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I'm so fucking sick of this. This level of ass-clownery makes Japan look so bad, and so diminishes its national prestige in the world, that it's almost like whe

by veidr 13y ago

I'm so fucking sick of this. This level of ass-clownery makes Japan look so bad, and so diminishes its national prestige in the world, that it's almost like when Bush the junior was president of the USA. Yes, TEPCO is a private company. But it reflects on Japan the same way it would if the US government just left BP and Halliburton to decide entirely for themselves how to clean up the New Horizon oil rig disaster, with no meaningful oversight nor repercussions. Except that the Fukushima disaster is about 100 times worse than the New Horizon spill. TEPCO should have been nationalized, or at least put into a decade of receivership, within a few days of the fail, when it became clear that they were completely unequipped to deal with a disaster of this magnitude and their president checked himself into a hospital for stress/mental issues.

raverbashing 13y ago
Yes, it's not about public/private. At a certain "screw-up" level, it doesn't matter anymore. This is a Japanese problem, but it's close to becoming a worldwide problem The containment has failed, as the leaks show, now what's the solution for that? Can we just pour tons and tons of sand on top so it melts and becomes a glass cocoon? (I don't know) Or it has breached the soil?
- justatdotin 13y ago
  it is certainly not just a Japanese problem. Japanese uranium mines didn't fuel the reactors, and the radiological contamination does not recognise national borders. The mismanagement of this disaster is not solely the responsibility of the Japanese government, but has been enabled by the hopeful silence of other nations. Why didn't all our governments stand up and denounce the misinformation around declaration of a 20msv 'acceptable' public dose limit, up from 1msv? Hoping to continue on with business as usual, international authorities stayed silent while their Japanese counterparts misled their people about what was 'safe'.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
lmm 13y ago
>Except that the Fukushima disaster is about 100 times worse than the New Horizon spill. Really? Everyone is terrified of the radiation bogeyman, but I'd bet there were more injuries and deaths as a result of New Horizon.
- Turbots 13y ago
  That's because the effects of radioactive contaminated ocean water is much, much harder to measure. We still don't know what that much of radiation will cause the plankton, fish, bigger fish, and ultimately, us humans...
- veidr 13y ago
  Yeah, well, it's easy to make bets on events that will still be playing out hundreds of years after we are all dead, isn't it. Radioactive contamination of the food supply, the oceans, and tens of thousands of people exiled from their hometown for the rest of their lives. 17 injured and 11 dead rig workers is easily comprehended and instant. Doesn't really mean that disaster was worse, though. Just easier to contemplate.
  - benihana 13y ago
    >Yeah, well, it's easy to make bets on events that will still be playing out hundreds of years after we are all dead, isn't it. Is that why you lead off with a fine example of it when you said that Fukushima was "about 100 times worse" than New Horizon?
    - chronic25 13y ago
      Didn't you read his post? Yes.
  - berntb 13y ago
    >>hundreds of years after we are all dead >>Radioactive contamination of [...] the oceans Sigh... bad scare mongering. How many percent has the background radiation in the Pacific ocean increased by Fukushima? (Hint: radioactive water is very, very diluted after much less than one century. :-) )
rwmj 13y ago
You've not been paying much attention to the Japanese nuclear industry. This is the industry that allowed junior staff to mix nuclear materials together unsupervised, causing a chain reaction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident#In_1999 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident#In_...
- iyulaev 13y ago
  And engineers in Europe or the US have never had criticality incidents ;)
  - AsymetricCom 13y ago
    Lets try to stay on topic here. We should be doing everything we can to help Japan, not poking fun of them or trying to start some kind of competition of incompetence.
zsombor 13y ago
By what standard do you see Fukushima as being worse? Number of casualties? Number of people who had their livelihood directly affected? The effect on the biosphere?
- lispm 13y ago
  Let's just say that hundreds of people will work in extreme conditions (high radiation, damaged nuclear material, damaged buildings) for the next 20 years to keep this thing from collapsing/... before the next heavy earth quake hits.
  - snogglethorpe 13y ago
    ... and the region around the plant has been quite severely affected: long term evacuation of inhabitants in some areas, kids can't play outside in others (and must take constant "precautions"), large scale decontamination needed (removal of top-soil, etc), fishermen not allowed to fish (it depends on the species and their feeding habits etc, some have shown no contamination, others are way, way, over the limits), many problems caused by loss of confidence (obvious huge drop in tourism, a very hard time selling farm produce, etc). So sure, the number of people that started glowing green and exploded is small (:-), but the financial and social repercussions of the Fukushima incident are not small at all. "Number of people that died" isn't the only statistic to look at when evaluating such things...
- veidr 13y ago
  Personally, my weighting factors are: 1. Number of people who died, or will die, weighted by how they die -- painful slow death by internal organ cancers being pretty far up there on my chart. 2. Number of people who have traumatic long term health episodes, like cancer, that degrade their quality of life. Even if it isn't until much later. 3. Number of people who have to leave long-established hometown territory and give up their homes, to live in crappy housing (way better than an American FEMA trailer, but still sad) until they die. 4. Number of children who get thyroid cancer caused by radioactive contamination that would not have otherwise -- even though Japan has arguably the best health care system in the world, and virtually all of these kids will live. Still sucks to have cancer and surgery when you're 8. 5. Incidental casualties (including cleanup workers). The actual local Fukushima plant boss became something of a hero after telling Tokyo (as in Tokyo Electric Power Company) to fuck off and calling his own shots during the worst of it. He died of cancer[1] last year, and also had a brain hemorrhage last year, ostensibly none of which was related. But there were a lot of young workers that went in there and like, did manual labor. They might be alive, but a lot of them aren't all gonna be fine. 6. Degradation of the best food on earth. I read in a Seattle newspaper (I'm pretty sure) that effectively all tuna now commercially caught have higher levels of cesium than before Fukushima. First the mercury, now this? NO FUCK YUO!! And here in Japan it's like spinach, potatoes, meat, fish... they can only test like 0.1% of it (which is bullshit but that is another post). 7. And, since I am me, my personal standard of how fucked it was accrues bonus points for: each of the 17 times I was forced to choose between not bathing or bathing in cesium water (we did Perrier sponge baths at first but then bottled water became too scarce to use other than for drinking), the 1 time my local supermarket (high-end rich-people supermarket btw) had to hand me a letter apologizing for selling me beef with illegally high cesium levels, and the 50 hours I spent roaming Tokyo in search of clean bottled water in the aftermath. I just can't see any reality where Fukushima isn't worse than New Horizon, on balance. Not that New Horizon wasn't bad. It just wasn't one of the worst disasters since I have been alive, where Fukushima was. [1]: ht NO tp NO NO SORRY ://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/09/fukushima-nuclear-disaster-masao-yoshida-dead-cancer_n_3568293.html [2]: Man I really thought I was linking to NY Times, which I will now: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/world/asia/masao-yoshida-nuclear-engineer-and-chief-at-fukushima-plant-dies-at-58.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/world/asia/masao-yoshida-n... At least that accidental huffington link explains why my computer had been audibly churning out all sorts of sad (but unrelated) human interest stories while I typed that post....
pnathan 13y ago
I agree that TEPCO is not earning itself any medals, and the Japanese government is not earning medals in terms of checking TEPCO's foolery.

