Here’s the problem — radioisotopes enter the food chain. The radioactive variety of iodine, I-131, is readily absorbed by the thyroid. It is a strong gamma emitter, and once perched in the thyroid, I-131 slices-up the DNA of healthy cells, converting them to malformed cancer cells. Other isotopes pose a threat. Strontium is metabolised in the body as calcium and cesium is absorbed as potassium. Once ingested, these cancer-causing radioactive agents become part of our bones.

With the news of a full meltdown, wind patterns will likely deliver radiation to the West Coast in about five days. As I-131 has a toxic life of 80 days it is advisable for pregnant women and children to ingest potassium iodine (KI) to flood the thyroid with “good” iodine, thus keeping radioactive iodine out of the body. It’s important to note that KI only defeats I-131 and not the other deadly isotopes.

On television this weekend we’ve seen a parade of nuclear industry spokespeople and medically-ignorant physicists downplay the health ramifications. The experts like to say it’s “fear” we have to worry about, not the radiation. Some are even bemoaning the loss of nuclear power as a means of thwarting climate change. (Never mind that virtually every environmental group opposes nuclear power and prefers safe clean renewable energy.)

The fact is that radiation is never healthy. Rather than take industry’s word on it, I encourage you to read what medical researchers and physicians have to say. The National Academy of Science’s latest report on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, BIER-VII, says that the smallest dose of low-level ionizing radiation has the potential to cause health risks to humans.

Nuclear technology is so fraught with some many hazards, can we honestly engineer our way out of them? The answer is no. We’re dealing with 5000 degree temperatures, atomic chain reactions, and radiation that remains deadly for hundreds of thousands of years. Even Prometheus couldn’t handle this fire.

For background on the unfolding incident I suggest the following websites:

* Beyond Nuclear

* Washington Post backgrounder

* Union of Concerned Scientists blog

* Institute for Energy and Environmental Research

What can you do?

1. If you wish to stay apprised of the crisis, please let me know.

2. Activists along the Pacific coast are monitoring for radiation — let me know if you wish to participate.

3. Encourage local health officials to safely distribute KI pills in orderly fashion.

- Jonathan Parfrey

Jonathan Parfrey is executive director of the Green LA Coalition. For thirteen years he served as executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility in Los Angeles and currently serves on the board of directors of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility.

Links work on this page: http://greenlacoalit...aster-in-japan/

OK, is there anything I can do to protect myself to minimize exposure? That's what I want to know more than anything.

Again, what fraction of an X-ray can you expect 5000 miles away?

If this is the worst case disaster for a nuclear plant, nuclear seems pretty darn safe to me.

This footage of the sea relentlessly flooding a town is incredible: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/mar/14/tsunami-kesennuma-video

A black Panamera has started parking in a driveway near my house. I think the same guy also owns a red 911 GT3.

Tim Harford on Twitter: "The attention given to the Japanese nuclear plants (worrying) vs. the Tsunami (unimaginably tragic) seems disproportionate."

Japanese officials say they can contain it...but they also said this wasn't a possibility before. Sweet, I can't wait to experience radiation sweeping eastward.

CNN was saying the explosion was near the plant, not at the reactor. An explosion in/of the reactor is such an incredibly remote possibility that it's hardly worth even thinking about. Chernobyl was a horribly designed plant that wasn't maintained properly and run by people who made mistake after mistake reacting to the situation. This is a modern plant that, in the case of a meltdown, should be almost completely self-containing. Freaking out about the plant isn't called for at all.

*edit* Look at what happened when Three Mile Island melted down... external to the plant, nothing. TMI is still running the other reactor at the plant. No one was hurt. All that happened was it ruined that one reactor and showed that the safety systems worked, but everyone freaked out anyway. I suppose it's possible that this event could be a bit worse than that in a worst case scenario, but that's considering the plant got nailed with a freakishly nasty series of earthquakes and a massive tsunami. It's still, in the worst case scenario, not going to come anywhere near the events of Chernobyl.

Sorry, but depending on how this $h! blows across the ocean, I'm in the line of fire for radiation exposure. I want to know what is actually happening so I can prepare accordingly to protect myself. And I certainly don't trust the US government to tell me the truth, either.

Since Sendai is like 5300 miles away from you, how much radiation are we talking? An X-ray? A fraction of an X-ray? A PET scan?

I think their building standards saved millions. Had 8.9 hit a modern city that wasn't built to deal with being on the ring, it would be ugly.

True, but you need money to afford buildings that aren't shacks. Haiti had plenty of building codes but no one followed them because the country is desperately poor.

The interior looks pretty nice, but I suspect this car will be fairly lame.

Thankfully prosperity saved many thousands of lives in Japan. That was a huge quake, but since they don't live in huts this wasn't a repeat of 2004 Indonesia where over 230,000 people perished. And yes nuclear power is fine.

Hey I'm cheering those people on: lower prices for me.

You think it will lower prices even 9/10ths of a cent?

No of course not. I was half joking.

Hey I'm cheering those people on: lower prices for me.

Huzzah!

Sweet. Coming to DC in June.

Welcome! yes, pictures please.

I think this looks fantastic.

Not convinced. Has a whiff of Daewoo about it.

You won't often hear me call for government to lead the charge in human endeavors, but this is one such case. Some things simply can't be done when the base motive of profit is the only driver.

The Richard Branson profit motive part works for recreational spaceflight for tourists, and hopefully one day for regular commercial flights as the crafts can go much faster. The more abstract science-y research-y stuff with no concrete profit opportunity will still be publicly funded. NASA will administer grants to private companies, which is how much (if not most) government research is carried out. NASA is a bureaucratic and bloated mess--winding it down to some grant experts who fund energetic and innovative private firms seems like an improvement, no?

All of that should take place subordinate to bold exploration. The history of the space program shows a grand display of advances in technologies that could not have happened without it. It has spurred the growth of countless industries and thus repaid us many times over.

Like what?

You won't often hear me call for government to lead the charge in human endeavors, but this is one such case. Some things simply can't be done when the base motive of profit is the only driver.

The Richard Branson profit motive part works for recreational spaceflight for tourists, and hopefully one day for regular commercial flights as the crafts can go much faster. The more abstract science-y research-y stuff with no concrete profit opportunity will still be publicly funded. NASA will administer grants to private companies, which is how much (if not most) government research is carried out. NASA is a bureaucratic and bloated mess--winding it down to some grant experts who fund energetic and innovative private firms seems like an improvement, no?

It will take some time for the price to come down, but not 100 years. Imagine discussing the possibility of 55" flat screen TVs in modest living rooms with someone in 2001.

I can see private companies springing up to offer trips to and from space. I could even see commercial airlines stepping up to the plate. Like Camino said, though, I think we've got quite a ways to go before that happens.

Uh, what? This is already happening:

http://www.virgingalactic.com/