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Tonight's Comedy Hour Punchline: Japan To Stress Test Nuclear Plants
Just when one thinks news can't get any more... what's the right word here... here it comes. Per Reuters, Japan has decided to justify the credibility of its nukes, by, get this, performing stress tests. "Japan's trade minister Banri Kaieda said the government would conduct stress tests on all nuclear power reactors in Japan, Jiji news agency reported on Wednesday. The minister also said he would ensure there were no problems with power supplies, Jiji reported." Where does one start here: that the ECB is not the one conducting the tests - after all who has more expertise with stress tests... Or that the tests come after the biggest nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl: after all what's the downside - one more Fukushima and Japan would convert into the Prypiat level from Call of Duty... Or that the tests will just accidentally forget to test for such 60 sigma events as earthquakes or tsunamis... Or that the announcement comes a day after the Japanese reconstruction minister quit after a week on the job... Or that the ECB will announce it will accept Japan's nukes as collateral until at least 10 major networks show footage of a mushroom cloud.... Or that ISDA will shortly determine that another nuclear explosion is not really a nuclear explosion and that all CDS against nuclear explosions will be null and void as soon as there is an actual explosion... Or that Tim Geithner is currently in Tokyo explaining there is nothing more credible than a stress tested nuke... Or that Basel VIIIXLC will find a NPP safe if its ratio of gamma to alpha radiation is more than 1 megaroentgen, promptly followed by Jamie Dimon bitching to BOJ president Shirakawa that 1 megaroentgen is too much to demand from Fukushima Street.... And it continues. Etc. Etc. Etc.
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Tow a nuke down the street? This is far out even for ZH!
Yep, and Moody's will rate them.
( I promised myself to just read and not post... Oh well)
there is a typo in the headline "Street test" while "Stress Test" is meant.
.....and it's gone.....
Good to see Japans Govt conducting stress tests now after Fukinshambles!!
...which begs the big question just what has Japans Nuclear Regulator been up to all these years???
...is it like every country that has Financial Regulators (who all failed miserably on their supervisory guarantees) sitting on their over-paid inept crony arses whistling Dixie?
I wonder if that includes the rogue reactors?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-06/japan-has-two-nuclear-reactors-...
Thanks Manthong
your article says 2 new Jap nuclear plants are fully operational (fired up and supplying electricity to the grid) yet have not been awarded licenses to be operational... and the Nuclear Regulator is whistling Dixie as per usual, not a whimper from them, crones getting paid to sit on their hands and look the other way (the usual regulatory capture of porn on the net presumably)
Pretty typical of all regulation and Law ...the bigger you are and more ingratiated with the political system the wider the Regulators move the goalposts for you to glide through (in Japan the nuclear regulator no doubt bows and smiles as you do)
Street testing sounds like a decent idea...but watch out for rain, since they obviously flunked the splash test.
Tyler, I believe the title should be STRESS and not STREET. Though Fukushima has effectively STREET tested the facilities.
So what we already know. They only acknowledge that something is terribly wrong after tragedy is run to its final destination.
His name is Robert Paulson.
Is it possible for an entire world to have jumped the shark? Doesn't there need to be "normal' somewhere out there in order to measure ludicrous against?
Just askin' because it's beginning to look that way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
Just lost it's collective mind, is all. Resistance is futile.
Yes, CD. Possible, probable, and likely. Our planet is suffering a great delusion. Btw, loved your series of articles. I read them while on the road the last month. nice.
"Jump the Shark" Excellent analogy thank you!
Breaking News: Japanese government reports Fukushima nuclear radiation contained after stress test by Bernanke.
Japanese government press release:
"Japanese government is happy to announce Fukushima nuclear radiation is contained, based on stress test by world class containment expert Ben Bernanke. Core radiation, which strips out non-core radiation affecting food, energy, and people beyond the core reactors, remains contained within Bernanke's target for core radiation for a worst-case nuclear accident."
"Bernanke's stress test took note of the recent rise in non-core radiation in hundreds of square kilometers on land and sea around Fukashima. Bernanke-san assures Japanese government these are temporary, transitory spikes in radiation unlikely to become problematic as long as radiation expectations remain well-anchored. Ben-san congratulated the Japanese government for the withholding and obfuscation of radiation information and for showing how to anchor the public's radiation expectations toward the low or harmless end. Ben lamented that he was not able to anchor expectations to a similar degree in the U.S. due to a few bad apples, like Ron Paul, Zero Hedge, and a FOIA lawsuit by Bloomberg News."
+1
Ever notice how all those top executives have transportable skills? Slaughterhouse, concentration camp--makes no difference for truly capable and visionary executives.
No wonder we give them rather than the shareholders the bulk of the corporate earnings!
Bernanke: "At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the radiation from the subprime reactors seems likely to be contained."
