Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

Quoting sunlinepr:
For me..... and I don't know if you agree....Japan Earthquake opens a new window of meditation, to inspect and weight our vulneraribilities.

For many, Nuclear plants are considered state of the art, energy producing technology, owned only by those few World class societes, a solution to GW, the present road to take in energy matters, etc.

What we have found here is that a nuclear plant can be a very dangerous time bomb. Not only a tsunami or an earthquake can activate it, but an enemy missile during war, even a passenger airplane used like in 911..... Sounds frightening, but it can turn out to be the worst nightmare of any "advanced" economy...

I agree. I think we must rethink the use of nuclear power. It scares me to think what would happen should a plane crash into one of these things.

Quoting twincomanche:


They are designed specifically to withstand a 747 flying into them.

Things don't do what they are designed to do all the time. I'd hate to see the design tested.

Wiki Article on International Atomic Energy Agency

International Atomic Energy AgencyFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

International Atomic Energy Agency

The IAEA flag
Org type Organization
Acronyms IAEA
Head Yukiya Amano
Status Active
Established 1957
Headquarters Vienna, Austria
Website www.iaea.org

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and to inhibit its use for any military purpose, including nuclear weapons. The IAEA was established as an autonomous organization on 29 July 1957. Though established independently of the United Nations through its own international treaty, the IAEA Statute,[1] the IAEA reports to both the UN General Assembly and Security Council.

Quoting twincomanche:


They are designed specifically to withstand a 747 flying into them.

747- First flown commercially in 1970,... All plants built before that date are vulnerable. Even many built after 1970, never took in consideration the fact that an airplane could be used like in 911....

As of 2008, Nuclear power in the United States is provided by 104 (69 pressurized water reactors and 35 boiling water reactors) commercial nuclear power plants licensed to operate, producing a total of 806.2 TWh of electricity, which was 19.6% of the nation's total electric energy consumption in 2008.[1] The United States is the world's largest supplier of commercial nuclear power.

Ground has been broken on two new nuclear plants with a total of four reactors. The only reactor under construction in America, at Watts Bar, Tennessee, was begun in 1973 and may be completed in 2012. Of the 104 plants now operating in the U.S., ground was broken on all of them in 1974 or earlier.[2][3] In September 2010, Matthew Wald from the New York Times reported that "the nuclear renaissance is looking small and slow at the moment".[4]

I was living in Holland at the time of Chernobyl. All I can say is been there done that NEVER want to do it again. Schools started late, due to radioactive dew on the grass, pregnant women were told to stay indoors we couldn't eat any produce that was grown outside, all dairy was dumped for weeks. It was bad. This scares me. It is worse than the experts on CNN have been trying to convince you of. They are down playing the problem way too much. IF what the Japanese government has been saying is true about both reactors being in meltdown, Chernobyl could end up looking like a Sunday picnic. It will affect everyone on the planet.

The plain and simple truth is this: nuclear energy is not clean energy. It simply isn't. And as such, it does not belong as one of the hoped-for pillars of America's energy future. Even if there weren't the specter of calamitous disasters such as present in Japan now, there's the not insignificant matter of waste. But that's almost an aside here...

Just 11 months ago BP showed us how well their industry was handling self-regulation, and now TEPCO is doing the same. Both organizations proclaim their operations are "fail safe", but they've only managed to deliver on the first half of that term.

Overview: Nuclear Plant Sabotage


"Nuclear power plants cannot be made invulnerable to sabotage. If a nuclear plant is someday sabotaged, there should not be a long list of things that could have been done to prevent it; things that are then done at the surviving nuclear plants to protect against another attack. Those steps must be taken now to guard against the first attack".

Link

Quoting cat5hurricane:

Exactly. They have thought of that already.

Assuming they are as truthful as the people who in the 60's, when the first of these reactors was built near my home town, told us that these reactors are intrinsically safe. Once the water has boiled off, everything stops and everything is fine.

LOL

Quoting SquallyWx:


I agree. I think we must rethink the use of nuclear power. It scares me to think what would happen should a plane crash into one of these things.

