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Latest And Greatest Tsunami Video
Yet another clip of the March 11 tsunami advent has emerged and this one could be by far the most jarring. Nothing but the brute force of nature here. And this is what central planners believe can be papered over with a few trillions monetary ones and zeroes?
New Shocking Video Of The Japanese Tsunami by timbarracuda
h/t Morten
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OT: Radioactivity being reported in Massachusetts rainwater:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/03/27/radiation_in_mass_...
awesome, can they post more?
A bunch of people in the water all named Bob.
That's funny
You can keep track of quakes here.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_big.php
You can keep track of quakes on Google Earth if you download this small little add-on here.'
Updated: Sun Mar 27 23:01:08 UTC (163 kB)
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/catalogs/
getting rumors of another quake hitting Japan...6 something on the scale, happened mins ago
if (today != end_of_world)
{
DOW = DOW + 50 + (rand() % 50);
}
else
{
DOW = DOW - 1;
}
if ( today == end_of_world) {
dow = dow+200;
} else {
dow = dow+200;
}
Fixed that little bug for ya.
if ( tomorrow == California_Tsunami) {
S&P_500 = S&P_500 + 200;
} else {
S&P_500 = S&P_500 + 100;
}
All disasters are bullish for equities.
Let's just cut to the chase:
while (!endOfTime) { dow += 200; }
Anybody know what city this was?
The city of Kesennuma, in northeast Japan.
Over 73K people lived there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesennuma,_Miyagi
Past tense, of course...
Yes, brings the death toll/missing numbers into question like everything else over there.
jesus...
god bless all of them
Pray, but move your feet: http://www.worldvision.org
Bloomberg:
Tepco Chief Shimizu Pressured to Quit After Costing Investors $26 Billion
Lol. That will fix everything. I guess we can stop worrying then!
Maybe Plato was right?
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=31.297328,-23.7854&spn=4.570784,8.811...
Bizzarre. Is that the supposed finding of Atlantis?
EDIT: Nevermind. That's over 3600sq miles. There's no way in hell that was a city.
http://www.googleearthanomalies.com/Anomalies/tabid/56/articleType/Artic...
National geographic aired a documentary about Atlantis 2 days after the Tsunami. So probably really few people actualy noticed, but they think they just found Atlantis in Spain. The documentary is called "Finding Atlantis".
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/finding-atlantis-4982/Over...
jfyi
More likely H.P. Lovecraft, the elder race came from the deep and Cthullu is still their god.
00:42 28Mar11 RTRS-Northern Japan hit by magnitude 6.5 quake
March 28 (Reuters) - A magnitude 6.5 earthquake jolted northern Japan on Monday, prompting officials to issue a tsunami warning, media and a U.S. oceanic agency said.
Japanese broadcaster NHK said a 50-cm tsunami wave was expected to reach the shores of Miyagi prefecture, hit hard by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Wow. What happened to the photographer and where was he standing? I hope he lived to tell hi story.
Yes, I kept expecting to see the horizon start shifting, as the building he was on start to get swept away along with everything else.
Considering his/her video made it to the Internet, I'd say there's a good chance he/she lived. :)
6.5 Mag Earthquake just hit JAPAN NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Same Place as the 9.0 !!!!!!!!
Tsunami warnings up !
Get ready for the futures to ramp up !
Futures are "ALL" over the place Nikkei futures trading on 50 point tics back and forth !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.sgxniftydowfutureslive.com/index_files/DOWFUTURES.htm
Hu ?
The shit is hitting the fan
There have been DOZENS of magnitude 6.5 quakes since the big one. A 6.5 quake 200km offshore and a couple of dozen km deep is actually usually not that big a deal. If my cocktail napkin math is correct, it is probably something like 0.0001 of the energy released in the original "big" one. Given that we are only a few weeks past the big one, ongoing aftershocks are normal (there are, in fact, several dozen a day felt in Miyagi/Iwate, and a few every day felt in Tokyo). Furthermore, 50cm tsunami are actually reasonably normal for coastlines in Japan. They happen all the time. Any given Pacific coastal city would get a few or several a year most years.
