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Special Report
Pass the Plutonium
Fukushima is not the end of nuclear power — just the opposite. Even Dick Durbin might agree.
People think that Fukushima will mean the end of nuclear power, but I’m convinced it’s the opposite. We’re going to lose our nuclear virginity over this accident and start seeing the world as adults. In fact it’s already happening.
Exhibit A is George Monbiot, the left-wing British columnist and global warming fanatic with the Guardian who explained to readers three days after the earthquake, “Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power.”
You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.
Monbiot’s point is quite simple. For years we’ve lived with the impression that a nuclear meltdown is the equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off, killing thousands and leaving whole landscapes uninhabitable. Now we’ve had one and look what’s happened. The fourth worst earthquake in history has failed to crack open the concrete containment and the difficulty arose only because the utility didn’t have enough backup electricity on hand. Fukushima remains a horribly dangerous situation and the workers who are bringing the reactor under control ought to be given a parade down Broadway when it’s finally over. But what has the toll been so far? One worker died in a steam explosion and others have been exposed to levels of radiation that may increase their chances of getting cancer somewhere down the line. But this is basically an industrial accident. As Monbiot points out, coal mining in China kills more people in a week than ever died as a result of Chernobyl.
The real problem at Fukushima has been that headline writers can’t seem to keep the phrases “catastrophe” and “holocaust” out of their vocabulary. At one point, one cable news website headline read, “Steam Explosion at Reactor, 10,000 Dead.” The 10,000 deaths, of course, were from the earthquake but you have to read the story to discover that. This week in the print edition of the New York Times, theScience section ran a headline, “When All Isn’t Enough to Stop a Catastrophe,” claiming that “Nuclear plants have plans for every contingency, but no one can predict everything that might go wrong.” But the only catastrophe the authors could come up with was the failure of an emergency shutdown system in New Jersey in 1983 where there was no fuel melt and no one was hurt. The story ended with a risk analysis specialist saying, “On a continuum, there is no question in my mind that the dangers from fossil fuel burning should worry us more.”
One by one, the nuclear myths have fallen. In the immediate aftermath, reporters and commentators right up to Bill O’Reilly were anticipating a dreaded “meltdown” would be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb. In fact, a meltdown simply means the fuel has melted to the bottom of the steel pressure vessel, which is inside the concrete containment structure. In days of yore environmentalists dreamed up “The China Syndrome,” which had the fuel melting through the pressure vessel, then through the concrete containment and continuing on its way to China until it hit groundwater, at which point it would cause a steam explosion that would kill everybody in Los Angeles — or at least that’s what Jane Fonda was told. Three Mile Island proved this wouldn’t happen. Fukushima has confirmed it.
Another hot button has been plutonium, an artificial element formed in a reactor. (Plutonium is forged in supernovas, along with all the other heavy elements, but it disappeared on earth long ago.) In the effort to portray nuclear power as the devil’s handiwork, Ralph Nader once labeled plutonium “the most toxic substance ever known to mankind.” In fact it is about as toxic as caffeine. Bernard Cohen, the tireless crusader for nuclear common sense, offered many times to eat as much plutonium as Nader would eat caffeine on “The Tonight Show” but Nader never took him up.
Failing to convince anyone of plutonium’s toxicity, Nader next announced that “one pound of plutonium would be enough to kill everyone on earth.” The scenario here was plutonium, if ground into fine dust and breathed in by everyone on earth, would eventually give everyone lung cancer. As the late Petr Beckmann responded, “So would tomorrow’s production of hatpins kill everyone on earth if carefully placed in each individual heart.”
All this came back again last week when traces of plutonium turned up in seawater. Was the nuclear holocaust eminent? Not at all. The plutonium in seawater is no more dangerous than barium or americium or any of the other radioactive elements that accumulate in nuclear fuel rods. We don’t want to be exposed to too much of them, but iodine-131 is the truly bad actor because it migrates to the thyroid gland and causes thyroid cancer. The usual route of exposure is ingestion from milk and vegetables, however, and it can be carefully monitored. Naturally we want to limit exposure to these radioactive elements as much as possible, but radiation is not a death ray and exposure does not equal instant death.
So the encouraging news out of Fukushima is that that all these bad things have happened and we’re still miles away from anything that could be called a “nuclear holocaust.” Monbiot debated the venerable Helen Caldicott on Democracy Now! on Wednesday and it took Caldicott only 30 seconds to conjure up another doomsday scenario. The fuel rods in one reactor, she said, had already melted through the steel pressure vessel (not true) and were lying on the concrete floor. The plutonium in the rods would soon react with the concrete and cause a hydrogen explosion, which would blow the containment structure to smithereens and scatter a radioactive plume all over Japan, making it uninhabitable forever, and then drift over to the United States and kill a lot of people here as well. Caldicott has been conjuring such apocalyptic visions for thirty years but now it seemed oddly quaint. Even the Democracy Now! anchor looked skeptical. Monbiot gently chided her for making “unjustifiable and excessive claims for the impact of that radiation” and accused her of encouraging “what could be far more devastating to the lives of the people in Japan — a wild overreaction in terms of the response in which we ask the Japanese people to engage.” That’s not the kind of reaction Caldicott usually expects.
But there’s more. At the hearings of the Senate Energy and Water subcommittee on Wednesday, Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin, one of the most liberal members of the Senate, asked Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko and Deputy Energy Secretary Peter Lyons why we aren’t reprocessing our nuclear fuel. “I remember reading about Sisyphus in college and how he kept pushing the rock up that hill only to have it roll back down again and I realize now the name of that hill was Yucca Mountain,” Durbin began.
“What about nuclear reprocessing?” he continued. “There was a time when we took a national position not to reprocess because it might create the opportunity for someone to use plutonium to develop a nuclear weapon. Yet today two of our closest allies, Britain and France, have decided that reprocessing is not only okay, it’s a great commercial investment. They are receiving waste from other countries and not only reprocessing it but dramatically reducing the amount of radioactive material.”
Now you have to realize how important this is. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter caved in to environmental hysteria and banned nuclear reprocessing on the grounds that we were saving the world from the proliferation of nuclear weapons. John McPhee had written a book, The Curve of Binding Energy, postulating that someone might steal plutonium from a reprocessing factory and use it to make a bomb. His authority was Ted Taylor, one of the U.S. Army’s most prolific bomb designers, who had started regretting his work and was also convinced that because he could make a bomb in his basement anyone else could as well. Taylor warned McPhee that there would be “dozens,” even “hundreds of [nuclear] explosions a year” once we began to reprocess. Carter swallowed all this and banned reprocessing his first few months in office.
