Current Status of Japanese Tsunami Earthquake Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Areas

Posted: March 13th, 2011 by: h2

In general I tend to ignore surface noise as we scrabble around the floor of the pit we’re digging for ourselves, but now and then an event of such magnitude occurs that it’s just not possible to at least follow it as it unfolds.

Please note that some of these links will go offline as the world’s attention drifts towards other things, I’ll try to keep them fairly up to date.

Video Feeds

News and Information Sources

Live / Current News Blogs

The following news sites have live blogs where you can find minute by minute updates:

Reports and Serious Analysis

Pro Industry News / Information Sources

Online Discussions and Analysis

As usual, theOilDrum.com is my go-to discussion and information source when it comes to energy related issues and problems.

Related Japanese Energy Issues

It’s not just the nuclear power plants that are going to give Japan big problems during the coming years as it tries to adapt to the new reality created by the earthquake/tsunami. The following articles outline other issues to be faced by Japan’s energy sector.

Nuclear Waste and Other Related Issues

Many times the primary problems of the radioactive waste products generated by nuclear power, as well as the question of uranium mining tailings, themselves radioactive, are pushed to the side by the ongoing, and aggressive, pro-nuclear lobby, and those who have internalized this message.

  • Russia: Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste – NTI.org Historically, the Soviet Union and Russia have disposed of radioactive waste in three ways: by dumping it into the Baltic and Arctic Seas as well as into the northern Pacific (primarily the Sea of Japan); by placing it in storage sites on the Kola Peninsula in the Russian North, and on the Shkotovo and Kamchatka Peninsulas in the Russian Far East; and by holding radioactive waste on storage ships servicing the Northern and Pacific fleets.
  • Spent nuclear fuel throughout US stored by state – March 22 The Associated Press analyzed state-by-state data that nuclear power plants voluntarily report annually to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry and lobbying group. As I’ve noted, the waste is not being handled, and the costs are being pushed to the future. Until waste is processed and permanently stored as it’s generated, there’s nothing to talk about in terms of the acceptability of nuclear energy.
  • The French fix – There are no good choices for dealing with nuclear waste; but some aren’t as bad – www.seattlepi.com – April 22, 1998 Got to start somewhere with the waste, so let’s see where the French are at now, since they generate the most nuclear energy of any country out there percentage wise of total electrical base load. This is an excellent, in-depth, and fairly objective article. Summary? All choices with nuclear waste are bad, but some are worse than others. But in no case does there exist an actually good choice.

General Energy Information

It’s important to have a grasp of some of the basics about global and regional energy use. That’s mostly so you can recognize nuclear industry shills when they lie about energy related matters, the top lie of course being that nuclear replaces coal.

  • World energy resources and consumption – wikipedia This shows quite clearly how all energy sources are increasing, especially coal and oil. Well, oil has hit a plateau since this article was written since it’s hit its probably global production maximum per day. I’m sure there are better resources that show this information in a more up to date way, but this is ok for now. Coal use is up about 100% from 1990 to 2009.

Previous Known, Lesser Known, or Unknown, Nuclear Problems

  • Outside Magazine – Chernobyl, My Primeval, Teeming, Irradiated Eden Very long article about how a heavily irradiated, toxic, Chernobyl exclusion zone is doing today. Interesting stuff.
  • Kyshtym disaster “According to Gyorgy, who invoked the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to the relevant Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) files, the CIA knew of the 1957 Mayak accident all along……but kept it secret to prevent adverse consequences for the fledgling American nuclear industry.” You will see a lot of this type of cover-ups by the way.
  • Time Magazine report on Millstone reactor fuel handling / storage cover up Long, 14 page article that shows how failure to follow proper safety procedures is common and ignored. Same problem we saw, by the way, with Japan now, a history of corruption and other less than ethical actions designed to avoid expensive changes in materials handling and plant ioperations, like storing the massive amounts of spent fuel rods in the cooling ponds, only designed for a few months material initially.

NOTE: comment posters, please do not add discussion type comments to this thread, if you have new links that contain valuable resources, then post them, with a short explanation of what they are talking about in the link.

Feel free to post more general comments in any other currently active thread, however.

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