Star-viking comments

zichi is 100% correct on the corium issues.

Another 100% certainty is that Japan is losing 4 reactors which, with modification, could prevent us breaching the 1.5 degree warming threshold the IPCC has informed us about.

Brian, “cheap nuclear” was a claim relating to fusion power, not fission. Nuclear still does quite well on cost, except when competing against cheap frakked gas. As for safety - we did have an unexpected mega quake and tsunami.

papigiulio, are you seriously suggesting that TV shows should be the most reliable source of scientific evidence?

Just let these so called experts watch the tv show 'Chernobyl' or in fact send them over there to see if turning them on in a quake prone country is such a good idea.

Had a warning 10 secs before it hit, enough time to get outside.

Heavy rain due today which could cause landslides. 

Part of the Shonai area of Yamagata has struggled with land subsidence these past few years. Hope everyone stays safe.

Just like the Tohoku earthquake 8 years ago, people still haven't learnt their lesson; they ignore warnings and take huge risks of getting swept away.

A big part of the problem were the mixed warnings given to the Great Tokoku Tsunami. The Met. Agency did not have a proper tsunami reporting system for such massive events, and confused people with reports of minimal tsunamis, then larger, then uh, we don't know... gonna be big.

Long term measures:

Introduce measures to get Hikkikomoris out of their rooms and into some kind of life.

Get Japanese people to take more notice of their surroundings. Maybe someone could have jumped in to aid the kids in that case.

Get Japanese Society to stop ignoring bad behaviour by just ignoring things - whether it's guys walking down the street with knives, or kids getting battered at home.

And what next? I can see the headlines now:

Japanese Anger at Western Faux-pas

The Japanese Government has expressed its anger at the disrespect shown to the Japanese Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Abe was greeted as Prime Minister "Shinzo" on arrival at the G8 summit yesterday.

His aides expressed great displeasure at this insensitive mistake.

Summit organisers, who had been expected to apologise deeply, instead replied flippantly, increasing the ire of the Japanese party:

"We were told to call him "Abe Shinzo" in English, and had expected the Japanese party to be familiar with English language conventions - we are not going to change our language to suit one country.

Goodlucktoyou

I'm not talking from an armchair - Norn Iron born and bred.

Toasted Heretic

Partition happened because the people in the North, generally, did not want to be part of an all-Ireland republic - and the people in the South either did not recognise it, or thought "they'll wake up one day and realize they love it".

Northern Ireland is occupied, by the people of Northern Ireland: Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter.

The only way to an all-Ireland state is by fully accepting that. It may be a step too far for many.

Goodlucktoyou,

Northern Ireland and its people are no one’s to give to anyone. The Good Friday Agreement, massively endorsed North and South enshrines that. We are not tokens in anyones game.

Toasted Heretic

The “occupied six counties”? You do realise that such language is hardly even used by Sinn Fein these days. The people who do use it are some Irish Americans, and the people who murdered Lyra McKee

Prior to the man made Fukushima nuclear disaster, nuclear energy generated 27% of total power and renewable energy less than 3%. Today, that is reversed with nuclear energy generating less than 3% and renewables 20%.

Inaccurate: the current renewables stats include hydro generation, so pre-accident stats should be around 10%, and current (2017) around 16.7%.

See "Status of Renewable Energies in Japan" from the Institute for Sustainable Energy Polices.

Kazumichi,

Don't buy food from Fukushima.

If water is bad up there, seafood the should be worse.

Thanks so much for your support, as if the people of Fukushima haven't been through enough in the past 8 years.

Ally,

I'm sorry to disagree with you but the UK is Britain and N Ireland. The British are the English, Scottish and the Welsh. The native people of N Ireland are not british. They are Irish. 

Look, the accepted demonym for people from the UK is British. People from Northern Ireland are UK Nationals. Now it would have been nice to come up with a demonym that obviously encompasses the whole of the UK, but what would that be?

People from Northern Ireland aren't second-class citizens, to be ejected from their country at will.*

No one said they were. What I said was: 

NI needs to separate and either form a united ireland with the irish republic or become its own country.

That's hardly calling them second class citizens. Please don't put words in my mouth.

From my point of view that statement is saying that you don't want us in the UK, and we should leave. That's a choice for the people of Northern Ireland to make, as citizens of the UK.

Aly,

Maybe its time for Northern Ireland to leave the UK. Geographically, culturally and historically it is Irish not British.

What is "British"?, it is the identity of the UK.

Even our passports say the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, yet Northern Irish are considered British.

That's because it is the right of anyone born in the UK to be a UK National - AKA British

For a while it didn't matter, because we were all in the EU, but now that Britain is leaving, NI needs to separate and either form a united ireland with the irish republic or become its own country.

People from Northern Ireland aren't second-class citizens, to be ejected from their country at will.

Firefox,

Britain was quite happy to rip many other countries apart, e.g, when 80% of Ireland wanted independence in 1921, Britain decided it had to respect the wishes of the 20% (descendants of British colonial planters) in north-east Ireland , and ripped the country apart, causing decides of strife. 