6.5 earthquake just now for west coast of Japan, tsunami warning just issued....
ES futures unfazed by the news once again.
Like I said, strong as an ox.
"ES futures unfazed by the news once again.
Like I said, DUMB as an ox."
Fixed it for ya
you guys are obsessed with the futures...it's a massive bulltrap forming, buying into that when a 20% + correction is building. i mean a collpase in the VIX, warning right there!
TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 001 PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS ISSUED AT 2230Z 27 MAR 2011 THIS BULLETIN APPLIES TO AREAS WITHIN AND BORDERING THE PACIFIC OCEAN AND ADJACENT SEAS...EXCEPT ALASKA...BRITISH COLUMBIA... WASHINGTON...OREGON AND CALIFORNIA. ... TSUNAMI INFORMATION BULLETIN ... THIS BULLETIN IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS BULLETIN IS ISSUED AS ADVICE TO GOVERNMENT AGENCIES. ONLY NATIONAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO MAKE DECISIONS REGARDING THE OFFICIAL STATE OF ALERT IN THEIR AREA AND ANY ACTIONS TO BE TAKEN IN RESPONSE. AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS REPORTED BY THE JAPAN METEOROLOGICAL AGENCY. ORIGIN TIME - 2224Z 27 MAR 2011 COORDINATES - 38.3 NORTH 142.4 EAST DEPTH - 10 KM LOCATION - NEAR EAST COAST OF HONSHU JAPAN MAGNITUDE - 6.5 EVALUATION NO DESTRUCTIVE WIDESPREAD TSUNAMI THREAT EXISTS BASED ON HISTORICAL EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI DATA. HOWEVER - EARTHQUAKES OF THIS SIZE SOMETIMES GENERATE LOCAL TSUNAMIS THAT CAN BE DESTRUCTIVE ALONG COASTS LOCATED WITHIN A HUNDRED KILOMETERS OF THE EARTHQUAKE EPICENTER. AUTHORITIES IN THE REGION OF THE EPICENTER SHOULD BE AWARE OF THIS POSSIBILITY AND TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION.
RT:
You said enough for today.
STFU!
The morning NHK news played that JSDF helicopter footage that someone linked to on the prior Fukushima thread. They had analysis of it too. Apparently the big green crane that moves the fuel rods about has fallen into the pool of reactor #3? and likely smashed the fuel rods. No wonder Tepco wants to check for plutonium leakage as the MOX fuel rods were in that pool. Also the lid for the ( empty) reactor is sitting by the open walls of the building. Its the big round yellow thing in the video.
Argh, now have to go rummaging for the heli-footage you mention. Link please?
About the MOX rods- #3 said to have only begun using MOX fuel rods about six months ago. So there are no MOX rods in the spent fuel pool, only the reactor vessel.
However I'm one of those who suspect the pressure vessel blew it's top in the explosion. If so it hardly matters where the MOX rods were. 'Were' being the operative word.
I CANNOT BELIEVE shit like TEPCO's "OK, *now* we are going to start analyzing for plutonium in the contamination." Many, many people among the Japanese government and TEPCO executives deserve to be hung.
Hey, has anyone found a youtube copy of this thead's tsunami video? 'Youtube downloader' doesn't work with that host site - http://dai.ly/eGyWa7
Internet Download Manager (Windows) … provides a download link to most videos.
Direct video link -> New Shocking Video Of The Japanese Tsunami by timbarracuda
Saves as “29947728_mp4_h264_aac.mp4” … add an “.flv” extension to it, if needed.
Worked, ta!
You bought http://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/ ?
Looks good, apart from slight problem of not being freeware. Any observations?
Darn it, the silver situation is making me into a tightwad. Now I see everything in terms of amounts of silver I can't have if I buy x, y, z instead. (Yes, I'm relatively poor.)
