Katsuo wrote:

dat5h wrote:

This says, in your own given article that the government (and from tepco, too as I have seen in Tokyo) has been asking all of us to stop using AC.

The leaflet TEPCO put in my letterbox asked that air conditioners be set to a higher level than usual (28º C) and warned against overdoing it due to the danger of heatstroke.

That's a great thing to hear. I haven't received anything like that recently, but definitely received letters asking us to reduce usage at the beginning of the rainy season (note this was before it became crazy hot). Also, the university has specifically asked us to not use ac much or try to not use it at all to 'help the country'. Plus they have banned most experimental equipment during the day or at peak hours. And theory students are supposed to reduce simulations as much as possible. My cluster says there are 72 available CPUs, but it queues my simulations (waits to run them till others stop) if I try to run more than 4. Maybe they (tepco) have been more responsible lately, but the universitiy's only saving grace recently was to ask us all to take simultaneous vacations.

ghinzdra wrote:

Do you guys have any data about food risk level?

I'm kind of surprised more people aren't talking about this. It's become a huge issue in Japan, but it doesn't seem to be getting much (any?) attention abroad.

I'm sure a lot of you are aware of the current beef scare - http://www.excite.co.jp/News/economy_g/ … 25003.html - This report has a "great" line at the end - セシウム汚染牛を仮に食べても「ただちに健康に影響はない」とされている。 That actually made me laugh; nice use of ただちに.

Reports from a couple of weeks back were detailing how some of the beef had been traced - http://www.shinmai.co.jp/news/20110716/ … 04000.html - They say there is no health risk to the people who consumed the beef in Nagano as the level of radiation falls below the 暫定規制値. That's all right then. Later on it says 風評被害を受ける可能性もある. Of course the risk is 'rumoured' as I don't believe anyone really has any idea what the effects of directly consuming cesium might be.

It seems that more and more people are becoming concerned enough to start asking where their food is being supplied from. It was interesting to see signs clearly stating where food is produced appearing at supermarkets in this area recently. Of course, it's one thing to know where things are produced, but quite another to figure out where the ingredients were sourced from.

bodhisamaya wrote:

I do hold protestors accountable for nothing less than murder for not considering the consequences of their actions.

I know you mean well, but I'm not sure I could call anyone a murderer just yet. As far as I can see twelve people have died so far this summer. I've been trying to ascertain the exact situation that led to their deaths, but it's difficult as the articles I've read so far all fudge over the details. I'd like to find out the full facts before putting the blame on anyone.

bodhisamaya wrote:

26 had died as of ten days ago;12,973 were taken by ambulance to the hospital.

You might well be right, but I'd still like to see more information. Under what circumstances did those 26 people die? I appreciate the figure is above the norm for this time of year, but it's also true that the rainy season finished earlier than predicted and we've had some extremely hot weather.

I think we should be understanding of the reasons behind so many people pushing for the shutdown of nuclear power plants, regardless of any personally held views. It goes without saying that Japan is going through a period of turmoil and many people continue to be fearful or at least concerned by the events surrounding Fukushima. In such a climate, it going to be difficult to have a reasoned debate for both sides of the argument; you either find yourself accused of being blind to current events or taking a knee-jerk reaction.

just a note to point to this post with links to the 3 part NHK special on this... in case there's anyone who's interested but not reading that thread...

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?p … 60#p154660

hmm...well, i'm sure there's some level of knee jerk reaction going on, but it's not all just that... in Japan's case, you can't just say well, they've been in operation for 40 years with only 1 case of failure so the actual risk is quite low...

much more complex interpretation is needed, because there are a few areas in Japan with extremely high probability of exceptionally large earthquakes that are either due soon, or are already overdue by now (we're talking between 80-99.99% over the next x years). Obviously those nuclear reactors are at much larger risk of failure. Supposing the 関東地震 had come earlier, they might have found out the risk then. (and people would be saying... we've only had nuclear power for 5 years, and look what's happened!! for eg.)

There's also the fact that farming isn't allowed in many places now... and not only in the exclusion zone. If another big earthquake does come, and the same thing happened again, there's the risk of not having enough food to feed everyone.

