Japan Nuclear powerplant explosion and radiation crisis

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JVRR
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Re: Japan Nuclear powerplant explosion and radiation crisis

#21 Unread post by JVRR »

QuietMonkey wrote:thanks Guzzi...

-- that's pretty rough! -- ESPECIALLY the lack of water... hopefully everything is coming together for temporary supplies and those essentials. The way the weather is hopefully they are able to make progress in locating people still missing, etc.

This reminds me of a great video of an architect in New Mexico (I think), Mike Reynolds, known as the Garbage Warrior (using recycled materials). He has been building (and fighting an uphill battle) with his self-sustainable homes for 30+ years. They even yanked his license for several years. The homes are entirely off the grid, offering self-sustaining temperature control, sewage, and a rain-water catching, storage and filtration system... he proved the sound principals of his designs (which the legal types had screwed him over on for various bureaucratic reasons) by using it in disaster stricken areas like what Japan is facing.
Curiously enough, sounds like George W. Bush's home in Crawford, Texas.
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Re: Japan Nuclear powerplant explosion and radiation crisis

#22 Unread post by QuietMonkey »

JVRR wrote:Curiously enough, sounds like George W. Bush's home in Crawford, Texas.
Different architect (and a very sophisticated house none-the-less). I know Bush has used this house in part to "play green" while doing the opposite and worse. Al Gore got some things moving in this direction of eco stuff with his movie.

Reynolds' homes are very oldschool in many ways, just going back to the most essential principals. They can be built by a group of average people with some basic training and mostly inexpensive materials. This cost to build factor is one reason they scared big industry so much through the 80's and 90s. Taking money from the coffers of builders, etc. He was squashed for a very long time. Getting your credentials yanked and your community closed down because it doesnt fit the political structure became a real crusher of a battle that went on for many years for him.

In other news: the destruction in Japan is wreaking havoc very close to home for us in the motorcycle industry... the motorcycle factories shutting down, and of course many people in or close to the industry have been injured and some no doubt have died. I heard the number of deaths has exceeded 10,000 people so far.

Tragic losses. Hopefully the situation at the Nuclear plant is contained successfully soon. Because tourism will be affected greatly too, and travel even much later in the year could be affected. One motorcycle related even is the Japanse MotoGP race was cancelled and shifted to October. But that is nothing compared to the reality of peoples daily lives.

The New York Times has a before/after image collection from the Tsunami damage:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011 ... l?ref=asia
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Re: Japan Nuclear powerplant explosion and radiation crisis

#23 Unread post by Kingshead »

I fear the after affects will be felt long after we are all gone.

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Re: Japan Nuclear powerplant explosion and radiation crisis

#24 Unread post by Hondagirl »

They certainly will. Thank you Viper for posting some positive thinking on the situation in North Japan right now. We really all could use it. Thanks TMW for starting the topic.I'm late to add a comment here - wanna thank those of you who noticed I was missing and in Japan. I'm actually just 100 kms from the Fukushima plant. We did manage to escape for a while to a relative farther south when radiation levels were bad although we also spent the first week right here as there was no way out, the roads were buckled and useless, no trains or bus out of town as the station was hit bad by the quake, no gas for cars, nobody could get out. We were all exposed to radio nuclides as we waited for hours in snow blizzards for our food and water rations. It was so cold and no electricity for 4 days and no gas for 3 weeks in temps minus zero ; this was a mixed blessing as we stayed inside wrapped in coats and gloves to sleep which was probably a good thing, 3 x safer inside from radiation.

The situation here regarding food contamination and groundwater/soil contamination is bad. Radiation is not right now the issue for those of us living a distance from the plant, of course its still a huge worry and fear for all the people who have been evacuated in the 80km danger zone and everyone is praying for the workers at the plant -national heros- on whom we are all depending for some kind of magical end to the frustrations of radioactive water build up (nowhere to store it, rainy season adding more water into vessels still open at top) and the contamination of the Pacific coast/fish. And not to mention the cesium/plutonium that has bound to soil in parts of our prefecture and all over Fukushima prefecture and will remain there for 30 years or more.