That video link probably won’t be good tomorrow though. Yes that’s the one (IDM). Ummmmmm no, I ummmm didn’t ummm … I plead the fifth. You’re right. It’s not freeware (free for a month, I think). No other downloader that I know of adds a download link button to nearly every video, that is as convenient as IDM. “FLV Player v2.0.25” is free though. Any observations? … Yah, (but it’s firewall/technical).
:) Another thing on my 'go hunt in obscure places' list.
Goldilocks is in bear-heaven.
THz: try the adobe flash for freeloaderz, if you dare. it works for Utoob, also. always nice to hear from another low-rollin silver luvr.
be advised, iyam a luddite and that was the first thing that popped into my coco-nut and i don't have the tools to know if it is even relevant, 'k?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPuiEb7_fa4
.
nice graphics
on wires now:
France and Germany voters are away c-hair way from kicking out that German fraulein and that French m****
I'll bet the EZ has a summer of riots...anytakers? EUR sold
Ohh yeah.
Gonna be a Long hot summer in Europe.
Sizzling...
geiger counters Japan:
realtime radiation readings in Tokio, Fukushima
http://www.mmnews.de/index.php/etc/7503-geiger-zaehler-japan-live-counter
nice...although the map is upside down
Comrade Obama can stop a flood like this.
Are there any Japanese speakers out there in ZH-land who could comment on the voice-over?
Do you mean the Japanese public megaphone announcement alongside that slightly wonky tsunami emergency siren?
Yeah, I wish i could understand what they are saying too. Similar PA announcements in all the tsunami videos that have audio. I wonder if it's live or recorded?
Since the demonstration of FeelGood-Lying(tm) from the government in the Fukushima crisis, I can't help wondering if those tsunami warnings might be saying something like "Not to worry citizens, there's possibly a slight problem with rising damp, please proceed in an orderly and dignified manner to somewhere a little higher. Take your time, we'll let you know if there is any cause for alarm."
But no, I suppose not. And I shouldn't even joke about it. No money in minimizing tsunami dangers, so nothing like the nuclear power lies.
I can see a big future for anyone producing 'housing that floats'. Some kind of robust multi-floatation cell floor base, that allows a building to ride out anything, even if many floatation cells are holed. And how about 'tsunami emergency survival capsules'- a sort of light metal drum you can climb into and latch closed a watertight lid, lined with closed cell soft foam, an hour's air supply and inside-openable air ports, and a rescue beacon. Made of stainless steel and other permanent materials, so the things will still work next time they are needed. Which might be a long time. Or not, if the planet really is angry with us.
THx: can ya help me @ 1107132, above?
Obama is a both Diety and President. He possesses supernatural powers ... he will rebuild the world!
Oh My God The Humanity The Price Discovery !
TD why doesn't the strike line work ?
I have a strike line through "The Humanity"....kinda takes away from the post (I dont even see it in my preview) ya know ?
Just a few notes on one of your previous comments in another thread:
I spent a few minutes checking out the site. First, the link seems not to work, page offline. Going to the root domain gives you a 'friendly' warning from .gov that you are in an unauthorized location. The interactive map supposedly showing the radiation levels at various US facilities functions, but I have NOT been able to pull up reading graphs from ANY of the monitoring stations. With any browser. All I see is the heartwarmingly reassuring statement: That's really great - but then why not show the readings from the past few weeks, so we can all see if and how they have changed. Anyone have any luck acquiring this data from here or another source? I recognize that dangerous or even alarming levels of radiation in any form are unlikely to materialize Stateside soon, but it would be nice to see the numbers - if only to infer the rate of change at the origin.What a freaking mess! Where does all that debris go? Out to sea? Then what??
Wait til Yellowstone blows. Mega caldera bitchez.
http://www.earthmountainview.com/yellowstone/yellowstone.htm
Mt. St. Helen's just shook too. No cause for concern, but if it blows...a definite sign that Mother Nature is angry!
the moon is closest point in 20 years or so, gravitational forces on the crust must be stronger than usual.