Although, if the NHK documentary is correct, there were things that could have been done much better to prevent the scale of the disaster in Fukushima... one of which would have been for the time taken between the decision to vent and the action not taking over 6 hours...!! That delay allowed hydrogen to build up, which eventually caused the explosions.

I guess it'd be fair to say that some of them need decomissioning immediately while others need extra security and back ups for if anything does go wrong, with a view to phase them out later. The problem is, how much spare money do Japan have for investing in other forms of power generation atm?

Last edited by IceCream (2011 August 23, 1:55 am)

... yeah, well i also wouldn't like to see Japan investing heavily in either of those industries, but given their own protocols and the amount of strong engineers in the country, i'd hope they would be investing more heavily in renewable sources of energy.

i think part of what makes failures of nuclear energy so scary IS it's unknownness. No-one is entirely sure what to expect. It's plausible to believe that the costs of accidents to do with oil or coal do have a higher cost in terms of lives lost, but they don't come close to nuclear in terms of psychological impact.

The fact that nuclear accidents affect children the most (who haven't chosen it, it's not work related injury), the fact that areas are uninhabitable afterwards for such long periods, the farms that end up with radioactive food well outside the exclusion zone, and the genetic mutations all leave a deep impression. Even if you're totally rational, doesn't it leave you with a large feeling of unease?

The idea that children in Fukushima aren't being allowed to play outside most days is hard to take as well. Balancing loss of quality of life of people who never chose to have nuclear power against loss of lives of people who directly chose to be involved is kinda difficult, i think.

The economic costs of such failures are also large, and not localised to any one particular area.

Anyway, yeah, i hope they'll be investing in renewable energy...

well yeah, i definately agree. i think it's reasonable to shut down those power plants that are most at risk of strong earthquakes in the near future while keeping others active under greater safety protocols.

given the extremely limited resources of coal and oil, as well as the fact that it's the "Kyoto Protocol" on climate change, indicating that Japan should at least be one of the leading nations in that, plus the fact that Japan doesn't even have a working army, only a self defense force... a fact that many Japanese people are proud of, and there would be a huge outcry against if it were changed, given the general feeling against war in Japan... all these things indicate that it would be very hard for Japan to go in that direction, even with the decline of nuclear power.

There's plenty of other options for them to explore, even now, i think. Renewable energy sources probably could account for a much more significant chunk of power generation in Japan than they do already, even without more development. I guess it depends on cost though... but things like solar panels aren't being used as widely as they could, and Japan gets plenty of sun. So, I don't think the government will take decisions to shut down nuclear power stations immediately lightly, and without various other plans in place...

well, when it's cloudy, it's usually windy too right? So, most bases are covered by combining both . Wave power can make up the rest. Isn't it possible to store energy from these sources too, so it can be used to cover shortfall?

Even if Japan's army is large, wouldn't it still take vast amounts of money to change it from defense to offense? The differences in strategy and weapons between those two are quite large, aren't they?

Anyway, yeah, for now writing off nuclear power completely isn't an option. But i wouldn't be sorry to see the back of it either, even if they can reuse the waste. Did you know that they can determine the age of wine produced before the first atom bomb was dropped because particles that weren't found on earth previously are found only in wine after that time?
It's hard to really measure the actual cost to human life of nuclear related products, because we're playing with stuff we really don't understand so well. The products of fission can only be determined statistically, each fission produces different products. And it's incredibly hard to determine how each of them affects the human body.
And the economic costs of failures fall much more heavily on governments, which is an issue. (BP covers the economic costs of it's own oil spills, but Tepco aren't paying for the relocation of everyone from the exclusion zone and all the tests on the foods, right?)

If all countries invest more heavily in clean, renewable energy sources, we could end all other types much more quickly. There was an interesting article in National Geographic that really stuck in my mind about how fast computer processer speeds have increased (almost exponentially) compared to efficiency of solar power, because so much money has been poured into that. So, we're talking about a long term solution, but if enough was invested, it could be doable within my lifetime even. I'd rather see more money put into that than things like reusable nuclear waste...

Last edited by IceCream (2011 August 23, 4:50 am)

well, again, there's differences between the type of radiation pilots are exposed to and the type of radiation that's present in Tohoku atm.