The result was the everlasting pseudo-problem of “nuclear waste.” Reprocessing reduces the volume of spent fuel by 95 percent. The amount is already remarkably small (as Gwyneth Cravens, author of Power to Save the World, says, “All the nuclear waste we’ve ever produced in this country would fit into one Best Buy”), but with reprocessing it is even smaller. The French store all their high-level waste from 30 years of producing 75 percent of their electricity beneath the floor of one room at Le Hague.
Now no Democrat has ever wanted to admit that Carter might have made a mistake, since he meant so well. If they do question the ban on reprocessing, they usually blame President Ford, who temporarily suspended it the year before. Yet now here is Democratic Majority Whip Durbin ending his remarks by saying, “Is that thinking from the Carter Administration really appropriate today?”
Don’t be too quick to write off the nuclear renaissance. The world is changing. Nuclear is going to have its day.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (88) | Leave a comment
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Dee See| 4.1.11 @ 6:55AM
Agenda 21 et al, calling for MASS population
extermination --UH, we meant 'easing' by 2050,
get another New World Order birthday present
---not unlike the one on MAO's birthday,
the 2005 Tsunami in Southeast Asia.
(BTW unmentioned, unreferenced throughout
the entire Fukishima 'event')
MEANWHILE, into the third week of a hideously
deteriorating situtation NO confrontations with
Globalist cuprits like GE's Jeff I-Melt-down
---NO mention of HAARP technology ---indeed,
even as the fallout gets a revivifying blast from
the latest meltdowns ----not even much coverage.
chris haynes| 4.1.11 @ 7:46AM
This wont kill nuclear: Fukushima.
This will: Gas
With power at $50 a megawatt hour, you can make money building gas fired power plants . At that price, an old nuclear plant barely makes money. To afford a new one, you need to get over $100.
But you make a good point. Three Mile Island was frightening becuase it was a near miss. By contrast, Fukushima was a direct hit, and in the end, its just an industrial accident.
Bob K.| 4.1.11 @ 8:08AM
No. Gas is not the answer. It is too costly to produce, transport, store and maintain it's transportation infrastructure. Too long to go into in this space but read some of it here.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=183350
Nuclear is the most efficient source of energy available. We have to get started on returning to it now.
c. j. acworth| 4.1.11 @ 8:09AM
Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't it the case that the truely dangerous isotopes are the ones with the shortest half-life? I think I read somewhere that Iodine-131 has a half-life of about 8 days, which means that even if it gets loose, its has mostly decayed after a few weeks. Still a bad situation to be sure, but evacuating the area for a month or two is doable.
Sendai| 4.1.11 @ 7:08PM
You are very ill-informed. It there is I-131, there is also Cesium, Strontium, etc. They have much longer half-life, but are extremely dangerous and vicious isotopes, which effect will be felt for centuries. They are the reason for the exclusion zones around Chernobyl. Believe whatever you want, but evacuation "for a few months" will not be a solution for the region around Fukushima. And it may extend well beyond the IAEA-recommended 40 km zone, if the reactors keep on leaking radiation for a long period, which seems the most likely scenario. Only the most scientifically and historically illiterate will believe such BS.
DaveS| 4.3.11 @ 11:43AM
Where do you get 'extremely dangerous isotopes' from? First off, your intelligence on this is all pretend. Cesium and strontium are elements - not isotopes. Sr-89, Sr-90, Sr-91 are isotopes - of strontium.
And half-life does not tell the story. I-129 has a huge half-life - but no one issues protection orders against it.
So until you show me your credentials to talk about this, I won't divulge mine.
Sendai| 4.3.11 @ 2:38PM
Of course I know an atom/element can have different isotopes. That's the very concept behind unstable isotopes and their progressive decay to stable forms, emitting radiation in the process. I didn't list every possible isotope of iodine, cesium, strontium, tellurium and others, there's no point to it in an article comment.
Should I conclude from your comment that you are not aware of the distastrous health effects of Cs-137, Sr-89 and Sr-90 for example ? Do you really need me to walk you through MedPub for an avalanche of peer-reviewed articles about "dangerous isotopes" ? Are you kidding me ?
Many scientists have been asking for isotope specific measurements. I'm just echoing their demands here. I never said that I was a scientist, I'm not. I'm just someone whose job is to read and write. Which means there are things I perfectly know and understand about the situation and its dangers, as illustrated by the medical/historical record. More than enough to know the author of this article is propagating damned lies, and grossly misevaluating the situation. For what I can't be sure of, I stated my incompetence loud and clear. Do you support his conclusion that there will be no exclusion zone ? Is it just a simple industrial accident ? That's strange, because both the Areva VP I quoted and the japanese gvt don't exactly seem to share that impression.
But if you deny even the notion that there are some isotopes that can be both described as "extremely dangerous" (on the mid to long-term, for health) and very long-lived (long half-life), I suggest you look up terms such as "vegetovascular dystonia", "incorporated long-living radionucleides", "Chernobyl legs", "Chernobyl heart", etc... All kinds of well-documented diseases that were totally unknown before Chernobyl. Or maybe you should tell thousands of Belarussian, Ukrainians and Russian doctors that they are just irrational alarmists.
Where did I say that half-life tells all the story ??? I said exactly the opposite ! I said that all properties of a given isotope have to be considered to evaluate their health implications. Meaning especially the kind of radiation they emit, and their chemical behavior if ingested, which will determine their effects on their target organs.
For what it's worth, I don't give a flying f*ck about your qualifications/credentials to talk about this. I don't exactly need you, it's not like there's a shortage of very detailed info about the isotope-specific effects of radiation, beit external or internal. But again, all you did with your message was attacking the specific combination of words I used. I should probably have said "different isotopes of Cs, Sr, etc.". But that's a small detail, and anybody with half a brain could perfectly understand what I was saying. Apart from that, you didn't bring anything to the table, and I have yet to see a convincing rebuttal of any of the points I made.
Sendai| 4.3.11 @ 2:39PM
I meant PubMed, for the record.