Hank Paulson: "From the standpoint of the overall environment, my bottom line is we're watching the radiation closely but it appears to be contained."
Chris O'Meara, Lehman Brothers CFO: "We continue to believe that subprime reactor challenges are and will continue to be reasonably contained."
Sam Molinaro, Bear Stearns CFO: "Plutonium hasn't spilled into other parts of the market."
Timothy Bitsberger, Fraudie Mac Treasurer: "The subprime reactor meltdown is severe but contained."
Bernanke: "The troubles in the subprime reactors seem unlikely to seriously spill over to the broader environment or the financial system."
Hank Paulson: "I also said I thought in an environment as diverse and healthy as this that losses may occur in a number of nuclear power plants, but that overall this is contained and we have a healthy environment."
Timmy Geithner: "Japan has the capacity to manage through this, and I think they will. Our environment is getting stronger. We’re seeing a lot of strength, improvement and confidence."
Can we watch it on Bloomberg TV?
You could watch it on BOOMberg TV.
Banks, Nuclear Plants.... all good eh?
Now it's clear what the US has been up to all these years.
Just stress testing it's armed forces.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/a-year-and-a-day-later/
that must be why there is so much post-stress test disorder among vets...
If you see a hole in the reactor, just plug it with the head of Larry Summers!
Very funny. Kinda like stress testing the Banks to restore confidence all the while holding the same toxic waste as before. A physical plant is no different. The radiation levels may be off the charts, but the plant is tough enough to withstand a nuclear blast.
Timmah would be perfect for this. Turbo Test Timmah.
Fukushima will joint the list of TBTF (Too Big To Fry).
Stress testing a nuclear reactor after 4 of them have done a patty melt, with the population trudging into the night.
I suppose next you're gonna tell me that we trained these guys, right?
Yes, intense training was included in the package we sold them. They visited our sites and we taught them for weeks on end.
Don't report fires. There is no problem. The evacuation zone is just a technicality. The building fell over in the wind. Your children can't already glow in the dark. That is not godzilla, no matter what. The steam is to cool it off. No, can't have lunch with you, I eat only what I can import.
Who will shut them down and move the crap to some reasonably safe place for storage? That's right, nice knowing you.
60 sigmas? {blOoOp bbeeep boiNg beEEeeep bInG bIng blOOp\\\]
-AIGFP Quant
Mr. Dabolina
I have come to declare you the winner of the great Fukushima flame war. lol...
"It is insurmountable, impossible, hopeless Trav." lulz
An existential clusterfuck indeed.
I had a teacher whom wisely once told me:
"There are no bounds to the depravity of the human condition"
The words are resounding particularly in reflection to this crisis, where so many lives are put at risk, and so much cover up implemented to preserve power. How many unborn children, women, and innocent men will be ravaged by this disaster is unquantifiable in my imagination.
It's a shame that we resort to preserving prestige over that of human life itself; but such is living in the current world. I guess, it's nothing new but the anguish we bestow upon one another can bring great humility to a man who witnesses it first hand. We go through great lengths to preserve profit and status.
Indeed, sir. Clearly, you learned that lesson well. Morality is no longer an input to their equation. Keep that heart, brother. I'm with you.
it should be pointed out that the chernobyl meltdown was the direct result of an 'experiment' on the reactor. the recently released documentary 'the battle of chernobyl' is a very worthwhile watch if you want to know about what a collossal and evil mistake the whole thing was from start to finish. the japanese government is behaving in precisely the same way as the soviet government behaved... as much as i hate socialism, it just shows that interventionist governments that like to deceptively describe themselves as capitalists are no different.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just wait for another earthquake?
Stress test? See how many central banksters it takes to fill the containment vessels.
If the news of the day wasn't enough to convince us, what does it take?
Life imitating Banzai7...
That is funny.
Bob that was beyond funny! Geese WB-7. That was rich!
gesundheit to you too, Banzai.
THAT is hilarious!
No way this thing survives a Godzilla attack.
From this angle it looks like an anal plug.........not that I would know what one looks like.
But I assure you that if I did know what one looks like it would look like this.
I feel certain that if you knew what one looked like, you would not change your opinion, lol...
"Anal plug?" Is that kind some kind of retentive strategy?
hahahahahha... She couldn't type the word 'buttplug' I bet. She's a writer of serious stuff. CD doesn't deal in buttplugs. lol... damn I've missed you guys...
Nope. I just got tired of using the thumb to plug up the fiat dam. I suspect this is what it will look like when it all finally goes to hell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Francis_Dam
hahahahahahahahahahaa..... i'm fallin off my chair now. godhelpus.jpg
good to see you, cd. hope you are well. thanks for the laugh...
Well, Cog, you have to admit here that this is not COMPLETE destruction, Big Ben managed to save a segment.
You " Fellas" Go way back! I'm not touching this one!
