Knee jerk energy policy

Enginer says:
As a Registered Professional Chemical Engineer (with no proof) I believe that cold fusion has been adequately demonstrated and will be proven this fall.
The e-cat is really exiting stuff, but since it’s really too good to be true, I remain skeptical (while growingly optimistic) until this fall. If this invention holds its promise, it will change the world forever in ways we still can’t even imagine (just imagine e.g. no more need to be connected to the power grid – can you?).
Anthony would need a new twist to his blog, though, CAGW will be such a non-issue then 😉

Re: Joe Public says:
May 30, 2011 at 3:08 am
“You guys DO know that 3 of the reactors are in meldown right? TEPCO only like 2 weeks ago finally fessed up to there being a meltdown since 16 hours after the tsunami struck, meaning, meltdown has been in full effect since March 11.
Unbelievable.”
I second your expressions of bafflement. We have three nuclear units with breached pressure vessels and containment structures, at least one of those reactors with its entire fuel load sitting as a molten blob in the dry well underneath its pressure vessel, unit four reactor building leaning like the Tower Of Pizza with a triple load of fuel rods sitting in its spent fuel pool on the upper level and three reactors leaking so badly that “once through” cooling is necessary and the entire plant site is awash in a rising tide of highly reactive water that continues to exit those reactors. Yet, no matter how bad the news becomes (and it continues to get worse by the day) I continue to see entrenched and impassioned comments that stagger my sense of reality.
Early in this unfolding disaster, I tried to convey on this blog the seriousness of the situation at Fukushima with little effect. At that time, nuke proponents were denying “meltdown” and claiming the news media was “over-reacting”. Now that the crippled plant’s documented failures have progressed to just about the worst possible outcome for a boiling water reactor facility, I’m still reading “over-reaction”.
While I acknowledge that Germany’s abandoning nuclear without an economically viable plan for replacement power seems more politically reactionary than rational, I find many of the comments to this article to be, as you put it, unbelievable.

They go through this after every other election and keep bumping the date back, though only by one year this time. Note that all the powerplants are supposed to shut down in the last 2 years, it never happens that way in the real world, replacement is gradual. But by that time the current politicians plan to be retired.
Germany exported electricity, so they could get away with shifting to ‘Green Power’ by exporting shortages to the rest of the EU, but this plan looks like they are through the fat and into the muscle and bone. 2011 would be interesting, but by then it will have been delayed several more times

One word: “Nuts!”

Claude Harvey says at 4:40pm
“unbelievable”
Claude you suffer from engineer worry. Why not worry about all the people who died in the tsunami or all the Americans who died in the recent torandoes. But no, lets worry about a contained breakdown of technology in a country that has no oil or coal and yet has achieved the scale of the worlds second largest economy.
Yes times are tough for the Japanese nuclear industry. So you do a Germany and run for the hills. Japan will rebuild. They will clean up the mess. They will climb back. Meanwhile Germany will have morphed into Don Quixote, not quite sure why they are tilting at windmills but certain that if it looks green then follow it .

Jerome, actually wind and solar have rather high hazards. Remember that the most common form of industrial accident is falling. As of 2008, wind power in Germany had accounted for 21 fatalities, 20 in construction and maintenance and one bystander (a parachutist who landed on a turbine). Since then, I don’t have precise figures but I understand that the routine fatalities have averaged about two per year. There was one incident of a turbine falling on a highway and killing three motorists.
When you consider this per unit of energy produced, wind turns out to be nearly as dangerous as modern industrial coal mining. It works out to somewhere between 600-800 deaths per TWyear. Nuclear is about 15, hydro in the OECD is about 30-50, hydro in the 3rd world is about 900, coal is about 1,000, and liquefied petrochemicals are about 2,000. The definitive numbers on this, of which these are approximations, is produced by the Paul Scherrer Institut.
Claude, it still amounts to a ‘so what’. Doses to the public have been and will be negligible, no worker has received more than 200 mSv, which is the maximum permissible under emergency conditions, and there have been zero radiation related deaths or significant injuries. Your “highly radioactive” water will still not constitute a significant radiation dose to either the public or to the biosphere.

Well with any luck the new reactors that runs on fairy dust that is derived from unobtanium will come on line in 2020 so they will be okay.

Hmmm. So politicians speak and some people actually believe them. Silly them.
Is Guantanamo closed yet?
Merkel is just surviving short term while the Fukushima hysteria passes.
As this shutdown approaches, with brownouts, probably energy rationing, and of course ‘energy prices necessarily skyrocketing,’ reality will set in and plans will change.
A country with Germany’s economy needs abundant and reliable energy. Their only other option other than coal is natural gas, which will make them Russian puppets.

Any of you geniuses care to estimate what it might take to decontaminate 600 square kilometers of soil? I’ve seen $ millions spent decontaminating a single acre.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-30/japan-risks-chernobyl-like-dead-zone-as-fukushima-soil-radiation-soars.html
The maximum cumulative dose allowed by the Japanese government for the cleanup personnel is 250 mSv, not the 200 dose cited by “Colin”. It was raised from Japan’s standard 100 mSv limitation in order to avoid having to use “jumpers” for even routine chores at the crippled plant. Two workers are now reported to have received in excess of 250 mSv (reputedly the equivalent of 400 medical X-rays to the gut – there’s a reason why your X-ray technician covers some of your vitals with a lead blanket and hides behind a lead wall before unleashing the shot).
The catch-22 is that no one really knows what dosages were inflicted in the early days of the accident because nearly all the monitoring and recording equipment was disabled and the crew ran out of dosimeters very early on.

http://www.thestreet.mobi/story/11064385/1/8-nuclear-stocks-with-upside.html
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Are-Uranium-Prices-Ready-to-Rally.html
I’m with T.C. …buying uranium producers.