I have to admit that I’m all for space exploration, but this is not why…

Via Popular Science:

Former Apollo Astronaut and Senator Says Mining Helium on the Moon Could Solve The Global Energy Crisis

Former astronaut, Apollo moonwalker, geologist and former Senator Harrison Schmitt has a modest plan to solve the world’s energy problems. All we need is $15 billion over 15 years and some fusion reactors that have yet to be invented. And we’ll need a moon base.

Schmitt’s idea isn’t novel–he thinks the U.S. should go back to the moon, this time to mine the surface for helium-3, an isotope of helium that is rare on earth but relatively bountiful on the moon. The Russians have been talking about mining helium-3 from the moon for years, but they’ve never put forth a viable plan. Schmitt thinks his, all things considered, is pretty realistic.

So how does Schmitt’s plan break down? We’ll need $5 billion for a helium-3 fusion demonstration plant, because as of right now no such thing exists. We’ll also need to invest $5 billion more in a heavy-lift rocket capable of launching regular moon missions, something akin to the Apollo-era Saturn V.

A moon base for mining the stuff would cost another $2.5 billion, and though Schmitt didn’t really specify in his recent presentation to a petroleum conference, the other $2.5 billion could easily be chalked up to operating costs in an endeavor of this magnitude.

But it could pay for itself while developing critical spaceflight technologies and enabling a mission to Mars. Schmitt says a two-square-kilometer swath of lunar surface mined to a depth of roughly 10 feet would yield about 220 pounds of helium-3. That’s enough to run a 1,000-megawatt reactor for a year, or $140 million in energy based on today’s coal prices. Scale that up to several reactors, and you’ve got a moneymaking operation.

Why go to all this trouble? Helium-3 is abundant on the moon and produces little to no radioactive waste that must be cleaned up and stored. The reaction necessary would burn at a much hotter temperature than other fusion reactions, but the chance of environmental disaster via radioactive spill is virtually nil. Plus we would establish a permanent presence on the moon.

Throw in another $5 billion, and we might even be able to populate said moon base with a clone work force and some soothing, Kevin Spacey-esque AI.

Did anyone miss the part about the fusion reactors that HAVE YET TO BE INVENTED? Aside from that, a number of the contentions made are just plain wrong: Helium-3 fusion does not produce zero radioactive waste, it’s not that abundant on the moon and you would not just need a Saturn-V sized rocket, but thousands of them.

Now four reasons why this whole idea is stupid

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Via the Associated Press (From Germany – Surprise Surprise!) (Presumably the dollar figure was translated from Euros for reprinting in the US)

Insurance cost vs. nuclear power risk
BERLIN — From the United States to Japan, it’s illegal to drive a car without sufficient insurance, yet governments around the world choose to run more than 440 nuclear power plants with hardly any coverage whatsoever.

In the United States, every nuclear power plant is required to maintain a minimum of $300 million in privately paid liability insurance. This is about the maximum that anyone can really hope to effectively get from private insurers, since much more would risk the insurance company itself would be unable to pay out. In addition to this, every plant operator pays into a shared risk insurance pool, which now totals over twenty billion dollars. Anything above that is government underwritten, since no private entity ever could guarantee such massive insurance burdens. Obviously these amounts are significantly higher than one could ever hope for most plant operators to ever be able to come up with on their own.

I don’t know the specifics of other countries, but most have some kind of insurance requirements.

Japan’s Fukushima disaster, which will leave taxpayers there with a massive bill, brings to the fore one of the industry’s key weaknesses — that nuclear power is a viable source for cheap energy only if it goes uninsured.

Governments that use nuclear energy are torn between the benefit of low-cost electricity and the risk of a nuclear catastrophe, which could total trillions of dollars and even bankrupt a country.

The bottom line is that it’s a gamble: Governments are hoping to dodge a one-off disaster while they accumulate small gains over the long-term.

It is a cheap source of energy even when heavily insured, which it generally is.

The Japanese have a huge bill from a Tsunami and earthquake. This may have been made worse by the fact that the government is continuing to enforce an unnecessary evacuation area, even after nearly all the iodine-131 in the reactors is gone, decay heat has been reduced and cooling is stabilized. But that’s the Japanese government’s fault if they want to continue to support the evacuation.

