The Great Fukushima Cover-Up

[flamingdem]

http://www.presstorm.com/2011/04/the-great-fukushima-cover-up/

Recently the Prime Minister Naoto Kan of Japan says:

“From now on, people…should live life as normal,”

and should

“consume products from the areas that have been affected”

in order to

“support the area.”


This statement was made about the same time Fukushima was reclassified as a level 7 accident, the same as Chernobyl. Who does he think he is kidding? Let’s go back to normal only weeks after Japan has experienced a nuclear major disaster?

------------------------------SNIP

Greenpeace has found radioactively contaminated vegetables with levels up to 75 times more than the legal limits. They also found that people in contaminated areas have not been told to avoid eating their crops. The Low Level Radiation Campaign suggests that the government should ask for international food aid to prevent people having to eat contaminated food. In the light of these comments, the suggestion of the Prime Minister that people continue to eat food from the areas around Fukushima is criminal.

WHAT IS BEING COVERED-UP?

The main thing Japanese officials want to cover up is the fact that their choice of generating electricity from nuclear power stations has been a serious mistake. They obviously thought a disaster on such a scale could never happen. Now they want to pretend that things are not too bad so they can continue to rely on nuclear power in the future. This is also useful to the nuclear power industry world-wide, which has been working overtime to minimize the dangers the accident at Fukushima has caused. As a result of the Japanese cover-up: (1) officials have provided very little real information about the condition of the reactors, (2) they have released only a limited amount of data about levels of contamination, (3) what they have released looks like the lowest levels they can find, (4) they have allowed people to remain in areas with high levels of contamination, and (5) they have continued to play down or ignore the dangers from eating contaminated food.

There is also one more problem which needs to be dealt with, namely compensation. TEPCO will pay up to US$12,000 to each of the more than 50,000 families who lived in the 30km evacuation zone. These payments are intended to cover short-term living expenses, and final compensation packages have yet to be worked out. It is quite possible that the people who have been evacuated will never be able to return to their property. This means they will need some kind of compensation for jobs, houses, businesses and farms which must be abandoned.

YET MORE COVER-UP

This article has concentrated on the way that Japanese authorities have reacted to the events at Fukushima. My aim has been to argue that protecting the health and welfare of the Japanese people is not as important as protecting the image of the nuclear power industry. Still the cover-up does not stop here. Two areas which have not been discussed are (1) the contamination of the Pacific Ocean from the leaking reactors and (2) the air-borne radioactivity from Fukushima which has been found in the United States and Canada. MORE AT LINK

[Art_from_Ark]

1. The US Dept. of Energy says radiation levels are decreasing

http://blog.energy.gov/content/situation-japan/

Measurements taken by various local organizations say levels are decreasing or stabilizing at near-normal levels outside of the eastern Fukushima area.

The area immediately downwind (N and NW) from the reactors that has not already been evacuated will be evacuated within the coming month.

No one can say with any certainty at this time how long the area will remain evacuated.

[WhiteTara]

3. If memory serves me, the evacuation will be about

125 thousand years.

I have great concern for all of you there and want to scream out, Run Away! But I know that isn't possible for many people. Maybe I'm just paranoid and am over reacting?

Perhaps nuclear would be safe if it were not in the hands of humans who are subject to greed. Shortcuts, cheaper not better rule the capitalist mind and that seems to always spell ruin.

[Demeter]

4. No, not even then would Nuclear be safe

"Safe" means you can fix Oops-es. Nuclear accidents are forever. Even without accidents, the mining, refining and use of nuclear materials means radiation contamination forever.

[caraher]

5. not that long, but beyond the lifetime of anyone calling the place home

The main isotope contributing to high-level radioactive contamination is Cs-137, which has a 30 year half-life. How long you want stay away depends on how much above whatever level you consider acceptable the contamination is. If it's 1000 times greater than you'd accept then, unless you can physically remove the contaminant, you need to wait 10 half lives (since 2^10 is about 1000). For Cs-137 that would be 300 years. If it's 1 million times too high then you wait 600 years (since it drops by a factor of 1000 the first 300 years and another factor of 1000 the next 300 years).

