Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster In Japan

[ChriswUfGator]

We bring good things to life.....except Nuclear power plants

"We make things glow green!"

[Ocklawaha]

Time to call in the Russians, those boys volunteered to go right in and pour the cement into their own disastrous experience with Nukes...

Weird thing is, had these been OFFSHORE POWER SYSTEMS generators, NOTHING WOULD HAVE HAPPENED! The Naval ships in the area didn't even feel it as long as they weren't tied to the pier.

Oops I almost forgot, they did that then they all died!  My highest respect for giving their lives (knowing full well they wouldn't return) to save their fellow countrymen.

OCKLAWAHA

[JeffreyS]

And of course they are still dumping water in the ocean.

[Timkin]

Guess you just cannot fix stupid.

[hillary supporter]

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/and-then-there-were-three-three-full-

wow.  it turns out that all three reactors had 100% meltdowns.  They came very close to losing all of northern Japan.

Since whatever they've told us about the Fukushima plant has only been part of the story, I wonder if this means No. 4 (the one that's leaning -- remember, the cat's on the roof!) is melting down as we speak:

 

Tokyo (CNN) -- Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday.

    The nuclear group's new evaluation, released Monday, goes further than previous statements in describing the extent of the damage caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

    The announcement will not change plans for how to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the agency said.

I feel compelled to bring some nagging points up that this disaster has put on my mind.
Number of deaths from Tsunami, earthquake   12,000+ with about 10,000 still missing.
number of deaths from nuclear disaster at Fukushima plant   1 (a worker was struck and killed by a crane.
Do we have definitive numbers on the radioactivity in the surrounding water of the plant?
I recall all experts declaring the radioactivity that passed over the US from the disaster as insignificant.
China announced recently that they will continue with the aim of 150 nuke plants by 2030s.
In terms of replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power, should we reconsider it as a distinct possibility, especially after this tragedy, where all the faults have been pointed out and remedied in 2011?

[hillary supporter]

Not encouraging.

[Debbie Thompson]

Not encouraging...but should be studied.  Mutations are regular occurences.  This one could be related to the nuclear accident, or it may have occurred naturally anyway and be totally unrelated.

[BridgeTroll]

In response to the nuclear disaster in Japan... Germany is shutting down ALL of its reactors...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,767900,00.html

06/10/2011

Higher Prices, Higher Emissions

The Downside of Germany's Nuclear Phaseout

Most Germans support Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to phaseout nuclear energy in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. But not all the consequences will be welcome. A new study shows that the country's emissions reduction targets may not be met -- and electricity bills may rise as well.

It was hardly an inspired performance. German Chancellor Angela Merkel took to the podium on Thursday in the Bundestag, the federal parliament, to give a keynote speech on her government's plans to permanently phase out nuclear energy in Germany. But her exhaustion -- the product of having just flown in from a three-day visit to Washington -- was impossible to ignore.

And yet, suddenly, just as Merkel pledged that the last reactor in Germany would be shut down by 2022, applause erupted in the plenary hall. Not, though, from her own party. Rather, it was the opposition Greens who stood up clapping and cheering.

It was a moment which perfectly highlighted the difficult political about-face that Merkel and her conservative governing coalition has recently completed -- from supporting nuclear energy last autumn to rejecting it this spring. And the repercussions of her decision have yet to make themselves fully apparent.

That not all of them are good for Merkel's government has already become clear. Stephan Kohler, head of the German Energy Agency, told SPIEGEL that one significant side-effect of the phase out could be that the country will fail to reach its emission reduction goals. "Large energy companies are now turning more to cheap lignite (brown coal) to replace atomic energy and less to natural gas, which is more efficient but also more expensive," Kohler said.

Lower Emissions Reduction

Germany hopes to reduce its emissions of CO2 by 40 percent by 2020 relative to 1990. But a study from Germany's Federal Environment Agency indicates that current measures "will only result in an emissions reduction of 30 to 33 percent."

