The fire occurred on June 7th, and knocked out cooling for approximately 90 minutes. After 88 hours, the cooling pool would boil dry and highly radioactive materials would be exposed.They had a fire, they put it out, and they lost operational coolant ability for an hour and half because of it.
In 1989, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recommended improvements to the emergency venting system in the Mark I containment in Generic Letter 89-16. Specifically, the NRC recommended the addition of what is known as a “hardened vent,” which is a separate vent pipe designed to withstand higher loads during an accident such as a station blackout (a complete loss of power) and routed to an elevated point outside the reactor building.So, you're wrong about reactors in the US not being designed to vent radioactive hydrogen in a loss-of-coolant accident. And you're wrong about concerns that the hydrogen could explode having been addressed immediately in the US. And you're wrong about Japan having done nothing to address those concerns.
[...]
In response to this letter, operators of U.S. nuclear power plants with Mark I containment systems followed this recommendation and designed and implemented hardened vent systems. Operators in Japan, including TEPCO, did the same. While general requirements for a vent system were established by a BWR (boiling water reactor) owners group which GE helps facilitate, each individual plant owner designed and installed the hardened vent to meet its specific design criteria.
The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:I note with interest that they've picked different timespans for the "before" and "after" numbers, as well as only using numbers from 8 of the 26 cities in those zones. I'm at work so I don't have time to do a full walk through the data (the "Notifiable Diseases and Mortality Tables" links here) but this has the feel of the same cherry-picked stats shadiness that the "there's no global warming" crew tend to use.4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 - 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant.
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 - 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)
The eight cities included in the report are San Jose..., and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster.Way to go! You transition almost imperceptibly from talking about infant mortality in the US, to how "there is and should be concern about young children"... IN JAPAN.
"There is and should be concern about younger people being exposed, and the Japanese government will be giving out radiation monitors to children," Dr MV Ramana, a physicist with the Programme on Science and Global Security at Princeton University who specialises in issues of nuclear safety, told Al Jazeera.
Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well.How radioactive? What isotopes?
"Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April."Clearly, you say? How many people? Affected in what way? How "heavy"?
Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US?Aha. Of course that's why! The entire US government has shut themselves up on the say-so of a corporation who donated $300k to Obama's election. I'm willing to allow that the US government plays down the risks of nuclear power to keep the nuclear power industry going, but the insinuation of straightforward conspiracy is just silly.
Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns, thus far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.
Dr Shoji Sawada is a theoretical particle physicist and Professor Emeritus at Nagoya University in Japan. He is concerned about the types of nuclear plants in his country, and the fact that most of them are of US design.Theoretical particle physics is not nuclear physics. He could know very little about nuclear power for all we know, and just hold strong opinions on the subject.
The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 - 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant.
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 - 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)
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posted by stavrogin at 5:03 PM on June 16, 2011 [5 favorites]