Earthquake in Japan....9.0...ouch!

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The crisis has renewed concern in other countries about the safety of atomic power. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said it represented a turning point for the world. She said that safety standards at her own country's nuclear power stations would now be reviewed. In the United States, Senator Joe Lieberman said Washington needed to put the brakes on the development of nuclear power plants until lessons were learned from what had happened in Japan.
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Uchhhh.
 
Inevitable to be honest. (RE Azza's post) And also ****ing stupid IMO. What do they intend to do other than moan and whine about it?
 
To be fair, if everyone gets together and works out why the pumps seem to be failing so easily, it can only help Japan have safer pumps in the future.

Haven't like 6 of the reactors in the two main plants had trouble cooling, though only 2 have had serious issues, and another pump has failed. I mean frankly as Rroff has been saying they've been designed well and its a testiment to the quality that they all didn't just flatten like pancakes after a 9.0 quake and a ridiculous Tsunami, but theres only so much you can do and so much you can theoretically work out.

Theres nothing wrong with checking the safety, especially of older plants as maybe these ones in Japan from the early 70's should have been replaced by now with newer better designs. Then again newer doesn't always mean suitable, just because theres some newer safer(in normal conditions) design for nuclear plants doesn't mean its a type suitable for withstanding near constant earthquakes and could be worse than other designs against Tsunami's.

I said pages earlier, at some point you have to weight reward vs worst case scenario. In Japan the chance of 8+ quakes and Tsunami's is exponentially higher than say, the UK, or a lot of Europe, etc.

Maybe the world needs to get together and say, we'll have more nuclear plants in sensible locations and subsidise coal plants elsewhere.

IE the uk gets two more nuclear plants instead of Japan and Japan opens two more coal plants, and together the countries try to hit emissions limits and power output, etc.


China shouldn't have any nuclear plants because its China, I just don't trust them to build safely and not on the cheap as they generally don't seem to give a crap about population health/rights, just price/speed/quantity.
 
Nitefly said:
How is reviewing the safety of nuclear plants a bad thing?
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Its not, but, lets be honest thats not what its about, its a PR stunt, politicians trying to sound like forward thinking, green, inteligent people that people will vote for, nothing more or less.

I mean, if they cared about Nuclear safety why wasn't the German politician already running health checks, and what are the chances of German plants suffering a 9.0 quake and a Tsunami, what relevance has the situation to them, nothing, its just PR stunts.

However, good things can come out of bad things, and good things happen even with the worst intentions. IE bad quake, but maybe someone comes up with a much better pump and next time they don't get damaged, or politician shamefully using a disaster to try get PR and advance their own agenda, but ends up with safer Nuclear plants.

Often good work is only done when people benefit from it.
 
drunkenmaster said:
IE the uk gets two more nuclear plants instead of Japan and Japan opens two more coal plants, and together the countries try to hit emissions limits and power output, etc.


China shouldn't have any nuclear plants because its China, I just don't trust them to build safely and not on the cheap as they generally don't seem to give a crap about population health/rights, just price/speed/quantity.
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Thats too much like common sense to happen.
 
Those plants were built in the 60 and 70's, Plant one was due to be decommissioned shortly due to its age anyway.
Things have moved on MASSIVELY since then.
Most reactors built now physically cannot "meltdown" as the reactor itself is made of material that stops the reaction.

All this talk of things melting down only means (so far) that the reactor has to be decommissioned and scrapped, incurring massive costs.
 
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Does anyone know if there are any specials on tv that I can watch about this disaster? :( Im following news feeds but wondering if there was anything else out there
 
Jon1818 said:
This really is horrible... in a country that is classed as an MEDC too :(
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Well it could have been much worse without the building regulations in Japan, most other countries would come out much worse in the same situation. As for the tsunami, the best you can do is pump around tsunami warnings in which they did but because it was so close to the shore the time was limited. You probably could out run it in a car but you would have to be driving 70 mph+

I heard that there might be a memory shortage for a while, but that is just a minuscule problem.
 
Anyone see the BBC News with the report from Minamisanriku? Basically the whole town has been destroyed. Apparently the only building left standing is the tallest building! Has a population of over 17,000, of which over half are missing!! :eek:

The pictures are insane, seriously horrible.
 
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