And a jet crashing into a coal stash wouldn't cause an equal, if not greater issue spewing thousands of tons of toxins and heavy metals into the atmosphere? Or a bomb that ignites an underground coal fire which will burn for hundreds of years, poisoning everything for miles around it? Or crashing into a large refinery spreading toxic by-products and materials into a major watershed?

If a jet crashing into something is going to be the measure of safety we are going to use then there is a lot of major industry that should be shut down right now due to the risk of wide scale contamination of toxic materials.

Nuclear power is the safest, cleanest, power source we currently have for the power that's produced. Thanks to the anti-nuke crowd though, it has been damn near impossible to build newer, safer plants. Anything with the word nuclear in it has been ingrained as being bad and immediately inspires fear. All this while coal power production and mining operations regularly claims thousands of lives.

Quoting cat5hurricane:

Exactly. They have thought of that already.

Yeah. They thought of protecting the containment dome from a 747 coming it at full throttle. They just forgot that internal combustion engines don't work well when submerged under debris-laden seawater. Whoopsie...

Quoting Xyrus2000:


Nuclear power is the safest, cleanest, power source we currently have for the power that's produced. Thanks to the anti-nuke crowd though, it has been damn near impossible to build newer, safer plants. Anything with the word nuclear in it has been ingrained as being bad and immediately inspires fear. All this while coal power production and mining operations regularly claims thousands of lives.

Are you going to watch the remains for the next 20000 years?

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, it looks like the IAEA not only promotes nuclear energy but is also responsible for industry standards regulating its safety.

The IAEA serves as an intergovernmental forum for scientific and technical cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear technology and nuclear power worldwide.

The programs of the IAEA encourage the development of the peaceful applications of nuclear technology,
provide international safeguards against misuse of nuclear technology and nuclear materials,
and promote nuclear safety (including radiation protection) and nuclear security standards and their implementation.

From wiki article cited above.

Maybe we should haul in the Nuclear Plants themselves and have a Hearing on their records..


Mr King. from New York can be the chairman.

Quoting SquallyWx:


Things don't do what they are designed to do all the time. I'd hate to see the design tested.

You're letting fear instead of reason dictate your position. Basing a decision on an improbable event is not a well reasoned decision.

With that line of reasoning I'm surprised you'd even drive a car.

Quoting Xyrus2000:


You're letting fear instead of reason dictate your position. Basing a decision on an improbable event is not a well reasoned decision.

With that line of reasoning I'm surprised you'd even drive a car.

I take it your employer is involved in the nuclear business?

Why else would you believe a single word they tell you?

Quoting Xyrus2000:


And a jet crashing into a coal stash wouldn't cause an equal, if not greater issue spewing thousands of tons of toxins and heavy metals into the atmosphere? Or a bomb that ignites an underground coal fire which will burn for hundreds of years, poisoning everything for miles around it? Or crashing into a large refinery spreading toxic by-products and materials into a major watershed?

If a jet crashing into something is going to be the measure of safety we are going to use then there is a lot of major industry that should be shut down right now due to the risk of wide scale contamination of toxic materials.

Nuclear power is the safest, cleanest, power source we currently have for the power that's produced. Thanks to the anti-nuke crowd though, it has been damn near impossible to build newer, safer plants. Anything with the word nuclear in it has been ingrained as being bad and immediately inspires fear. All this while coal power production and mining operations regularly claims thousands of lives.

Yes, coal is filthy and dangerous and environmentally destructive and chock full of CO2. Yes, miners die in coal mine accidents, and they get black lung, and mountaintops are stripped bare and rivers are destroyed, and the global temperature rises. But bad as coal is, it doesn't cause deformities in newborns ten years down the road. It doesn't cause tumors and cancers. It doesn't get "out of control". It doesn't cause skin to fall off, or eyes to lose their sight. It doesn't send plumes wafting out across the land that render areas unfit and uninhabitable for many, many decades. And it doesn't create waste for which there's no safe, cheap, secure, or stable way to maintain it for the thousands of years it takes to decay to a harmless state.

