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Japan situation looks 'more serious' than Three Mile Island: DOE's Chu (Duh?)
www.platts.com ^ | 03-16-2011 | Herman Wang

Posted on 03/16/2011 12:27:11 PM PDT by Red Badger

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu told Congress Wednesday that Japan's ongoing nuclear crisis appears "more serious" than the 1979 Three Mile Island partial reactor meltdown.

Chu's comments came in response to a question comparing the incidents from Representative Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican, as Chu was testifying before the House of Representatives' Energy and Power Subcommittee.

"I think the events unfolding in Japan actually appear to me to be more serious than Three Mile Island," Chu said. "To what extent, we don't really know right now. They're unfolding on an hour-by-hour basis and there are conflicting reports."

"That's one of the reasons the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are there [in Japan] with boots on the ground, not only to assist the Japanese government, but also for our sake, for us to know what is happening," Chu added.

The Three Mile Island incident, which occurred in 1979 near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, resulted when a mechanical or electrical failure of a cooling system caused a reactor to heat up to unsafe levels, and consequent equipment design flaws and human errors negated backup safety measures. The cooling system was restored later that evening, and no deaths resulted, although 140,000 people were evacuated from the area.

In Japan, Friday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake led to a release of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and a subsequent tsunami knocked out backup electric generators that had been designed to keep the cooling system running.

The Japanese government is still struggling to cool the reactors and stored used nuclear fuel to avoid further release of radiation.

Chu said DOE has sent 39 people and 17,000 pounds of equipment -- including radiation detectors and aerial measuring systems -- to Japan to help the country deal with the crisis.

"We are going to be looking very, very closely at the events happening in Japan and take those lessons," Chu said. "We will be looking very carefully and gathering whatever lessons can be learned and apply them to all the nuclear facilities we have in the US."


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: japanearthquake; nrc
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1 posted on 03/16/2011 12:27:12 PM PDT by Red Badger
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To: Red Badger

TMI was a cake walk compared to this.


2 posted on 03/16/2011 12:30:34 PM PDT by stevecmd
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To: Red Badger

“partial reactor meltdown”

I love how people feel free to call something that wasn’t a meltdown a “meltdown” by adding the word “partial.”


3 posted on 03/16/2011 12:30:57 PM PDT by Tublecane
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To: Red Badger

Not much gets past this guy Chu.


4 posted on 03/16/2011 12:31:35 PM PDT by 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten (Welcome to the USA - where every day is Backwards Day!)
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To: Red Badger

A quote from his statement summarizes it nicely: “we don’t really know”


5 posted on 03/16/2011 12:35:36 PM PDT by frposty (I'm a simpleton)
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To: frposty

Since the news media is all over the map here’s a good site for info

http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/information-on-the-japanese-earthquake-and-reactors-in-that-region/


6 posted on 03/16/2011 12:38:06 PM PDT by 20 years too late
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To: Red Badger

TMI was a situation that belongs in the “top 50 of what could have gone wrong, but didn’t go wrong, shoulda coulda woulda and things might have been really bad, possibly”.

Chernobyl, ok, that was bad, and it killed 225 people or so, including near term radiation illness. Ok, how many things have happened since, that claimed far more than 225 people?

Nothing brings out hysteria, for less cause, than nuclear. It must be the complex nature of science, or competing interests of finance related to other sources of energy that FEAR nuclear energy? I suspect it is both.


7 posted on 03/16/2011 12:39:32 PM PDT by Professional
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To: Red Badger

Only stupids with an agenda could make this comment. Has to be a liberal and/or a democrat.


8 posted on 03/16/2011 12:40:15 PM PDT by mulligan
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To: Red Badger

LOL more people were killed when a car went in the water at Chappaquiddick driven by a womanizing senator.


9 posted on 03/16/2011 12:40:26 PM PDT by boomop1
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To: mulligan

He’s Zero’s DOE Cabinet Secretary...................


10 posted on 03/16/2011 12:41:16 PM PDT by Red Badger (How can anyone look at the situation in Libya and be for gun control is beyond stupid. It's suicide.)
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To: boomop1

add: then Three Mile Island


11 posted on 03/16/2011 12:41:44 PM PDT by boomop1
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To: Red Badger

Since TMI was essential an non-event except for the media coverage and resulting panic, that would not be too hard for a major nuclear accident to be worse.