We are eating only imported food, dairy products from Hokkaido,and all our water is now bottled from South Korea. It's possible to take other safety measures too. I started a blog about the situation less than a week after the quake and the latest entry is on what we are doing here to keep safe at a personal level. Link in my profile.
Am so impressed by the way people are trying to get normality back. Even though morale is low, everyone seems to be helping people who have a worse situation than themselves. Unfortunately however many things can never be the same again here. I wonder if we will ever be able to eat fish again and dairy products.The whole nation is angry with TEPCO and the govt, we are relying on nuclear scientists at the Universities to give us accurate info and updates locally-they have the precious equipment to research and get more accurate data, although all data seems to have ifs and buts attached.

In latest news, Geiger equipment to measure radiation and advanced equip to measure radioactive caesium/cesium particles that bind so well in soil are now sold out here in Japan. The worry of iodine in the air is now not an issue as iodine has a short half life. Iodine 131 and other iodines can be removed from tap water by 50% using activated charcoal filtration, thankyou Brita. Cesium and plutonium and all other radioactive family members have a much longer lifeline and are far more scary for people here now.

Recent news on ocean contamination: http://www9.nhk.or.jp/kabun-blog/500/83387.html
Chart of daily radiation levels in Japan: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/radiation-levels.html
http://www.cnic.jp/english/newsletter/n ... ersed.html
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Re: Japan Nuclear powerplant explosion and radiation crisis

#25 Unread post by mogster »

JC Viper wrote: Unfortunately, it is absent minded activists who have stood in the way of progress and blocked advancement of nuclear power. Newer designs are signifigantly safer and have almost no chance to melt down.

I am proud to have protested against nuclear power both in industry & warfare (sorry defence).

A local church group sponsors Chernobyl kids to come over & holiday in the fresh air of the Dorset coast. Their plethora of health problems tells me I was right to march.


Glad to hear you coping Hondagirl - souds pretty grim. :(


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Re: Japan Nuclear powerplant explosion and radiation crisis

#26 Unread post by QuietMonkey »

Hondagirl wrote:... Unfortunately however many things can never be the same again here. I wonder if we will ever be able to eat fish again and dairy products.
We've seen similar problems and effects on the food chain from much less harmful accidents over the years, so the significance and scale of magnitude of nuclear contamination seems so much more difficult to accept.

Although in general we seem to put a lot of tragedies behind us (as is one strong part of human nature to survive by focusing on ourselves), changing little (unless we have more direct contact with the events), perhaps the world has grown and changed enough over the past 30 or 40 years that the importance of this tragedy will guide us to solutions rather than simply harm generations from the effects. Either way it is (somewhat sadly) our course of evolution: mistakes kill you or make you stronger.

Our personal values are at the heart of the changes required to enforce sustainable populations and living habits (reworked business and economic systems). Without pressure to change our lives the business community will always continue along the same trends, akin to personal gain rather than supporting a true community. Business is just a larger reflection of our own personal values and failings as a community.

One can only hope the larger outlook around the world keeps changing for the better, so we can learn to look after the planet's ecosystem and inhabitants in more holistic ways, growing better for our mistakes.

I dont think fighting against technology is the problem, it is being accountable for the safe use of our discoveries and implementation of technology, which is where profit always seems to wedge it's way into the reality of how much effort and cost is involved to do things with much larger safety "fences". From what I can tell, nuclear power has been phenomenally reliable, producing massive amounts of power and it is only our having too much faith in ourselves which keeps us from really digging deep enough to implement full scale safety measures for those rare events when things do go wrong. This is no different than I see in many other areas of daily life, just on a larger scale.
"Zounds! Zorched by Zarches, Spaceman Spiff's crippled craft crashes on planet Plootarg!"

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