Japan's turn

spooly74 · 1 June 2011

Smurf1976 said:
If this were any other type of power plant (coal, oil, gas, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, wood, whatever...) then this would have been over long ago.

Granted, but this isn't a zero sum game.

The "odds" of something going wrong may be small, but the consequences when they do are so large and that's the inherent problem with nuclear power.

How should we quantify the consequences?
Loss of life, exclusion zones, cost etc.
You could argue that conventional plants have a far greater kill rate without the major inconvenience of cost and relocation should something go wrong.

You can never reduce the chances of an accident to zero - sooner or later it's going to happen and we've got no effective response when it does.

The same applies to other forms of power generation.
Take the Banqiao Dam failure in China during the 70's where over 150,000 people died and 11 million people relocated. If nuclear plant killed that many it would be the last plant to do so. No doubt about it.

Also, the response at Fukushima, imo, under worst case scenario was outstanding, and continues.

Smurf1976 · 1 June 2011

spooly74 said:
You could argue that conventional plants have a far greater kill rate without the major inconvenience of cost and relocation should something go wrong.

It would be hard to argue with that point. Coal kills rather a lot of people, but there is no realistic scenario where it causes the permanent abandonment of anything other than the mine itself.

It's like investing. It's not generally wise to place yourself in a situation where a single event unfolding causes a total loss of your capital. And yet that's comparable to the situation with nuclear power. One major incident causes a catastrophic loss - that risk doesn't really exist with coal.

All that said, I'm realistic enough to acknowledge that closing down the world's nuclear power industry is not an option.

Aussiejeff · 6 June 2011

Ooopsies.....

Tokyo Electric Power Co. fell to a record low after reports that radiation levels surged at its crippled Fukushima plant and the president of Japan’s largest stock exchange said the utility should be liquidated.

The owner of the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant plunged as much as 28 percent to 206 yen, the most since the utility known as Tepco starting trading in 1974. The stock traded 24 percent lower at 218 yen at 11 a.m. in Tokyo and was the biggest decliner in the Topix Electric Power & Gas Index .

Radiation readings inside the No. 1 reactor building spiked to the highest level yet, almost three months after the disaster started, Kyodo News reported June 4, citing data from Tepco. In a separate report, the Asahi newspaper cited Tokyo Stock Exchange President Atsushi Saito as saying that the utility should undergo restructuring similar to Japan Airlines Co., which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2010.

The power producer, which posted the biggest loss on record for a non-financial Japanese company, last week had its long- term credit rating cut to junk status by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services. The utility may post a full-year net loss of about 570 billion yen ($7.09 billion) on a parent basis, the Tokyo Shimbun reported today, citing an internal document from Tepco. Tepco said it wasn’t the source of the newspaper report.

Kansai Electric Power Co., Japan’s second largest utility, also plunged after Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co. cut its target price to 1,350 yen from 2,150 yen. The utility dropped as much as 10 percent to 1,185 yen.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-06/tepco-slumps-to-record-low-on-radiation-spike.html

Highest radiation readings to date? Sounds a bit ominous...

spooly74 · 6 June 2011

Aussiejeff said:
Ooopsies.....

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-06/tepco-slumps-to-record-low-on-radiation-spike.html

Highest radiation readings to date? Sounds a bit ominous...

Only if you're planning on going in there to have your lunch for now.
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/04_16.html

TEPCO said it found that steam was rising from a crevice in the floor, and that extremely high radiation of 3,000 to 4,000 millisieverts per hour was measured around the area. The radiation is believed to be the highest detected in the air at the plant.

TEPCO says the steam is likely coming from water at a temperature of 50 degrees Celsius that has accumulated in the basement of the reactor building.

The company sees no major impact from the radiation so far on ongoing work, as it has been detected only within a limited section of the building

Radiation chart

DB008 · 6 June 2011

This is a great one to watch.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13598607

Japan pensioners volunteer to tackle nuclear crisis

A group of more than 200 Japanese pensioners are volunteering to tackle the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima power station.

The Skilled Veterans Corps, as they call themselves, is made up of retired engineers and other professionals, all over the age of 60.

They say they should be facing the dangers of radiation, not the young.

It was while watching the television news that Yasuteru Yamada decided it was time for his generation to stand up.

No longer could he be just an observer of the struggle to stabilise the Fukushima nuclear plant.

The retired engineer is reporting back for duty at the age of 72, and he is organising a team of pensioners to go with him.

For weeks now Mr Yamada has been getting back in touch with old friends, sending out e-mails and even messages on Twitter......

More on the link above and there is a video at the start of the page.

(I asked myself, if this situation happened here, would retired engineers do the same, probably not. Culture difference, 100:1)

tothemax6 · 6 June 2011

DB008 said:
This is a great one to watch.
More on the link above and there is a video at the start of the page.
(I asked myself, if this situation happened here, would retired engineers do the same, probably not. Culture difference, 100:1)

Yeah I was amazed by their sense of duty - they just did what a man was supposed to do in that situation.

Smurf1976 · 17 June 2011

http://peakoil.com/enviroment/fukushima-its-much-worse-than-you-think/

If this article is even half correct then this is one almighty disaster.

In short, an actual melt through has supposedly occurred and there's no known means of dealing with it. The "impossible" has, it seems, actually happened.

There's risk in everything that is true. But no other single human activity has the potential for harm on this scale for such a long period. Nothing else even comes close.

Glen48 · 18 June 2011

Sounds to me like Japan will be a waste land for eons maybe they should get on a boat and move to OZ and start again.
Think the population is 80 M was the 3rd largest economy in the World.
If China goes to war we will have some troops to defend OZ.

Glen48 · 18 June 2011

Japan and USA

http://bl158w.blu158.mail.live.com/...baca6-9955-11e0-93e9-002264c19764&n=543124912

Aussiejeff · 29 June 2011

Analysts are also forecasting price hikes for Japan’s electricity, according to Nikkei News. With the continued shortage of nuclear power, the cost of electricity could climb by up to 18 percent in the next fiscal year, according to research from Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/bus...-burdened-by-electricity-shortages-58332.html

I'm surprised they are only forecasting +18% price rise. However, I note they didn't mention anything about the following year(s) of presumed rises as well!

Should all bode very well for their moribund economy.

Party on.....

Smurf1976 · 6 September 2011

It may no longer be grabbing the headlines, but let's not forget that this disaster is ongoing and will be for a long time yet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/world/asia/22japan.html?_r=2

Much as I'm keen on all things electrical, I maintain my view that the fission of uranium (conventional nuclear power) is too high a price to pay in order to keep the lights on. Had this been a coal, oil, gas or hydro plant then Japan wouldn't be faced with many of the problems it has today.

It comes back to consequences. No matter how "safe" these plants are supposed to be, the consequenes in the event of an accident are catastrophic to say the least. It's like betting everything you own on a "sure thing" then finding out it's not so sure after all. The loss may be unlikely, but it's a disaster when it comes.

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