Holy shit that is awesome. "spent politician tunnel" hah.
bad news: the spent stimulus holding pools are dried up and burning.
surreal... thats the fucking word... surreal
The article pokes fun at stressing nuclear plants, and for good reason...you don't. For one, you cannot replicate seismic forces nor tsunami events. Second, you already know what happens on a BWR when you lose all incoming power. Third, the physics of reactor meltdowns are already pretty well known, and no sane operator will take a reactor anywhere close to that possibility in a test (Chernobyl). You can computer-model events until you run out of scenarios...but if you use the typical 25,50 and 100 year events - and even thousand year events as Monte Carlo modelled in the past, you will produce nothing new, nothing that takes into account the plant-safety-breaker that took place at Fukushima. This is pure PR, and PR that will fail miserably. Everyone is aware of the past grand safety projections on those plants that melted down, and everyone knows that a rehash of the incompetent engineering that created them in the first place - and failed to take into account events beyond the engineer's and scientist's comprehension as feasible, is doomed, in a stress test scenario, to produce the same false, warm-and-fuzzy.
Despite the massive failures in Japan, the NRC still continues to extend the licenses on plants here in the US that were originally designed for a limited number of years. The industry and the NRC maintain that the original regulations, based on limited experience data, were too strict, and now that we know more, we can relax the intent of that data and extend plant lifetimes. Nobody seem to have asked them about the fate of the Fukushima plants, which were- BTW - designed to that original criteria.
To be fair, the original specs on plants were tight, but to be honest, they were designed via a method of risk analysis that has been proven many times over in many fields to be lacking in the ability to model outside events....black swans, if you will. The Monte Carlo method has always been - and still is - the engineer's go-to formula for assessing risk on systems too complex to be directly modelled. The problem is (as a lot of financial operators have discovered) the Monte Carlo method was originally invented to statistically calculate the movement and interactions of neutrons in a nuclear explosion, an event that is so statistically large and independent of large interacting variables that inaccuracy in the result was not necessarily a deal-killer.
But, financial markets and nuclear plants are subject to very large and signifigant outside variables. Those variables can cause an interacting event to massively go one way, overwhelming the predictions of randomality. Neutrons only behave that way under a limited and pretty well understood set of circumstances that could be designed out of the system (a bomb).
In the end, nuclear plants were designed to a system that also took into account financial feasibility. Incompetent engineers were further shackled by incompetent bean counters. Off-the-shelf plant designs were taken and used in places where they should never have been used, and very circumspect engineering decisions were made concerning power availability under outlying circumstances. In the end, bad designs and greed populated the world with systems not designed to cope with the fat tails the world can deliver. Like a war once joined, it is easy to use a warped normalcy bias to continue down the same path...we must not quit now, we have so much invested in lives and treasure. Right....so lets kill more to try to make an outcome justify our original stupidity. No, this kind of design thinking is okay for a toaster, but maybe not okay for a system that has the potential to poison a significant portion of the planet.
To close, all the new AP and thorium plant designs use the same stupid criteria to model risk that the original GE BWR type One was designed to. Just wanted to make everyone feel better.
Ari:
Good to see you, my friend. Thanks for that. I figured as much, but in much less articulate terms, lol. Now if Jim from Mn chimes in we got old home week on the Fukushima front.
Hope all is well with you.
Am good, MB. I was just gonna drop in a few sentences....and, well....shit happens:) Hope you are doing well too.
Where is old Jim these days?
Oh he's around. I see his posts in comments occasionally. If he's got an opinion he's got a white paper to back it up. lulz. That guy doesn't fckn play around...lol.
I know...I just jerk stuff out of my ass, and Jim comes along and tramples it with some thesis written by God Almighty. Maybe I need one of Cog's butt plugs (the ones he has never seen, but whose application he is acutely aware of).
I told you I just used my thumb. :>)
The buttplug, it was in the shape of a mushroom cloud....
There are many here who 'rock the cradle' and one thing we know:
It ain't over 'til it's over...........................
Why is it ok to operate plants designed in the 1960s, but not sell automobiles designed in that period?
I am not disagreeing with you Willie, but after spending a fortune trying to keep a precious, computerized Denali on the road, I am about ready for a "65 Falcon, maybe with the under-slung AC unit, but no fucking GM designed computer with a dubious sense of both safety and liability that makes it shut the beast down from 70 MPH to 20 MPH in less time than it takes a Formula One car to brake into the tunnel turn at Monaco....."reduced engine power mode." GM.....I fart in your general, incompetent fucking direction.
Hi, Bill...how ya doing?
My first car was a 62 Falcon Futura. To this day it is still the best car I ever had. Cost me the precious sum of $200 in 1974. I miss those days sometimes. Meh.
