Japan's Nuclear Village

[don]

Automatic Earth takes a long look at Japan's nuclear safety record in the context of its corporate culture.

As an energy resource poor island, Japan has embraced nuclear power over the last several decades as a means to ensure security of energy supply. Growth in electricity supply was a key enabler of the Japanese post-war boom and commitment to high-tech industrial growth, but dependence on external sources would have entailed a major vulnerability. The oil shocks of the 1970s strongly underlined the danger of dependency on potentially unstable or capricious foreign suppliers, creating further impetus for nuclear development. The relative independence and self-sufficiency conferred by nuclear development also fitted with a characteristic Japanese cultural insularity. Prior to the earthquake and tsunami, nuclear provided over 30% of Japan's electric power from 54 reactors.

Since the disaster of March 11th, the world has been watching Japan struggle to deal with an unanticipated eventuality that greatly exceeded the design-basis accident for the 40-year old Fukushima plant and overwhelmed its inadequate defences. Japan is in uncharted waters, attempting to control several badly damaged reactors and several spent fuel pools simultaneously, under circumstances for which there is no rule book to follow. Criticism is mounting as to the way the catastrophe is being handled, and the Japanese nuclear governance record is coming under sharp scrutiny.

In order to fathom the Japanese approach to these events, it is necessary to understand aspects of Japanese culture, especially as it manifests in terms of corporate culture.

People's sense of identity and worth is tightly bound with membership of strong, cohesive groups. Japan is an insular and collectivist society which prizes conformity, loyalty, harmony, obedience, consensus, teamwork, stability and homogeneity, and strongly discourages deviation from the norm or standing out from the crowd. Originality, initiative, freedom of expression and openness to outside influences are therefore not generally rewarded. There is an old Japanese proverb encapsulating this attitude:

("Deru kui wa utareru"), or in English, "The stake that sticks up gets hammered down."

Full Article: http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.co...c-village.html

[big67]

Re: Japan's Nuclear Village

Great post, thank you

[Starving Steve]

Re: Japan's Nuclear Village

Let me review for the benefit of those who want to learn:

a.) The human body naturally repairs damage done to cells by radiation;
b.) People eat even root vegetables and mushrooms at Chernobyl, and they are healthy;
c.) Life on Earth evolved to tolerate radiation;
d.) Plutonium is everywhere in the Earth's crust because fission occurs naturally within the Earth;
e.) The heat within the Earth is due to nuclear fission, more than to pressure;
f.) No company should be held liable for natural damage due to a 9.0 earthquake and a 35 foot tsunami;
g.) The tsunami from Japan was so large that it caused damage all along the California coast, 6000 air-miles away;
h.) Sailors sleep inches from the core of atomic reactors on nuclear submarines;
i.) The ecosystem around Chernobyl is doing fine, and has been doing fine for years;
j.) My uncle has a fuel rod portion encased in clear plastic on his desk, a gift and presentation from his company;
k.) Nuclear power is the safest and cheapest and greenest sources of all electric power;
l.) Where are the massive numbers of calculated deaths and mutations from nuclear power?
m.)The daughter products from fission inside the Earth are some of the rare Earth elements on the periodic table;
n.) Large doses of natural radiation come from everywhere around us, even from our foods, especially bananas;
o.) Some elements rich in radionuclides are required for human health, especially potassium;
p.) More radionuclides are emitted into the environment from coal-fired power plants than from nuclear power plants;
q.) Your spouse is naturally radioactive and so are you, therefore don't sleep with your spouse.

[Shakespear]

Re: Japan's Nuclear Village

h.) Sailors sleep inches from the core of atomic reactors on nuclear submarines;

j.) My uncle has a fuel rod portion encased in clear plastic on his desk, a gift and presentation from his company;

Inches ????? That must be true on the plastic model on your uncle's desk.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/subs/c...es/cutaway.jpg

[Starving Steve]

Re: Japan's Nuclear Village

What is the name of the sub in the diagramme above?

As for the paper-weight on my uncle's desk, it is an actual fuel rod portion with the side of the fuel rod cut-away. You can see the black uranium-oxide.

I always had imagined enriched uranium-oxide to be silvery because uranium is a metal, or maybe yellow because the ore of uranium (carnitite) from Arizona and Utah is yellow. But oddly, enriched uranium-oxide is black. The oxide makes it black. The only silvery part of the fuel rod is the zirconium casing that holds the enriched uranium-oxide fuel.

As young boy, I played around the fuel-rod, and I am fine. My uncle is fine. My aunt is fine. Everyone is healthy! These lies about fuel-rods being deadly are fascinating! My sympathies go with Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) in this time of crisis, because TEPCO is being accused of all kinds of falsehoods about radiation.

My first aunt did die of lung cancer from smoking cigarettes. She never stopped smoking. She lived for cigarettes, and she died with a cigarette in her mouth. Her old Buick stank of the cigarettes. But my second aunt is doing fine, and she does NOT smoke cigarettes.

No, I do not hold stock in TEPCO. Please do not take my comments here as any solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any stock.

[big67]

Re: Japan's Nuclear Village

StarvingSteve, the fact that you are (still) fine only demonstrates that deseases due to radiation exposure are a probabilistic phenomena: no matter how big is your ego, you are not a statistically significant population

Anyway I was reading some information about industrial usage of uranium dioxide, and found an interesting story about the fiestaware... a terrific vintage piece to have!

http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/rglass.html

[don]

Re: Japan's Nuclear Village

another blast from the past (I wonder how these were disposed of)

[Starving Steve]

Re: Japan's Nuclear Village

One of the fun things for kids to do at night in bed is to take a very large and bright flashlight and shine it in a dark bedroom directly into your fingers. Put the flashlight up onto your fingers..... All of your finger bones will show-up, just as if you had X-rayed your bones.

Visible light is another form of radiation, of course.

You can do this shining of your feet too, but the bones won't show-up quite as well. The bones of your toes will show-up nicely, however.

As a young boy, I do remember those X-ray machines in the shoe stores. Those were fun! As kids, we used to push and shove each other to get to use the X-ray machine.... Of course, X-ray is nothing to play around with, but what did we know about the danger of X-ray as kids? These machines were in use well into the early 1950s.