The cost of a worst-case nuclear accident at a plant in Germany, for example, has been estimated to total as much as $11 trillion, while the mandatory reactor insurance is only 3.7 billion.

11 trillion? Now you’ve gone from wrong to complete absurdity. You could completely destroy much of Germany and rebuild it all for less than that. We know. We’ve actually done it. Even if you adjust for inflation it comes nowhere close to $11 trillion. Even if you consider the increased costs of labor, infrastructure construction and the fact that there were costs that were locally-paid, it does not even come close.

I’d love to hear where this $11 trillion figure comes from. It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.

From there on, the article pretty much says the same thing, claiming all nuclear plants should carry insurance for amounts of money that don’t even exist and adding in a few dramatic statements from “experts” on the matter.   There is also the high and mighty claim that it’s unethical for a society to have to be burdened by the risk that a nuclear plant will suffer a cooling system failure and thus bankrupt superpowers.

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We know the approximate dosage that workers at Fukushima have been exposed to is not extremely high.  All but 28 workers have been exposed to less than 100 mSv, while only two workers have been exposed to levels as high as 170 mSv.  Thus far, nobody has been exposed to more than 250 mSv.

This is really not much radiation at all.  It’s more than the average person is exposed to and is more than nuclear plant workers are normally exposed to under normal operating conditions.   Still, 100 mSv is only about 10% of the minimum dose required to cause even minor, temporary radiation sickness.

Despite hazardous conditions, there have been no life-threatening injuries at the Fukushima plant since the quake and tsunami hit on March 11.  The worst case that workers might face is a slightly elevated risk of cancer in the years to come, although even that is not a certainty, and as it stands, even those exposed to the highest doses would have only a tiny increase in total risk.

So why on earth would anyone make a fuss about a worker being exposed to 17.55 mSv?   That level may be bellow the (extremely conservative) standards for exposure under normal operations, but it’s not high at all.  It’s not high enough to cause any detectable health problems.   It’s about the same exposure someone might get from a few CT scan examinations.

The reason everyone is all bothered is that the person in question had two X chromosomes.

Via Fox Business:

TOKYO -(Dow Jones)- Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501.TO) said Wednesday that one of its female employees at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was exposed to radiation exceeding three times the legal limit of 5 millisieverts in a three-month period, Kyodo News reported.

The woman, who is in her 50s, has no health problems, but the government’s nuclear safety agency said that two more female workers may also have been exposed to radiation in excess of the limit. The agency called on the utility to investigate the reason and take measures to prevent a recurrence.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told a press conference the situation was “extremely deplorable,” but added that all female employees had left the radiation-leaking plant on March 23.

According to the plant operator and the agency, a total of 19 female Tokyo Electric employees were working at the six-reactor complex following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami hit the plant, and one of them was exposed to a total of 17.55 millisieverts of radiation.

The woman was found to have suffered more internal than external radiation exposure, with the internal exposure reaching 13.6 millisieverts.

Another agency official said that TEPCO needs to explain why the worker suffered so much internal exposure.

TEPCO and the agency said that the woman had been refueling fire trucks and working inside a building on site. She had been wearing a mask, but may have inhaled radioactive material when putting it on or taking it off.

An TEPCO official acknowledged during a press conference that its radiation-dose management should have been more stringent.

Under Japanese law, radiation workers are not permitted to be exposed to more than 100 millisieverts over five years, or more than 50 millisieverts in one year.

For female workers, the limit is 5 millisieverts in a three-month period, considering they may become pregnant. For the general public, the limit is 1 millisievert per year, excluding exposure from medical procedures.

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You have probably seen photos from Japan that show people walking around wearing surgical masks  The implication of these photographs would seem to be that there’s a need for residents of Japan to protect themselves from fallout from the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant incident.

Some of these individuals may indeed be wearing such masks because of a belief that the masks will provide protection from fallout, but that does not tell the whole story.   The Japanese like to put on masks of this type pretty much any time anything in the enviornment is supposed to be harmful.   If there are reports of high pollen levels, the Japanese put on their masks.  If it’s cold season, they put on their masks.  When the air quality might be a little off, they put on their masks.    In many cases, they don’t even need a reason to put on a mask.