We're gonna need a bigger boat.
Does anyone suppose the camera man was getting a bit nervous?
His altitude was increasing as he stood on a higher and higher pile of sheeeet!
Yes I think he was nervous at the end.
Amazing and tragic all at once.
Those people never stood a chance.
I have just one question.
Are those dark balls floating by, people's heads?
Why, are you hungry Mr. Jong ?
I really hope not.
Unless heads swell up to the size of a car door in water, I'd say no...perhaps they're Boat Mooring Buoys. My reasoning is that these are fishing towns.
How it's supposed to look:
http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/068/cache/rice-terraces-japan_6812_600x450.jpg
Peace to the people of Japan
And just cuz it's cool: rice field art
http://worldphotocollections.blogspot.com/2009/04/rice-field-art.html
Amazing video, very, very frightening. Feel for the people who had to experience this event.
Does anyone believe any nuclear power plant in the world could withstand an earthquake of this magnitude??
beware of May of 2011 and the fail of "The New Madrid"
Nice that something on here is about the natural disaster, not the nukes. The natural disaster is a much bigger deal.
Only so far. But the natural disaster is over bar the mourning, cleanup and rebuilding. The nuclear disaster is only just getting warmed up; could easily snowball to far greater effect than the tsunami, and absolutely certainly will be going on for thousands of years.
Anyone taking bets on whether and how soon Tokyo will have to be evacuated? Would that be a 'much bigger deal', do you think?
I am praying,,,that is it...that whole town is gone
This massive destruction cannot be erased with fiat. True loses take time to replace. And in this case a long long time. Pity the poor folks caught up in all this, especially those left to deal with it. Good Lord!!!!
It's easy to see ZD posters aren't ocean people.
Two things should jump out at you from the video
1) That location was situated up a relatively narrow inlet.
That funneled the wave and its effect was amplified.
2) It wasn't really a 'wave', rather it was like the tide coming in only far,far beyond.
What would be informative would be a chart of the 'wave' height/extent inland and the geography of the coast.
Furthermore, don't necessiarly extrapolate this to other earthquake zones.
For example, the infamous San Andres fault of California lies inland and moves North/South rather than than the ocean based uplifting mechanics involved in the Japan quake.
ok, i finally achieved brain-thaw and put the google on: "does spent Uranium fuel contain plutonium?" yep! got a link to a "FAS" site (Federation of Am. Scientists/Special Weapons Primer/Weapons of Mass Destruction) Plutonium Production - Nuclear Weapons.
i know! sounds pretty fringe already! w/out claiming to understand it or even whether this makes any sense, here's what it sez:
Plutonium containing high quantities of fissile material i.e. Pu-239 in the order of 90-95 %, is known as weapon-grade plutonium. Plutonium containing lower concentrations, in the range of 50-60 % is known as reactor-grade plutonium. The definitions of the various plutonium grades are expressed as a percentage of the isotope Pu-240 which is considered as an impurity for weapons manufacturers.
Plutonium-grade % of Plutonium- 240 Super-grade ? 3% Weapon-grade ? 7% Fuel-grade between 7% and 18% incl. Reactor-grade ? 18%Reactor-grade plutonium is produced in the core of a reactor when uranium-238 is irradiated with neutrons. Unlike weapon grade plutonium (which is relatively pure plutonium-239), reactor grade plutonium is a mixture of plutonium-238, 239, 240, 241 and 242. It is this mixture of isotopes which renders reactor grade plutonium less unsuitable as a weapon-grade material.
The even numbered isotopes (plutonium-238, 240 and 242) fission spontaneously producing high energy neutrons and a lot of heat. In fact, the neutron and gamma dose from this material is significant and the heat generated in this way would melt the high-explosive material needed to compress the critical mass prior to initiation. The neutrons can also initiate a premature chain reaction thus reducing the explosive yield, typically to a few percent of the nominal yield, sometimes called the "fizzle yield". Such physical characteristics make reactor-grade plutonium extremely difficult to manipulate and control and therefore explain its unsuitability as a bomb-making ingredient.
