Nuclear Plant on a Fault Line???

Hi Watford people. Benign lifelong QPR fan here (recovered from the battering you gave us at LR!).

Have to confess, got a bit bored with all the football stuff and was roaming aimlessly around the site earlier. Noticed the comparatively high number of comments against threads on your board... had a butchers and wow! Is there anything you lot don't discuss?? Quite a debating society you've put together, you've obviously been at it a while now. Really enjoyed the threads on Libya (particularly the Bertrand Russel and Zen quotes), WFC debts and National Service.

Anyway, as the title suggests, forgive the audacity but I have a question for your evidently learned panel.

Ever since the Japan disasters, it keeps thumping inside me nut: first world nation with a volatile fault line running up the east coast, builds a six reactor plant bang on top of it (pun apt but not intended) - and not too far from one of the world's biggest cities! What were they thinking?

If they need nuclear energy (and it seems they do) why not locate it elsewhere - on terra firma for instance, the west coast maybe? China might not like it but that's rarely bothered the Japanese much before...

Conventional news sites appear to be addressing the disasters from every angle bar the most obvious one. Less conventional sites do but without plausible theory (access to ocean cargo etc.) let alone fact.

I'm no expert but just curious for a justification for placing a nuclear power plant on a fault line. On the evidence of your earlier discussions, I reckon you lot could probably get as near to an answer as I have so far. Up for it?

If not, back to football I s'pose. What are the chances of nicking Danny Graham off you next season?

 

Welcome Brixton (and well done on rangers season)(wash mouth out now) 2nd question first DG will have to sold in the summer I imagine with a couple of others,as we still in financial **** street!! I imagine a sensible offer of £4M + would do it ,the big variable in this is the new owner, who bought the club with loans
I was wondering about the same issue! They do have nucleur plants dotted around the west coast as well! It does seem a bit risky!
However lets look at from their side
1) Huge industrial nation in the word with the likes of Toshiba ,Honda Sony etc,need lots of electricity to keep its manufacturing industry rolling along , all these plants are dotted all around Japan ,less so the North (more farming and agiculture).
2) No indigenous oil supplies
3) The reactors at the time of construction were state of the art built with lots of failsafes even taking into account earthquakes!
What happened was a severe freak of nature for a quake that violent to hit! but it my opinion it was the tsunami that caused the damage taking out the means of providing coolant to the rods in the core! took away the electrical supply that powered the cooling pumps ,ancilliary pumps ,also the backup systems of using sea water was dashed because of the pipelines used were clogged up with debris from the wave!
You can power down output ,but you cant just turn off the core inside a reactor it ,all you can do is keep it cool ,if you cant then you have a problem!!
4) If Japan was to decommission its nuclear sites where would it get the electricity it needs!

Lastly New Zealand is built on a fault line as welll as as far as I know is non nuke,a lot of countrys are built on faultlines or areas of tectonic instability
Dare I say it but I think the problem is more deep seated and global ie changes in the planet itself!

 

I would guess it is an accepted risk. The Japanese Government would have known there was a faultline underneath it, but would have taken the risk, because like Norway has said, they need the power. Isn't Japan the most densely populated country?

Japan was formed because of the fautline. Much like New Zealand and Hawaii. Where ever you build a nuclear powerplant in Japan, it is always going to be dangerously close to an epicentre, should an earthquake occur.

The Fukushima incident was and is bad. However it has been over-dramatised by the press (as everything is now-a-days). We live in a world of drama, OMG's and WTF's. It is what people "want" to hear.

I feel that is all comes down to our own greed and impatience. Everyone wants everything NOW. This means we are prepared to take more risks, even if this risks have potentially devastating consequences.

 

Thats a really good point BBW greed and need over common sense, where have I heard that before?!

 

Norway - your wife?

 

Welcome Brixton - perhaps we will become the board to post "interesting" debates on.