Just as in the West, yuppies will down bottles of expensive designer water, eat “organic” certified produce or down huge numbers of vitamin-C tablets, the surgical mask in much of Asia is supposed to promote good health in general and do all kinds of other things that it probably does not.

Asian Surgical Mask Culture:

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Only on rare occasions do I ever take down a post that I have made on this site. This is one of them.

While I continue to stand by the conclusion of the post, that workers at Fukushima face a small risk of increased cancer and that there is a low likelihood that any will die as a result, I had to reconsider the quality of the post.

Simply put: There was at least one basic mathmatical error in it, and many of the estimates and numbers given were just too hazy.  Too many of the “best guesses” were not good enough and the avaliable data was too sparse to go very far with.  

Upon giving the issue more thought, I simply decided that the post was too speculative, too vague and not of a high enough quality to put out there, especially with the potential that it could be cited by others and spread information which may ultimatey be proven false.

I apologize to readers for publishing something that, upon better consideraton, probably should never have been published.  I have been quick to critisize the media for over-speculation in areas where there is not enough data avaliable.

That said, I hipe to have a similar post on the risks to Fukushima workers in the near future.  It will require substansially more research and consideration than the previous one.

Fear of nuclear energy is common in most of the Western world, but nowhere are more people more terrified of nuclear energy than in Germany.   Following the German reunification, anti-nuclear groups mounted a campaign of fear that has been more successful than anywhere else in the world.  The message was aided by the recent memory of both Chernobyl and of the decades of fear during the Cold War, when Germany was seen as the most likely battleground in a nuclear war.

In 2000, the coalition government of the German Green Party and Social Democratic Party announced that nuclear power would be completely phased out in Germany by 2020.   In the following years, several nuclear power plants were closed as part of the mandatory termination of nuclear power generation.   While the official party line was that the phase-out of nuclear energy would result in its replacement with renewable energy sources, the reality is that Germany instead increased both coal and natural gas generation capacity and electrical imports.   Huge wind and solar power projects were built, but resulted in only insignificant base load power capacity.

As a result, by 2010, Germany was facing the potential for a catastrophic shortage of electricity.   New coal burners and international transmission lines were not being built fast enough to replace the nuclear power stations that were slated for mandatory closure.   It is therefore no surprise that the government announced changes to the planned phase-out which would allow for nuclear power plants to continue to operate past the initial limits.

Not surprisingly this resulted in a very strong backlash from both radiophobic Germans and anti-nuclear energy special interests.   Still, despite the terror that so many Germans have been conditioned to respond to nuclear energy with, the extension seemed preferable to sitting in the dark or huffing down even more coal fumes.

Then came Fukushima.  As public support for nuclear energy was already hanging by a thread, the panic and fear that came as a result of Fukushima seems to have pushed things back over the edge.  Having now seen major losses in regional elections, the German government now seems to be ready to concede to a national phobia of nuclear energy.

Yet this time something is different.   The pervasive lie that “green” sources like wind and solar can power a major industrial nation is no longer as easily believed as it once, and with the potential for nuclear plants being retired in the near future, there it’s no longer possible to claim that wind and solar energy will be available by the time the plants are finally decommissioned.  In light of this, politicians are now starting to admit the truth:  phasing out nuclear energy will mean its replacement with fossil fuel – coal and gas.

To some extent, lip service is still being paid to the “renewable” sources.  That is both a political necessity and gives some measure of sugar-coating to the fact that this means more dirt burners. Even in a country terrified of nuclear energy, building more coal and gas capacity rubs enough people the wrong way that the claim that they are just “until renewable capacity is available” makes it a bit easier to swallow.

Via Reuters:
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Around 1939, a lot of people started to get very excited because a new term was being tossed around.  A conflict which had developed between the UK, France and Germany over the German invasion of Poland started to be called “World War II.”   The largest previous conflict was not retroactively re-named “World War I.”   This was a big deal because it was now officially acknowledged that the hostilities were on par with the huge European war that had happened two decades earlier.

Of course, it doesn’t really matter.   World War II in fact turned out to be much larger than World War I, but not because of the name.   They could have called it “The Great Patriotic War,” as the Russians do or they could have called it “The War of 1939.”   It would not matter.

