Japan nuclear plant explosions

[Magicdirt]

`

Edited May 8, 2011 by Magicdirt

[botanika]

Firstly, your right that if they insist on making all the energy they desire on the islands with little visible air pollution nuclear is the go. However there are three glaring errors in your logic. Firstly, the japanese are not self sustaining- not by a long shot- not for the last hundred years. If the ships and planes stopped japan would hit famine in 1 week. I dont know where you got the idea that they are or want to be a closed self-sustaining system Secondly, energy can move. China could make energy with solar, wind, river dams, horizontal river and ocean generators and sell that power to japan. China has the space and japan has the money to buy power. Thirdly why is it assumed that japans addiction to a constant orgy of electricity driven opulence is moral, reasonable, or even their right as humans? Theyre going too far in their addiction and their unsustainable habits will cost them.

 

For fucks sake Japan is hardly alone in it's gluttony for technology, use of GE built nuclear power plants or want of a higher standard of living and China can hardly keep it's own country going energy-wise whilst manufacturing iPhones to the world let alone provide the currently impractical wind, water and solar power for export on such a large scale. You've got to be kidding. Most Chinese hate the Japanese, they aren't going to become fairy godmothers to them and if they were able to provide that kind of energy export in the first place they wouldn't be buying up the bulk of australia's uranium. I never said Japan was a closed self sustaining system or anything about whether it's culture is sustainable or ethical. The moral issue of technology and resource use is one for all mankind. Japan has little practical choices just like many other countries, including China and the US, who already experienced 3 mile island and also has reactors close enough to major faultlines to be considered potentially hazardous. You think they are just going to stop mining uranium and grow flowers? Nobody wants dirty energy, we all want safe clean, renewable energy but for the time being most of us are stuck with it and we will pay the consequences just as we have throughout history. Human life and morals are dispensable in the pursuit of political and economic power and natural disasters or catastrophic change is part of what made us who we are in the first place.

Edited March 16, 2011 by botanika

[santiago]

the radioactive cloud depending on actual truths given to the world by the japanese is heading for the USA.

its a bit strange radaiation has been detected hundreds of kms out to sea yet the exlusion zone is a mere 20kms on the japan mainland, seems like the beginning of a cover up to me.

also its a bit strange to actually build nuclear plants on the ring of fire...seems a bit risky. hopefully australia uses this as an example to make a firm decision to invest heavily in renewable energy and set ourselves up for a safe and sustainable future, renewable energy is the only long term safe option.

[Auxin]

Your right the japanese arent the only hedonistic tek gluttons, my own people are up to their chins in that mind set too, as are many others. That doesnt make the mistakes of the japanese any less of mistakes.

Your right, too, that many other energy sources couldnt fully replace the system currently in place at any fast rate. But people are barely even trying, and in the mean time people dont have to use one quarter the energy they currently do. I go riding at night when the majority sleep, nearly all houses are brightly lit externally at least on two sides tho no one is coming home, streets are lit sometimes to the point of being almost blinding and while thats convenient to me while riding past thats no justification for such waste (hell, people dont even like hippies riding past their house, lol). The streets are empty of cars and so empty of people I'm actually surprised when I see a human on foot. And thats not to mention all the shop neon lights on the main streets, peoples over sized energy inefficient homes, peoples energy inefficient habits and hobbies. Theres actually a law here saying if I dont water and mow my lawn every week I'm breaking city legal ordinances and I get fined $200, what the fuck use is grass anyway!?! It doesnt even taste good, much less provide significant nutriment.

My sister gets paid well to 'subdue' people who look suspicious near a nuke plant, with her pay she goes on two vacations every month burning up more non-renewable resources in 2 weeks than a subsistence farmer does in 5 years and all the while regardless if shes in town here or in tijuana on tequila holiday her 9 room, 3 bathroom, 2 story, 12 window house she bought for her and her cat is heated to 23*C 24 hours a day just to keep her cat happy.

No its not the japs, and its not america, and its not the transnational plutocratic corporate overlords, its now the majority of humanity that is rocketing us toward a future of plague and famine and a earth stripped of resource just so we can perpetuate the notion that if you pleasure yourself enough for long enough at high enough of a price at some point it'll be more valuable than the next 147,000 years of humanity!

