tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post7809592042019071914..comments2024-03-06T06:34:42.881-05:00Comments on EconoSpeak: Stop worrying and love nuclear power. Fuel rod meltdowns are happening now but they're only temporary. More quotes.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-19535564951855216992011-03-30T10:08:29.844-04:002011-03-30T10:08:29.844-04:00Barkley, the Tokyo Electric Power Company is now a...Barkley, the Tokyo Electric Power Company is now advising residents to engage in 5 steps to reduce energy consumption. They say this will eliminate the need for 4 nuclear power stations.<br /><br />-- Turn the air conditioner down.<br />-- Turn off unnecessary lights.<br />-- Turn down the thermostat of the refrigerator.<br />-- Reduce the brightness of the TV, and the length of time it is turned on.<br />-- Unplug electric appliances not in use.<br /><br />See: Switch household habits for major power savings<br />The Yomiuri Shimbun<br />http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110327002417.htm<br /><br />However, it is the industrial sector that uses most of TEPCo's power. Machinery companies, such as car and electronic appliance makers. I believe that such concentrated economic activity could lend itself to some other form of (safer and cleaner) energy production. <br /><br />In terms of the comparison of deaths from Three MIle Island with that of the global coal industry. Well, this current Japanese disaster is likely to be exceeding Chernobyl. Perhaps even - as has been reported - on a <i>daily</i> basis. It is unprecented in scale.<br /><br />[40 kilometres away it has been reported that ]"the level of contamination in the soil could be twice the amount that was compulsory evacuation for Chernobyl."<br /><br />Source:<br />Aileen Mioko Smith, March 24 (thanks to Michael Collins "They said it wasn't like Chernobyl and they were wrong"<br />As quoted in:<br />The Doomsday Scenario - Is Fukushima About to Blow?<br />By MIKE WHITNEY. March 28, 2011<br />http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney03282011.html<br /><br />"The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl.”<br /><br />Source: The Central Institute of Meteorology and Geodynamics of Vienna as reported in "New Scientist", March 24 --- Michael Collins "They said it wasn't like Chernobyl and they were wrong". As quoted in: <br /><br />The Doomsday Scenario - Is Fukushima About to Blow?<br />By MIKE WHITNEY. March 28, 2011<br />http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney03282011.htmlMyrtle Blackwoodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07427043367624101075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-56464542144051563332011-03-29T14:17:32.193-04:002011-03-29T14:17:32.193-04:00Those six will not do it, not even close, although...Those six will not do it, not even close, although they are worth doing in any case.<br /><br />Even if the numbers on cancer deaths are true, they are not remotely anywhere near the thousands dead due to coal burning happening that would not have if we had had nuclear plants rather than all those coal plants.Barkley Rosserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13114257724762074636noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-5404466043918359452011-03-29T10:28:28.365-04:002011-03-29T10:28:28.365-04:00Re: "nobody died at Three Mile Island."
...Re: "nobody died at Three Mile Island."<br /><br />"<i>...Studying wind patterns from the .. the accident, the Aamodts ultimately <br />identified three areas..downwind from the accident, where over a long period after the accident cancer death rates were about seven times what would have been <br />expected according to established state statistics....</i> (This article goes on at some length on this topic. See the source reference below).<br /><br />Re: "Let us also be real about the alternatives."<br /><br />"...<i>to compensate for the loss of nuclear-generated electricity, the United States could simply cut its energy waste. According to the Rocky Mountain Institute, “Just electric efficiency can save four times’ nuclear power’s output, at one-sixth its perating cost.” Speaking of energy in general, G. Tyler Miller, Jr. estimates that American energy waste amounts to 84% of consumption - 41% by degradation of energy quality and 43% "by using fuel-wasting motor vehicles, furnaces and other devices, and by living and working in leaky, poorly insulated and poorly designed buildings.” He goes on to write “People in the United States unnecessarily waste as much energy as two-thirds of the world's population consumes” [Miller 1996]. ...The following <br />six measures could substitute immediately for the lost electricity....<br />[i] Domestic electric lighting - a massive savings.<br />[2] Window areas. <br />[3] Insulation and weatherstripping. <br />[4] Modular Space Heating and Cooling. <br />Regulating the use of electronics.<br />[5] Ventilation especially in summer. <br />[6] Other (assorted) such as building design, buiding siting, landscaping, efficient public transportation etc </i>"<br /><br />Re: "we must also not be swept into killing thousands of people unnecessarily due to hysteria over headlines that distort the fundamental realities here."<br /><br />Where's the hysteria, Barkley?<br /><br />The evidence is overwhelmingly pointing to a long-term failure of governance over the employment of dangerous technologies. Would you dispute this fact?<br /><br />REFERENCE:<br />CRITICAL HOUR: THREE MILE ISLAND, THE NUCLEAR LEGACY,AND NATIONAL SECURITY <br />by Albert J. Fritsch, Arthur H. Purcell, and Mary Byrd Davis.<br />2004.Myrtle Blackwoodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07427043367624101075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-56705282701482203522011-03-28T11:33:43.131-04:002011-03-28T11:33:43.131-04:00Brenda,
The Japanese have old tech nuclear reacto...Brenda,<br /><br />The Japanese have old tech nuclear reactors and failed to respond to serious warnings regarding the threat to them of tsunamis. Likewise, in the US pretty much all nuclear reactors also have old, unsafe, technologies, and it has been reported that there has been no serious response to a National Academy of Sciences study in 2007 warning of various safety lapses and issues that should be dealt with.<br /><br />That said, nobody died at Three Mile Island, and while three workers have been hospitalized in Japan due to radiation burns, nobody has died there yet due to the reactor problems (which remain very serious, nevertheless). In all the hullabaloo over the reactor problems, people seem to have conveniently forgotten the over 10,000 and still climbing verified dead directly from the earthquake and tsunami.<br /><br />Let us also be real about the alternatives. The most serious immediate alternative is coal. Latest estimate is that 30,000 die per year in the US alone from coal burning pollution. But they die individually, scattered across the country, often without even realizing that coal did them in. There are no headlines, except for the occasional coal mining accident. But how many thousands have died because nuclear power plant construction in the US basically shut down after Three Mile Island in which nobody died?<br /><br />Natural gas, the most likely immediate alternative in the US, is better than coal, but still emits carbon dioxide, unlike nuclear, and there are serious potential water pollution problems with the hot new technique of hydrofracking to get it.<br /><br />For all their virtues (and even they have problems, previously discussed here), neither solar nor wind nor both is going to seriously replace nuclear as a source of electricity anywhere, despite the fantasies of some in Germany.<br /><br />We can and must improve the safety record of nuclear power, but we must also not be swept into killing thousands of people unnecessarily due to hysteria over headlines that distort the fundamental realities here.Barkley Rosserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13114257724762074636noreply@blogger.com