Crisis in Japan

[KAOS]

I wonder why there's no discussion thread yet? It's on my mind half of the time since Friday and I almost can't stop watching and reading news.

Especially worrying is the situation at the nuclear power plants, and it seems Japan's officials themselves don't know exactly what is happening there or what could happen the next days.
My thoughts are with the people in Japan and I hope the reactors can be cooled down without much more radioactivity leaking out.

On Saturday and Sunday, friends of mine posted some facts about the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 on Facebook, and although the situation in Japan is quite different from that in Chernobyl, it touches our old fears here in Germany, maybe as well in other parts of Europe. My mother told me yesterday how she was worried about me and my brother back then - weather changes could have caused fallout in our region. In some parts of Germany, crops were destroyed and children weren't allowed to play outside.
Radioactivity seems to be already leaking out at Fukushima, and this could give the Japanese a very hard time for the next months or years, or even decades.

Once again this disaster shows the unpredictable risks of nuclear power and it should be well pondered if the problems we (may) have in the end are worth the cheap electricity we get now.

Here, in Germany, the anti-nuclear movement is rather strong. In 2002 the German government decided to shut down all nuclear power plants in Germany until 2021. But last year, it was decided to stretch this period about another 8 to 14 years - disregarding the fact that most Germans favour an earlier shut down and big demonstrations took place against this new decision.
I hope, the incidents in Japan will lead to discussions about the use of nuclear power again, in many countries all over the world.

How do you think about this? What is the situation in your countries like?

[Joshuamonkey]

I support nuclear power.
So yeah..and it sounds like the power plant didn't even explode. There's too many factors for this to really show that nuclear power is bad.

[Doug R.]

I also support nuclear power. Chernobyl was built by the Soviets, meaning they cut as many corners as they could. While the situation at Fukushima certainly is terrifying, I'm very interested to see the final extent of the damage and fallout in from this state-of-the-art facility. If ultimately there's no loss of life, and the radiation is contained to a limited area, to me that is a major success and supports continued use of nuclear power. It's not as if 8.9 quakes happen often (and even here, nothing would have happened if their backup generators had worked. I want to know why they didn't). Nuclear is the only large-scale viable alternative to fossil fuels, and by viable, I mean not having to cover 50% of your country's landmass with windmills and solar panels. People don't like it because it's scary. Personally, I find $200 barrels of oil scarier.

[gejyspa]

For one of the degree requirements at my college, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, we had to do a 3/4 year project involving the interaction of society with technology (called an IQP). For our project, my partner and I did a longitudinal analysis of opinions about nuclear power that had been collected by 4 previous IQPs. They compared the opinions of the students from our school (conferring engineering/science degrees) and the liberal arts college down the road. The first study was conducted just prior to the Three Mile Island (TMI) incident. This of course necessitated a second poll in the year afterwards, after TMI. Then they did another study about 5-6 years later to see if opinions had gone back to previous levels. Unfortunately, this was right before Chernobyl, so they had to do a fourth after that. The results of our 240 page report (1988) was basically that while as expected, support for nuclear power waned after each of the two accidents, support for nuclear power at WPI was always higher than at the liberal arts school. The former considered it to be a safe, cheap, reliable power with a large supply of fuel and the latter as an environmental disaster waiting to happen, or having happened. But then, over the next 20 years, attitudes began to change. Suddenly, nuclear was embraced as being much much greener than fossil fuels, and, while certainly no solar/wind/geothermal, it was at least much better than being dependent on dwindling supplies of oil and coal and didn't destroy the ozone, contribute to global warming, etc., and with only no problems in 25 years, also began to be thought of as relatively safe.

I expect the penudulum is going to swing back the other way again.

[Piscator]

Considering the strength of the quake, the reactors seem to be doing pretty well, so I wouldn't see this as an argument for the general dangerousness of nuclear energy.

Also, even if the worst happens and radioactive material is leaked in large amounts, the effect would probably not be worse than any other large industrial accident, e.g. the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico last year. Radiation is a high profile danger, but we shouldn't forget that good old chemicals can be as dangerous to your health. I wouldn't be surprised if the health hazards caused by burning refineries and leaking chemical factories would turn out to be a worse consequence of the eartquake.

[SekoETC]

Idiots in Finland are hogging iodine tablets and assuming all hell is going to break loose soon. I was really cracking up when I saw this picture (particularly the panel with the nuclear fallout map).