We all need to change our shit.

[Slybacon]

the radioactive cloud depending on actual truths given to the world by the japanese is heading for the USA.

its a bit strange radaiation has been detected hundreds of kms out to sea yet the exlusion zone is a mere 20kms on the japan mainland, seems like the beginning of a cover up to me.

also its a bit strange to actually build nuclear plants on the ring of fire...seems a bit risky. hopefully australia uses this as an example to make a firm decision to invest heavily in renewable energy and set ourselves up for a safe and sustainable future, renewable energy is the only long term safe option.

 

I think the Nuclear Cloud story is a myth. If you check the figures the winds are all North Easterly's which means its heading over the mainland then across the china sea into china.

Edited March 16, 2011 by Slybacon

[botanika]

We all need to change our shit.

 

That's why natural disasters are good - because they target everyone irrelevent of wealth or morality. I'm not convinced yet we have the communal frontal lobe to plan far enough ahead or change instantly to live completely sustainably in the long term unless we are absolutely forced to as a matter of survival and even if we could a meteor or super volcano could come along at anytime and take us back to square one. Life goes where it goes. Nature eventually self corrects irrelevent of our utopian desires. Everyone keeps talking about change but change and renewal is all we do - change IS innovation and nature is the ultimate teacher of innovation - the desire to unlock the underlying structure of nature, to dream, plan and pursue a better future brought us around the globe to where we are today irrespective of culture or sustainability. Our history is one of rising and falling civilisations and will likely continue to be so. Nature is not staticly sustainable, it is adaptable and constantly evolving often with evolution being a cruel process. Whether one lives a subsistence life in a tee pee or a billionaire life - both are part of the human endeavour. Most subsistence people around the world want a higher standard of living and most of the educated developed world can't afford to buy land to live a subsistence life if they wanted to. It's the irony of the human race - as I've said before we are about what we can do and how as much as we are about what we should do and why.

Really a $200 fine for not watering your lawn? Mad.

Edited March 16, 2011 by botanika

[botanika]

I think the Nuclear Cloud story is a myth. If you check the figures the winds are all North Easterly's which means its heading over the mainland then across the china sea into china.

 

With China's pollution it may not even be noticeable Im in Shanghai

[kindness]

I believe it was Aurthur C Clarke who once commented that the only way humankind would ever unite as one would be if we shared a common extra terrestrial enemy. I hope he was wrong in that statement but tend to believe it.

Any country using such potentially dangerous technology like nuclear should have to run it past some kind of bloody 'earth council' approval. We can la de dah around making sure everybody feels all nice and relations are good between countries all we like but when the shit hits the fan and nuclear power plants blow up / melt down and radiation is released into the atmosphere... well... there ain't no borders in the atmosphere and like it or not we all live on the same planet.

I'm scared of what is happening in Japan.

[botanika]

Death awaits us all - live life to the fullest and see past sensationalist journalism. Countries seeking nuclear energy don't build them without 'council approval' - it's a bit more complex and regulated than a DA submission! INSC

[kindness]

Death awaits us all - live life to the fullest and see past sensationalist journalism. Countries seeking nuclear energy don't build them without 'council approval' - it's a bit more complex and regulated than a DA submission! INSC

 

I'm mostly at peace with my own mortality.

I keep missing the sensationalist journalism bit where they talk about the impact globally rather than with the 20k - 40k exclusion zone... but then I'm not watching much.

Who has been digging up uranium then? Nobody gets to go outside and play until the truth is told.

edit to say: I've toyed a great deal with the idea of life being a big game and none of this really mattering that much, still yet to decide completely on that one... but I have also been thinking that the only way we are gonna start giving a shit about the planet is if we start to believe that we might have to be re-incarnated here... I figure people don't even give enough of a shit to think about doing the right thing so their kids get a decent time here so figure taking it that one selfish step further to thinking I might have to come back to this place could be a good way to assume the pose of gently treading on the earth - just some thoughts of mine.

Edited March 16, 2011 by kindness

[botanika]

I keep missing the sensationalist journalism bit where they talk about the impact globally rather than with the 20k - 40k exclusion zone... but then I'm not watching much.