This is not the first time that terminology has gotten people hot and bothered and it won’t be the last.   Politicians have been asked if they consider the Israeli West Bank Barrier to be a “wall or fence” as if that matters.  When it was discovered that Pluto was actually one of many small kiper belt objects many objected ferociously to it being downgraded from “planet,” despite the fact that it changes neither the size nor orbit of Pluto.

Well, now it’s official, Fukushima is now a “level 7″ and the media seems to be going nuts, acting like this means it is at least as bad as Chernobyl and probably worse.

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I’ve seen some bad reporting in my day – some downright horrible reporting.   However, this might just take the cake.   It’s made even worse by the fact that this shameful article was in the New York Times, a once respectable mainstream news source.

It is so blatantly anti-nuclear and anti-corporate that it resorts to the most odious of lies in a very thinly veiled attempt to paint the entire nuclear industry as being a horribly socially irresponsible monster.   The reporter obviously an ax to grind, but reports this as news, not opinion.

I think TEPCO should sue them for slander, but that probably would do more harm than good.

Japanese Workers Braved Radiation for a Temp Job

Mr. Ishizawa, who was finally allowed to leave, is not a nuclear specialist; he is not even an employee of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the crippled plant. He is one of thousands of untrained, itinerant, temporary laborers who handle the bulk of the dangerous work at nuclear power plants here and in other countries, lured by the higher wages offered for working with radiation.

They do not do “most of the dangerous work.” They do most of the work period. A nuclear plant is like just about any other industrial site. There are some jobs that require a great deal of skill and/or education, but there are a lot of unskilled jobs that range from sweeping floors to moving boxes to tightening bolts.

If you don’t believe me, go to any construction site.   You will see some skilled, experienced and educated individuals, such as the foreman, inspectors and welders.   However, you’ll also see a lot of laborers whose primary jobs include digging, cleaning up, moving around lumber, installing drywall and so on.

Yes, people are drawn to the nuclear industry because it pays highly. It’s not simply because they are “working with radiation.” The industry tends to offer good wages and benefits and working conditions that are at least as good as any industry and often much better.

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To help put into perspective the nature of the damage that has occurred to the Fukushima Daiichi power plant and surrounding area, I’ve put together a collection of some of the ground-level photographs that have been released.  Some of these photos come from the Associated Press, while others were released by the Japan Atomic Industry Forum, which has released photographs from inside the plant to the media.  A few also come from the US Navy, which has helped deliver supplies to the crippled nuclear plant.

These photos have been scaled and/or cropped to fit in the available space.   Higher resolution versions may be available at the original source, which is linked at the bottom of each photo.

The number of photos has turned out to be too large for one post, so this is part 1.   Part 2 will be published within the 48 hours and will include images of the damaged reactor buildings and plant overviews.

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What country is going to win the award for being the stupidest in their response to the events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant?   Could it be Australia, where ignoramuses who were more than 75 miles from the plant are whining about possible radiation poisoning?   Could it be the United States, where idiots are frantically calling government officials to ask if its safe to go outdoors?   How about China, where morons are buying salt thinking it will protect them from radioactive iodine?

Excuse my name calling, but the sheer stupidity of this is starting to really get to me.   It seems that South Korea is now vying for the title of being the most radiophobic nation of complete and utter idiots by closing schools out of fear of radiation.

Via CTV:

SEOUL, South Korea — More than 100 South Korean schools have cancelled or shortened classes over fears that rain falling across the country may include radiation from Japan’s stricken nuclear plant.

The Education Office of Gyeonggi province said it allowed schools to decide whether to open Thursday.

The prime minister’s office said radiation levels in the rain were low and posed no health threat.

Still, officials said that 126 schools in Gyeonggi province, near the capital, Seoul, shut down and 43 others shortened class hours as a precaution.

The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said only a few schools outside Gyeonggi cancelled classes Thursday.

Radiation levels fall quickly as you move away from the source, and officials have cleared the 12-mile (20-kilometre) radius around Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex.

Recent progress at the plant — which was damaged by a March 11 tsunami — appears to have slowed the release of radiation into the ocean. This week, technicians there plugged a crack that had been gushing contaminated water into the Pacific. Contamination in waters off the coast has fallen dramatically since then.

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