Sendai| 4.3.11 @ 9:26PM
Btw, here's an interesting document dated March 25th, based on data gathered up to March 24, almost 2 weeks ago.
http://www.ieer.org/comments/F.....-03-25.pdf
They say the release of I-131 is around 140,000 times that of the Three Mile Island accident. That's not to talk about Cesium-137, which was absent in the TMI incident, but has been released continuously from Fukushima since day one. Now, that was two weeks ago, and it's JUST THE BEGINNING. Months and months of continuous radiation leaks to come, if TEPCO is to be believed. But, everything's gonna be OK, right ? There's no such thing as a dangerous isotope, right ? Let's not forget that I'm the ignorant one, here.
By the way, they confirm that Cesium-137 is the main reason behind the exclusion zone around Chernobyl, but I talk from a place of ignorance, right ?
In other news, Chlorine-38 and Tellurium-139 have been detected at the plant, along with a neutron emission. Is that enough properly denominated isotopes for your taste, or do you want more ? Anyway, this is conclusive proof that what nuclear scientists call "inadvertent criticality" is sporadically occuring in Reactor #1. Mixing boron with the injected water is suggested as a way to mitigate recriticality.
Even more wonderful: TEPCO intends to wrap a "special cloth" around the reactor buildings. The proposal calls for building framed structures around the 45-meter-high containment buildings and then wrapping them with the sheeting, the sources said.
If all of the four buildings were wrapped in this manner, it would cost about 80 billion yen (about 1 Bn $) and take up to two months, the sources said.
The article concludes: "This step is essentially lip service to give the public a sense of ease by hiding the image of the decrepit nuclear plant,'' the source said."
Remember that this is coming from the Kyodo News wire, well known for its almost complete subservience to the japanese government.
Definitely a standard industrial accident, isn't it ?
Anyone's free to rely on Mr Tucker to get information about Fukushima. Swallow the disinfo as much as you want, even when each passing day brings new elements to confirm how much his analysis is total BS. Even hardcore cheerleaders will eventually have to admit the reality of what's happening. Reality is reality, whether or not if fits your ideology.
DAC| 4.4.11 @ 5:30PM
Time will prove you dead-ass wrong, as the detection of certain isotopes doesn't mean jackshit. The dose makes the poison, and the Japanese government and TEPCO both have a far more vested interest in getting this right than Monday-morning backseat drivers like you.
In all your ravings about this or that isotope--which I'm sure are dangerous at high concentrations, if delivered just right--you ignore the other points of the article: everything we do to produce energy is risky. Everything. Rational adults balance risks and rewards. Children just scream.
Also, if you think nuclear power is so horribly dangerous, which 20% of the day would you care to do without power? Clearly you can't abide the fact that nuclear power generates roughly that much of electricity across the US (regional differences exist, of course). Go run your refrigerator off the local windmill, assmonkey, or just shut up and get out of the way.
Intelligent Design| 4.1.11 @ 8:09AM
The riskiest thing about nuclear power in the U.S. is the fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not granted a license for a reactor for 35 years. As a result, the 100 + nuclear plants in this country are all aging, becoming obsolete. In the meantime, the latest nuclear technology, which is safer, is being installed in countries around the world, such as in China.
Too Many Tims| 4.1.11 @ 3:00PM
Yes , there's a real irony that the enviromental groups have locked us into plants designed in the 1960's.
Rod Adams | 4.2.11 @ 6:56AM
The real irony is that people like you have not recognized that the entities that have the greatest means, motive and opportunity for seeking to kill nuclear developments are the entities that profit from oil, natural gas and coal addiction.
Every large nuclear plant reduces the consumption of coal by about 4 million tons per year or the consumption (sales) of natural gas by about 60 billion cubic feet.
There is a reason why you can find that the foundations that support environmental causes often have names like Rockefeller and Pew (founded by the heirs to the Sun Oil Company fortune.)
Whit| 4.3.11 @ 10:09AM
Very few, if any, have sufficient information to determine fact from fiction in this area and I don't claim to be the most informed. I do note that the same forces that have opposed nuclear power also have opposed all fossil fuel p0wer so it is hardly the companies p0roducing the fossil fuel that are in opposition to nuclear. Actually nuclear is no threat to fossil fuel so your statement does not hold water.
DaveS| 4.3.11 @ 11:44AM
Wrongo: the oil producers opposed nuclear for along time.
The best way to get out of the Middle EAst debacles is to let the producers there eat their oil.
Dee See| 4.1.11 @ 8:21AM
AGAIN ---after the Great Tsunami on MAO's
Birthday in 2005, and the 1/11/10 quake in Haiti, and this latest 3/11/11 Fukishima disaster,
as the cover-up goes on ----as Hollywood admits
last week it's been programming to 'please'
Beijing for decades now -----as POST American
franchise slum A-MAL-GAME-ation North American union moves on
'by stealth' ---as ------as ---------as
-----Just keep a goin' ---Just keep a goin'
------------FOX News is ALL American
-----------------and Glenn Beck's watchin' out for you
---------------------JUST KEEP A GOIN'
John Carnal| 4.3.11 @ 10:25PM
My god man what are you smokin'?
JimH| 4.1.11 @ 8:36AM
For electricity we should be building nuclear plants of modern design. Several versions have been mentioned here previously by Mr. Tucker and others. The spent fuel products are valuable in themselves and could be reprocessed. Even without reprocessing the spent fuel can be safely encased and stored, either underground or on a military base. Once vitrified this material poses less risk to the environment then the dead batteries of a Volt. To truly reduce our need for foreign oil we should in the short term be powering our cars with natural gas. In the longer term, once we have cheap nuclear power and better hydrogen storage fuel cells may make sense for vehicles. Oil without even addressing the pollution aspect is too valuable as a chemical feedstock to burn
Louis Jenkins| 4.1.11 @ 8:57AM
We import over 60% of our oil. We've even imported electrical energy from Mexico. We've got the know how and the technology. Can the USA not become the leader in nuclear energy instead of the leader in brown headed woodpecker preservation?
Whit| 4.3.11 @ 10:30AM
The best management practices would be to get the government out of our business so those with the imagination and and vision can develop what does work. If the government had been running all this a hundred years ago we would still be using the horse and buggy. Bureaucrats are not R. G. LeTourneau, George Westinghouse. Henry Ford and Nicola Tesla. These are names that have contributed to our national wealth and no bureaucrat or politician have their mind that devised this progress.
Sure, mistakes were made and corrected, When you are blazing trail you do not know what is over the next hill and There is always the unexpected. As far as I know none of us have survived much past the 100 year mark so time seems to be the deadliest of all maladies. Yet our earthly life has been used to club us into submission to that which is not desirable now or in the future.
chris haynes| 4.1.11 @ 9:35AM
You'll never see cars running on hydrogen.