Nuclear power is cleaner than coal, perhaps, but that's a pretty bad yardstick to use as comparison.

Until/unless energy corporations can prove that people matter more than profit, I'll never give them the benefit of the doubt, and I'll never trust them to do the safe thing, the smart thing, the right thing.

I am not against nuclear power plants. I just think having the industry regulate itself, which appears to be the situation, is like having the fox guard the henhouse; or the financial industry regulate itself, or the oil companies write their own tickets for drill permits.

Unfortunately, this is what is happening everywhere.
Government is bad.
Government should not interfere with business.
Let business run itself.
Better yet, let business take over government then things would run better!
I believe when that has happened in other countries, like Egypt and Tunisia, it's called "corruption."

Quoting sunlinepr:


747- First flown commercially in 1970,... All plants built before that date are vulnerable. Even many built after 1970, never took in consideration the fact that an airplane could be used like in 911....

You also have a 1:100 chance of dying in your car, a 1:36 chance that you die in accident in your own home, a 1:246 chance you die falling down, and a 1:5 chance that you'll die of heart disease.

A little perspective goes a long way. Basing decision on extremely low probability events will lead to bad decisions.

Just to focus on the tropics for a post or two...
The SST Map Year Comparisons
2011: warming up nicely near home, but the eastern atlantic is struggling to warm, although we don't normally see cape verde systems until late August/September...


2010: Warm all over except the Gulf and Florida/East Coast


2009: No Warmth whatsoever.


2008: Gulf is warming, but eastern Caribbean and central atlantic are very cool.


2007: Warmer than the future years..


2006: if it wasnt for th el nino building in place you wouldve thought this season was going to be horrible...


2005: it's a mix between 2010 and 2011, 2010 due to the Central and eastern atlantic being warmer than usual, and 2011 because a more built up warmth closer to home...

Quoting Xyrus2000:


And a jet crashing into a coal stash wouldn't cause an equal, if not greater issue spewing thousands of tons of toxins and heavy metals into the atmosphere? Or a bomb that ignites an underground coal fire which will burn for hundreds of years, poisoning everything for miles around it? Or crashing into a large refinery spreading toxic by-products and materials into a major watershed?

If a jet crashing into something is going to be the measure of safety we are going to use then there is a lot of major industry that should be shut down right now due to the risk of wide scale contamination of toxic materials.

Nuclear power is the safest, cleanest, power source we currently have for the power that's produced. Thanks to the anti-nuke crowd though, it has been damn near impossible to build newer, safer plants. Anything with the word nuclear in it has been ingrained as being bad and immediately inspires fear. All this while coal power production and mining operations regularly claims thousands of lives.

Yeah people fear Nuclear power because they are ignorant of it. Disasters happen, the Nuclear plants are not the problem.

Most people sadly are influenced by all the hollywood disaster movies involving nuclear plants in them, rather than having any education on nuclear power.

Watching this chat is starting to be hilarious. During the BP GOM disaster, some of the same people were PUSHING nuclear power.

Face it, no matter how you "make" power.. there are inherent dangers.

Satellite Photos of Japan, Before and After the Quake and Tsunami

Move the slider to compare satellite images, taken by GeoEye, from before and after the disaster.

Quoting Xyrus2000:


A little perspective goes a long way. Basing decision on extremely low probability events will lead to bad decisions.

That's another lie they want us to believe. Ask any insurer, decisions should never be based upon probability but on risk, which is the product of probability times the cost of the incident.

Either you just don't know what you are talking about or you are deliberately ......

When you drive your car, you risk your own life and a few others, when you cut corners in the design of a nuclear power plant, you risk the life of thousands

Quoting Orcasystems:
Watching this chat is starting to be hilarious. During the BP GOM disaster, some of the same people were PUSHING nuclear power.

Face it, no matter how you "make" power.. there are inherent dangers.

always risks even more so if being push to the limit it was intended for

Quoting Chicklit:
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, it looks like the IAEA not only promotes nuclear energy but is also responsible for industry standards regulating its safety.

The IAEA serves as an intergovernmental forum for scientific and technical cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear technology and nuclear power worldwide.