There are other, longer-lived isotopes present, but their long half-lives also make them less radioactive per number of nuclei. Pu-239 has a 24,000 year half-life, so if you have a lot of it to worry about essentially none of it decays on the time scale of recorded human history, and even 125,000 years is only about 5 half-lives, which would give a reduction by a factor of 2^5 or about 30 times.

It's certainly true that safety and profit are in conflict. My understanding is that the reactor design at Fukushima (and in use in many reactors here) has a pressure suppression torus mainly as an engineering trick to save money on reactor vessel construction. The idea was that it would limit pressure rises in event of an accident, meaning the vessel did not need to be as thick, which made it cheaper to build. Then more careful analysis - after they'd started building with this design - showed that the system likely would not maintain pressure at the desired lower level in an accident, and it would become necessary to vent the vessel to reduce pressure, releasing radioactive steam in the process. So that's what they've been doing: building up pressure, releasing radioactive steam, repeat...

[Turbineguy]

6. The torus ring acts to help control

reactor vessel steam pressure. Pressure is controlled by sending heat into the torus. It's more efficient than opening a steam dump turbine bypass directly to the condenser, although that exists as well. The control rods deal with controlling the chain reaction and the recirculation deals with the pressure fluctuations. They are separate issues. Here's why: Reactor control is different than conventional fossil fuel boiler combustion control system which can regulate steam pressure fairly precisely because of low hysteresis and low latency.

The Pressure vessel wall thickness is determined by the pressure it has to contain. BWR reactors can run at lower pressures as steam is generated in the reactor and not in a separate secondary pressure vessel such as PWR's do. Hence a thinner shell.

From my trusty Baumeister's (8th edition page 9-122):

"Boiling water reactors have a simpler design and can utilize relatively thin-walled pressure vessels and pipes because they operate at moderate pressures compared with pressurized-water reactors. Fuel cladding temperatures are only slightly higher than steam temperatures and there is an inherent safety factor because steam-void volume increases on a transient power increase.

<snip>

Load changes are accomplished by steam bypass control or rods since adjustment of the turbine throttle and consequent reduction in steam flow will cause an increase in pressure in the reactor, which in turn will cause the collapse of the steam bubbles and increase reactivity. The control system functions to maintain constant reactor pressure, and reactivity control is achieved in part by varying the recirculation rate in the reactor."

There's a lot of information in those two paragraphs that dispute some of the contentions about peak fuel temperatures likely experienced in the Fukushima reactors.

In conventional boilers the collapse and growth of steam bubbles due to pressure fluctuations, which still occur within the parameters of combustion control, result in a phenomenon called shrink and swell. This is where the boiler water level rises when the turbine throttle is opened and drops when the throttle is closed in. Feed water flow is controlled by balancing water level against steam flow with water flow as a corrective feedback. Because of the way steam is generated in the reactor or in boiler tubes, the control of steam bubble size is important as the specific heat of steam and therefore the heat transfer rate is so much less than water that large bubbles create localized and temporary hot spots. In addition, higher pressures result in higher steam density therefore greater heat transfer. Steam is created where ever the heat source is and therefore there's plenty of steam well below the water level.

I hope this helps.

[caraher]

9. Thanks for the explanation

I'm not fully conversant with the details of these systems, so additional technical information is useful. I definitely understand better the issue with the steam bubbles.

Still, it's not clear to me what the safety margins really are - sure, BWRs do operate at lower pressures and the torus helps, but there does seem to be a consensus that the original Mark I designs weren't adequate in some accident scenarios (which is http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16contain.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&seid=auto&smid=tw-nytimesscience">why they did retrofits including addition of venting systems).

It's interesting to read http://www.gereports.com/setting-the-record-straight-on-mark-i-containment-history/">GE's rebuttals to criticisms of http://www.gereports.com/the-mark-i-containment-system-in-bwr-reactors/">Mark I containment. What's I find telling is that most of what they say is couched in terms of regulatory compliance. For instance (from the second link):

Claim: The Mark I was “cheaper and easier to build – in part because they used a comparatively smaller and less expensive containment structure.”

Fact: Because of the pressure suppression capability designed into the Mark I, we are able to have a smaller containment design. The pressure suppression technology enables the Mark I to reduce the pressure in the containment vessel by condensing steam in the suppression pool. Safety remained our top priority, and the Mark I design met all NRC design criteria.