Its too hard to store. Look at the Nissan Versa. It runs on natural gas. And it's got no trunk. The space is filled with compressed gas tanks. Hydrogen needs three times the tankage. You wouldnt have room for any passengers.
Bob K.| 4.1.11 @ 9:48AM
Natural Gas is a good alternative for some types of transportation. Diesel is best for trucks. For our overall energy needs Nuclear is by far the most efficient fuel; followed by water power and coal of which we have 400 years of reserves.
Habu| 4.1.11 @ 9:56AM
At this point in time , with the Japanese reactors not even under control this thread is a tad premature....sad job TAS.
Rod Adams | 4.2.11 @ 7:00AM
What do you mean "not under control?" There have been updates every day that ignorant media pundits have attempted to use to scare people, but the reality is that the plants were shutdown almost instantly and the only real challenge has been to safely provide adequate cooling in the face of a very difficult natural disaster situation.
There have been measurable releases, but so far, no one has been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation or radioactive material. Yes, without evacuation and care by the workers there could have been more causalities, but those did not happen because there is a pretty good understanding of the appropriate actions to take in the very rare circumstance of a core melt.
DaveS| 4.3.11 @ 11:47AM
30,000 dead; 0.001% of these MAYBE from the plants.
People forget these things as a matter of normal course. Only the hippies keep this ant-nuke nostalgia alive.
Sendai| 4.3.11 @ 3:49PM
Right. We have at least one advanced meltdown, probably two more partial meltdowns. The radiation levels in the groundwater are 10.000 times more than the legal limit. The japanese government just admitted that radiation leaks were likely to go on for months... Anyone here with enough of a brain to wonder what will happen when winds start blowing from the north-east ? What will happen when typhoon season, usually starting around May in Japan, scatters radioactive dust and vapors all over Honshu ? What do you say about the fact that there is still a serious risk of corium eating through the concrete drywell in at least one reactor ? Is that what you call "under control" ? If so, what would it be if it wasn't ??? Funny guys...
Btw, that's coming from an "AGW-denying" libertarian, who was never anti-nuclear. I'm pro-RESPONSIBLE nuclear, especially in emergency management. And TEPCO has not been the least bit responsible. Decades of falsified safety reports (see Bloomberg), utter unpreparedness for a disaster situation, inept emergency management so far, and grossly delayed and lackluster disclosure (says Areva white paper). And I'm especially ANTI-this kind of BS article. This author and his cheerleaders probably think they're doing the nuclear industry a favor by denying the most basic facts about Fukushima. Obviously, they're not. They're just an easy target for the greenies to lambast "reality denying nuclear propagandists" such as Mr. Tucker. What will it take for this author to admit that his analysis was dead wrong, and yes... ridiculously premature ?
John Carnal| 4.3.11 @ 10:31PM
More of your spittle ought to do the trick.
Sendai| 4.4.11 @ 7:29AM
Maybe, maybe not. I have a feeling the author will go into hiding for the next few months... just the time for this non-crisis/simple industrial accident to disappear from the public mind. Anyway, just in case, there's plenty more where that came from.
Brian B| 4.1.11 @ 11:11AM
Everyone seems to have their pet energy source we should pursue as the most efficient, the cheapest, the most suitable, etc.
How's about, for a change, we let the market pursue the most appropriate energy sources sans all subsidies and preferential treatment and with some sensible, limited regulation to ensure reasonable safety.
Whit| 4.3.11 @ 10:48AM
I ran a circle sawmill off and on from 1950 and used saw guides to keep the blade from being deflected in the cut but I can assure you those guides did not control the running of the saw, It is a dynamic tool that has to be tuned to its operating conditions.
I agree with your statement. We do need a form of guides to keep the technology in the cut but those guides cannot interfere with the running of the technology as our government seems to believe and practice. When the saw begins to rub too heavy on a guide it generates frictional heat which expands the metal and causes the blade to have a wave around it rim and it quits cutting and has to be resharpened or whatever it take to make it cut true again. These dynamics apply to business just as surely as they apply to engineering.
lol wut?| 4.1.11 @ 11:29AM
Dude, being an editor for Nuclear Townhall you should know better and should not mislead people with incorrect facts.
lol wut?| 4.1.11 @ 11:32AM
well the software for this blog zapped half my post
making it appear silly. here's the gist of it:
Plutonium is NOT an artificial element. Rare yes, Oklo, Gabon has some evidence of this.
http://sti.srs.gov/fulltext/dpms8075/dpms8075.pdf
http://www.wonuc.org/nucwaste/oklo.htm
Bill Wood| 4.1.11 @ 11:48AM
I'm an engineer and have know this for about 35 years. It really wasn't a secret. Generally I'm not impressed much with 'environmentalists', and this is why. I wonder how much else you are wrong about.
w3 Waynesville, NC
David W| 4.1.11 @ 12:22PM
While going to college I spent summers in a major oil/natural gas processing facility. I was standing behind a cow0rker when he suffered 3rd degree burns on his hands (fortunately I was able to jump out of the way when the 400+ degree catalyst spewed out of the pollution-reducing device). I worked with two people who later died after being exposed to Hydrogen Sulfide gas. I helped fight a 40 foot hydrogen blowtorch (because the mechanic cocked the compressor piston 90 degrees - fortunately he wasn't injured). I worked around acids, caustics, explosive gas, and who knows what. My little town was evacuated twice that I remember (hydrogen sulfide gas release, a major explosion). Then in 1980 there was a massive explosion that threw metal over 7 miles away. So excuse my yawn when I hear about the nuclear problems in Japan (or TMI).
By the way - did you know that arsenic and other poisons will kill you and they don't have a half life? I read that a coal fired plant can't be licensed as a nuclear plant because it releases too much radioactive compounds (yes, coal contains minute radioactive compounds).
The nuclear plants didn't have a problem because of the earthquake - everything worked as it was designed. The problem was the tsunami that wiped out the backup generators. Who knows, if they hadn't shut the reactor down because of the earthquake it might have been able to withstand the tidal wave and we would be more concerned about the thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of displaced citizens.
Thanks to the problems in Japan AND the Obama administration there will be a nuclear winter - due to the shutting down of coal plants, eventual shutting down of nuclear plants, with only wind turbines and solar cells providing 20% of what we need. We'll be freezing our butts off.
