On Mar 22, 2011, at 9:29 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
> Jean-Christophe "And they had only planned for a wave about 1/3 that
> high, which means that most probably a wave even half that would not
> have harmed the plant anywhere as bad as it did. And that's already 7
> meters."
>
> [WS:] My point exactly, which makes my analogy to a plane crash valid.
> The pilots and Swiss air traffic controllers made a major blunder in
> 2002 which lead to a rare mid-air collision of two airliners. But
> that blunder says nothing about the safety of airline travel because
> its - well - a rare blunder, and exception not a "situation normal."
>
> This is analogous to building a 3 meter wall in a place where 15 meter
> waves can be expected. A major blunder to be sure, and heads will
> likely roll for that in due time, but expecting that such major
> blunders are common borders on paranoia.
This is a fatuous echoing of nuclear industry apologetics. Like this from Coakshott, parroting Monbiot: "The reactor in Japan causing the problem is one of the worst designs being a pressurised water cooled one, if even this has caused very little damage despite a huge natural disaster, then we can be reasonably confident about more modern designs in non-earthquake zones."
What is ignored is that the earthquake--and therefore the accompanying tsunami--was many times more powerful than the expected worst-case event on which both the reactoer security and the seawall were premised. There was no "blunder," just a universally accepted "scientific" consensus that turned out to be wrong by a factor of hundreds of percent. Which *proves* that the scientific consensus everywhere, even in what Coakshott fancifully calls "non-earthquake zones" (earthquakes can happen anywhere, as can unanticipated forms of disaster), of the stress that a nuclear facility of "modern design" can be "reasonably confidently" expected to withstand, now has to be revised upwards by a factor of hundreds of percent.
But nuclear energy was grossly uneconomic even before Fukushima. Now construction costs increase vastly, and the cost of insurance (whether private or public) soars even further out of sight. Before Fukushima no new nuclear plant could ever be built without enormous subsidy of the real actuarial insurance cost (in the US via the Price-Anderson Act) and a whole string of further subsidies and preferences going up to Obumber's call for tens of billions worth of federal guarantees for nuclear-utility bonds. Now, with the multiplication of the objective worst-case constraint and the even greater multiplication of public fear (and even hysteria) about radiation, there is no excuse at all for even the most cautious support for nuclear power.
And, by the way, why hasn't the Iranian regime taken advantage of Fukushima to get the sanctions monkey off its back by canceling their stupid going-nowhere "peaceful" nuclear construction program? That sure makes it look like their project ain't so peaceful after all!
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64