Saturday, March 12, 2011

Pow!

Yikes. A magnitude 9.0 earthquake, huge tsunami, a hydrogen explosion in a reactor building signaling that bad stuff is happening to the core, and Level 4 nuclear emergency (so far) in the Fukuyama nuclear reactors.

Kinda puts the Trinity Drive discussion into a broader context, especially for all those alarmists who think of a change in design of Trinity in apocalyptic terms.  God, we love our sheltered lives up here on The Hill.

Good discussion of Fukuyama here, by Barry Brook and Dr Josef Oehmen:

Fukushima Nuclear Accident – a simple and accurate explanation


(For those wondering what this has to do with bicycling, remember where many of us reading this live and work).

3 comments:

danc said...

Don't see the immediate bicycle connection. OK let's try BBC News - Japan earthquake: Explosion at Fukushima nuclear plant for a little context.

danc said...

Thanks, excellent article.

Anonymous said...

The article on the link concerning the level of risk in Japan was informative in terms of facts. It is also looking more and more like the discredited nuclear industry's company line about how safe the stuff is.

I don't recall the industry getting a waiver for human error. It will always plague us and the stakes are too high. The error here was the willing suspension of disbelief. Everybody, engineers included, believed the plants were built to withstand anything nature would throw at them.