Just remember how many nukes have been set off around the world for testing. While its not a perfect world we're all still here, people still live in Hiroshima and Chernobyl is a new overgrown ecosystem.

edit to say: I've toyed a great deal with the idea of life being a big game and none of this really mattering that much, still yet to decide completely on that one... but I have also been thinking that the only way we are gonna start giving a shit about the planet is if we start to believe that we might have to be re-incarnated here... I figure people don't even give enough of a shit to think about doing the right thing so their kids get a decent time here so figure taking it that one selfish step further to thinking I might have to come back to this place could be a good way to assume the pose of gently treading on the earth - just some thoughts of mine.

 

Most people do care and are not intentionally selfish - the big issue is there are just simply a lot of us on the planet and we don't change in drastic ways until nature has affected us in drastic ways and for that to happen globally we'll need something like a major event (comet strike, supervolcano, global police takeover to enforce population control, mass competition wars for resources etc). Look at the differences between NZ when Tasman sailed by - they had turned cannibalistic - and when Cook sailed into NouMea (a healthy egalitarian society that only changed its social structure when it hit the end of the line with no food left, the difference is that island was settled and stripped of food far earlier than NZ).

Re-incarnation is partly what drives suicide bombers to kill innocent people, what drives religion to control people in the belief of a God and afterlife we have no proof whatsoever exists. There is no supernatural afterlife - this is it. You only gain immortality by passing on your genes. The sooner people of the world stop putting what is sacred into a religous book or hoping for supernatural intervention and start looking at the world through rational common sense the better.

[kindness]

I agree that people aren't intentionally selfish. Same as people always do the very best they can do given the skills / tools they have been given in their growing up by those before them... Blaming someone for what they don't know and expecting to feel better within oneself is clearly a futile exercise.

I have been struggling with what you describe above for a long time botanika, by which I mean that we as a species will not change what we are doing unless external circumstances basically demand it. Somewhere in the recesses of my self I have this hope that we will be able to come to our senses before facing extinction. I also have a notion that parallels that thought which thinks I'm just being an eternal optimist there.

I watch nature in many forms around me and figure we are the same... most forms of life do not change unless they HAVE to. So yeah, it is very likely that we are the same.

anyhooo... I think the bits of my body will one day be dirt, (hopefully relatively fertile ) and therefore I am immortal.

peace bruvva

[botanika]

Well I mean the instant paradigm shift a lot of people seem to be looking for ain't going to happen until were forced to. We are of course always changing, every nano second evolution is at work. Compared with the 1950's humanity is vastly more conscious of nature and our place in it. We don't go around like barbarians anymore. The future will be full of catastrophe just like the past and I believe it will also be full of abundance and exceptional positive life experiences. We are definately fertile soil

[ballzac]

I like the way you think botanika.

[kindness]

I agree about the paradigm shift not happening unless forced. Pity that isn't it. Although I am also a firm believer that we as humans rate our ability to cause any lasting damage to this earth much higher than we are really capable of. Time has already told the story of way bigger things than we could ever cause.

It's all nature, even our weird current obsession with destroying the upper atmosphere with carbon emissions / gamble of using a rare and dangerous mineral to make power. Nothing that happens here can be anything other than natural because we are all a product of nature...

I'm gonna bow out now coz I feel like I'm hogging the discussion on nuclear plant explosions and just soothing my own fears through this discussion with you botanika, but thankyou.

namaste

[mutant]

hey cheer up

this is population control at it's best.

I understand it would be easier for you to see it as such, if, say it was an disaster in an old plant in nearby Bulgaria [balkan, europe] [we are also in a highly earthquake area, Greece]

but don't you remember that Carlin rambling about natural disasters?

natural disasters are cool.

besides, japanese films are overrated. and that photo of Auxin,

DEFINATELY photoshopped

PS: mushrooms have been fruiting deep in Tsernoblys chambers last years, so not all living organisms share our prejudice towards radiation. Some eat it!

[tripsis]

This is hardly population control at its best. Recent floods in China have had much larger death tolls. The Rwandan Tutsi genocide took a million, as did the killings when Pakistan split from China. AIDS takes more lives each year. Car accidents do too.