In addition, the removal of atomic energy from Germany's power mix and the resulting need to invest billions in the development of alternative energies and a new power grid could result in higher energy bills. "The phase out of nuclear energy is not going to be free," Rainer Brüderle, Merkel's economics minister until recently, told SPIEGEL. Brüderle, who is now floor leader for the Free Democrats, Merkel's junior coalition partner, added that "we have to be honest with the people. We will all have to pay, the power customers, the taxpayers."

Merkel's change of course on nuclear energy came about, as she said once again in her Thursday speech, as a result of the atomic catastrophe in Fukushima, Japan, following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami there. It calls for eight of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors to be shut down immediately and the remaining nine to be taken successively offline by 2022. In addition, her plan calls for measures to boost the growth of alternative energies in an effort to fill the gap.

It is, in essence, a plan remarkably similar to one passed by her Social Democratic predecessor Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. And it is one which has put Merkel on a collision course with some of Germany's largest energy companies.

The Deindustrialization of Germany

One of her most vocal critics has been Jürgen Grossmann, head of energy giant RWE. At the end of May, he complained publicly of an "eco-dictatorship" before writing a letter directly to Merkel earlier this week blasting details of her plans.

On Friday, he took the battle a step further, warning in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung that Merkel's phase out plan could result in large companies turning their backs on the country as a result of climbing energy prices. "The de-industrialization (of Germany) won't come all at once. It will be a gradual process," Grossmann said. "Soon we will have to do without entire industrial sectors: companies like BASF and Thyssen-Krupp won't be here anymore."

There has even been growing criticism from within her own party. Indeed, many within her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) now want her to call a party convention to focus solely on the issue of atomic energy.

"It would be good were the party to discuss such a fundamental change as the nuclear question at a special party convention," Peter Hauk, CDU floor leader in Baden-Württemberg state parliament, told SPIEGEL. "Such a discussion would be good for the party." Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, head of the CDU in the state of Saarland, agrees. "Given the effort to find broad societal consensus on the issue," she told SPIEGEL, "a discussion within the party would certainly seem appropriate."

Merkel made no indication on Thursday that she was intending to acquiesce to such demands. "The dramatic events in Japan were a turning point for the world and a turning point for me personally," she said. "I have revised my views."

With reporting by Veit Medick

[Timkin]

Wonder if there are consequences of Shutting down Reactors?

It is unfortunate that the reactors have all melted down.  Since Chernobyl has never been occupied since, I have to assume a similar situation is in place in Japan. Because of the potential for recurring earthquakes , I have to wonder how this could ever be fully contained.... presume the earthquake activity directly relates to the condition of the containment vessels... and it seems to me the potential for leaking radiation into the soil and surrounding ocean will be ever present.

[BridgeTroll]

Wonder if there are consequences of Shutting down Reactors?

It is unfortunate that the reactors have all melted down.  Since Chernobyl has never been occupied since, I have to assume a similar situation is in place in Japan. Because of the potential for recurring earthquakes , I have to wonder how this could ever be fully contained.... presume the earthquake activity directly relates to the condition of the containment vessels... and it seems to me the potential for leaking radiation into the soil and surrounding ocean will be ever present.

Funny you should ask...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,768201,00.html

06/13/2011
  Germany's Nuclear Phaseout
Irate Power Companies to Sue Berlin For Damages

By Frank Dohmen and Alexander Neubacher

Germany's power companies are preparing to take legal action against the government's decision to shut down their nuclear power plants. They say the new closure plan is too rigid and will prove more costly to them than the previous nuclear phaseout agreed by a center-left government in 2000.

In the Krümmel nuclear power plant near Hamburg, located on the bank of the Elbe river, Germany's nuclear exit is already a reality. The plant hasn't produced a single kilowatt-hour of electricity for almost two years, after being shut down following various incidents, such as a fire that broke out at the site and a problem with a transformer. Even the owners, E.on and Vattenfall, were doubtful that the plant would ever go back into operation.

But the reactor, which has essentially been shut down, is of considerable value, at least at the moment, and the companies have decided to defend their property. The power company bosses are threatening to sue for billions of euros in compensation, arguing that the decision by the center-right coalition to phase out nuclear energy is even more costly for them than the original closure plan agreed by a previous center-left government in 2000. They stand a good chance of getting the money they claim they are entitled to.

