A few hours ago, Japan nationalized Tepco!!!!! http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2012/05/10/putting-tepcos-nationalization-in-context/ Wall Street Journal says this is the 2nd-biggest nationalization in world history. It disproves conservative economics concerning privatization and regulation. Denny, Maxiep, and all you lesser William F. Buckley intellects...you are now part of this thread. Governments are better than corporations.
I've heard these rumors for months (I used to work in nuclear). Tepco has really mismanaged this whole disaster. Lying to the government, lying to the press, lying to it's own employees, the company was living on borrowed time. I think nuclear power is something that is best left to governments. There's too much risk, the costs are too large and there is too long to wait for ROI
Personally, I'm fine with private plants that must comply with engineering and safety standards and regulation. Look at how many of the current plants have had inspections that they can blow off, or don't get inspected and have things (relatively) fall apart. First, single-loop plants are dumb, and were known to be dumb in 1970. I don't think any reactor built in 2013 would be single-loop (mixing the water that touches the hot rock with the water (in steam form) that goes through the turbines). Second, when problems are noted, they should be fixed or the plant shut down. This happens with airlines, with stadia, with homes that don't meet code, etc. ' But if it were to be nationalized, that would require government workers to run it. We barely have enough qualified electricians, mechanics, reactor operators and officers in the navy to run our fleet of submarines, and many of those who do leave the service after their commitments and get paid much more by industry to do the work. Would you be comfortable with the reactor operator next you making 30k a year because that's what the federal guidelines say they're capped at? What caliber of people would those wages draw?
Fukushima Leak Upgraded To Level 3 Severity TOKYO — Japan's nuclear regulator on Wednesday upgraded the rating of a leak of radiation-contaminated water from a tank at its tsunami-wrecked nuclear plant to a "serious incident" on an international scale, and it castigated the plant operator for failing to catch the problem earlier. The Nuclear Regulation Authority's latest criticism of Tokyo Electric Power Co. came a day after the operator of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant acknowledged that the 300-ton (300,000-liter, 80,000-gallon) leak probably began nearly a month and a half before it was discovered Aug. 19. In a meeting with agency officials and experts Tuesday night, TEPCO said radioactivity near the leaky tank and exposure levels among patrolling staff started to increase in early July. There is no sign that anyone tried to find the source of that radioactivity before the leak was discovered. On Wednesday, regulatory officials said TEPCO has repeatedly ignored their instructions to improve their patrolling procedures to reduce the risk of overlooking leakages. They said TEPCO lacked expertise and also underestimated potential impact of the leak because underground water is shallower around the tank than the company initially told regulators. "Their instructions, written or verbal, have never been observed," Toyoshi Fuketa, a regulatory commissioner, said at the agency's weekly meeting Wednesday. TEPCO acknowledged recently that only two workers were assigned to check all 1,000 storage tanks at the plant during their twice-daily, two-hour walk without carrying dosimeters, and their inspection results were not adequately recorded. TEPCO said it will increase patrolling staff to 50 from the current eight. Earlier this week, Japan's industry minister, Toshimitsu Motegi, said the government will take over cleanup efforts and allocate funding for long-term contaminated water management projects. The nuclear authority originally gave a Level 1 preliminary rating – an "anomaly," to the tank leak. Last week the authority proposed raising that to Level 3 – a "serious incident" – and it made that change after consulting with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA's ratings are designed to inform the international community, and changing them does not affect efforts to clean up the leak by the government and TEPCO. The 2011 Fukushima disaster itself was rated the maximum of 7 on the scale, the same as the 1986 Chernobyl accident. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/28/fukushima-leak-upgraded_n_3826890.html
Salaries in the corporate nuclear industry (either utilities or military use) are practically set by contracts with government, which subsidizes it. Private salaries could easily be brought down to government salaries. Hey Denny, notice he says that government salaries are lower than private, in this industry? Is government more efficient than overpaid privateers?
Taken from http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/01/chart-day-federal-government-pay-vs-private-sector-pay I think you completely misunderstood or twisted what Brian wrote. There's a difference between military pay scale and what the rest of government pays. He asked if you want guys attracted by the military pay scale wage to control the reactor near your house. FWIW, I am quite sure that guys who passed freshman physics class at the UofI where I went in the 1970s were perfectly qualified to work on reactors.
To be fair, you don't need to be a mechanical engineer to drive a truck for a living, or need 1,000 hours of piloting experience to be a stewardess. Paralegals don't have law degrees. Dental assistants attend dentists. In fact I'd avoid hiring phd's at most positions because they are insufferable assholes, anecdotally speaking.
Sure. But I'm confident that those who passed freshman physics understood the inner workings of a reactor and all the math (calculus) involved. It's not like you need to be a rocket surgeon to be able to run one.
Running a reactor is not the problem. But thanks for the expected strawman diversion. The PROBLEM is stopping an infinite production of nuclear waste and the constant spewing of it directly into the entire world's food supply. It's clear no one on Earth has a solution, regardless of their education level. Nobody. No fucking clue. Only madmen think nuclear energy is safe.
No strawman or diversion. Question was asked if you want military pay scale guys making $30K running all our reactors. Those students who passed physics represent a much bigger pool of guys to choose from. To this day, the tsunami killed way more people than the damaged reactors. Nobody on earth has a solution for tsunamis.
Yes, but everyone knows the solution for man-made nuclear reactors. Stop making them, or spend 10 times as much to make them safer, which then makes them uneconomical and ends them anyway.
Which is why we don't purposely create Tsunamis. Only a madman would create a murderous power he could not control. No credible scientists or doctors will EVER step forward to support your silly claim about death toll comparisons. They understand the slow, snowballing effects of mutation and disease from radiation poisoning of the environment from observing a semi-contained, semi-controlled Chernobyl. This is not contained nor is it controlled. Doesn't appear it ever will be.
LOL Nuclear power has provided clean power for the US, Japan, France, and many other countries for half a century. Nobody purposefully causes a reactor to fail. Car fatalities? Ralph Nader made his fame on a bogus claim that the Corvair was unsafe at any speed. Turns out the Corvette is among the deadliest cars when it comes to traffic fatalities, year after year. Yet they still make Corvettes with full knowledge that tens or hundreds of thousands will die in them. That's more than due to all the deaths from nuclear accidents in history. Obama saved the Corvette!
You hit about 10 topics there, but nice evasion. And Corvettes stopped using plastic gas tanks because of Nader's book, so problem solved there long ago.