by veidr 13y ago

raverbashing 13y ago

Yes, it's not about public/private. At a certain "screw-up" level, it doesn't matter anymore. This is a Japanese problem, but it's close to becoming a worldwide problem The containment has failed, as the leaks show, now what's the solution for that? Can we just pour tons and tons of sand on top so it melts and becomes a glass cocoon? (I don't know) Or it has breached the soil?

justatdotin 13y ago
it is certainly not just a Japanese problem. Japanese uranium mines didn't fuel the reactors, and the radiological contamination does not recognise national borders. The mismanagement of this disaster is not solely the responsibility of the Japanese government, but has been enabled by the hopeful silence of other nations. Why didn't all our governments stand up and denounce the misinformation around declaration of a 20msv 'acceptable' public dose limit, up from 1msv? Hoping to continue on with business as usual, international authorities stayed silent while their Japanese counterparts misled their people about what was 'safe'.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

lmm 13y ago

>Except that the Fukushima disaster is about 100 times worse than the New Horizon spill. Really? Everyone is terrified of the radiation bogeyman, but I'd bet there were more injuries and deaths as a result of New Horizon.

Turbots 13y ago
That's because the effects of radioactive contaminated ocean water is much, much harder to measure. We still don't know what that much of radiation will cause the plankton, fish, bigger fish, and ultimately, us humans...
veidr 13y ago
Yeah, well, it's easy to make bets on events that will still be playing out hundreds of years after we are all dead, isn't it. Radioactive contamination of the food supply, the oceans, and tens of thousands of people exiled from their hometown for the rest of their lives. 17 injured and 11 dead rig workers is easily comprehended and instant. Doesn't really mean that disaster was worse, though. Just easier to contemplate.
- benihana 13y ago
  >Yeah, well, it's easy to make bets on events that will still be playing out hundreds of years after we are all dead, isn't it. Is that why you lead off with a fine example of it when you said that Fukushima was "about 100 times worse" than New Horizon?
  - chronic25 13y ago
    Didn't you read his post? Yes.
- berntb 13y ago
  >>hundreds of years after we are all dead >>Radioactive contamination of [...] the oceans Sigh... bad scare mongering. How many percent has the background radiation in the Pacific ocean increased by Fukushima? (Hint: radioactive water is very, very diluted after much less than one century. :-) )

rwmj 13y ago

You've not been paying much attention to the Japanese nuclear industry. This is the industry that allowed junior staff to mix nuclear materials together unsupervised, causing a chain reaction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident#In_1999 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident#In_...