The dispute centers around how the reactors are to be shut down. The government wants to provide each power plant with a fixed expiration date. The plan is based on a proposal by Horst Seehofer, the chairman of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) party, who prevailed against the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) in negotiations over the phaseout. The CSU and FDP are junior coalition partners to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats.

The FDP would have preferred a more flexible handling of the plants' remaining life spans, and its chairman, Philipp Rösler, is dissatisfied with the outcome of the negotiations.

Fierce Reaction

For the plant operators, the current plan is the worst of all closure methods debated to date. In the past, they calculated the profitability of their nuclear power plants on the basis of their remaining power output, not in terms of their remaining life spans of weeks and months. The companies are now accusing the government of wiping out these remaining nuclear power production rights with a stroke of the pen.

Consequently, their reaction has been fierce. Jürgen Grossmann, the head of power company RWE, wrote that the phaseout decision constitutes a gross breach of their property rights. E.on CEO Johannes Teyssen says that the companies will incur substantial financial losses. Vattenfall CEO Oystein Loseth is demanding "fair compensation for our losses as a result of the government's decision."

The nuclear plant operators are citing agreements they made with the government of Social Democrats and Greens in 2000 under then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, in which each nuclear power plant was allotted a specific amount of electricity that it could feed into the grid until it was shut down. The German Environment Ministry is keeping track of the relevant figures for each plant. According to the plan, as of early January, the 17 German nuclear power plants still had a remaining entitlement to produce about 981,000 gigawatt hours.

Old reactors also have such accounts. For instance, the Krümmel plant near Hamburg, which has already effectively been shut down, still has a contingent of about 88,000 gigawatt hours. The plant operators can sell this amount of electricity and transfer it to other power plants. In other words, the Krümmel contingent is worth a lot of money -- or at least it was, until the government came up with the idea of expiration dates.

The timetable the government has established for the nuclear phaseout is so tight that the utilities will be unable to fully utilize their remaining contingents. As a result, the executives argue, they no longer have the option of transferring electricity contingents. The market, they say, is dead.

'Poorly Drafted Law'

Officials at the companies' headquarters in Essen and Düsseldorf say they will probably file a constitutional complaint as soon as German President Christian Wulff has signed the phaseout law. Specifically, they will invoke Article 14 of the German constitution, which addresses the question of whether the companies' assets are being expropriated, and if they are therefore entitled to compensation. After that, the amount of compensation would be negotiated in civil courts. According to internal calculations, the industry envisions a potential sum of â,¬20 billion ($29 billion). The burden would ultimately fall on taxpayers.

Some experts expect that the nuclear industry could very well win its legal battle against the government's phaseout plan. "I have rarely seen such a poorly drafted law," says Wolfgang Renneberg, who used to be responsible for reactor safety at the Environment Ministry.

The FDP also has its misgivings. General Secretary Christian Lindner says that he is following the energy companies' legal intentions with concern. "We warned against this and would like to have taken precautions against this risk," says Lindner. FDP leader Rösler has said privately that he sympathizes with the industry's criticism. As economics minister, the issue is doubly unpleasant for Rösler.

It is also complicated by the fact that the energy companies are filing legal action against the fuel element tax, which is supported by the FDP. The first lawsuit is ready to be filed. RWE has just replaced the fuel elements in his Gundremmingen nuclear power plant. Under the law, this would make the company liable for a tax in the double-digit millions, payable within four weeks. And that, says an RWE spokesman, is something the company will not "accept without complaint."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

[peestandingup]

“They lied to us”: Radiation release comparable to Chernobyl â€" Total core meltdown in all 3 reactors â€" Worst industrial catastrophe in world history (CNN VIDEO)

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2011/06/21/exp.arena.michio.kaku.fukushima.cnn

[BridgeTroll]

Wonder if there are consequences of Shutting down Reactors?