The odd numbered isotope, plutonium-241, is also a highly undesirable isotope as it decays to americium-241 which is an intense emitter of alpha particles, X and gamma rays. Plutonium-241 has a half-life of 13.2 years which means americium-241 accumulates quickly causing serious handling problems.
Weapon-grade plutonium has different characteristics. It contains mainly Pu-239 which has a half-life of 24 000 years and only very small quantities of Pu-241 (unlike reactor-grade plutonium which can contain around 15% Pu-241.) It is thus relatively stable and can be safely handled with a pair of thick gloves
To achieve the high percentages of Pu-239 required for weapon grade plutonium, it must be produced specifically for this purpose. The uranium must spend only several weeks in the reactor core and then be removed. For this to be carried out in a LWR - the prevalent reactor design for electricity generation - the reactor would have to be shut down completely for such an operation; this is easily detectable.
The Isotopic Composition of Reactor and Weapon Grade Plutonium
Pu-238 (%) Pu-239 (%) Pu-240 (%) Pu-241 (%) Pu-242 (%) Reactor-Grade Plutonium(3,7% U-235, 43,000 MWd/t)1 2 53 24 15 6 Weapon-Grade Plutonium 93 7
1 Source: Plutonium Fuel - OECD Report, 1989. [END pasties]
my "preview" indicates this last chart will not print well, but the 1 2 53 24 15 6 series is the % of the percentages of the 5 diff plutonium iso's, in order, except the "1" is from a footnote and shld be ignored for data, yet noted for leading to the '89 OECD Report, whatever tf that is!
the "93 7" go under the Pu-239 and Pu-240 columns and are the % for Weapon Grade Plutonium, respectively.
might be best togo to my link in 1st para, and just read the whole thing, yerself, 'k?
lookin prety bad for the "Under Chernobyl X5 crowd" here, imo, but my jury is still out till we crunch this a bit more, and, hopefully reach a zH clusterflock semi-conscious consensus.
and this from PHYSORG (3.18.11)Plutonium in troubled reactors, spent fuel pools
this also looks bad, except that the Pu doesn't travel well in air. too heavy. "But plutonium, like uranium, is a heavy element that is not easily dispersed in the air. It is the other byproducts of nuclear power generation, such as radioactive forms of cesium and iodine, that are more prone to spread and cause widespread contamination." that's reassuring! the Pu's @ c. 139 are so much heavier than than the Ce's @ c. 137 and the I's @ c. 131 (6% for this slewie moron's simple math) that, although the Ce is showing up in San Fran & Boston rain, most likely, the Pu is nothing to see here, just move along, junk the shit outa slewie, and stfu!
ka-pow! "Only six percent of the fuel rods at the plant's Unit 3 were a mixture of plutonium-239 and uranium-235 when first put into operation. The fuel in other reactors is only uranium, but even there, plutonium is created during the fission process."
w-w-whack! "This means the fuel in all of the stricken reactors and spent fuel pools contain plutonium."
ka-boom! "Ed Lyman, a physicist at the activist group Union of Concerned Scientists, estimates the fuel in Unit 3 is 5 percent to 10 percent more dangerous than the fuel in the other crippled reactors."
s-s-smack-0! "When the pellets of uranium dioxide inside the thin fuel rods are split to create energy in the reactor, they release neutrons that, in turn, create highly radioactive plutonium-239. This is the same type of plutonium used to make nuclear weapons.
This plutonium also splits, creating even more energy. By the end of a uranium fuel cycle, 40 percent of the energy produced comes from the splitting of plutonium.