I don't see how their "Fact" in any way contradicts the claim. They agree that the containment system is smaller and do not address the economics. Rather than give an assessment of safety directly, they simply say their design met NRC criteria. I don't think regulatory compliance is in dispute. A better question may be the adequacy of those criteria.

From the first link, we're told

The Mark I containment has a proven track record of safety and reliability for over 40 years and there are 32 BWR Mark I reactors operating as designed worldwide.

While the technology was commercialized 40 years ago, it has continued to evolve. Over the last four decades, the Mark I has been modified in the form of retrofits to address technology improvements and changing regulatory requirements.

All of the modifications were made in accordance with regulatory requirements. In the United States, for example, the NRC issued a generic industry requirement in 1980 for the Mark I containment that the industry used to make modifications.

We understand that all of the BWR Mark I containment units at Fukushima Daiichi also addressed these issues and implemented modifications in accordance with Japanese regulatory requirements.

Here they cast fixes as "technology improvements" and responses to "changing regulatory requirements" without any mention of reasons for changing regulations. The regulations changed for a simple reason - a better understanding of the hydrodynamics of certain accident scenarios revealed unacceptable risks (by NRC and industry standards) in the original design.

The fact that GE reports the Fukushima plants as being in compliance with all applicable regulations certainly calls into question any assurance of safety based merely on compliance with government standards...

[Turbineguy]

19. When reading the GE material I would consider: Who pays?

If the regulations are inadequate, it's a political problem. Regulations evolve by their very nature. If there is a technical failure, the turd is in GE's pocket no matter what the regulations say.

Since nothing can be done unless it is done under the regulations it goes like this: A (possible) problem is found. The regulations are modified. A change is made in the plant. A random walk through the CFR's would reveal changes taking place over time are mostly experience driven. This is why "deregulation" can be extremely dangerous. I remember years ago Rush Limbaugh (I was a passenger in somebody else's car) talked about the procedures involved in changing a light bulb in a nuclear plant. He of course had all sorts of criticisms, because he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about and is not ashamed to show it.

Regulations are based on technical reality. And technical reality is always evolving. Early steam boiler regulations were based on riveted plates and weight balanced safety valves. Once welding and spring metallurgy improved the regulations changed. In fact the regulations started because boiler explosions were killing people.

The problem with many modern technologies is that it's a high stakes game. When it comes to airplanes for example, nobody says, "well, lets wait for a few more planes to crash before making the changes you propose". Most of the scenarios have to be imagined, because you certainly don't want to experience them. This whole process leads to problems because you are dealing essentially with peoples' opinions. The events at Fukushima as it turned out put a number of people in the "I told you so" position. If the tsunami hadn't washed everything out, these people would have died of old age as alarmists.

I don't know that I would say that GE is hiding behind the regulators on this. What this says to me is that regulation changes were made as the technology evolved and as the regulations changed, plant modifications were made. Since you can't just make modifications whenever the fancy strikes you, this makes sense.

To complicate things of course is the fact that regulators of different countries and different cultures are involved. Add to that TEPCO's less than stellar record of honesty.

[SpoonFed]

28. I agree...

The fact that GE reports the Fukushima plants as being in compliance with all applicable regulation certainly calls into question any assurance of safety based merely on compliance with government standards...

Reminds me of that thread that discussed how government regulators retire into well-paid positions in industry.
Also, the language uses the past tense of the verb "to meet"...

the Mark I design met all NRC design criteria

it met, past tense.

[txlibdem]

7. I definitely agree that nobody who lived there before the disaster will ever move back

The Japanese are very intelligent and have great experience with robotics so I may be underestimating their ability to remove/remediate the radioactive materials. But without some very extensive cleanup over a pretty huge area I think you might be right with your 300 year figure.