Habu| 4.1.11 @ 5:26PM
Damn dude ..you should have come to me when I went to Vietnam in '68...you would have probably been safer..... I guess we both had some luck...
ray| 4.1.11 @ 12:29PM
We have a abundance of coal, why not use
the coal for thorium salt reactors. Why uraniunm and plutonium.
Also we can get synfuel (gasoline and diesel) from coal, its been done right.
Dave Williams| 4.1.11 @ 12:53PM
Hats off to Mr. Monbiot, who changed his mind when persuaded by actual, real-world evidence. Now if only some of the other True Believers on the left -- regarding all sorts of causes -- would show some of the same intellectual integrity and courage....well, I can dream, can't I?
LiveFreeOrDie| 4.1.11 @ 1:07PM
I heartily agree with the absolute NEED for nuclear power plants but I must take issue with the quote:
Gwyneth Cravens, author of Power to Save the World, says, "All the nuclear waste we've ever produced in this country would fit into one Best Buy"
That's absurd and completely false. Ever seen the tank farms at any of our nuclear clean-up facilities? Tucker, why put such an obvious lie (quote or not) in this article? Credibility is the issue here. You had nailed it up to that point.
William Tucker | 4.1.11 @ 1:21PM
I should have been more specific. Cravens is referring to spent fuel rods, which are considered "high-level waste." There is also low-level waste - fluids used for clean-up, rags, protective clothing, even hospital gowns, that is not particularly dangerous to be around. This is usually buried at special landfills and does not require reprocessing or secure repositories.
William Tucker | 4.1.11 @ 1:21PM
I should have been more specific. Cravens is referring to spent fuel rods, which are considered "high-level waste." There is also low-level waste - fluids used for clean-up, rags, protective clothing, even hospital gowns, that is not particularly dangerous to be around. This is usually buried at special landfills and does not require reprocessing or secure repositories.
LiveFreeOrDie| 4.1.11 @ 2:00PM
@ Tucker
Ah, well that makes sense of it. Thank you for responding to a critical comment, or any comment for that matter. Regards,
LFOD
Whit| 4.3.11 @ 11:22AM
Any writer is like drawing water out of a dug well. You let the bucket down into that pool of knowledge and belief, which can be difficult to separate at time, and draw up the bucket full of water, then you dip out a sip of water from that bucket to quench your thirst. If the author put everything in his essay there would be no room for any sense out of it.
CalMark| 4.1.11 @ 2:28PM
@David W
Great point! A chemistry professor once stunned us by showing how a coal-fired plant releases many times more radioactivity than a nuke plant. The tiny radioactivity in each piece of coal adds up when you burn millions of tons of the stuff.
Enviro-zealots, however, are immune to facts, assuming they've ever heard one; these self-anointed amateur "environmental experts" all seem to be poli-sci majors or grief counselors or ACLU lawyers scoffing at people with science degrees who aren't in bed with Algore.
One such zealot enthused about a crackpot scheme for government "need-based" licenses to buy an SUV, because she hates oil. She also hates coal. To say nothing of how much she hates nuclear. She was stunned to learn that technology--"clean power," like the futile century-long quest for electric cars--won't just appear when you throw lots of money at it. No doubt she recovered her bumptiousness the minute she stopped talking to me.
Too Many Tims| 4.1.11 @ 3:07PM
A bit old ,but still a very informative article on reactor designs
http://www.popularmechanics.co.....347?page=5
parkyakarkus| 4.1.11 @ 3:08PM
Not only NOT The End...but a chance to look at thorium reactors, for even _cleaner & safer_ nuclear power. India certainly is. Why aren't we?
Sendai| 4.1.11 @ 6:57PM
This article is a despicable whitewash, full of misleading and outright false information. The IAEA itself is recommending the extension of the evacuation zone. Radionucleide measurements in Iitate, more than 40km away from the plant, are double the amount to trigger a full evacuation according to IAEA guidelines. A large part of northern Honshu will be uninhabitable for generations. You must be one of the very few to still pretend that there is no breach in any containment vessel. Even TEPCO doesn't dare uttering this crap anymore. Many SERIOUS scientists, unlike you, despicable lobbyist, are seriously discussing the possibility of total ablation of the concrete drywell, leading to a potential much larger contamination of the air and water (ocean, groundwater).
See here for one of many examples:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-.....l-seep-out
The fact is the situation is all but under control. This is not a simple industrial accident, and pretending otherwise is truly disgusting. All your major points have already been proven terribly wrong. We will not forget the shameful whitewash and disinformation you did by writing this article. This will stick for the rest of your life. I, and many others I'm sure, will make sure no one forgets what an hypocritical shill you are.
Ng Ai Soo| 4.2.11 @ 3:31PM
Funny that the monitoring stations all around say the radiation levels are reducing... http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/.....52988P.pdf
Perhaps another conspiracy, do you think?
Sendai| 4.2.11 @ 5:53PM
Of course levels will go down, with the short half-life of I-131. Until they go up again when the next plume/cloud gets blown by the wind. Note how they don't say a thing about Cesium levels. That's funny, as Cesium is lethal in the long term, and has a half-life of 30 years. If you check the latest news from Fukushima, you will see that the radiation in the seawater is far from diminishing, that the attempt to pour concrete on the crack leaking 1000+ mSv/h has failed miserably, that there is more and more widespread discussion of the possibility that the corium is eating through the concrete drywell in reactor #2, that the infarmous Cherenkov radiation indicating localized criticaly and high neutron emission has been conclusively observed multiple times on the site, that specific isotopes like radioactive chlorine are measured, which is not exactly good news either. And by the way, think of that what you may (I'm not exactly a fan of their "work" on most issues, especially the CO2 scam), but Greenpeace has filmed some of its staff with maxed-up counters (more than 9999 CPS) beyond 35 km from the plant. Do you think they have modified their counters to give a false impression ?
Anyway, where there's I-131, there's also at least Cesium-137, and this one is here to stay. Nobody in Japan dares to act as if the situation is under control. In fact, so far they have no serious solution to stop the melting of the cores, nor to stop the continuous leakage of radiation from at least 3 reactors. And btw, the uncovered, probably craked and continuously exposed pool in building #4 contains UNSPENT fuel, currently believed to be melting.
Your charts are very nice, but are they a good predictor of what's to come ? I wish the Japanese people the best of luck, but I don't think optimism is warranted as of now, quite the contrary. That is why I'm positively enraged by that kind of article, which I consider to be voluntary misinformation. The situation is extremely uncertain and none of the current data supports anything that has been said about Fukushima in this article.