Also there have been screen shots of loads of American idiots saying the tsunami was God's payback for Pearl Harbor, most of them ignoring the fact that the US already got their payback by using nuclear bombs and if God really wanted to punish Japan, it wouldn't be over something that they did to the US decades back, as if the US had never done anything hostile or sinful.

[Doug R.]

Also there have been screen shots of loads of American idiots saying the tsunami was God's payback for Pearl Harbor

They're probably the people that are saying the world will end on May 21st. I can't wait until the 22nd.

[Ronja Rotschopf]

I just hope the situation will not get worse than it already is

I'm against nuclear power, but I'm not in the mood to discuss it here.

[Armulus Satchula]

I think it would be awesome having windmills everywhere. I see them when I head out the turnpike and they look awesome. The only problem is the man power needed to maintain them. Nuclear seems like a much better idea and could be easily isolated in the united states, by say a desert. Japan really showed how safe they can be in extreme disaster scenarios.

[DylPickle]

Japan doesn't really have much opportunity for alternative energy outside of nuclear power. No coal, no oil, no hydro, and no land for wind/solar farms. I wouldn't feel threatened by having a nuclear plant in my region, but then again I don't live anywhere near the fault lines of the pacific rim.

[viktor]

i will make a new topic for power source discussion....
i feel concerned for japan, me and another friend of mine each changed our facebook profile pics to the Japanese flag, i also posted that to show support for the people of japan, for others to display the Japanese flag for a week as their profile pic.
i'm glad ingenuity shone through and they decided t flood the reactor core wit sea water to cool it down, a method that, has no certainty but is the only viable logical chance to avert a horror that could erupt and linger for decades.

north america is insanely lucky, i seen the footage of what waves hit the west coast, virtually nothing, but.. now that the plates shifted a Japanese island 8 feet.. not too long after the quake in Chile.. it's our turn again on this side of the pacific... be warned, the ocean is not the only fluid these waves are travelling through, the mantle carries it as well

[KAOS]

Some news on the disasters in Japan:
New York Times
Al Jazeera Live Blog
Article on Wikipedia about civilian nuclear accidents, already including Fukushima:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents

Today the ongoing Fukushima accident was declared as INES 6.
On the radio I've heard some interviews where people living in Japan describe their problems to get food and especially water. I hope they'll manage to organize logistics (especially food and water supply) soon.

In the European Union, the disaster leads to further discussions about the nuclear power plants of its members. Of course nobody expects radioactive clouds from Japan to get here (I find the pictures Seko posted really ridiculous and can hardly believe anybody could take this for serious ^^), and tsunamis also don't occur here very often , but e.g. there's a rather old German nuclear power plant in a region where there are light earthquakes from time to time and the facility is not designed to resist them. (source, in German) Two others are temporarily out of service because of an accumulation of incidents over the last years.
Apart from that, the German facilities (I can not tell about those in other countries) are not designed to resist airplane crashes and there always remains the risk of human error. As a technician I know there are limits to every technology and especially to every human dealing with this technology. There is no such thing as absolute safety, and when it comes to terms with radioactivity, which will last on for thousands of years, I see it as negligence to think we could control it completely.
Some general information about nuclear and radiation accidents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents
Article on the European reactions on the nuclear disaster in Japan: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2011/03/2011314154359989592.html#

[DylPickle]

I like how you actually make the effort to link us your sources. More effort than I have to spare.

Someone linked me this video, and it's worth sharing. It really shows just how quickly a tsunamis can come in, and how freaky it must have been to witness it in person.
Edit: Link was broken. Oh well.

[raspberrytea]

It sorts of feels like the apocalypse over here.

The TV stations are starting to go back to normal (they were covering the disaster(s) 24/7 for the first 3 days, but now the main news programs are back to their regular scheduled times, though they're about the same problems), but there's a general feeling of gloom and a lot of international students here are either going back to their home countries for good, going to other Asian countries temporarily and seeing what happens, or panicking.

Last night there was another quake (around 6?) near Mt. Fuji-- I'm in Kyoto, which is not particularly close to Tokyo, but we could feel it over here. At this rate the only thing left to happen to Japan is for Mt. Fuji to suddenly erupt. :/

[gejyspa]

Hey, we're all glad you're okay, raspberrytea.