Not good news
An explosion was heard Tuesday morning at the Japanese nuclear reactor that has been of greatest concern in the wake of the country’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, which damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.
The cause of the explosion at Unit 2 and the conditions at the site weren’t immediately clear, but the news heightened anxiety over the precarious state of the facility.
The fuel rods in all three of the most troubled Japanese nuclear reactors — each of which lost its cooling system in Friday’s massive earthquake and tsunami — appear to be melting, the nation’s chief government spokesman said earlier Monday.
Well this is most likely going to spell doom and gloom and the end to any new nuclear plants in the United States.
I can’t say Im disappointed given the fact that we can’t even figure out what to do with the spent fuel rods. There are something like 100 Nuke plants in the USA and all of them have pools filled with spent fuel rods just lying in water coooling for the next 1000 years.
There is nothing really safe about the Nuclear industry and given the fact that they are run by corporations wanting to make a buck they are bound to be figuring out new and inventive ways of bypassing safety for the all mighty buck.
Do not get me wrong. I am a capitalist. However I believe that Corporations will FUK us every chance they get if they get the chance. But I also believe those same corporations and big businesses give us an awesome standard of living and a whole host of benefits that offset their shennanigans by a large margin.
But a Nuke Melt down is not the same thing as an Airliner crash or a boat sinking….It will be destroying lives and eating the economy for decades…not weeks….and in the end an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and 30 foot Tsunami was just too much for these Nuke plants but then again when it comes to Nuke plants built on a fault line next to the ocean…..
They should have been able to withstand this……..or not be built….one or the other.
Until the whole event is over, we cannot speculate or shouldn’t, on the outcome or on the use of nuclear power plants.
The structures survived a far greater quake than they were built to withstand, a very good sign. The tidal wave was unforseen, but perhaps should have been predictable in the aftermath of such a large quake.
The radiation cannot be accurately reported yet, but people are jumping on the anti nuke bandwagon before there is reason to.
A power plant in the US, engineered to withstand natural disasters, and built away from fault lines and coastlines, could be one of the safest and greenest forms of energy. But due to these horrific circumstances in Japan which have not fully unfolded to reveal exactly how bad or not so bad it ends up being, the environazis have begun anew their anti-nuke rantings. It’s BS and they know it. It’s their “never let a good crisis go to waste” moment.
And, in Japan, a nation that does not have any energy sources of its own, it has to produce by nuclear or imported natural gas. Some are speculating that they may now go that route – which will be a boon to the US gas markets.
However, I agree, they should have probably anticipated a tsunami knowing that they are ON A FAULT LINE!!
Had the tsunami not hit and took out the backup generators and destroyed some of the backup cooling capacity, we would not even be having this discussion.
However, I think the bigger thing to ponder is this….
” Some Scientists” are saying that this quake knocked us off our axis by 4 inches.
I would like to know which 4 inches? Which direction? And, how could they tell?
They said the same thing for the last 4 major quakes. friggin idiots!!!