Or would it be cheaper to just build floating cities?
http://www.gizmag.com/lilypad-floating-city-concept/17697/

5 examples of floating cities here:
http://weburbanist.com/2008/03/09/5-floating-utopia-and-ocean-city-projects-from-seafaring-condos-to-to-oceanic-micronations/

And to power these floating cities? Floating solar farms, of course:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/researcher-push/

[Someguyinjapan]

8. Delusional

The Japanese are no more or less intelligent; you are making the same tiresome mistake that so many people do in equating superior technical expertise with superior overall collective intelligence. If your hypothesis about the Japanese holds true, then:

A) Why were the Japanese, despite their technical brilliance, forced to such tactics such as cooling the reactor rods by water cannon and air-dropping water from helicopters?

B) Why did TEPCO completely fail in addressing inherent site design flaws, despite having upwards of 40 years to do so?

C) Why were the Japanese-despite their technical brilliance-forced to call for outside help in dealing with the crisis at Fukushima during it's initial stages?

Your premise is incredibly flawed, and unless this was an attempt at satire that I completely missed, you will come to realize as I have that a society that still relies on a thousand year-old piece of technology instead of a f_cking signature to complete the most rudimentary of transactions and has yet to discover the wonders of central heating and building insulation has a LONG way to go before they are ready to tackle the complexities of wide-scale nuclear decontamination.

[txlibdem]

10. If you hate the Japanese so much then why are you there?

And, yes, I am attributing the Japanese with high technical expertise. They have a culture that prizes academic achievement, compared to American culture which prizes... what... who can be the biggest thief and get the fattest wallet? America routinely scores below Japan, heck, even below the Czech Republic (no offense to Czech's).

The Fukushima disaster is something I wouldn't wish on anybody. I'm just saying that if anyone can come up with a novel or technological solution, I'd put my money on the Japanese.

[Someguyinjapan]

11. If you are so impressed by the Japanese, then why aren't you here?

Isn't this a fun game to play?

How I regard the Japanese has nothing to do with the position that the Japanese are inherently better equipped to deal with unforseen circumstanes than anyone else. Aside from failing to addressed the questions I posed that challenged your premise, there is one more point to ponder: the Japanese have had 5 weeks, yet we are no closer to seeing the fantastical novel robotic solution to Fukushima that you hypothesize. When can we expect to see that.

By the way, employing classic deflection tactics such as questioning my motivations for being here instead of answering challenges to your stated position suggests you are not as confident in your position as you would like to believe. Yes, the Japanese are good at academic subjects, but they suck at innovation-they are good at improving others' ideas.

[Art_from_Ark]

12. Speaking as someone else who is living in Japan

Central heating for single-family homes is impractical for most of this country-- it would require the consumption of much larger amounts of electricity and natural gas, which could increase home fuel bills by several hundred dollars (10s of thousands of yen) a month. My electric bill alone in the winter is nearly 20,000 yen-- and half of that is for heating one or two rooms for a couple of hours in the morning and 3 or 4 hours at night. And I don't live in a particularly cold area. The gas bill is about 7000 yen in winter, and that's just for on-demand heating of the water for the bathtub and the bathroom and kitchen faucets. Central heating would increase my fuel consumption-- and fuel bills-- dramatically.

As for insulation, a lot of new homes and apartments are built with insulation. Also, this has been done in colder areas like Hokkaido for a long time.

As for the signature stamp (hanko) versus a personal signature, it's 6 of one, half dozen of the other for me. Have you ever tried to verify signatures written in Kanji? It's no small task. Having a custom-designed, hand-made stamp at least provides some consistency to a signature. The trouble comes when the signature stamp is lost or stolen-- but then again, you can also run into trouble if someone learns how to forge your signature.

[Someguyinjapan]

13. Right

Wow-I've been told. I stand corrected; central heating and insulation in Japan are indeed known...

Central heating for single-family homes is impractical for most of this country-- it would require the consumption of much larger amounts of electricity and natural gas

Which could be avoided if the houses were insulated in the first place. Did you happen to miss the implied relationship due to the juxtaposition of the words "central heating" and "building insulation" in my post, or did you think that was an accidental occurrence? By the way, "impractical for most of the country" would suggest a lack of the aforementioned accompanying insulation, would it not? Which would further suggest most homes here are uninsulated.

My electric bill alone in the winter is nearly 20,000 yen-- and half of that is for heating one or two rooms for a couple of hours in the morning and 3 or 4 hours at night.

