22 replies to this topic

[zman]

Relocate them to Detroit.

It's Michigan's only possible hope.

OMG, that was a good one

[Sooth]

Maybe half of Japan is sparsely populated in the first place because of the terrain. The livable parts are in the coastal areas. One of the reasons the plants were located where they were is because it was removed from the most densely populated areas. It will cost them a lot to clean this up, one estimate is about $200 billion. But the Japanese own more than $600 billion in US treasuries. In addition to having all their own government debt internally financed.

Japan population density map:



...and reactors....



Even in the case of a reactor meltdown, 95% (guess) of Japan's industrial capacity should remain intact -- and that's still more than the industrial capacity of the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia combined.



http://www.unscear.o...rnobylmaps.html

Not that this isn't a huge disaster. But our own finances in this country are a huge disaster, too. And what happens when our Japanese bankers call in our loans?

But this is all fundamental. Now back to technical analysis!

[dhroz]

Relocate them to Detroit.

It's Michigan's only possible hope.

Can't do that. The Koreans have beat them to it. Koreans and Japanese do not get along well.

[dhroz]

Maybe half of Japan is sparsely populated in the first place because of the terrain. The livable parts are in the coastal areas. One of the reasons the plants were located where they were is because it was removed from the most densely populated areas. It will cost them a lot to clean this up, one estimate is about $200 billion. But the Japanese own more than $600 billion in US treasuries. In addition to having all their own government debt internally financed.

Japan population density map:



...and reactors....



Even in the case of a reactor meltdown, 95% (guess) of Japan's industrial capacity should remain intact -- and that's still more than the industrial capacity of the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia combined.



http://www.unscear.o...rnobylmaps.html

Not that this isn't a huge disaster. But our own finances in this country are a huge disaster, too. And what happens when our Japanese bankers call in our loans?

But this is all fundamental. Now back to technical analysis!

Plants are constructed near large bodies of water such as oceans, lakes, and rivers because the weight of the reactor cores. Reactors must be floated to their final position on a large barge. The equipment used to off load the reactors often has a capacity of 1200 tons or greater.

[pdx5]

Maybe half of Japan is sparsely populated in the first place because of the terrain. The livable parts are in the coastal areas. One of the reasons the plants were located where they were is because it was removed from the most densely populated areas. It will cost them a lot to clean this up, one estimate is about $200 billion. But the Japanese own more than $600 billion in US treasuries. In addition to having all their own government debt internally financed.

Japan population density map:



...and reactors....



Even in the case of a reactor meltdown, 95% (guess) of Japan's industrial capacity should remain intact -- and that's still more than the industrial capacity of the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia combined.



http://www.unscear.o...rnobylmaps.html

Not that this isn't a huge disaster. But our own finances in this country are a huge disaster, too. And what happens when our Japanese bankers call in our loans?

But this is all fundamental. Now back to technical analysis!

Very cogent post!

And Japan has and will lose 10,000 times more people to earthquakes and tsunami's than they will lose to
reactor malfunctions. And the same ratio applies to United States if we are hit by a 8 or 9 magnitude quake
near any populated area.

[milbank]

If TWO direct hits of plutonium bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki failed to
make Japan inhabitable, I would'nt count on any part of Japan becoming inhabitable.
In case you have not heard both cities are rebuilt and thriving.

do you know how much plutonium you are comparing .. it doesnt sound like it.
reactors compared to a war head think again.
like i said my idea is way out of the box ... just like the others that have materialized over the months.

no im not expecting half of Japan to become inhabitable but
if im right about a 50-100 mile area around this reactor...... they are not going to send in CAT Dossers and other equipment to Clean Up & rebuild the area..
...... hell people might not live thru the completion of the process.

this is much different than Katrina or .. an Oil spill ... more like Chernobyl .

this event is not close to being over yet and again could get worse before better .. i've never studied the populations around Chernobyl
but a quick web search shows examples of small cities prior to 1986 of 50,000 have about 800 people living there now, that's a huge percentage loss...think of it in dollars.

this reactor area in Japan will be most likely be condemned for decades.

for the record ... time will tell

I agree and have the same concerns Mr. Dev. As far as Katrina goes, people are naive if they believe the PR being put out by the government in regard to the destruction, or lack thereof, in the Gulf of Mexico. Nonetheless, you are correct that the oil spill is not comparable in destruction of humans to the radiation released by a reactor meltdown.