The spent fuel rod that remains at the end of the process contains uranium, plutonium, and a cocktail of other poisonous and radioactive byproducts."
and, i can find no better way to frame this one than just these original words: "The Fukushima Dai-ichi site has a considerable number of fuel rods on hand, according to information provided Thursday by Toyko Electric Power Co., which owns the atomic complex: There are 3,400 tons of fuel in seven spent fuel pools within the six-reactor plant, including one joint pool storing very old fuel from units 3 and 4. There are 877 tons in five of the reactor cores. Officials have said that the fuel in Unit 4's reactor vessel was transferred to its spent fuel pool when the unit was temporarily shut in November." (my "Bold" type, 'k?)
i'm sure all you cunt-puppet trolls on batmanke's obummer's and chu's strings & payrolls will continue to call me names and junk me, but, verily, i say unto you:
C'MON DOWN YOU FUK-FACED ASSWIPES. BRING IT. NOW!!!
any questions?
i have one, but let's see if anyone else asks it, first...
Is this the end of Japan?
personally, i think that depends on how much longer the "Sgt. Schultz's" sit around and play dumber than dirt b4 they get their asses in there and prepare it for entombment. another fortnight+, who knows? maybe this is just a white-faced geisha-maiko/kabuki drama due to the fact they've already figured that is not an option, given the mess, here. short ans: don't know. i'm just a slow-ass pi-rat trying to tack into a heluva headwind on the materials questions, still, RS.
i'm reminder of the old sufi adage: "Those who say, don't know. Those who know, don't say." apparently this applies to planet-destroying psychopathic cabals, too! maybe their "united front" will start to fail as "opinion" changes due to e-truth. that'll be fun to watch, doncha think? if we see this as "pestilence, on a white horse of anti-christ (falsehood, lies)" i would say we have famine, war, and death riding pretty hard already, too, but those are "only false symbols of the flying spaghetti monster", right?
still, why worry? what the hell can we do about it? anyhow? just keep playing in their casino, with their chips, and tell everybody how smart yer bets and hedges are, 'cause with QE to infinity, the really "smart" playaz just BTFD, love the "risk on", and are making tons of "money", too, right?
my bias has been evident since day 1, on zH, but with the amount of emotive junking, here, over 2.5 week-old "news", wait'll they see these "real" horsemen, now!
ok! semi sarc!
Another way of looking at it - if Tokyo has to be evacuated, is that the end of Japan?
Also, if 36 million people (including the Emperor) must evacuate due to the insanity of TEPCO and nuclear power, will they all go quietly or will some take retribution into their own hands?
This point tells me TEPCO (and the Japanese government) will NEVER admit to things getting bad enough to evacuate Tokyo, because even a total fool would recognise that event would mean they personally are dead men.
Yes I have questions. Plutonium is water soluble. So, considering all the water being poured over reactor #3, that the reactor containment vessel is definitely breached and possibly catastrophically (top blown off and holes in the bottom too), and that most of the water sprayed into the mess probably ends up in the sea...
How much Plutonium is being washed into the sea at Fukushima?
And why hasn't the Plutonium contamination been measured so far?
my Q was: of the 3,400 tons of waste fuel and almost 900 tons of fuel also reported above, what is the mass, in ounces, pounds, or tons of the fuking plutonium and would we find it spread across the isotopes in the %'s given for the Waste Fuel in the first link, above, where these figures are given and the 2nd chart wouldn't print right for me?
perhaps the plutonium has been measured or well-estimated, THz, but is, like most relevant info about the FED, for example, a "secret" because if people "knew" they would "lose faith" in banksters and the goobermints, "economists" and "scientists" who lie lie lie like there's "no tomorrow"...
It's a good question pi-rat. Very similar to one I've been asking for years:
What is the total inventory of man-made radioactives on Earth, including a breakdown by isotopes and half-lives? Note the total mass will be greater than the sum of all fission fuels ever mined & refined, due to activation of non-uranium materials exposed to radiation. Also include stockpiles and expended DU.
