Ray,
If Japan loses 40,000 people from this incident, it will be the worst.
But the chance of that is small.
Instead, spare a tear for the thousands of Japanese already lost from the
natural events.
The workers in the plants are suffering and will suffer, but the chance of
further serious contamination of the civilian population is not great.
Anything might still happen, but the probability is that things will be soon
under control and the main damage will be economic. I don't like the stories
of spent fuel rods in temporary water tanks losing their water, but that's a
continuing problem caused by various governments, including the US, fiddling
around unable to provide them a permanent home. At least one nuclear plant
got fed up with waiting and built above ground places (like a row of brick
garages) for spent fuel rods. But, everywhere, in the absence of a safe
place to get rid of them they sit in tanks of water. I would prefer them to
be processed (against the law) and then suitably covered in concrete be
dropped into the Pacific Trench
Suggesting 40 million dead and a destroyed country is fantasy. It adds to
the serious problem of the psychological effect on people who are
ill-educated about radioactivity and nuclear plants.
Just over 40 people died in the post-explosion at Chernobyl, from
radioactivity burns and thermal burns - many of them firefighters. Some
500-600 children suffered thyroid problems but after 10 years only 3 died.
Yet, some 200,000 abortions were arranged by women who thought their babies
would be affected by radiation, even though there seems to be no evidence of
births being affected by radiation.
But as the "radioactive cloud" drifted across Norway Europeans were fearful.
The governments provide money for people who have been adversely affected by
Chernobyl radiation - a decided incentive for people to discover their
health problems have a radioactive cause.
Chernobyl released 7 million curies, Windscale in the UK may have released
as much as 20,000 curies but maybe less..
Three-Mile Island released 15 curies.
Both Chernobyl and Windscale produced plutonium for the military.
Just as the two dangerous places you mentioned, Los Alamos and Fort Dix,
were military.
It's bad practice for you to mix into a discussion of nuclear power plants
dangerous military installations as if they prove something about nuclear
power.
It's also bad practice for you to introduce bad analogies. The Little Dutch
Boy has no connection with any aspect of nuclear power and neither do your
other analogies. They prove nothing.
I haven't counted the number of nuclear plants in the world for quite a
while. Then, there were 462. Probably many more have been built since then -
except in the US where they would save lives and illness. The new ones are
much better than the ancient ones we have now - though they have been
updated over the years. And the new ones are inherently safe.
Harry
******************************
Henry George School of Los Angeles
Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042
(818) 352-4141
******************************
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2011 5:25 PM
To: [email protected]; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,
EDUCATION'
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question:
As usual you didn't mention my point. If Japan loses forty million people
from this accident it will be the worst ever in the world but if Japan is
polluted as American industry polluted my home town, then Japan could be
useless from decades to centuries to millennia with a dead countryside.
That's the potential of nuclear power. I have no problem with toxic
solutions as long as they are regulated and successfully controlled. But
Harry, I've heard your statement about "inherently safe" so many times from
American business that it seems it would be an embarrassment to use it.
The little Dutch Boy was saying that lead paint was inherently safe for
children's furniture when I was in high school. They said the mill ponds
were inherently safe to swim in as well. The dust was fine and the lead
didn't cause harm. Then it was the gasoline with lead and then it was the
Fluorocarbons and the ozone and we need not worry about volcanoes, tornadoes
or asteroids either and on and on. Business people just say things to make
a sale. I do not share your seemed belief that private enterprise would
allow the proper regulation for such toxicity to be rendered safe enough to
boil water without an accident. I also don't share you myths about death
and safety. I find your derisiveness about the military undeserved and far
from my own experience in the military. And in the eighties I had a
student, a tenor, who took me through the laboratory at Los Alamos, he was
and is a civilian associated the Harvard physics department and lectured at
the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. He invented a
whole new method of calculation that actually worked.
At Los Alamos they told me that Nuclear Power had a 300 million dollar cap
on liability or it could not be capitalized. The subsidy according to the
news is larger today than it was then. The market will not sustain Nuclear
Power without ample government subsidies. I spoke with the people who
designed such things at Los Alamos and my Cherokee Priest teacher had been
an engineer at Three Mile Island and died from a cancer that appeared
suspiciously after that accident even though denied by the authorities, like
agent Orange in Vietnam. The official story at TMI is that no one died.
Of course they didn't count the accident where he fell thirty feet in the
cooling tower and had to have his bone marrow replaced. You may feel safe
in California but I think it's an atrocity that the artistic capital of
America and one of the great treasures of the world is down river and wind
from Indian Point, the number one hazardous reactor in America.
REH
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Harry Pollard
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2011 2:46 PM
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question:
The nuclear companies have paid out billions of dollars into the insurance
fund, which has hardly been touched. This source of power is inherently
safe. (I believe they are trying to get some of it back, but I doubt they'll
succeed.)
The two dangerous nuclear situations you mentioned in a previous post (but
forgot to explain) - that is Los Alamos and Fort Dix - were military sites,
not nuclear power plants.
Coal, which supplies half our power and which we couldn't do without, is
much more dangerous in actual yearly deaths (from rail transportation), from
premature deaths from pollution, and from diseased miners. (Some time ago,
their union chief said 500,000 miners suffer from black lung.)
We need a lot more nuclear plants but superstition and ideology is stopping
their construction. Small self-contained nuclear power plants are much in
need and would be produced plentifully if politicians though more about what
we need and less about what they need - re-election.
Harry
******************************
Henry George School of Los Angeles
Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042
(818) 352-4141
******************************
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 9:51 AM
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question:
By not contemplating the end of Japan, a nation of islands the size of
California with 133 million souls, and what that would mean in the world,
are we practicing the same kind of denial the builders of those reactors
practiced? In America there is a 300 million dollar liability limit on all
nuclear accidents built into the law. Otherwise no private company would
build one. The Japanese have to stay indoors and avoid panic while Der
Spiegal and the foreign embassies all relocate. We rarely speak of the
implications and necessity of that 300 million dollar cap on liability.
That's always ignored when discussing nuclear power. Could we call it the
Joseph Goebbels/Frank Luntz theory of politics. It's not the reality that
matters but "how you say it." "final solution" for example or all of those
names on Republican bills that destroy culture, the environment and the
middle class. If such an accident happened in America, would the upper 1%
just relocate back to their ancestral home?
REH
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 10:39 AM
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION';
[email protected]
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question:
Some years ago I was in conversation with the head of Bell Northern
Research. I said that isn't it odd that Silicon Valley and all the high
tech activities and research was located along the San Andreas Fault.
Aren't we taking chances? What will happen if we suddenly lose the people
and research/manufacturing capacity when an earthquake hits, as it surely
will one of these days or years.
He said Yes, he thinks about it too. But you know the enormous investments
are still there and the San Andreas Fault is still there and after it
happens everyone will say: Why didn't we do something about it.
Human nature and denial is the X factor in all of this.
arthur
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Gurstein
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 8:30 AM
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION';
[email protected]
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question:
This might work for the folks in Japan, but what about for GE the
designers/builders of the reactors?
M
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 8:56 AM
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION';
[email protected]
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question:
this was how it was done in times past
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_hari_kari
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Gurstein
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 12:14 AM
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION';
[email protected]
Subject: [Futurework] Question:
Should officials who, out of greed and stupidity locate a nuclear plant with
inadequate safety measures on a well-known earthquake fault line be tried
for crimes against humanity?
M
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