iyulaev 13y ago
And engineers in Europe or the US have never had criticality incidents ;)
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  Lets try to stay on topic here. We should be doing everything we can to help Japan, not poking fun of them or trying to start some kind of competition of incompetence.

zsombor 13y ago

By what standard do you see Fukushima as being worse? Number of casualties? Number of people who had their livelihood directly affected? The effect on the biosphere?

lispm 13y ago
Let's just say that hundreds of people will work in extreme conditions (high radiation, damaged nuclear material, damaged buildings) for the next 20 years to keep this thing from collapsing/... before the next heavy earth quake hits.
- snogglethorpe 13y ago
  ... and the region around the plant has been quite severely affected: long term evacuation of inhabitants in some areas, kids can't play outside in others (and must take constant "precautions"), large scale decontamination needed (removal of top-soil, etc), fishermen not allowed to fish (it depends on the species and their feeding habits etc, some have shown no contamination, others are way, way, over the limits), many problems caused by loss of confidence (obvious huge drop in tourism, a very hard time selling farm produce, etc). So sure, the number of people that started glowing green and exploded is small (:-), but the financial and social repercussions of the Fukushima incident are not small at all. "Number of people that died" isn't the only statistic to look at when evaluating such things...
veidr 13y ago
Personally, my weighting factors are: 1. Number of people who died, or will die, weighted by how they die -- painful slow death by internal organ cancers being pretty far up there on my chart. 2. Number of people who have traumatic long term health episodes, like cancer, that degrade their quality of life. Even if it isn't until much later. 3. Number of people who have to leave long-established hometown territory and give up their homes, to live in crappy housing (way better than an American FEMA trailer, but still sad) until they die. 4. Number of children who get thyroid cancer caused by radioactive contamination that would not have otherwise -- even though Japan has arguably the best health care system in the world, and virtually all of these kids will live. Still sucks to have cancer and surgery when you're 8. 5. Incidental casualties (including cleanup workers). The actual local Fukushima plant boss became something of a hero after telling Tokyo (as in Tokyo Electric Power Company) to fuck off and calling his own shots during the worst of it. He died of cancer[1] last year, and also had a brain hemorrhage last year, ostensibly none of which was related. But there were a lot of young workers that went in there and like, did manual labor. They might be alive, but a lot of them aren't all gonna be fine. 6. Degradation of the best food on earth. I read in a Seattle newspaper (I'm pretty sure) that effectively all tuna now commercially caught have higher levels of cesium than before Fukushima. First the mercury, now this? NO FUCK YUO!! And here in Japan it's like spinach, potatoes, meat, fish... they can only test like 0.1% of it (which is bullshit but that is another post). 7. And, since I am me, my personal standard of how fucked it was accrues bonus points for: each of the 17 times I was forced to choose between not bathing or bathing in cesium water (we did Perrier sponge baths at first but then bottled water became too scarce to use other than for drinking), the 1 time my local supermarket (high-end rich-people supermarket btw) had to hand me a letter apologizing for selling me beef with illegally high cesium levels, and the 50 hours I spent roaming Tokyo in search of clean bottled water in the aftermath. I just can't see any reality where Fukushima isn't worse than New Horizon, on balance. Not that New Horizon wasn't bad. It just wasn't one of the worst disasters since I have been alive, where Fukushima was. [1]: ht NO tp NO NO SORRY ://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/09/fukushima-nuclear-disaster-masao-yoshida-dead-cancer_n_3568293.html [2]: Man I really thought I was linking to NY Times, which I will now: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/world/asia/masao-yoshida-nuclear-engineer-and-chief-at-fukushima-plant-dies-at-58.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/world/asia/masao-yoshida-n... At least that accidental huffington link explains why my computer had been audibly churning out all sorts of sad (but unrelated) human interest stories while I typed that post....

pnathan 13y ago

I agree that TEPCO is not earning itself any medals, and the Japanese government is not earning medals in terms of checking TEPCO's foolery.