Japan's Quake Could Have Irradiated the Entire United States

from Counterpunch:
Had the violent 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit off the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the entire United States.

The two huge reactors each at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are not designed to withstand such powerful shocks. All four are extremely close to major faults. All four reactors are located relatively low to the coast. They are vulnerable to tsunamis like those now expected to hit as many as fifty countries.
...
Heavy radioactive fallout spread from Chernobyl blanketed all of Europe within a matter of days. It covered an area far larger than the United States. Fallout did hit the jet stream and then the coast of California, thousands of miles away, within ten days. It then carried all the way across the northern tier of the United States.
...
The Obama Administration is now asking Congress for $36 billion in new loan guarantees to build more commercial reactors. It has yet to reveal its exact plans for dealing with a major reactor disaster. Nor has it identified the cash or human reserves needed to cover the death and destruction imposed by the reactors' owners.



http://www.counterpunch.org/wasserman03112011.html

Very sobering and cautionary.

from Counterpunch:
Had the violent 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit off the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the entire United States.

The two huge reactors each at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are not designed to withstand such powerful shocks. All four are extremely close to major faults. All four reactors are located relatively low to the coast. They are vulnerable to tsunamis like those now expected to hit as many as fifty countries.
...
Heavy radioactive fallout spread from Chernobyl blanketed all of Europe within a matter of days. It covered an area far larger than the United States. Fallout did hit the jet stream and then the coast of California, thousands of miles away, within ten days. It then carried all the way across the northern tier of the United States.
...
The Obama Administration is now asking Congress for $36 billion in new loan guarantees to build more commercial reactors. It has yet to reveal its exact plans for dealing with a major reactor disaster. Nor has it identified the cash or human reserves needed to cover the death and destruction imposed by the reactors' owners.



http://www.counterpunch.org/wasserman03112011.html

times. You could alert on two of those and the mods will cut it down to one. This stuff happens. Whenever I post, I always check to see if the post has appeared, even if some error message makes it seem like it didn't. Before I post, I always copy the post to the Windows clipboard so I can report it in case the original post didn't work.

There are very few intelligent human beings. We cannot afford to cater to the masses of idiots. I can't help but say this, even if it's offensive. A few people developed concepts that enabled us to create a lifestyle that avoids hardship. Just because the masses are used to something doesn't mean we need to sustain it. Whenever I think this way I immediately envision people in hospital beds. We can't just turn off the electricity. But then we also cannot make this planet uninhabitable, whether it's global warming, or irradiation.

It's time to change gears. Sorry, Koch industries.

:sarcasm:


What happened to all those No Nukes music festivals?

Thanks for the thread, ellenrr.

is already sending "lethal clouds" across the entire United States (and the rest of the world, for that matter), and has been for a very, very long time. It just doesn't have the scare factor of ooooohhhhhh...radiation! So what was the point here again?

we should add radiation to the list of common pollutants.

Just because we have one disaster on our hands, does not make another disaster a ok.

The point is that none of our major energy sources right now is 100% safe and clean. I'd love it if all our needs could be supplied by solar and wind, but I'm not willing to abandon all other options on the hope that they will be ready to do that before fossil fuels get too tight.

United States.

Deaths statistics from the fuel chain for coal and nuclear

Higher level of deaths from coal in public health would be related to the increased deaths from particulates. The deaths totals are more from coal occupation are mining.

The World Health Organization and other sources attribute about 1 million deaths/year to coal air pollution. Coal generates about 6200 TWh out of the world total of 15500 TWh of electricity. This would be 161 deaths per TWh.
In the USA about 30,000 deaths/year from coal pollution from 2000 TWh. 15 deaths per TWh.
In China about 500,000 deaths/year from coal pollution from 1800 TWh. 278 deaths per TWh.

The construction of existing 1970-vintage U.S. nuclear power plants required 40 metric tons (MT) of steel and 190 cubic meters (m3) of concrete per average megawatt of electricity (MW(e)) generating capacity. For comparison, a typical wind energy system operating with 6.5 meters-per-second average wind speed requires construction inputs of 460 MT of steel and 870 m**3 of concrete per average MW(e). Coal uses 98 MT of steel and 160 m**3 of concrete per average MW(e); & natural-gas combined cycle plants use 3.3 MT steel and 27 m**3 concrete.

Metal/Nonmetal fatalities in the USA (iron and concrete components mainly)

Coal and fossil fuel deaths usually do not include deaths caused during transportation. The more trucking and rail transport is used then the more deaths there are. The transportation deaths are a larger component of the deaths in the USA than direct industry deaths. Moving 1.2 billion tons of coal takes up 40% of the freight rail traffic and a few percent of the trucking in the USA.

Uranium mining is a lot safer because insitu leaching (the main method of uranium mining) involves flushing acid down pipes. No workers are digging underground anymore. Only about 60,000 tons of uranium are needed each year so that is 200 times less material being moved than for coal plants.

But what about Chernobyl ?
The World Health Organization study in 2005 indicated that 50 people died to that point as a direct result of Chernobyl. 4000 people may eventually die earlier as a result of Chernobyl, but those deaths would be more than 20 years after the fact and the cause and effect becomes more tenuous.

He explains that there have been 4000 cases of thyroid cancer, mainly in children, but that except for nine deaths, all of them have recovered. "Otherwise, the team of international experts found no evidence for any increases in the incidence of leukemia and cancer among affected residents."


Averaging about 2100 TWh from 1985-2005 or a total of 42,000 TWh. So those 50 deaths would be 0.0012 deaths/TWh. If those possible 4000 deaths occur over the next 25 years, then with 2800 TWh being assumed average for 2005 through 2030, then it would be 4000 deaths over 112,000 TWh generated over 45 years or 0.037 deaths/TWh. There are no reactors in existence that are as unsafe as the Chernobyl reactor was. Even the eight of that type that exist have containment domes and operate with lower void co-efficients.

Fox News.