There was no referendum on Irish Independance, so you can't say "80% of Ireland wanted it". There was a guerrilla war that had demands they wanted met, people in the northeast of Ireland who did not want those demands met, and a nation sapped from the ardors of the Great War which wanted a tolerable solution. Forcing Northern Ireland into the South would have lead to a massive bloodbath of a Civil War, one which would probably cause massive loss of life in GB too.

Britain also ripped apart the Indian subcontinent and several African colonies, imposing artificial borders.

The peoples of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh did not accept any possible solutions to the problem of becoming a nation together, partition was inevitable.

As for artificial borders - well, all borders are imposed in some fashion.

Poor reporting, as usual. The ministry ruling allows compensation to be made available, but does not ascribe the illness to radiation exposure - just that it may have had an effect.

AzzprinAug. 1  07:37 pm JST

When walking on a road it is safer to walk on the right (for countries that drive on the right, walk on the left) so you are looking at oncoming traffic.

Japan seems to have the idea that everyone should keep within the rules, and so any problems are caused by people breaking the rules. So you are supposed to "go with the flow". Also why people don't check for traffic at pedestrian crossings.

BTW, good to see another Norn Ironer here.

Jandworld

Where the hell to put the remains of this since 3/11 mostly useless energy source?

The resumption of Kyuden’s reactors is enabling it to lower rates and decommission its remaining fossil fuel plants. So much for “useless”.

And to expand on Luis’s comment above - caffeine is more lethal than plutonium, and like reactor-grade plutonium, is very, very hard to make into bombs.

Maintenance issues at virtually mothballed nuclear plants hardly risk workers' safety - unless the reactors magically get a fresh fuel load teleported into their cores.

Typical Kyodo fear-mongering.

Civitas Sine Suffragio Today  12:24 pm JST

I have long felt that the Ryukyuans need to get more assertive towards Tokyo and Washington. If they won't listen to peaceful protest, then they will need to take it to the next level - just as the Irish did against the Brits. Sometimes violence is the only answer.

A very shallow comparison, and very shallow thoughts. I do not know if you are talking about the Irish War of Independence, or the Northern Irish Troubles, but in the latter Ireland already had Home Rule coming in, but it wasn't enough for the hardliners. As for the Troubles, if you want to make a fractured, tortured society, by all means go for mass bombings, shootings, abductions, and torture - but don't turn around afterwards and decry the pain and anguish of those left behind, or try and scramble up the blood-soaked hill to claim the moral high-ground.

Er, if the original pack weighed 10-14 kgs as papigiulio says above, then we can assume that the bulk of it still remained inside the pack, making it nothing in the least like 'a flying piece of silk cloth', but more like a flying hammer.

Back in the day a chute failure was apparent when the canopy failed to inflate properly, to did not come out of the pack at all. In the former, the chute was cut away with a knife, and the reserve opened - usually from a pack near the stomach. In the latter, there was no need to jettison the main chute, as there was no risk of entangling it with the reserve.

Apparently in modern systems the reserve is also in the back-pack, but the jettisoning procedure is virtually the same - no dropping of parachute packs.

Searching for "canopy emergencies" on Google will bring up more detailed accounts.

kurisupisu,

Thank you so much for supporting the people of Tohoku.

You might want to check both historical and current radioisotope contamination maps: both Sakunami and Yamadera suffered very little contamination, and now there's none.

Goodlucktoyou,

You forgot to read your link:

The sands took up and retained radioactive cesium originating from the disaster in 2011 and have been slowly releasing it back to the ocean.

So, not corium - released caesium.

"No one is either exposed to, or drinks, these waters, and thus public health is not of primary concern here," the scientists said in a study published October 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

And little or no danger.

@Lover

I'm afraid you are completely wrong. Tsunami effects from 1960 were used in the initial plans, and tsunami countermeasures were increased twice in the 2000s because of new information.

The 2001 paper was firmed up in 2008 and TEPCO did investigations.

By the way, what is it with people who castigate TEPCO over allegedly not taking countermeasures for the 2011 tsunami, but have no interest in finding out who let 20,000 people die in the same event?

Reference:http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/nu/fukushima-np/interim/images/111202_01-e.pdf

Hopefully sane heads will prevail and get Reactors 6 & 7 operating.

YongYang,

Japan seems to ignore sediment deposits etc from tsunami events in the distant past

Japan does not. The Jogan Tsunami was being investigated, unfortunately some vital information was missing: it was discovered after the 2011 Tsunami that the inland reach (and so power) of the tsunamis were being underestimated. Scientists had previously thought that sediment deposits showed the reach of ancient tsunamis - in 2011 sediment some deposits only went 60% of the inundation limit. (See Goto et al, The future of tsunami research following the 2011 Tohoku-oki event)

I'm not sure it's really a basket case, but it certainly would be one option.

wipeoutDec. 26  07:16 pm JST

They're decontaminating the town.

"Partially decontaminating part of the town."

