8.8 earthquake hits Japan

A good example of what Im talking about, and which youve presented in the hyperspectral images youve presente. Look at the top left one. There are linear features in the soil taht probably indicate the presence of joints or faults. Siting criteria requires us to know and map ACTIVE faults (those defined as having displayed some displacement in a past few thousand years)

WE didnt have hyspec methods when most of these nuke plants were located and built. If we need to ,we can "puddle" existing tectonic features so they dont induce and displacement in the plant OR, that they dont become a conduit for ground water movement and a ground water plumes

Agreed, as far as tectonics - never had an opinion on the damn things, being unqualified to address matters geological. But I do understand the mathematical particle physics portion of what's involved here and I'm telling you that, if the vast expanse of the Pacific hadn't been available, Fukushima would be toast.

I think you make some good points from a geological perspective, but I believe attempting to consistently impose such rational methods, would fail on a political one. I believe the fundamentsal issues are that the relationship between risk, rationally examined, and human reactions to it are not either rational or easily explained. We tend to tolerate ubiquitous risks in which we have an element (often very limited) of choice, while rejecting others appreciably smaller that appear to be imposed on us. We also tend to overreract to some risks that involve things unseen and not easily understood. Finally we often have difficulty dealing with hazards that involve low probabilities but with horrific outcomes. Thus we have about 5.2 deaths every hour on American highways - 24/7/365 without a lot of discussion and tons of paper consumed in analyses of a reactor accicent at TMI that killed no one. In a similar way the world appears fixated on the Fukushima powerplant in Japan after an unusual natural disaster that wiped out numerous citiers, towns, roads, bridges, railroads & trains, power systems and agricultural lands on which a large population depends .... not to mention upwards of 15,000 people.

Are we prepared to relocate cities and/or other elemments of modern infrastructure away from geologically risky areas? I doubt it seriously. It is relatively easy to deal with risk and expectations in the world of science and engineering. However, everything we know about human history tells us that these are not principles that human beiongs will gladly accept in the governance of their lives.

All that said, I do believe that some improvementsd could be made. Just briefly considering a map of the Pacific plate boundaries, it seems evident that locating a powerplant on the west coast of northern Japan - just as acessible to the oceanic heat sink on the Sea of japan - would have been preferable to one on the Pacific coast immediately west of a very active seismic plate boundary. Even here though, we would have to consider the locations of the major population centers of Japan, from Tokyo to Osaka, which also occupy the same sessmically active region. I believe this illustrates the contradiction very well.

Im not married to the process but "in a perfect world" Id expect that the citizen scientists would have more credibility. AS it stands, you are right and we , usually subordinate these siting realities to design promises. AND on top of it all we have Price ANderson so there really is little at stake for the nuke industry.

HS makes the point excatly the way Id like to see it, (where we three could actually make a difference in siting criteria to reduce some level of risk by tweking the siting requirements up a whole bunch)
Waitll we have reliable fusion power where we would be trucking nuke material in as feedstock and we are "capturing the sun" in a corn field.

Siting?! Have you followed the debacle pursuant to wind turbine farms whose planned location was in "tornado alley" east of the Rockies? I have - from a financial standpoint - and couldn't believe "sophisticated investors" dumped $ 150 billion on it. Getting "windpower" to demand on 2 coasts was impossible.

Fusion was an old dream even at my birth; I don't expect to see it realized in my lifetime. Plutonium is what powers our satellites; until we get commercial fusion it's only fission that will cleanly turn on the lights in our homes and offices. No amount of blather from Obama, Gore, et al, will change that.

never say never. we kept talking about a functional limit to the size of processors just 10 years ago.

Actually, the loudest political proponent of fusion has been Lyndon LArouche and his gang of super libertarians.

True - but with microprocessors we got an actual quantum improvement via multicore processors, and the new parallelized software to run them. In fusion we seem to be simply building bigger tokamaks. Anyway, got to go soon, so wanted to tell you for the record that you won my undying affection when you said your favorite plutonium isotope was same as mine: 244. As you know some of it is leftovers from assorted bomb explosions, but at least some of it extant on our planet can only be here from some long-ago supernova. The stuff of stars. There's magic in them thar numbers, as well as in them thar hills

I havent been out to SAndia in a few years so Im not up to date ,but what about the "Z machine"? arent they still screwing with that or the laser fusion gizmos(non donuts)

All I heard from them recently is they acquired superfast, superparallel, 4-D computers for modeling thermonuclear explosions. No, they don't rent them out for other quantitative analyses - they claim to be researching neutron flux inside suns. Re lasers for fusion, check ITER, France - also on the waters!

Perhaps you should visit the rather large masoleum to the magnetic containment fusion project at Livermore. It has been abandoned now for 20 years. You are correct there were concerns about the continued gains in efficiency & speed of microprocessors a decade ago. However, these were fears that advancements that had been occuring almost continuously for a long time might not be sustained. In the problem of confining a fusion reaction there has been almost no progress for several decades - a very differeent situation. Indeed your analogy would better suggest that no progress in fusion will likely occur for a very long time.

There's still a joint US/European research program that has been operating now for about three decades, (the acronym for it has slipped my mind). My impression is that it long ago became a permanent scientific bureaucracy, likely to go nowhere.

Its called limited resources . Google it .

When you say a compassion towards animals, do you include cockroaches ? Or is this a mammal thing ? Because if it is only SOME mammals, then I stand more chance of being correct than you....but we are used to that, arent we ?

What a sheltered life you have lived amongst the rocks . Go to India and tell people dying in the streets that your dog matters more than they do because we can save both . Doesnt make a lot of sense does it ?

Gomer the Turd must seek help .

As opposed to an immature mind ranting about war crimes whilst being very selective in choosing which country to criticise .

It appears to me that you have missed farmerman's meaning completely.

"Ready, Fire, Aim" !

Then be so kind as to explain it to me.....

Sentimental tangent - sorry, that's my way. A childhood friend's husband was a fusion scientist at Oak Ridge, may he rest in peace. She is no dummy either. I went back there to their wedding in the later sixties, so of course I met him at the time. I figure I wouldn't understand a word he said if he ever talked about his job if we had conversed after that; he probably wasn't allowed to anyway. She and I are still in contact, but not to the extent that we talk about fusion.

Waiting patiently George O'Brien.....how have I missed the point completely in :



"Fire ! Aim, Ready !"

I guess I was mistaken sine Id been reading several of the old "Science and TEchnology" magazines from LArry Livermore and they had a joint pub re: the Z machine technology from the joint efforts with Sandia, Which, as I further understand, has led to a combined science and tech advanced research center of Livermore and Sandia. Is that true?