It is unfortunate that the reactors have all melted down.  Since Chernobyl has never been occupied since, I have to assume a similar situation is in place in Japan. Because of the potential for recurring earthquakes , I have to wonder how this could ever be fully contained.... presume the earthquake activity directly relates to the condition of the containment vessels... and it seems to me the potential for leaking radiation into the soil and surrounding ocean will be ever present.

Funny you should ask...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,768201,00.html

06/13/2011
  Germany's Nuclear Phaseout
Irate Power Companies to Sue Berlin For Damages

By Frank Dohmen and Alexander Neubacher

Germany's power companies are preparing to take legal action against the government's decision to shut down their nuclear power plants. They say the new closure plan is too rigid and will prove more costly to them than the previous nuclear phaseout agreed by a center-left government in 2000.

In the Krümmel nuclear power plant near Hamburg, located on the bank of the Elbe river, Germany's nuclear exit is already a reality. The plant hasn't produced a single kilowatt-hour of electricity for almost two years, after being shut down following various incidents, such as a fire that broke out at the site and a problem with a transformer. Even the owners, E.on and Vattenfall, were doubtful that the plant would ever go back into operation.

But the reactor, which has essentially been shut down, is of considerable value, at least at the moment, and the companies have decided to defend their property. The power company bosses are threatening to sue for billions of euros in compensation, arguing that the decision by the center-right coalition to phase out nuclear energy is even more costly for them than the original closure plan agreed by a previous center-left government in 2000. They stand a good chance of getting the money they claim they are entitled to.

The dispute centers around how the reactors are to be shut down. The government wants to provide each power plant with a fixed expiration date. The plan is based on a proposal by Horst Seehofer, the chairman of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) party, who prevailed against the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) in negotiations over the phaseout. The CSU and FDP are junior coalition partners to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats.

The FDP would have preferred a more flexible handling of the plants' remaining life spans, and its chairman, Philipp Rösler, is dissatisfied with the outcome of the negotiations.

Fierce Reaction

For the plant operators, the current plan is the worst of all closure methods debated to date. In the past, they calculated the profitability of their nuclear power plants on the basis of their remaining power output, not in terms of their remaining life spans of weeks and months. The companies are now accusing the government of wiping out these remaining nuclear power production rights with a stroke of the pen.

Consequently, their reaction has been fierce. Jürgen Grossmann, the head of power company RWE, wrote that the phaseout decision constitutes a gross breach of their property rights. E.on CEO Johannes Teyssen says that the companies will incur substantial financial losses. Vattenfall CEO Oystein Loseth is demanding "fair compensation for our losses as a result of the government's decision."

The nuclear plant operators are citing agreements they made with the government of Social Democrats and Greens in 2000 under then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, in which each nuclear power plant was allotted a specific amount of electricity that it could feed into the grid until it was shut down. The German Environment Ministry is keeping track of the relevant figures for each plant. According to the plan, as of early January, the 17 German nuclear power plants still had a remaining entitlement to produce about 981,000 gigawatt hours.

Old reactors also have such accounts. For instance, the Krümmel plant near Hamburg, which has already effectively been shut down, still has a contingent of about 88,000 gigawatt hours. The plant operators can sell this amount of electricity and transfer it to other power plants. In other words, the Krümmel contingent is worth a lot of money -- or at least it was, until the government came up with the idea of expiration dates.

The timetable the government has established for the nuclear phaseout is so tight that the utilities will be unable to fully utilize their remaining contingents. As a result, the executives argue, they no longer have the option of transferring electricity contingents. The market, they say, is dead.

'Poorly Drafted Law'

Officials at the companies' headquarters in Essen and Düsseldorf say they will probably file a constitutional complaint as soon as German President Christian Wulff has signed the phaseout law. Specifically, they will invoke Article 14 of the German constitution, which addresses the question of whether the companies' assets are being expropriated, and if they are therefore entitled to compensation. After that, the amount of compensation would be negotiated in civil courts. According to internal calculations, the industry envisions a potential sum of â,¬20 billion ($29 billion). The burden would ultimately fall on taxpayers.