A few sources for your consideration, but there are plenty more.
http://www.reuters.com/article.....src=Social Media&WT;.z_smid=twtr-reuters_ com&WT;.z_smid_dest=Twitter
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/.....actor.html
Sendai| 4.2.11 @ 6:08PM
Oh, and last thing, I said nothing about a conspiracy. But TEPCO and the japanese regulators are not beyond "conspiracy to commit a crime".
http://www.businessweek.com/ne.....dents.html
Ng Ai Soo| 4.2.11 @ 6:52PM
Strange... these are the Japan Atomic Industry Forum (JAIF) press releases... they agree with the Fukusima Prefecture measurements and, according to Greenpeace, these are slightly worse than their own independent measurements! None of them refer specifically to an isotope... they just measure radiation it seems. So the data is not in dispute, no attempt has been made to hide these and the advise from both the IAEA and Greenpeace regarding the evacuation of Iitate is public, as is the refusal of the Japanese to heed. I wonder if there is some difference in the interpretation of the danger posed by these levels of radiation?
Sendai| 4.2.11 @ 7:36PM
Indeed, there is an enormous gamut of interpretations regarding the danger posed by these radiations. If you ask people like Christopher Busby or Vladimir Yablokov, from the Russian Academy of Science, they will tell you the current levels will have far-ranging consequences. If you ask lobbyists for the nuclear industry, they will tell you it's nothing more than eating a few bananas. Is the truth in between ? As a non-scientist, I can not say. I have been desperately looking for honest and unbiased sources for the last three weeks, preferably sources with an experience in the nuclear industry.
Unfortunately, to measure specific isotopes, you need very specific hardware, much more than a simple Geiger counter, which by the way doesn't register any kind of beta emission.
I have found Arnie Gundersen, for example, to be very articulate and thorough.
http://fairewinds.com/multimedia
Some other scientists, more or less qualified, like Michio Kaku, and another one I saw on CNN a little while ago, were extremely pessimistic, to put it mildly.
Ng Ai Soo| 4.2.11 @ 7:56PM
Well, perhaps these folks have the "experience in the nuclear industry" that you seek... http://www.world-nuclear.org/W.....spx?id=754
This is a download link to a paper on radiation... hope that helps.
Sendai| 4.2.11 @ 8:10PM
Thanks for the link. I must say that the data about the consequences of Chernobyl seems grossly underestimated. Some studies based on doctors and epidemiologists on the ground concluded the number of victims was much higher than admitted by the IAEA, and you just have to take a look at Belarus, and places like Mogilev, to see that certain kinds of cancers and deformities have literaly skyrocketed, and brand new diseases have appeared (for an example, check what they call "the Chernobyl heart"). The official number of victims (4000) seems ridiculously low to me, and many medical professionals and scientists have alledged that the IAEA and its partners have simply ignored much of the data that was submitted to them. That wouldn't be too surprising, considering that the IAEA is a partisan organization, dedicated to the promotion of civil nuclear applications. So it has a strong incentive not to emphasize the potential dangers of the technology when things go wrong.
So, I would take this paper with a little more than a pinch of salt.
Ng Ai Soo| 4.2.11 @ 8:24PM
Now, that was a very quick read, I must say... and since Dr. Helen Caldicott says doctors cannot lie about such matters as public health by virtue of their professional oath... may I suggest you report any such discrepancies that you may find which may mislead the public, to the employer of the writer of the paper, a Dr. Wigg, I understand, at the Clinical Radiobiology Unit, Cancer Services, Royal Adelaide Hospital, Adelaide, Australia.
And be sure to let us know as well.
Sendai| 4.2.11 @ 8:52PM
I am a quick reader, yes. Arent' you ? I also saw the author's data seems to support the theory of nuclear hormesis (i.e. that low levels of radiation actually reduce your risk of developing cancer). It's a controversial theory, but I admit it could have some validity. Anyway, I'm not qualified to appreciate it, and it's not relevant to this situation, as we are taking about exposures to levels several orders or magnitude over standard background radiaton for people in the plant's's vicinity.
I get your sarcasm, but I really don't care. There's no real point to it. Two experts make radically different conclusions, based on two radically different datasets. It's not exactly the first time that I've seen that.
Time will tell if "optimism" ("The Fukushima crisis is over, yippie, everything is under control now, look, this was just a standard industrial accident !") was a smart reaction to the current data. Time will tell if the author was right to suggest that there would be no significant exclusion zone as a result.
I don't know Caldicoot, and I have no interest in knowing her for now. And of course, for having studied many cases where doctors misrepresented their research, if not lied outright, I know their "oath" is more a symbolic one than anything else. There have been many cases where doctors, or the FDA for that matter, have explicitly violated their mandate, which is to protect the public. This is no rare occurence.
Sendai| 4.2.11 @ 11:24PM
******snip*******
On March 21, Stanford University presented an invitation-only panel discussion on the Japanese crisis that featured Alan Hansen, an executive vice president of Areva NC, a unit of the company focused on the nuclear fuel cycle.
“Clearly,” he told the audience, “we’re witnessing one of the greatest disasters in modern time.”
******snip********
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04.....ted=2&_r=1
Clearly... this is just a simple industrial accident.
DaveS| 4.3.11 @ 11:48AM
You persist in your ignorance.
Sendai| 4.3.11 @ 2:03PM
Your point being ? Am is my bringing documented information to the table persisting in my ignorance ?
Want today's news ?
http://english.kyodonews.jp/ne.....82864.html
But hey, that's just a standard industrial accident, right ? Months and months to come of constant radiation leaks as finally confessed by the japanese government, but it's all OK, right ? No worse than eating a few bananas, right ? The people who were evacuated and the farmers will be back in no time, and everything's gonna be just alright. Retard.
Sendai| 4.2.11 @ 7:58PM
A few other resources you might find interesting:
http://www.zerohedge.com/artic.....a-reactors
This is mainly a financial website (very interesting btw for a muckraking point of view), but they currently provide great coverage of the Fukushima crisis and its financial implications.
For a scientific examination of what might unfortunately happen in Fukushima:
http://www.plinius.eu/home/lib.....l_MCCI.pdf
In 2007, they tried to model and anticipate what could happen in case of a catastrophic meltdown, i.e. if corium is produced (which seems to be the case in at least Reactor #2) and starts eating the concrete drywell. Some vapor emissions are consistent with an ongoing concrete ablation process. The point is we don't really know what could happen if the corium magma (temp. around 3000°C) penetrates the soil and ends up meeting a water table. Let's hope it doesn't get to that, but the lacking level of disclosure from TEPCO, and their inability/unwillingness to properly measure the emissions and the isotopes leaves us in the dark about that.
