I’m not wagering my life on anything. There’s no threat to my life from Fukushima whatsoever, under any condition. I used to live in Nevada downwind of the test range, talked to people who lived and ranched in the “downwind” area of the NTS, and they’re pretty sanguine about nukes as well. They’re more worried about winter precip levels than they are about any nuclear fallout.
And there will be another bottom bolted onto that flange, BTW.
That’s what I’ve tried to communicate over and over, but people here in the US now seem to want to worry about things that are no reason for them to worry, while ignoring things that they SHOULD be worried about.
What you SHOULD be worried about is the rapidly accelerating debt load in the US and the hollowing out of the US economy, with no prospects or plan from either political part on how to reverse the situation. Then people should be worried that the major trading partners of the US are working on plans to replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which when accomplished, will make oil prices shoot to the moon in a couple months’ time. When (not if) that happens, the US economy will go into free-fall and the US consumer will see huge devaluation of the dollar vs. tangible goods (read as: “Food.”) in a very short period of time.
What we’re now getting closer and closer to a point-of-no-return for the US economy. I estimate that, unchecked, our macro-economic conditions are close to a point of no return within the next two to three years. After that, we will be in a situation where our economic future becomes one like Japan - decade upon decade of low to no growth, high non-participation in the labor force by youth and unskilled, huge transfer payments from the productive class to the deadbeat class, capital fleeting our markets.
Romney so far has not articulated a plan to reverse this course. The GOP keeps harping on Ryan’s “plan” but it is nothing but window dressing.
Fukushima? Pfah. I’m literally more concerned about weeds in my yard than Fukushima. It’s a huge mess, the results of which may eventually collapse the Japanese economy, but for us, the upside from that is that the US will lose a major economic competitor. The downside is that the Japanese buy a lot of US debt, and they simply won’t have the money to do that any more - they’ll be too busy trying to prop up their own economy. Their idiotic idea of shutting down all their nuke plants will (not might, but will) result in macro-economic declines for their country for the foreseeable future. They don’t have natural hydrocarbon resources (eg, coal), or natural gas that they can burn to replace their nukes.
The point is that the bottom looks more like the top of a salt shaker. Obviously it was never ever designed to stop a near complete meltdown of the core.