The average radiation dose to people living within 10 miles of the TMI was eight millirem, and no more than 100 millirem to any single individual. Eight millirem is about equal to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the average background level of radiation received by U.S. residents in a year.

http://www.ans.org/pi/resources/sptopics/tmi/whathappened.html


12 posted on 03/16/2011 12:42:03 PM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer (biblein90days.org))
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To: frposty

Three Mile Island was a media event that got stoked because in the same week a silly Jane Fonda movie opened called “The China Syndrome”. No one was injured, despite the panic that it caused.


13 posted on 03/16/2011 12:45:26 PM PDT by Spok
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To: Red Badger

Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President Obama as Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white. A global initiative to change the colour of roofs, roads and pavements so that they reflect more sunlight and heat could play a big part in containing global warming, he said yesterday.


14 posted on 03/16/2011 12:55:51 PM PDT by razorback-bert (Some days it's not worth chewing through the straps.)
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To: Spok

Truth indeed, a media event that has become part of the false history of liberal America.

A few years ago, I asked my students to write down how many people they think died in the TMI “catastrophe” (as one of our text books labeled it without, of course, providing figures). This was a bonus question on a test. The average guess was around ten thousand; the highest, half a million. Only two people out of almost a hundred said “zero.”

These were senior science majors at a school noted for rigorous standards in this area.


15 posted on 03/16/2011 12:56:31 PM PDT by atomic conspiracy (Victory in Iraq: Worst defeat for activist media since Goebbels shot himself.)
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First rule for government officials: If you don’t know it, don’t say it.

Obama searched high and low to find people with less experience than he to staff his cabinet.


16 posted on 03/16/2011 12:59:57 PM PDT by D-fendr (Deus non alligatur sacramentis sed nos alligamur.)
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To: razorback-bert

This might actually be a good idea in the resorts of the Bahamas, Costa Rica, Cuba, Venezuela or some of the other tropical fleshpots where noted liberals spend their ill-deserved vacation time.
If you live in the sub-arctic or on the Great Plains, as many of us peasants do, it is probably not so hot.


17 posted on 03/16/2011 1:00:03 PM PDT by atomic conspiracy (Victory in Iraq: Worst defeat for activist media since Goebbels shot himself.)
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To: Red Badger
Dr. Chu Phd.
B.S. Bull Sh*T M.S. More of the same Phd Piled Higher and Deeper
18 posted on 03/16/2011 1:00:28 PM PDT by dblshot (Insanity - electing the same people over and over and expecting different results.)
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To: Red Badger

Yeah but did anyone ask him what his NCAA picks were?


19 posted on 03/16/2011 1:02:55 PM PDT by McGruff (Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.)
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To: Red Badger

Even Chernobyl wasn’t all that big a deal. Michael Fumento comments (in 2005, 20 years after Chernobyl):
http://www.fumento.com/environment/chernobyl.html


For the answer go back to 1986 in the former Soviet Union, a regime in which worker and public safety mattered zilch. A powerful steam explosion at one of four reactors of the Chernobyl nuclear facility near Kiev – a hunk of junk compared to any American nuke plant – caused additional explosions, a fire, and a full nuclear meltdown. Over 100,000 people were evacuated.

UPI’s immediate death toll was 2,000 while others used far higher figures. “Late Word From Inside Russia: Mass Grave for 15,000 N-Victims,” blared the New York Post. Blame these perhaps on confusion and Soviet secrecy. But in 2001 Agence France-Presse reported the highest toll ever, claiming “between 15,000 and 30,000 people died” from the initial blast and radiation exposure. As to delayed cancer deaths from radiation, some nuclear energy opponents estimated almost half a million.

...

But a voluminous new report assembled by the Chernobyl Forum, comprising 8 UN agencies, shows not only that the accident’s immediate impact was grossly exaggerated but that even delayed cancer deaths will prove minuscule compared to the outrageous predictions.

The actual number of immediate deaths? Not 30,000 but rather 47 says the report. All were among plant personnel and emergency workers, none among the general public.

Delayed cancer deaths estimated in the new report? Not half a million but about 4,000. This though five million people received excess radiation exposure. Yet the report also admits that although there’s been plenty of time for cancers to start showing up, researchers are having trouble finding enough cases even to justify the 4,000.



20 posted on 03/16/2011 1:06:00 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always)
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