reply to post by ofhumandescent
This latest crisis in Japan coupled with the Gulf oil gusher and the CoExit we poured on top of it means that now not only two major oceans
have been compromised but our air, soil and food chain are now involved.
But again, most people simply don't like to concentrate on the negative and will wait until the last minute, when it's already too evident and again,
this time, it may already be close to already being too late.
I live on the gulf coast, grew up here, family has been here a few generations. My great grandparents took everything they had and, along with a dozen
or so other families, left their homeland their their ancestors had lived in for many more generations than we've been here.
You would not believe the number of people I talk to on a daily basis (I'm a restaurant manager in a popular tourist town, so we see locals and out of
towners) who think both Fukushima and The Deep Horizon problems are either fixed or well under control.
Corexit?
Yeah, that's the stuff they used to clean up
all the oil, right?
/sarcasm
People don't know or care about much beyond what crosses their narrow field of view at the end of their blinders. Unless it can be directly related to
them, too many people just don't care.
I know radiation is dangerous, I know that corruption and greed that are rampant in government and business should not have the keys to that closet. I
know public apathy plays in to their (They Live, great movie, gave me the chis and i figured the reason that it wasn't more popular was that it was
too close to the truth) hands.
A few are aware and have a wider field of vision, a greater percentage on this site than in the general public would qualify there.
Your mother was born the same year as my grandmother, so I imagine you are closer to my dad's generation than to mine. I am a gen Xer, but I am not
typical of what is commonly portrayed about them. I have educated myself in a tremendous number of subjects and have always been able to learn easily
and quickly.
You are so right in what you say in that we, the people, need to stand and make our voices heard. That is the ONLY thing we have left to us. I just
don't know if we can awaken enought people in time to make an impact.
I try. Believe me I try.
Think globally, act locally; see the tree thread in my signature.
What I find is that normalcy bias is too strong and sims has too much inertia to allow people to accept the depth of what Fukushima means for our
world.
Has this killed the Pacific?
I don't know. I hope it hasn't. I
know it has injured the ocean. If those hundreds of thousands of gallons of highly contaminated water do end
up in the ocean, that wound will be much deeper and be more difficult to treat.
Reactor 4 has proven to be an extremely tough (we've never been able to find video of that explosion) nut to crack, but just by looking at the
building, one can determine that it would have had to have been an incredibly powerful explosion.
Of the ~1535 (the chart below shows the breakdown) assemblies on the SFP of R4, ~200 are are fresh, unirradiated core awaitng the replcement of the
shroud of the reactor.
Caltech .pdf *******This is the direct link to the full 10MB
file******
The remainder are previously used cores and are being bled of decay heat before being moved to the CSFP building:
Where more decay heat is bled off through a series of heat exchangers before he assemblies being eventually encased in a dry cask for long-term
storage:
building in fireground to the right of the image is the dry cask storage
facility
If the earthquake caused significant enough damage, coolant would have begun leaking immediately and Ina very short time he temps would have reached
highe enough levels to strip water down to hydrogen and oxygen. Soon thereafter, the cladding on the fuel rods would have transformed into zirconium
hydride, which is explosive in and of itself.
Whatever has actuall happened over there, it is a very. Bad. Thing.
edit on 6-2-2012 by jadedANDcynical because: Typo