The programs of the IAEA encourage the development of the peaceful applications of nuclear technology,
provide international safeguards against misuse of nuclear technology and nuclear materials,
and promote nuclear safety (including radiation protection) and nuclear security standards and their implementation.

From wiki article cited above.

Kind of like the FAA.

Quoting Neapolitan:
The plain and simple truth is this: nuclear energy is not clean energy. It simply isn't. And as such, it does not belong as one of the hoped-for pillars of America's energy future. Even if there weren't the specter of calamitous disasters such as present in Japan now, there's the not insignificant matter of waste. But that's almost an aside here...

Just 11 months ago BP showed us how well their industry was handling self-regulation, and now TEPCO is doing the same. Both organizations proclaim their operations are "fail safe", but they've only managed to deliver on the first half of that term.

Nuclear power is cleaner than fossil fuels, bar none. And if we didn't have idiotic regulations in place that prevents the use of fast breeder reactors it could be made even more so. And if we would use more modern designs like molten salt and thorium reactors, it would be even cleaner. Modern designs are also incapable of melting down, especially thorium reactors.

Our largest power source is coal. You should take a look at what else is inside coal, including radioactive elements, heavy metals, and various other nasties. We burns metric tons of it every year.

Nuclear waste on the other hand is relatively small and contained. It would be even smaller if we allowed spent fuel reprocessing since a lot more of the material would be used up. Even IF we don't ever allow reprocessing, all the waster we would ever produce can fit in a relatively small area under a mountain in the desert.

Our choices until we get fusion, are fossil fuels or nuclear. Renewables are not yet capable of replacing a major part of our power requirements yet.

Here's a video of a house cat duck & covering 15 mins before the earthquake. The quake follows. Remember this whole area has been having tremors for weeks. Insects & such just don't leave in a few minutes.

I'm observant near to a fault. I don't use a weather radio when living in the forest cause the rest of the environment tells me what is going on. If I see animals out openly gathering food like mad, I usually get out & have a day or three to do it before real severe weather hits. I get what the article said..Living in town, before a 'cane I tend to ride a pony out to a swamp, hang out for a while. Get a look at something more than squirrels & raccoons, see what's blooming. It's hard enough to see the signs in town..impossible with an i-pod or such in hand. Well I guess unless your taking video of your cat doing it's disaster drill.

I think alot of times they react to the what maybe. Fire ants here for example.. They'll move & prepare for a rain all the same for each of these fronts. Like they feel the front, react but don't know if it is going to dry up like many have or actually rain. If they are in my hay in the barn the rain is going to more than heavy. If they are in the trees, that's some sort of hurricane or ridiculous flood.

Quoting sunlinepr:
Overview: Nuclear Plant Sabotage


"Nuclear power plants cannot be made invulnerable to sabotage. If a nuclear plant is someday sabotaged, there should not be a long list of things that could have been done to prevent it; things that are then done at the surviving nuclear plants to protect against another attack. Those steps must be taken now to guard against the first attack".

Link

It would be better to replace vulnerable plants with modern ones that do not melt-down in the first place. Unfortunately, this isn't going to happen anytime soon in this country.

Person Finder: 2011 Japan Earthquake
What is your situation?

한국어 | 中 文 (简 体) | 中 文 (繁 體)

This is from a person in another blog (non-weather) that I frequent. Scary thought.
He worked for years in Japan and only returned this past year.

"I hate to be critical of the country that I worked in for so long but unfortunately their basic cultural trait works against them in situations like this. Subordinate engineers in the know, now matter how brilliant, are not allowed to give information upwards that will put leadership in humiliating roles. Getting the truth (for outsiders) is a hit and miss proposition at best. The boss and CEO just have to "hope" that what they say to the public WILL happen. Otherwise, suicide is their only honorable way out, while the public reaps the consequences of the bosses and supervisors not listening to the subordinate engineers or outside recommendations."