The reason I ask, is I happen to think there's a fairly high chance humans are going to have a global breakdown of technological civilization sometime soon. Maybe as soon as a year or two, maybe 50 or a 100 years away. But I consider the long term - what happens to life on Earth if there are no scientifically educated humans (plus available energy, industrial capacity and determination) around to maintain containment on all the abandoned nuclear power stations, subs, missiles and radioactive waste dumps? Considering that much of this stuff has half-lives of tens of thousands and in some cases millions of years, the time corrosion, weathering, wind and water movements would take to spread ALL the materials around the globe is insignificant compared to the duration of the high background radiation result.
So the question is, if peak oil or some other effect results in a collapse of our 'complex society', will we have left enough radio actives to sterilize the planet eventually?
My gut feeling is the answer to this is 'yes'. But I have never seen any serious academic and informed attempt to answer this question. Or even any recognition, anywhere, that it's a valid question.
Assuming the answer is 'yes', then our production of all this radioactive shit is a crime equivalent to murder of an entire living planet. Which so far as we know for sure, may be the only one in the entire universe. (I doubt it is, but till we know otherwise it's our responsibility to assume it is.)
As for the utility and safety of fission nuclear power...
Look up something called EROEI. Energy return on energy invested. All studies of the EROEI of various energy sources that take into account 'whole life cycle' cost/benefits, show some pretty shocking results. Finding out about this is what killed my optimism regarding most 'renewable' energy sources - wind, solar, wave, etc. But for nuclear fission, it's even worse than 'poor performance'. Turns out nuclear, when you add in the long term costs of waste materials containment, is NET ENERGY NEGATIVE. By a wide margin. For that reason alone nuclear isn't a solution to our energy shortage.
However the *main* reason we must not use nuclear fission (of any form) is that we, as a culture, don't have an instinctive understanding of the scale of major natural disasters that can and do occur. We're not aware of them, because there haven't been any truly major ones in the interval of 'recorded history' (yet).
Earthquakes and tsunamis are one thing, and bad enough as demonstrated in Japan.
But the real reasons we can't use nuclear fission power stations, are: major meteorite strikes and supervolcanos. They happen, and much more often than most people realise. I collect discoveries of geological 'major strikes', and there are a lot of them. The Earth would look like the Moon (covered in craters) except they get weathered away, and eventually subducted.
The point is that such events wipe out large areas, but in a 'rapidly healing' way. No long half-life isotopes. But if you add in many nuclear power stations and waste repositories (say over a 1/4 to 2/3 of the globe getting whacked by an ocean strike) you are talking total extinction of life on Earth for millions, possibly billions of years, due to hugely raised background radiation levels.
This is why we must not do this. It is not arguable.
If we can get nuclear power working in a way that doesn't involve large volumes of long-life radio actives, then fine, I'm all for it. Small scale fusion devices that ran on H and with no nasty waste products would be nice. Till then, make do without. Consider the unfolding disaster of Fukushima as a relatively mild warning slap. It's just ONE site. A large meteorite strike in the Pacific would do much worse, to every nuclear plant within say a hundred miles of all Pacific coastlines. The resulting dark age would take out the rest of the world's nuke plants within a century. Goodbye to life on Earth for millennia.
I hesitate to break into many of the commenters' sarcasm, jokes, etc. here, but as someone who literally lost 90% of what I owned in a mere flood, it sickens me that anyone could not view this as anything but absolutely catastrophic, physically alone, but in the mental side of things also. It's been almost a year now and I still have nightmares all relating to water. I still can't work a regular schedule and don't have a job. The enormity of what Japan and her people are suffering, and will continue to suffer, from this may boggle some minds, but not mine. Sure, what I lost and what the Japanese people lost may be "just stuff," but it's far worse than that and I would not wish it on the worst trolls here or anywhere else. If you haven't been through it, I would recommend highly that you just keep silent, or send your best wishes in the form you prefer. Anything else is absolutely unconscionable given the circumstances.