Chernobyl?

Read this article to get an anecdotal example of one victim's experience of it. This person wasn't even born when it happened. She is now a correspondent for Reuters.

"Witness: Growing up in Chernobyl's fallout zone"

http://news.yahoo.co...ernobyl_belarus

[nimblebear]

Maybe not all but half of Japan,... That's a lot of people .

Anyone have a model for that one ?

If you think im way out of the box with this thought ... you may want to compare it to my March 3rd Post here ...where i use the word catastrophe

Not way out of the box at all. The plausibility is growing by the hour, especially considering if its confirmed that the US actually tried to get them to shut down 5 gigawatts of nukes, in return for some "super soakers" and technology to put a stop to the meltdown pronto. People in the US "knowtank" realized how bad this was days ago, and the pre-cautions that TEPCO, had not taken previous to the event. Japan ministries are not telling anyone anything about the true severity of the situation. In fact, notice how nearly all outlets have gone remarkably quiet in the past 12-18 hours. This is a VERY bad omen folks. If there were even the slightest good news, it'd be traveling fast.

Pray for these folks.

[nimblebear]

ALSO....

you may wish to read a "paper by Alvarez et al. (2003a; see also Thompson, 2003)" at the NAP.edu site here, ( http://www.nap.edu/o...=11263&page=45) which considered something the nuclear industry isn't too fond of talking about, namely the loss of cooling water in spent-rod storage. This part in particular:

"Alvarez and his co-authors concluded that such an event would lead to the rapid heat-up of spent fuel in a dense-packed pool to temperatures at which the zirconium alloy cladding would catch fire and release many of the fuel’s fission products, particularly cesium-137. They suggested that the fire could spread to the older spent fuel, resulting in long-term contamination consequences that were worse than those from the Chemobyl accident. Citing two reports by Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL, 1987, 1997), they estimated that between 10 and 100 percent of the cesium-137 could be mobilized in the plume from the burning spent fuel pool, which could cause tens of thousands of excess cancer deaths, loss of tens of thousands of square kilometers of land, and economic losses in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The excess cancer estimates were revised downward to between 2000 and 6000 cancer deaths in a subsequent paper (Beyea et at., 2004) that more accurately accounted for average population densities around U.S. power plants. "

One of the conclusions of this was that Alvarez and coauthors suggested that wet-cooled rods should be moved to dry storage within 5-years.

What does Japan lack ? Availability of dry land not already occupied by something more important than spent fuel.

[pdx5]

Some facts to think about. Every banana you buy is given a dose of radiation. Every X-Ray you receive including dental have radiation. Women who received many chest X-Rays for whatever problem have much lower incidence of breast cancer. Actual case: Over many years 10,000 people were accidentally exposed to 4 times the "safe level" living in a certain building. Their cancer rates were studied and found to be 1/17 of general population in the same age bracket. Point is that small levels of radiation may actually be beneficial. The panic over minor radiation is overblown. Big difference between Fukushima and Chernobyl reactors is that the latter did not have a containment shield. 3 Mile Island was not a major disaster because it did have a containment shield which did not get compromised. Unless there is evidence that containment shield for fuel rods is compromised, Fukushima will not rise to the level of Chernobyl.

[milbank]

Some facts to think about.

Every banana you buy is given a dose of radiation.
Every X-Ray you receive including dental have radiation.
Women who received many chest X-Rays for whatever problem have much lower incidence of breast cancer.
Actual case: Over many years 10,000 people were accidentally exposed to 4 times the "safe level" living in a
certain building. Their cancer rates were studied and found to be 1/17 of general population in the same age bracket.
Point is that small levels of radiation may actually be beneficial. The panic over minor radiation is overblown.

Big difference between Fukushima and Chernobyl reactors is that the latter did not have a containment shield.
3 Mile Island was not a major disaster because it did have a containment shield which did not get compromised.
Unless there is evidence that containment shield for fuel rods is compromised, Fukushima will not rise
to the level of Chernobyl.

Yeah riiiiiight, exposure to the "minor radiation" being emitted from Fukushima is like eating a banana or getting a chest X-Ray. It's beneficial. It's good for them!

Edited by milbank, 18 March 2011 - 01:21 AM.