My first was a '55 chevy with 3-speed on the column, 265 CI V8. Wish I had it back....not only would it beat the shit out of this Gold-plated piece of miserable crap made by junkies in Detroit, it would be worth a fortune.
Bored as usual ;-)
Geisha's off the the Okiya, ey?
Hey I still drive my 66 Mustang
Hey I still drive my 66 Mustang
No way this guy survives a Godzilla attack.
Fun time....that is quite a conversation "piece."
Is there some "dipping sauce" hidden under those pink flowers?? :>D
This would be a good slot for one of the more civilized japanese pastimes....Tamakeri.
I must confess I was not aware of this relatively new pastime. Are you a sensei?
Tamakeri is a peculiarly Japanese form of BDSM which involves naked men get kicked in the testicles by women. Emerging in the last few years, it has been a growing niche in the Japanese porn. Apparently, a clean, hearty ‘Slap!’ of impact is very important. Astonishingly, most of the ball kicking sessions are followed by sex, which means tamakeri actors need the superhuman ability to stay hard while their member takes a bruising.
It would be refreshing to think that Japanese women were driving demand for tamakeri videos, revelling in the idea of dominating and humiliating their men. Sadly, the main customers for this kind of thing seem to be masochistic young men. Indeed, it has been much easier for pornographers to find willing kickees than kickers.
Man those Japanese guys like to party!
No Sensei here, Willie...just suddenly giggled at the thought of a Tepco executive taking a roach-killing high-heel toe right up the main vein of his lying gonads.....
Wow.
Suddenly I had a visual and my stomach cramped up along with some family jewel.......er.......retraction.
Does simulated radiation cause as much damage as real radiation? No problem, we can pay for any cleanup with simulated money!
That is a good avatar. +1
Simulated is ok, but it lakes the inherent smoothness, bouquet and superlative Amontillado of the true, vintage original.
I expect the vessel to pass, but when the system fails it will be because of the plumbing.
They are already at maximum fail. That is what this charade is all about, brother.
Horses' are gone. Might as well close the doors!
Too soon. Gotta burn the place to the ground before you try closing the doors.
Clearly you would make an extremely poor master of the universe. But thanks for playing along at home. :)
I sure would like to try my hand at being one of those masters of the universe...I hear the perks are great, and failure is always rewarded. I have been failing upward for years as a simple hillbilly....just think would I could accomplish with that title.
I found the real masters of the universe.
I believe this is the best representation I could find of Tepco and the BIS cartel. It's only but a few short seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-YUwNlb-tY
You hit the "Proverbial" NAIL, On the head. +1.
The stress testing will be called Operation New Dawn.
All fittings and seals will be pressure-tested to 1 atmosphere.
PETA is gonna be pissed if they start pressure testing Seals.
I wonder if the Japanese are going to store the
millions of barrels of highly radioactive water from
Fukushima in a facility similar to ours at Los Alamos.
I don't believe they have a desert though. I guess
they'll just keep them on site and wait for next
tsunami to wash them out to sea.
Well, they could invade China again for a little lebensraum for storage.
dispersion effect
"No one could have seen this coming" they said to the Japanese people.
I'm out. back on the road tomorrow. Love you guys.
I look at it this way... For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers... so when nature strikes back, and smacks him on the head and kicks him in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it's natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse. ~George Carlin
Apparently Plan B on the Fukushima clean-up is to encourage al Qaeda to steal the radioactive material for making dirty bombs.
Who ever said the Japanese were not innovative?
A brilliant, capitalistic strategy to boot.
The best stress test for Tepco is to force the top executives to cease smoking dope for a week.
That's a little harsh isn't it?
Aristarchan,
Nice post----may I take it literally because it reads great for an old fool who knows not a thing?
These are the same things we asked about in the 70's when they were being built, but who were we to be able to read the engineeringesque let alone determine the validity of same.
I remember a client who was the safety engineer at San Onofre yelling ast me over the phone several times, "It will never fail! It is PERFECTLY safe!"
And I believed him-------------------------
"Japan's trade minister Banri Kaieda said..."
trade minister?
wouldn't this be like our commerce secretary?
tyler's rant includes: Or that the announcement comes a day after the Japanese reconstruction minister quit after a week on the job...
japan has a big electricity gap right now. the autoworkers are taking days of the week off, like thur & fri, so they can work on the weekends when system demand is lower.
maybe the goobermint would like to expedite getting the grid back up.
maybe everyone should keep in mind that chernobyl #4 blew up b/c of a ...test...
...and Japan fudging every economic indicator it releases.
At least Japan has the SUKI (tm) RELIGION, The New World Religion (tm), a major international religion with over two million members, founded in the mid 1970s by Japanese intellectuals disaffected by traditional "old-world" religion.
R U Elite (tm)? SUKI (tm) Elite (tm)?
Im not laughing. What else you got? Is Don Rickles in da house?