The fact that they are now recruiting "jumpers" to the tune of 5000 $ for a few effective minutes of work is interpreted by some as a sign of desperation.
Sendai| 4.1.11 @ 7:05PM
@c. j. acworth
You are very ill-informed. It there is I-131, there is also Cesium, Strontium, etc. They have much longer half-life, but are extremely dangerous and vicious isotopes, which effect will be felt for centuries. They are the reason for the exclusion zones around Chernobyl. Believe whatever you want, but evacuation "for a few months" will not be a solution for the region around Fukushima. And it may extend well beyond the IAEA-recommended 40 km zone, if the reactors keep on leaking radiation for a long period, which seems the most likely scenario. Only the most scientifically and historically illiterate will believe such BS.
Stammon| 4.2.11 @ 11:34AM
Your polemic and accusations don't change the science. Science says that the shorter the half life, the more radioactive a substance. All radioactive elements loose radioactivity a they radiate, the higher the intensity the faster they lose it. That's not to say that nuclear energy isn't dangerous, it just is less dangerous than fossil fuel burning.
I would much rather live downwind from a nuclear plant than a coal plant.
Sendai| 4.2.11 @ 1:09PM
Science also says that thyroid cancer (resulting from short-term exposition to I-131 for example) is a serious condition, but it can be managed in most cases. The same thing can not be said of Cesium or Strontium contamination and ingestion. I find it enlightening that so little is said of many other isotopes with a much longer half-life and high chemical and radioactive toxicity. Each of them targets specific organs, and the repoductive system, with horrendous results. All the deceptive comparisions in the world (long flight, eating bananas - Potassium-40 -, X-Ray, CT Scan, etc.) does not account for such simple distinctions as temporary/permanent, and external/internal emissions. They're just misleading, unscientific comparisons. Comparing the temporary exposition to a small dose of radiation from radon during a flight to the ingestion of cesium-contaminated food which will inflict continuous and cumulative damage at the cellular level is idiotic, and an insult to science. The well-know concept of bio-accumulation of radionucleides in the food chain, and especially seafood, seems to conveniently elude most "analysts" such as Mr Tucker.
If you want to invoke science, for something so simple as : "the faster the decay, the more intense the radiation", please do your homework and learn a little about the difference between isotopes when it comes to health effects: the type of radiation they emit, their chemical behavior / the organs they target and their mode of action are MUCH MORE significant that the simplistic notion of "radioactivity" you mentionned in your weak attempt at a rebuttal.
I said nothing about coal, but I am interested in the potential of "clean/filtered coal" technologies. And I wouldn't mind too much living downwind from a well-designed nuclear plant managed by responsible individuals. But I certainly wouldn't want to live downwind from the Fukushima plant right now. And that was the point of my comment. The information and analysis provided by the author about the Fukushima crisis are erroneous, misleading and downright hyprocritical. They are already proved to be utter BS by none other than the IAEA and the utility itself. And I'm unfortunately convinced that the full extent of the criminal negligence and coverup by TEPCO and the japanese government will be exposed in the coming months. And I'm really afraid of dire consequences for the people living around the plan who have been told that everything is OK by their government, when the IAEA itself insists they should be evacuated immediately.
Negro X| 4.3.11 @ 10:07PM
Sendai,
You are a buffoon and a useful idiot.
Sendai| 4.4.11 @ 7:18AM
Hey Ng/DaveS/NegroX,
I love the fact that you can't produce anything more than that as an answer. I'll let the readers be the judge as to who are the buffoons and the useful idiots on this page. All the info I brought to counter the ridiculous points made by the author can be checked. As your tantrum is basically content-free, there's not much to say about it. Except that it reeks of frustration and powerlessness.
Sendai| 4.4.11 @ 8:08AM
Hey Shill,
The Japanese Gvt covered-up very high levels of radiation well outside the evacuation zone, as admitted by NHK, Japan's State TV Channel.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/.....6033453621
Uh-Oh...
http://www.stripes.com/news/pa.....g-1.139200
Or are they buffoons and useful idiots too ? Remember, the fact that a significant part of northern Japan, especially the part they call "Japan's bread basket", when Japan is a small overpopulated country, and already has to import 80% of its food, is reaaaaaally no big deal. Just a simple industrial accident. The triumph of reason indeed !
Bob K.| 4.1.11 @ 7:15PM
Here is a short but informative article on Energy and Power by a Professor at Cal Tech. It is for the layman and covers the forms of energy discussed here and many more. Save it and look it over at your leisure. It will surprise you. Scroll down a bit and you will see that the least expensive way to make electricity is from coal.
http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching.....gy-F08.htm
Russell | 4.1.11 @ 8:22PM
Next April 1st Jeff can try this :
TAS Assigns Fact Checkers to Editors,
Adopts 'Double Sourcing'
John| 4.2.11 @ 4:14AM
faced with global warming catastrophe nuclear represents the only real solution. The real problems lie in the economics - without government subsidies and guarantees these plants are not sustainable . And who the hell would insure these things. Even a small incident can run into billions.
Terry| 4.2.11 @ 9:59AM
Inherent in the "logic" (really -- plutonium is ok to eat?) of this article is a mistaken comfort that exists only because this disaster is thousands of miles from our own nuclear plants. How can you declare victory when just today radiation was detected in ocean water 25 miles south of the plant? First, get your facts straight and second, if you insist on using the number of deaths as a calibration, you might want to hold off since that statistic is not yet known.
Sendai| 4.4.11 @ 7:41AM
You're perfectly right. Notice how the hypocritical reality-denying shills will always talk about the number of deaths in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear accident ? Of course, the most salient feature of nuclear accidents is that their health effects can only be properly measured after years and years have passed. So this hypocritical argument only goes to prove how far they're willing to go to push their disinfo, and how stupid and attention-deficient they consider the general public to be.
Robert Hargraves | 4.2.11 @ 12:04PM
We use lots of plutonium today, for energy production. In all of today's power reactors plutonium is made inside the fuel rods by neutrons interacting with uranium-238. This plutonium-239 fissions, just as uranium-235 fissions. By the time the fuel rods are spent over 1/3 their power comes from plutonium that was bred inside the fuel rods.
e cowan| 4.2.11 @ 2:37PM
I thought thorium was the nuclear fuel of the future? Safer and cheaper?