Fair enough. How's about "decontaminating the town enough to lower exposure so that residents can permanently return.

Whether it's really worth considerable expense and effort for an evacuated town with a former population of just 6500 people is another matter. As you're very pronuclear, I expect you'd argue that it is.

Nope, that's a good point. Plenty of towns and villages across Tohoku are in terminal decline. Apparently Akita-ken will drop below half a million inhabitants by 2040. I once lived in a town that had "no habitation zones". Noting to do with contamination, it was just the expense of keeping access to these areas open in winter was becoming prohibitive.

A serious nuclear accident has destroyed this town and the lives (as they were) of its former inhabitants, and the chances of it recovering are not high.

The town has not been 'destroyed'.

Much of the population will not return, the land is poisoned, the fields are untended, and the properties have been largely abandoned for many years and will have considerably deteriorated. At the best of times, small communities like this in Japan have an ageing problem; this will be exacerbated by the fact that it is not going to attract young people back, and a major source of employment in the area, the power plant, is defunct. The place has few prospects.

It's a funny thing, but if the nuclear plant was not there, the town would likely be dying anyway. Perhaps it should be used as a site for low-level waste storage?

In that respect, it actually is hard to see the positive side of this. Frankly it looks cosmetic, and expensively so.

Well, the problem is (and this is the same across Japan) that most inhabitants want to recreate a Showa-Era Furusato that never existed. They want NHK morning drama-esque surroundings, and everything right with the world. The best thing to do with the town is to have a good deep knowlegable discussion about future possibilities.

kurisupisu,

And there are still thousands of tons of melted atomic fuel in the ground, somewhere....

The term you're looking for is "resolidified atomic fuel", and the 'somewhere' is in the containment vessels.

If one walks from home to the station and back again and lives in a hermetically sealed bubble, then it might be safe.

I think it's fairly safe to assume they'll be clearing more than the routes to the station

But living in an area where radioactive substances swirl around at the touch of wind and rain and every time a farmer starts burning cut grass etc (often, they do) and in that smoke will be radioactive elements waiting and ready to be inhaled.

Do they 'swirl around' at the touch of wind and rain? I was under the impression that they percolated into the soil and then were taken up by local plants, hence the grass-cutting in the article.

As for farmers - well, there's another bonus: those lung-ailment causing fires will have to be stopped.

Best to stay clear no?

No.

Goodlucktoyou,

It might be instructive to add my post to your reply:

"The grass takes up radiocaesium from the soil, so if you cut it and remove it, it removes some contamination from the area.  Then it rains, snows and typhoons."

I bolded the part of my post you seem to have overlooked.

Have you herd of strontium BTW?

You mean the aromic element with atomic number 38? Gosh, no.

Designer

Cut grass along the streets

"Just exactly how does that "decontaminate" the area?"

The grass takes up radiocaesium from the soil, so if you cut it and remove it, it removes some contamination from the area.

Disillusioned

@Shane Sommerville - so much negativity from everyone

"Ok, so what are the positives?"

They're decontaminating the town.

Joeintokyo

So radiation cleanup going into 2018 involves a a cheap cloth mask and a helmet? Makes my thyroid hurt just looking at that photo.

Radioactive Iodine causes the thryroid problems. None of that left around.

The court said the nuclear regulators' risk estimate for Mount Aso, 130 kilometers southwest of the plant, was inadequate, citing a past eruption tens of thousands of years ago that caused pyroclastic flows that exceeded that distance.

And Mt. Aso is a very different mountain, because of those explosions. However, it is hilarious that the judge uses this as a reason, because if an eruption like Aso4 occured without warning now, nuclear meltdowns would be the least of our worries. You'd be talking about millions of immediate deaths, millions more over the next few weeks, and more than that later from the ash choking Japan.

Also funny that the judge doesn't seem to understand that what we think of as "Japan" now, and what was there at the time of the Mt. Aso explosion in question is very different: The Seto Inland Sea did not exist, and Japan was directly connected to the Asian continent - this is because of the low seas in the 'ice age'. Pyroclastic flows are going to have a harder time crossing the Seto Inland Sea.

All this case proves is that the plaintiffs and the judge know very, very little science.

Goodlucktoyou,

The biggest problem is Japanese dependence on stupid nuke

But 'stupid nuke' is a very low emitter of greenhouse gasses.

japan is perfect for solar, geothermal, wave and wind production. But...

But... is it? And what about the energy storage needs?

Disillusioned,

Um, you say what? How about Takata airbags for starters? They are up to 26 deaths and over 100 injutires. ...

Maybe you missed it in your haste to write a scathing reply, but I wrote "recent "quality scandals". Maybe you remember them? Nissan, Subaru, Kobe Steel, Mitsubishi Materials - ring any bells?

Tokyo-Engr

I was expecting this.....

Good questions, but be careful, the people who populate this site are unforgiving of people who attempt to burst their bubbles.

I read recently that the problem seems to lie with acceptance of tokubetsu saiyō, that is products which don't quite meet the specs, but because the spec is 'over specced' there is a willingness to accept them.