Japan says battle to save the nuclear reactors has failed [Scrap 1-4]

guardian.co.uk, ^ | Thursday 31 March 2011 04.43 BST | Justin McCurry in Tokyo

[SargeK]

If I’m not mistaken, the number 1, 2 and 3 units at Chernobyl operated for years after the 1986 accident.

I imagine that it was still pretty ‘hot’ there, especially for a occupational exposure.

[DannyTN]

"What the chicken littles don’t realize or do not want to read or hear, is that OUR nuclear plants have back-ups for cooling, which Japan obviously did not!!!"

There was an article on FR a week before the Japan earthquake criticizing US reactors for only having one backup system for cooling.

Japan had backups, they were just disabled by the Tsunami.

[cvq3842]

Yes, that is what I had read also.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Forget the boiler-reactors! They are scrap. What is the condition of the turbine-generators?

[olrtex]

“Yup, Open up the sites of the 1942 camps!”

No doubt that is a sophmoric attempt at gallows humor, but it is beneath even the lowest yahoo (and thankfully there aren’t that many) who frequents these boards.

[SargeK]

Excellent posts.

I despair for the country when I see how poorly educated most people are. The lack of any grasp of science or math whatsoever is profoundly disturbing - and that is among the so-called ‘elite’ leaders in government and news media.

I wonder if we could help people better understand if we brought things down to a scale they can grok. Instead of talking billions and trillions, we say “What would you rather pay, ten dollars or ten thousand dollars? Because that is the difference between a billion and a trillion.”

[Mr. Silverback]

Anyone with half a brain knew that the reactors that had sea water pumped in were immediate write-offs. This has been discussed here at FR since the beginning. In short, the headline and lead-in sentence are simply not news.

Agree 100%. Worse, that headline will leave a lot of readers with the impression that the things are about to blow up or something.

[Ditto]

Which country would take them in knowing they could have radiation contamination?

If that wasn't a joke, it surely ranks among the top 2 or 3 stupidest statements ever made here.

[juno67]

Like, for instance, put the reactor pumps up high in the building instead of down low, as they apparently did, just to show proper respect for Murphy’s Law(”Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”). Any good engineer has a healthy respect for Murphy’s Law. It’s usually the constraints of time and money and general lack of support from the customer that prevent the engineers from designing a system as fail-safe as they would like.

[FDNYRHEROES]

The Japs lose another war to the mighty Atom

[Jack Hydrazine]

The Japanese intentionally ignored known tsunami data before 1896. That was the ultimate failure and the Japanese way of things. Ignore the problem and then play damage control when the problem finally rears its ugly head.

For just a little extra money they could have built that seawall a little higher at the plant and saved them from this disaster.

[FDNYRHEROES]

The Japanese intentionally ignored known tsunami data before 1896. That was the ultimate failure and the Japanese way of things.

Sorta reminds one of how they ignored the oil tank farms at Pearl Harbor. Taking them out would have seriously crippled what remained of the US Navy in the Pacific.

[Scythian]

So, when does the evacuation of Japan begin?

The real question is what in the hell are they doing over there, bury the damn things, do whatever you have to stop the damn radiation leak.

[catnipman]

“So when does the evacuation of Japan begin?”

Indeed it has already begun. My area in Colorado has been flooded with Japanese that apparently had the means to get out of Dodge. I swear about half the people in the Costco in Superior, Colorado are newly arrived Japanese.

[ex-Texan]

EPA Set To Increase Radioactive Release Guidelines!

This Must Be Stopped ! -

[Quix]

Ain’t tyrannical genocide cute.

/sarc

[jwalsh07]

That battle was lost when they lost the cooling pumps for the reactors and the spent fuel storage pools.

[bill1952]

>We don’t need more H1-B’s, we need to put AMERICANS to work in AMERICA.

HEAR, HEAR! X2

[Chickensoup]

Obama pushes for nuclear power despite Fukushima

I guess GE brings good things to light.

Was this the payback for buying tens of thousands of Hussain’s VOLTS?

[SteamShovel]

Basically, while the liberal arts majors who get elected and spend inordinate amounts of time bloviating on the Boobie-Tube about “illiteracy,” they spend almost no time worrying about innumeracy.

SPOT ON!!!