Sounds like you are living in an uninsulated home/apartment. I should know because my electric bill is similar each month here in my uninsulated apartment, and I'm not in a particularly cold area of Japan either.

As for insulation, a lot of new homes and apartments are built with insulation.

"A lot" is not "all". "A lot" is not even "the majority". And "a lot" of new homes being built with insulation (whatever that number may be) clearly implies that there are new homes still being built without it. Now, is there something substantive about my discussion with "the Japanese are our technological overlords" guy that you disagreed with or are you merely interested in nitpicking points disguised in sarcasm that you can clearly recognize ("yet to discover" meaning "not widely used" or "not as commonplace as one would expect in the world's third-largest economy" in case you had trouble with that) but are nonetheless perfectly true?

[Art_from_Ark]

23. How much do you think it would cost to insulate the average Japanese house?

Lots. I know someone who actually works for an insulation company in Yurakucho. Their main customers are in Niigata, Tohoku and Hokkaido-- in other words, the REALLY cold areas where people will fork over the cost of insulation. However, the cost is still prohibitive to most people outside of those areas. No one in my neighborhood is going to fork over a million yen or more to get their house insulated, and another million or more to get central heating installed-- especially when they can heat their home with kerosene for less than 10,000 yen/month during the 3 or 4 months each year that they need it. And we have pretty decent insulation in our house-- plus some really big south-facing windows-- plus a super energy-efficient air conditioner/heater-- and our electric bill is still high because we have to pay more for extra amperage. It wouldn't be worth it to invest a million yen or more for central heating to maybe save 5000 yen a month on heating costs for 4 months out of the year.

As for "nitpicking", YOU'RE the one who made the claim about central heating-- I'm just explaining why central heating is not really an option for most Japanese with existing homes outside of the really cold areas.

Regarding the "technical overlords bit"-- I was responding to your comments about technology as they regard central heating and signature stamps in Japan. The Japanese do excel in certain areas of technological development. In other areas they may be a bit behind. The problems with these particular reactors were both the earthquake, which cut off the power, and the tsunami, which inundated the damn things and caused an unprecedented type of disaster. Why wouldn't the Japanese seek outside help in dealing with this situation?

[Someguyinjapan]

27. You keep carping on about

A sarcastic aside somehow thinking that it is the Achilles heal that will destroy my argument, yet you fail to understand the basics of the debate that you chose to involve yourself in.

Japanese Are Our Technological Overlords Guy: inherent Japanese technical brilliance will allow them to come up with a novel solution to the Fukushima crisis.
Me: They've had five weeks, and there is no evidence of any such novel solution.

That the Japanese have asked for outside assistance is immaterial to the point that I was making by mentioning it. I said nothing of the sort that Japan shouldn't seek outside help, or that it wasn't required. If you can't figure out what I meant by mentioning that in the context of our discussion, then you have bigger problems on your hands than deciding whether to it's less cost effective to spend ten grand on insulating a house that you'll be living in for the next few decades as opposed to paying for fuel in a country that has no domestic supply and assuming that what you pay for it will remain at 2011 prices-and not increase.

[SpoonFed]

14. are you serious?

build floating cities?
is this brilliant satire or?

[txlibdem]

16. Japan does not have enough land as it is, where will the evacuees live?

It's a serious question and the cost/benefit ratio has to be looked at.

The immediate area around the failed reactors isn't going to be safe to live in for decades at the very least. That population will need to live elsewhere. The cost of building housing, schools, hospitals, mass transit, roads, etc., is going to be significant no matter where they end up living.

Compare all those costs with building the floating cities I posted about above. If automated building techniques could make floating cities cheaper than rebuilding the tsunami damaged region.

[Someguyinjapan]

17. Japan has enough land

75% of the Japanese population resides on 25% or so of the available land. 45,000 people in Fukushima have been evacuated due to radiation contamination concerns. That isn't a lot of people in a country of 127 million people. They could relocate them all to Hokkaido, or Kyushu, or comparatively underpopulated western Japan. It wouldn't be the first time the Japanese have been forced to relocate entire communities due to disasters.