/EOM
lothar, those "hundred-year hi water marks" used to issue building permits in flood plains get washed away on a regular basis, sir. i don't mean to be callous and unfeeling about your loss of property or the tsunami tolls in japan, but this news is 2.5 weeks old, m/l. have you not seen the "pictures" and heard the stories of The Flood? maybe whatever wiped out the flintstones and changed gaia's axis, then, would make us all faint if we could "see" it, too.
but, the tsunami is over, at least for now. and, since it carried all it's trains, boats, cars and maybe a few low-lying planes, too, out to sea, along with who knows how many previously living people, we have been royally treated to 18 days of absolute nonsense about the 6-banger nuclear "problem", which you, too, seem to think is "unimportant" compared to the scenes & "human-emotions" of this clip.
fact is, many of us are more emotionally involved, right now, in this "little 6-banger" and the implications for the still-living japanese, oceans, food chain, jet stream, and human beings, which are more "emotional" to us, right now than 2.5 week-old renewable hysteria over a wave of the past and yes, a heluva lotta dead japanese, too. if you're still too "locked up" to get to this "emotional concern" b/c of yer missing chattel after a year, almost, perhaps you will NEVER understand the "sarcasm" on this site. ok, i know you are seeing the perspective, intellectually, ok, here, but fact is, we're trying to come to an intellectual and emotional grasp of the nuclear disaster, which is not even close to over, yet. and, since many who claim to understand the human mind see sarc-ing as a form of anger, perhaps you can feel for us, too, since we really are totally fuking pissed about how the nuclear disaster is being framed and presented.
yes, this page is about the tsunami, and if you go back, i think you will see that many z's were concerned about the tsunami victims, at the time, also, including me. but we've had some closure, moved on to the 6-banger nuclear disaster/Keystone Kops show, and are just not gonna re-visit and re-open the tsunami sadness and angst again b/c tyler posted a "new" 5+-minute video, today.
i understand that you have not healed from last year, yet, and you have my compassion, care, and healing thoughts, for that pain and trouble which you are still living in many ways, my friend.
but you are still on 'apples'; and we are fuking livid about what is going on with the 'oranges', so please try to understand us, too, ok?
t.y. peace.
And peace to you as well. All I know is that this "thing" is going to cause way bigger issues than any aid agency is going to be able to solve.
I/we can be as livid as we wish about that, but in the end, whether those poor Japanese folks are irradiated into mutations, now or by birth, nothing, and I mean nothing, will erase their memories of what they've lost.
Probably the same as happened when the US nuked them twice. We're all dust in the wind; I understand that. I merely hope to convey that people here who are making jokes about the situation sit back for a minute and reflect on what they are joking about.
I'm a long-timer here, and I know how things go, but on this one... it's just too close to home and I can't deny being "emotional" about it. Those people's lives are ruined in so many ways I just don't know how folks here can crack jokes about it. Not now, but maybe later, and I am certainly one who has a wicked dark sense of humor.
There was a mistress here who many of us loved and adored; where she's gone I don't know and wish I could find her again, but that's neither here nor there I guess. I'm not in the best of frames of mind right now, so apologies in advance. I just can't get over that some people are making light of this situation, and as I said, I merely suffered a flood that took 2 days to come up. Nothing like a tsunami that came up in a few hours.
Thanks for your response; I appreciate it. Dust to dust is all we are.
I think this one just came out within the last day or so. It is only appearing on foreign sites as of now from what I'm seeing.
I've never seen a video like this - of a tsunami passing under a boat this far out at sea.
For those (like me) who've done their fair share of surfing the web for videos of rogue waves and the like, this is some crazy stuff:
http://patrz.pl/filmy/w-starciu-z-tsunami
The wave(s) almost looks like a rogue wave - but instead of only lasting for a few seconds...it just keeps coming...
The water in this video is a perfect metaphor for destiny for the US dollar. The destruction, a perfect metaphor for the holders of these dollars. Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink, or along those lines.
"History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of men..."
Blue Oyster Cult
This video is scary as hell. I would be panicking if I were there.
As my diving instructor used to say: never challenge or fight the sea; you will die.