Some experts expect that the nuclear industry could very well win its legal battle against the government's phaseout plan. "I have rarely seen such a poorly drafted law," says Wolfgang Renneberg, who used to be responsible for reactor safety at the Environment Ministry.

The FDP also has its misgivings. General Secretary Christian Lindner says that he is following the energy companies' legal intentions with concern. "We warned against this and would like to have taken precautions against this risk," says Lindner. FDP leader Rösler has said privately that he sympathizes with the industry's criticism. As economics minister, the issue is doubly unpleasant for Rösler.

It is also complicated by the fact that the energy companies are filing legal action against the fuel element tax, which is supported by the FDP. The first lawsuit is ready to be filed. RWE has just replaced the fuel elements in his Gundremmingen nuclear power plant. Under the law, this would make the company liable for a tax in the double-digit millions, payable within four weeks. And that, says an RWE spokesman, is something the company will not "accept without complaint."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

The plot thickens...

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/germanys_giant_green_reversal.html

July 14, 2011
Germany's Giant Green Reversal
Steve McCann

The theater of the absurd is not only in production on the banks of the Potomac, but also in Berlin.  Last spring the German Government made a monumental declaration with all the pomp and circumstance included: the country would phase out all its nuclear plants by 2022, shuttering 7 immediately in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and phasing out the rest of their 10 remaining plants as quickly as possible over the next ten years. It took only 3 months for reality to rear its ugly head.  Per Der Spiegel:

Germany's energy agency is warning that one of the German reactors mothballed in the wake of Fukushima may have to be restarted to make up for possible power shortages this winter and next.  Berlin is also using money earmarked for future energy efficiency to subsidize coal-fired plants.

With concern rising that solar and wind power might not be sufficient on cold winter days, one of the older reactors will likely have to be switched back on.

Merkel and her government have celebrated the phase out of nuclear energy in Germany as an "energy revolution" and vowed to make up for the capacity lost through the reactor shutdowns through billions in investments in renewable energies and energy savings measures.  But according to a report in the daily Berliner Zeitung on Wednesday, some of that money has now been earmarked to subsidize the construction of new coal-fired plants.

Criticism from the Greens has been scathing, with parliamentarian Oliver Krischner telling the paper that "coal-fired plants are damaging to the climate and are not flexible enough to make up for fluctuations in supply from renewable resources.

[Natural gas-fired plants are another option] But it is expensive.  Whereas a megawatt hour of electricity produced by coal currently costs between 18 and 19 Euros [US$25-27], a megawatt of gas-electricity costs 40 Euros [US$57].  "In Germany at the moment, we don't see a price scenario that would allow for newly constructed natural gas-powered plants to become profitable," the German energy giant RWE recently said in a statement.

It should also be noted that the cost per megawatt hour of nuclear generated power is between 15 and 20 Euros (US$21-28) and the actual cost of renewable energy considering the infrastructure requirements cannot be measured as the initial investment is so massive and unaffordable. ()   Further virtually all of Germany's natural gas must be imported from Russia thus subjecting them to the whims of an historical foe.

The German government has essentially turned to coal-fired plants as a replacement for nuclear.  A spokesman for the German Federal Network Agency claimed that should a nuclear plant have to be switched back on for this winter or next, it is only a "temporary solution."  After that there should be enough coal fired plants to fill the gap.  This in a country that prides itself on being the world leader in "Green Awareness" as a majority of Germans believe in man's so-called devastating impact on "climate change."

One wonders what Mark Twain would have to say about the abject folly of the world leaders, headlined by Barack Obama, on stage today.  Perhaps the Marx Brothers would be an apt comparison except theirs was pre-meditated comedy; the current cast of characters does not realize how foolish they constantly appear.


   

[peestandingup]

It's getting worse. Multiple reports of the ground starting to crack around the plant & venting radioactive steam from the cracks. Bad. It means the cores have basically melted all the way through & are underground now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baya8-agPs4

[JeffreyS]

The steam venting is very high radiation. The levels I heard were that the Rad levels per hour from the steam were 1000 times the yearly safe level.

[peestandingup]

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/08/201181665921711896.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OjJ3ZQ5i1M