It's preposterous to think that the Japanese government should invest untold billions in developing technologies, and then billions more in constructing a floating city, then who knows how much more in developing the power grid required to sustain such a city. Kansai International Airport is situated on an artificial island 2.5 miles long by 1.6 miles wide, at a cost of $20 billion dollars to construct. You think 45,000 people could live on an island of that size? I doubt it. It is also important to remember that despite the technological brilliance of the Japanese that you keep going on about, they made a critical engineering error in constructing KIX: the compression rate of the rock and soil used to construct the island was miscalculated, and it began to sink much faster than anticipated. Who's to say such an error that would comprise the structural integrity of your floating city wouldn't also be made?

It would be easier and far, far cheaper in simply relocating the whole lot of them to another prefecture into a new town built for them. Even if the Japanese had the technology available to build a floating city, cheaper and faster solutions are available. I'd be willing to bet that the 45,000 people evacuated (the majority who are in evacuation centers) aren't willing to wait for decades for someone to figure out how to build one of these things so they can finally move out of the mattresses they are sleeping on and into proper homes.

So no, I am sorry, this is simply not a serious proposition.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. The problem is NOT land

but FERTILE land.

[FBaggins]

20. Fertile land that isn't on the side of a mountain.

Countries with "plenty of land" don't build airports on artificial islands.

[Someguyinjapan]

21. Of course, you would know better.

Tell you what-take a train from downtown Osaka to Kobe, look to your right and tell me what you see.
Suburban development that goes halfway up the mountain side. And I can tell you more
than 45,000 people live there. Same thing can be seen in outlying areas north of Osaka and around Nara. Been to Beppu down in Kyushu recently? Stand down at the sea shore and look back towards the mountain; you will see more of the same. Towns and cities are indeed built on hillsides and mountainsides here.

But then again I shouldn't trust my own eyes with what they see every day, but rather accept the word of someone who has obviously never been here.

[FBaggins]

32. Well enough. Yes.

Suburban development that goes halfway up the mountain side. And I can tell you more
than 45,000 people live there.

Take a similar train ride from Chicago to San Francisco on the Zephyr and you'll see the difference.

I'm not saying (as the earlier poster did) that there's no place to put 45k people. That's a drop in the bucket. I'm just saying that it's awful crowded in the areas that can reasonably be developed. Some here think that Japan can just throw up a bunch of wind and solar power and replace all of their nuclear... without realizing that they don't have much space to play with.

[txlibdem]

22. Japan says quake rebuilding to cost as much as 25 trillion yen

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Japan has said it will cost as much as 25 trillion yen ($309bn; £189bn) to rebuild the country after the deadly earthquake and tsunami.

The cost is about 6% of Japan's total economic output in 2010 and is the biggest estimate so far.

According to the World Bank, Japan will need up to five years to rebuild and recover from the damage caused.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12828181
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's a LOT of money and would go a long way toward building a floating city by the usual, manual methods of construction. But you cleverly missed my statement about using automated construction methods to build the floating city (or cities) for far less cost. I need to start an OP for this serious idea whose time is now, not off in the distant future.

PS, the Japanese live on 25% of the land because there are many active volcanoes on the main island. They are not morons who say "let's cram ourselves into tiny areas along the coast because we like it."

[Someguyinjapan]

24. Cheaper than earlier estimates

25 trillion yen is roughly 250 billion dollars, which is lower than the 300 billion dollar edtimate I've seen.

As for "cleverly missing your statement", I didn't even bother with it because it is a complete non-starter-"If automated technology could..." which means no one has any idea if that is true or not.

PS: The Japanese live on 25% of the land as a result of massive post-war urbanization in t
he shift from a largely agrarian economy to an industrial one, similar to what happened in the U.S after the late 19th century, not because they are afraid of volcanos.

PPS: Ever heard of Kagoshima? City of 600,000 people with an active volcano that has erupted a cople of times last century within the city limits? So yeah, I guess the Japanese do build cities where they shouldn't, because as you so aptly point out there ate a lot of volcanos here and not alot of land to choose from. So you might as well start building floating islands. It is the logical progression to your wacky line of yhought.

[txlibdem]

25. Duh. Did you ever hear of Mexico City or Venice? One city does not a moronic country make.

You obviously know nothing of Japanese history, its geography, its arable land size, and its people.