79 Days Until Hurricane Season...
Still got ways to go

Quoting Xyrus2000:


And a jet crashing into a coal stash wouldn't cause an equal, if not greater issue spewing thousands of tons of toxins and heavy metals into the atmosphere? Or a bomb that ignites an underground coal fire which will burn for hundreds of years, poisoning everything for miles around it? Or crashing into a large refinery spreading toxic by-products and materials into a major watershed?

If a jet crashing into something is going to be the measure of safety we are going to use then there is a lot of major industry that should be shut down right now due to the risk of wide scale contamination of toxic materials.

Nuclear power is the safest, cleanest, power source we currently have for the power that's produced. Thanks to the anti-nuke crowd though, it has been damn near impossible to build newer, safer plants. Anything with the word nuclear in it has been ingrained as being bad and immediately inspires fear. All this while coal power production and mining operations regularly claims thousands of lives.

No its not. Simple as that. They are relatively safe but god forbid something go terribly wrong and you can wipe out a whole population over a given area. Nuclear power has the potential for total death and total destruction. It's highly unlikely but still possible. That possibility is inexcusable if you ask me.

For knowing so much about nuclear power I am amazed at your blind biased support for nuclear power.

Quoting Xyrus2000:


You also have a 1:100 chance of dying in your car, a 1:36 chance that you die in accident in your own home, a 1:246 chance you die falling down, and a 1:5 chance that you'll die of heart disease.

A little perspective goes a long way. Basing decision on extremely low probability events will lead to bad decisions.

why are you taking this to an individual level?


If a true nuclear disaster occurred we would be talking millions of people affected.

Quoting RecordSeason:
Just so everyone knows.

I had serious health issues a few weeks ago. I have a family history of terrible heart conditions, blood pressure disorders, diabetes, and even cancers.

A few weeks ago, I had a terrible numbness spell apparantly caused by very high blood pressure, and had to go to the emergency room.

They did blood tests, EKG, and a CAT scan, which were all allegedly normal, but my blood pressure was really high.

I am on medications now. I am only 30 years old, and I can say that I have really lost something. My metabolism and body temperature hasn't been right since then, and I'm always tired and weak.

RecordSeason, So sorry to hear about the health issues. This is something I know about. I can tell you that BP meds are hard to adjust to, especially the Beta-Blockers, as they are intended to slow the heart rate, thus the tired feeling. Give it a little time...it gets better :)

Quoting RecordSeason:
Just so everyone knows.

I had serious health issues a few weeks ago. I have a family history of terrible heart conditions, blood pressure disorders, diabetes, and even cancers.

A few weeks ago, I had a terrible numbness spell apparantly caused by very high blood pressure, and had to go to the emergency room.

They did blood tests, EKG, and a CAT scan, which were all allegedly normal, but my blood pressure was really high.

I am on medications now. I am only 30 years old, and I can say that I have really lost something. My metabolism and body temperature hasn't been right since then, and I'm always tired and weak.

Take it from someone that's had health issues that I let go on and saw a family member do the same, if you're always tired and weak, that doesn't sound good. Find a specialist...get it checked further!

nice day today

Quoting Xyrus2000:


Nuclear power is cleaner than fossil fuels, bar none. And if we didn't have idiotic regulations in place that prevents the use of fast breeder reactors it could be made even more so. And if we would use more modern designs like molten salt and thorium reactors, it would be even cleaner. Modern designs are also incapable of melting down, especially thorium reactors.

Our largest power source is coal. You should take a look at what else is inside coal, including radioactive elements, heavy metals, and various other nasties. We burns metric tons of it every year.

Nuclear waste on the other hand is relatively small and contained. It would be even smaller if we allowed spent fuel reprocessing since a lot more of the material would be used up. Even IF we don't ever allow reprocessing, all the waster we would ever produce can fit in a relatively small area under a mountain in the desert.

Our choices until we get fusion, are fossil fuels or nuclear. Renewables are not yet capable of replacing a major part of our power requirements yet.

Radiation is more dangerous than anything. It's that simple.

You are taking about day to day emitions. I am taking about potential disasters.


And in case you haven't noticed, man's most effective killing machine involves radiation. Hate to say it that way but you fail to get the message.