While this "natural disaster" in Japan might have taken a few thousand, what people tend to forget it that the lives of more than just humans are at stake. If it were only the earthquake and tsunami, it might not be so bad, but the potential devastation that could be caused by multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns is difficult to fathom. Every organism that comes into contact with such high levels of radiation will almost certainly be adversely affected by it (with the exception of perhaps a few extremophiles - although those mushrooms have not been studied properly as far as I'm aware and the idea that they subsist off the radiation is only a hypothesis).

As I said before, it's the fact that those consequences will be felt for untold generations, on a genetic level, amongst a huge diversity of species, that is the issue. It will, essentially, disrupt the "natural" evolution of those organisms and cause massive numbers of deleterious mutations.

[WoodDragon]

Just to put even the staggering death tolls of natural disasters and genocides into context, 210 thousand extra people are added to the human population every day - after all deaths are accounted for.

Any phenomenon that actually reduces the human population by a noticable amount would have to be far more widespread, and result in incomprehensibly greater human suffering, than even the tragedy that we've seen in Japan over the last week.

Sadly, the planet is likely to see such tragedy within the next century or two, at the latest.

Edited March 16, 2011 by WoodDragon

[mutant]

eh comeon, you took shit too seriously [whereas my post was lighthearted]

sure some tens of thousands are not really that much. But long term effects are important too. fuck up people with radiation for some 100 years. you might come up with some homo sapiens strains really hardy to radiation. I am sure this gene will be taken from the japs.

as for car accidents or AIDS costing the lives of more,

for me it's only a matter of aesthetics an art matter if you like....

car accidents is a good population control phenomenon, only we call it 'accident' and it can get very ugly

Natural disasters on the other hand are so much more tasteful, in the way cultivating mushrooms outside, in a bed is much more classy and beautiful compared to growing them in some dedicated room in dull pastic/glass containers.

With natural disasters you can say nature takes a revenge, even if you don't really believe it, but it still makes sense.

As for AIDS, it's either in the same class as a natural disaster [probably what WD believes about it]

or a man-made virus, by mistake or deliberately.

Either way it kills people, but it does so in a very selective way, so a reasonable man would easily suspect a conspiracy: in particular, AIDS kills mostly gay men / impoverished third world people / drug users , which implies AIDS is a republican virus. Yep, you're thinking the right thing. Only man could make a racist virus.

So whatever the absolute number of casualties, even in the long term, also important is the nature of the 'accident'. Aesthetics. Natural disasters have class, a greatness. Man makes it look like a horror film - only it's a reality.

Have a read, here's another great script for a horror film, also a japanese story, I wonder how nobody made it a film as of yet.

[bℓσωηG]

Apparently radioactive isotope particles would have made it to the west coast of the US and Canada on Friday and now there is a large storm brewing in the Pacific which will help spread them more.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kesP0IZggww&feature=player_embedded

Edited March 18, 2011 by blowng

[santiago]

dont panic say the japanese government and plant owners, we are only at this stage going to dump ONLY 11000 tonnes of radioactive water into the pacific ocean as a bandaid fix.

somehow when i have one of those reflective moments on a sunny sunday afternoon whilst sipping my ice cold home made lemonade after watching an inspiring doco by richard attenborough, the dumping of radioactive water into the pacific ocean kinda breaks the romantic view of the perfect world we all strive to live in.

at this moment i dont really get the world we live in and i have no hope for the long term viability of planet earth, we are doomed.

http://www.rferl.org/content/japan_dumping_radioactive_water_ocean/3546499.html

[ThunderIdeal]

who is richard attenborough?

[ballzac]

who is richard attenborough?

 

David Attenborough's brother

[synchromesh]

Radiation in No. 1 reactor building “far exceeded expected levels” reaching 700 millisieverts per hour — 500 million becquerels released when opening entrance

[devance]

jUST THINK, FUSION POWER,

ANOTHER CON JOB.

CIVIANS PAYING FOR THERMONUCLEAR BOMB IN THEIR BACK YARD THATS SUPPIOSED TO HAVE CLEAN ENERGY

FROM AND PRODUCE CLEAN WATER.