Further, your lack of knowledge of existing automated building technology is no excuse for you to be incapable of doing a google search. No excuses for your lack of knowledge except willful ignorance.

PS, I trust you far less than I trust the UK press, where I got the $306 Billion figure (you DO know what a link is, right?).

[Someguyinjapan]

26. I think it's a safe bet

That I know more than nothing about Japan. Nothing denotes zero.

Japanese people: was married to one, work with them daily, try to speak to them in their language.

Japanes geography: Visited a dozen different prefectures on two different main islands.

Japanese history: do you really want to go there?

The only willful ignorance going on in this thread is yours, with your incessant bleating about cockamamie schemes for resettling refugees when far more expedient and practical solutions already exist. No one is interested in yer floating citires idea over here-least of all those who are waiting to start rebuilding their lives as soon as possible.

But seriously, since your knowledge of Japan obviuosly exceeds mine, fly to the nearest Japanese embassy and make a pitch for your floating cities in your undoubtedly flawless keigo. Let me knowhow that works out.

[txlibdem]

29. Japanese ex-wife: no wonder you're so bitter

I guess you're right. The Japanese aren't perfect. Are we?

You dislike the idea of floating cities so much that you started a thread to pre-emptively tarnish the idea. Sounds like you have either an irrational fear of the water or an economic interest in a company that will benefit from rebuilding on the ground.

But, since you haven't been paying attention, I'll repeat the question you've been asked many times already: where are you going to start up the bulldozers??? There is very little good land left, unless you want to try your honorific Japanese to convince them to let your company flatten a few mountains. You could explain how good that's been for the coal belt; that'd sway 'em fer sure!

[SpoonFed]

30. So you divorced a coal power plant?

Sounds like you have either an irrational fear of the water or an economic interest in a company that will benefit from rebuilding on the ground.

Or perhaps just a sane grip on reality. Since you're arguing like a child who has a favourite dream of living on a floating island when he grows up, can you simply refrain from all this silliness and rebut this guys very valid points that were made and you conveniently ignored,

assuming (and it's a big assumption here) Japanese superior house boat building robot technology exists,

how many billions of dollars of research and development and
how many billions of dollars of investment in building, and
how many decades of time is this UNPROVEN (I'm being polite here) idea of yours going to take?
how many people in shelters on mattresses are willing to give your little idea the benefit of the doubt?

The fact that you point out irrelevant details in his posts like his ex-wife, it's no wonder that he nor I cannot take what you say seriously on any level, what-so-ever. If anything, you should move out from under that black cloud of shadow of a coal plant that I can assume you're living under, given the ferocity of your attempt at steering discussions about Fukushima and radiation to discussing coal plant emission. Yes, they are terrible, but that isn't the discussion of this message either.

Oh and you forgot to rebut my point about coal plants not producing plutonium and other nasty radioisotopes by their very existence. Nonsense is nonsense. Fantasy floating islands are fantasy floating islands. Poor reasoning is poor reasoning. Move away from that coal plant. Move away from that coal plant.

[txlibdem]

31. You bring up a topic from another OP and claim I never answered it - yet I did, in that OP

Have you had your coffee yet? Maybe another cup will help...

And, yes, if I could take the coal industry to a fair court, they would wind up in jail and would be forced to pay compensation for all the lives they've taken and all the medical bills that coal pollution has caused. If there were such a fair court in the Corporate-owned nations that is.

On the floating cities, if you don't like them then don't live on one. Simple answer. There now, does that make you feel better little one? Now go take your nap, cause someone's a witto cwanky.

[SpoonFed]

34. We are still waiting...

My cat says:

Meow meow meow meow coal is bad meow meow meow meow.

I wrote:

rebut this guys very valid points that were made and you conveniently ignored,

assuming (and it's a big assumption here) Japanese superior house boat building robot technology exists,

how many billions of dollars of research and development and
how many billions of dollars of investment in building, and
how many decades of time is this UNPROVEN (I'm being polite here) idea of yours going to take?
how many people in shelters on mattresses are willing to give your little idea the benefit of the doubt?

And I'm still waiting, but I'm not holding breath.

[txlibdem]

35. Already answered in the other OP

Waste your own time all you like, I'm not interested in playing your game of "let's see how much of this person's time I can waste."