Agree with others - but earthquakes are and have been common in Japan and their building code generally is sufficient to withstand them. What happened here was a double whammy. earthquake and tsunami (in my innocent youth we used to call those tidal waves). I suspect that the designers failed to make allowance for that. Also the earthquake was a really powerful one and probably the plant would have withstood just that. After the boxing day tsunami of a few years ago and now this one I suspect that a lot more thought will go into that aspect of all coastal buildings in the pacific rim.

Horribly afraid we will have to sell DG - unless we get a sufficient windfall if Ashley Young moves on for a high enough fee triggering a big sell on profit for us. I would prefer us to sell Scott Loach if we do sell but he has had an average season and wont command an awful lot now

 

It is a difficult one. With everyone going mental at the prospect of traditional energy sources drying up, governments are frantically looking for alternatives.

I feel that nuclear energy will be the future. It is just not ready yet. It is like electric cars. Great in principle, but in reality, they are useless. Give them 10 or 20 more years and they will be as good as petrol/diesel equivalents. Again, it comes down to greed and impatience. Desperately trying to produce and sell an electric car before it is really ready.

 

Welcome Brixton. And well done to Rangers this year (though we've still got a chance of the double!). Nice to see HH still performing.

Anyway, I don't think the nuclear energy argument is really about greed. It is much more about Keynesian economics - let the markets decide. If we want "things" (like cars, TVs, microwave ovens) someone needs to build them. To make things we need power. Power costs money and as most businesses are now finding out, going "green" makes economic sense. It reduces the cost of product.

The supply of energy is finite ("energy can be neither created nor destroyed") and therefore is becoming a significant cost. [In reading the following I should say that I am not an expert nor against or for nuclear energy] Nuclear energy is without doubt the greenest form of mass energy "production" - in the sense that it harnesses the most power from the resources available. For that reason, Japan has embraced it, big time (aside from the reality of not having oil/gas; and the mass use of wind turbines or hydro-electric power is not possible for the size of the country).

Nuclear power is massively regulated but even well intentioned regulation can't foresee the scale of a natural disaster like this. One can only hope that the poor people don't pay the ultimate price. Having said that, people die from oil exploration, from coal-mining etc etc (that's not being cynical just realistic). As Norway said, the only solution, is to reduce global energy consumption. Which isn't going to happen - as technology improves we find ways of getting more oil, more gas, developing electric cars etc etc. Some of our habits will change but the stark reality is that as the global population grows so does our energy consumption.

BTW, you can have Danny for £5m plus HH

 

.. and by the way Brixton - you posted at 3.30 a.m. !!!!!!!

 

You seem to have a thing about early starters Leo!

 

Why do they choose nuclear power and place the power plants in such positions. They have geothermal energy in the north of Japan why not exploit that. It is constant and environmentally good. This type of energy may not supply all the needs of Japan industry but it will help to lower the need for oil and nuclear energy for electricity.

​

 

Norway - I am just amazed at the number of people who are up and posting in the middle of the night - to be honest 3.30 a.m. is not an early start - more of a late finish

 

Agreed Ak- you would think they would use as much natural resouce for energy as they can.

 

I do think there will be an increased requirement of nuclear power in the near future and to pretend otherwise is a bit like sticking your head in the sand. If you don't drive, use electricity or have central heating then feel free to keep the moral high ground.

Anyway, as for Japan, I suspect they would have been pretty stringent in their safety designs but it just goes to show that no matter how many different things you think of you'll never be 100% nature proof.

 

geothermal wind , hydo electics ,osmosis tidal , all have a part to play ,but the develpment costs of a lot of these are slowed by cost and the fact the oil companies have bought up the patents!!!

 

Starting to sound like Aber with conspiracy theories now

 

No Norway - you have a long way to go to reach Aber proportions

 

Stop me if this is TMI but next time I get up for a pee in the night I think I will have a look to see who is on line and send loads of messages

 

tfft It is qan interesting one though the oil companies also own a lot of electic car patents as well , hence the development of these was slowed down ,we could easily be 10-15 years further down the line than we already are! same with alternative fuel research, it is only now that some of these patents are being challenged legally (norways government are fighting statoil on some cases and statoil is state owned!!!)

 

Leonardo - i'll keep an eye out for you and your bladder then