Robert Hargraves | 4.3.11 @ 4:33PM
Yes, thorium indeed, in the liquid fluoride thorium reactor. The fluid fuel form is walk-away safe.
http://rethinkingnuclearpower......om/aimhigh
Richard Baker| 4.3.11 @ 11:24AM
With all the nay-sayers on the issue of science and power generation chiming in, maybe we should re-think water wheels(under and over slung types), buggies and wagons, and draft horses such as Percherons and Belgians. After all, an engineer/scientist with a Ph.D. must know what they're talking about, right? Political Science is in it's ascendency. Luddites one and all.
James A. Burt| 4.3.11 @ 4:29PM
Do you like sushi?
b gilbert| 4.4.11 @ 9:43PM
I.m a guy who has believed and put my money where my mouth is and worked in energy efficiency for almost 30 years. great business. The market IS whats holding up Nuclear. Wall Street has determined its too risky. Let me say that again WALL STREET..says its too risky which is the government has to back up all loans which mean you. While nuclear's cost has gone up for decades ( from $ 1.5 B per plant to $12 B )even with billions of support dollars, renewables costs have dropped dramatically with maybe one tenth the support. The biggest winner in energy has been energy efficiency. California runs on half the energy per capita of the rest of the US. So deos Europre. And ALL other forms of energy create more jobs per dollar invested. If you believe in nuclear power PLEASE.. get on a plane and get over to Japan NOW and help out within the 12 mile zone. My answer for safe storage of spent fuel in the USA ? DRY CASK STORAGE. It eliminates the terrorist threat angle. It eliminates the human and power outage & water issue. Finally nuclear is great as long as nothing goes wrong. Are we always going to be perfect at anticipating all possibilities ? THEY DID PLAN for a tsunami..just not one that was 40 or 60 feet or 114 feet high . Wind costs less. PV is less in manyy areas of the U.S. and finally what will it costs to safely store spent fuel for 100,000 years? You guys are so so ill informed it is bizarre. What are you defending ?
b gilbert| 4.4.11 @ 9:53PM
oh yeah this is a hoot, you do know the normal decomissioning for a plant at $500 million ?
Well this one will cost right now $12 billion and take 30 years according to TEPCO.
Oh, and remember all those great "chance of a severe nuclear plant accident is 100,000 to one? Hmmm...wait, there are 442 plants in the world and this is number three involving 4 reactors,
( all four have now been officially declared trashed ), so that means 7 have gone down the drain. That's, let's see 7 out of 442. NOT 1 in 100,000. Again boys wake up and smell the coffee and stop smoking whatever you are on casue it sure ain't reality.
kevin norman| 4.5.11 @ 1:35PM
Atomic power is okay with me.
It doesn't kill very many people when it goes wrong.
And it is the most carbon friendly of power sources that we have.
mike| 4.5.11 @ 5:19PM
This article was published on 4/1/11. It must be an April Fool's joke.
old jim hardy| 4.7.11 @ 3:38PM
i retired from a nuke power plant after 30 years in instrument maintenance.
My generation enjoyed relatively cheap energy, and sorta explored the pathway to getting off carbon via nuclear.
I remember when Carter stopped reprocessing, and i have read McPhee's VERY interesting book.
I have also been appalled for decades as my plant's storage pools got more and more overcrowded with spent fuel.
That's going to turn out where most of the release in Japan came from, the spent fuel pools.
Well now we have a younger generation starting the productive years of their careers.
I'm disappointed in my generation. Will you allow a metaphor?
We've launched the young folks in basically a '65 Chevy with every old tire that was ever on it still in the trunk.
http://www.irss-usa.org/pages/.....lvarez.pdf
esp page 7
"Inventories of Cs-137 in Spent-Fuel Storage Pools
The spent-fuel pools adjacent to most power reactors contain much larger inventories
of 137Cs than the 2 MegaCuries (MCi) that were released from the core
of Chernobyl..."
then look up Fast Integrated Reactor.
We shoulda got there.
old jim
Marc Jeric| 4.8.11 @ 3:48PM
Among the worst criminals in history - worst by the number of murdered victims - are the following: Atila, Genghis Kahn, Stalin, Mao. Fast approaching these levels are Carter, Gore, Obama,...by what they are doing or have done already.
Jane Quatam| 5.13.11 @ 6:18PM
Reactor #1 has been confirmed to have a meltdown and has a hole in the bottom of the containment vessel.
All 3 reactors are still spewing radioactive steam/condensate. Reactor 4 is beginning to sink, which since it wasn't fueled at the time of the tsunami, would seem to indicate an activity caused by spent fuel rods leaving the holding tank and puddling together on the concrete floor, or structural damage from the seismic events and nearby explosions.
Another water leak was found in the #3 reactor (MOX fueled) spewing radioactive water into the water table and ocean. Radioactive waste has been found in at least 2 different cities' sewage treatment areas and sewers.
The government is trying to recover radioactive sewage sludge that was sold to concrete companies. It is only May 13th not yet 60 days since the tsunami, this "industrial accident" seems to be getting bigger and more problematic.
A bit of fuel rod was discovered 2 miles from the reactor, indicating a hypersonic explosion at the reactor since it would take a blast speed in excess of 1,000 miles per hour to move this fuel rod piece so far from the reactor.
I think perhaps the author may have understated the actual severity and danger to human and animal life, especially sea life from this nuclear event.
Christian Louboutin | 6.23.11 @ 4:11AM
Another hot button has been plutonium, an artificial element formed in a reactor. (Plutonium is forged in supernovas, along with all the other heavy elements, but it disappeared on earth long ago.) In the effort to portray nuclear power as the devil's handiwork, Ralph Nader once labeled plutonium "the most toxic substance ever known to mankind." In fact it is about as toxic as caffeine. Bernard Cohen, the tireless crusader for nuclear common sense, offered many times to eat as much plutonium as Nader would eat caffeine on "The Tonight Show" but Nader never took him up.
Walter C Ward, M.D.| 7.2.11 @ 6:36PM
After reading your articles about nclear power, I am puzzled as to why you have not written about the promise of THORIUM. I have no financial interest, but it seems many of the dire consequences of uranium could be avoided--and cheaper. Thanks
Michael| 7.26.11 @ 8:58AM
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Yatra.com
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