[Someguyinjapan]

33. So now you presume to know

The state of my relationship with my ex-wife? But why not-you know everything else there is to know about Japan.

I trash the idea of floating cities for one reason only: it's stupid. Building a new location on land for evacuees from the exclusion zone would be faster. It took 5 years to rebuild the JR station in downtown Osaka, and I can guarantee you it can't accommodate 45,000 people. And just how long will it take to build your floating city? Do you expect the Fukushima evacuees to patiently wait sleeping on the floors of converted high school gyms for years on end for this thing to be built when they could be resettled into a new community on land much sooner?

So you propose as a solution something
that has never been successfully done before, let alone to the scale you envision, with absolutely no
idea as to the cost of construction to say nothing of the maintenance and you expect to be taken seriously? And one that could potentially take much longer than it takes conventional construction now? You have presented zero compelling evidence aside from three links, two of which provided virtually no technical or engineering data on how this would be achieved.

"There is very little good land left." And how much might that be? Care to put a number behind that
figure, or is this more talking out of your ass? Or have you not yet clued into the fact that as a result of geology and geography, it could be argued that there never has been any "good"-meaning safe-land in Japan, which was the whole point about mentioning Kagoshima. Over here, if you aren't living next to or on top of a fault line, you're not far from a volcano. If you don't live near a volcano, you're in the path of a typhoon. But you already know that, and choose to ignore it because applying your fantasy idea in order to provide the same level of security to the other 126,000,000 Japanese as you would like to the Fukushima evacuees would be completely unrealistic, financially impossible and thus would puncture the dreamworld you so clearly live in.

As for me "starting up the bulldozers", you don't pay attention to the news much, because clean up operations by the JSDF have already been underway as the pre-cursor to reconstruction. ON LAND, I might mention.

If you think I am being bitter, you're correct, but not for the reasons you think. I just landed the best job I have ever had over here; it's satisfying, intellectually and financially rewarding, and I am the boss. And I started it March 1st. So what makes me bitter is the prospect of having to leave all of this behind and start over again. I come to a board like this seeking information that is difficult to come by over here for reasons already mentioned many times on here, and having to wade through crap posted by know-nothing clowns like yourself makes it that much harder. Maybe this is all just a game to you, but unless you are over here right now-as I am-you have absolutely no Goddamn idea how real this is.

You're miffed that I mocked you in another thread? I go to sleep tonight with a bag packed and sitting at the foot of my bed, ready to leave within 48 hours if necessary by one of three different routes I have planned and walk away from my apartment, my job and a rather nice woman I am just starting
know so I'm real f_ckin' sorry I hurt your feelings.

I'm done talking to you.

[txlibdem]

36. Moving up the corporate ladder? Been there, done that and still have the knives in the back

to prove it. I hope things turn out well for you. I had nearly a decade of riding in the company owner's limo, trips to Vegas, parties with the President, VP and the other hangers on. It was lots of fun while it lasted. Just enjoy it.

As to the floating islands, unless Japan has changed greatly since the last time I was there, they already have houses, apartment buildings, etc., wherever they don't have farms. I couldn't see where over 125,000 people (the last number of evacuees I've heard) can be shoehorned in this already crowded place. But since you are on the ground there now maybe you see something that I missed.

I just threw out an idea and you, "the boss" shot it down and spewed out derision. I just wish I could work for you. We'd get along "really well."
:sarcasm:

[barbtries]

2. thank you for posting. nt

[Someguyinjapan]

15. Actually I agree with him

Who does he think he is kidding? Let’s go back to normal only weeks after Japan has experienced a nuclear major disaster?

Trying to get back to normal is the only thing that is going to keep this country functioning. Unfortunately, due to the incredibly high level of political/economic centralization in Tokyo (think of Washington D.C. and New York City combined), if the Prime Minister was to start screaming, "RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" Tokyo would mass evacuate and the entire country would implode.

To be honest, things are pretty normal where I am (Kansai region); nobody talks about it much and there are few outward indications that the country has just endured a calamity that killed 27,000 people. It's a bit surreal. Then again, the Japanese are masters at denying things, now aren't they?