I'm not trying to say that oil and coal are better options, they're not. It's just that the differences between oil coal and nuclear are all measured on a scale of which is the worst... they all get minus 0 points in my book. Oil might get -200, coal -85 while nuclear only gets -30 or so.

How many minuses a particular method gets shouldn't be the way we see the world's production of power, i think. If that's the best we can do, lets go back to candles after dark or whatever, seriously.

There was an interesting article in National Geographic that really stuck in my mind about how fast computer processer speeds have increased (almost exponentially) compared to efficiency of solar power, because so much money has been poured into that. So, we're talking about a long term solution, but if enough was invested, it could be doable within my lifetime even. I'd rather see more money put into that than things like reusable nuclear waste...

um...presumedly money isn't going into solar because its not showing it's economic viability. You can't just throw money at a dead end product and expect it to get better. If solar has any merit the industry will stand on its own two feet. You're free to install a solar panel on your roof if you want to. In Japan government even subsidises this I believe, but no one would do it if they didn't.

erm, no... it's not that solar has no merit at all, it's just that there are "easier" or "cheaper" options right now, and business is driven by profitability, not long term environmental impacts, or even cost to human life. That's why governments are there to regulate stuff like that.

The point is that efficiency can be improved at pretty terrifying rates when money is put into development. The efficiency of computer processing is one example. There's no reason to beleive there's anything stopping us inventing way more efficient solar panels either. The potential is there for us to be able to fulfill all our energy needs many times over, it's just not being harnessed yet.

Long term, solar is never going to be as profitable as oil for energy companies though, because there isn't the same scarcity. Supposing that everyone was making enough power off grid to support their own needs, and they sell anything over to the grid to help power big business, where do energy companies huuuuuuge profits go to?

Once again, how much profit something makes isn't the supreme god of all decision making!!!

@Bodhisamaya: my point wasn't about how much electricity lighting uses... i just meant that perhaps we should be living more within our means electricity-wise. Do we really have to elect Pol Pot because he killed less people than Stalin or Hitler? You know what i mean...

Last edited by IceCream (2011 August 23, 7:19 am)

nadiatims wrote:

IceCream wrote:

erm, no... it's not that solar has no merit at all, it's just that there are "easier" or "cheaper" options right now, and business is driven by profitability, not long term environmental impacts, or even cost to human life. That's why governments are there to regulate stuff like that.

This is why we should adopt a polluter pays system. The increased cost in energy would trickle down to consumers and encourage less energy wasting.

To me, it seems unethical to accept tax payer dollars (steal from others) to install a solar panel on your roof that you wouldn't install san tax dollars.

huh? where's the stealing coming in? it's not just the person installing the solar power who benefits from it, everyone does. That's the exactly the point of taxes... they take from individuals to benefit society as a whole. (in theory).

Even now, if you install solar panels, it's going to be cheaper for you in the long run, as you produce some of your own power, and therefore pay less to other energy companies. That doesn't mean that people will install solar panels on their own though, as they might not have enough cash to make that initial outlay, which forces them to go on paying high rates every year to gas companies instead.

Even without a polluter pays system, more than 1/5th of households are in "fuel poverty" in the UK. http://www.poverty.org.uk/80/index.shtml
Prices of energy are obscenely high, and rising every year as the energy companies aren't passing down drops in fuel prices on to customers.

nadiatims wrote:

Energy companies lose money, but producers of solar panels make money if or when they have a viable product. So there is incentive for innovation. But solar is underfunded because investors remained unconvinced.

Solar power has been around for 40 years or so now, but it hasn't reached the efficiency it would have done if money had been invested in it. They need the investment to develop the technology, not after they already have a perfect product. The fact that investors haven't invested in it enough, despite it's potential, says something about investors, not about the potential of solar power. Yes, solar panelling is a viably profitable industry. But again, it's never going to reach the level of profitability of oil. So why should an investor invest in solar rather than oil, when they only think about short term profitability? May as well run all the oil fields dry first, and then move to solar. That would be the most profitable strategy...

Last edited by IceCream (2011 August 23, 9:16 am)