Okay, I've tried to leave the earthquake news out of Japan to the new sites and newspapers, but this news is just too horrific to ignore:
WASHINGTON — An explosion at a nuclear power plant in northern Japan on Saturday blew the roof off one building, brought down walls and caused a radiation leak of unspecified proportions, Japanese officials said, after Friday’s huge earthquake caused critical failures in the plant’s cooling system.Now I seem to remember there was somebody in the United States who was saying nuclear power plants, when built safely and securely, were an important energy investment.
Television images showed a huge cloud of white-gray smoke from the explosion. Soon afterward, government officials said an evacuation zone around the plant had been doubled, to 12 miles. The chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, confirmed earlier news reports of an explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, 15o miles north of Tokyo, saying: “We are looking into the cause and the situation and we’ll make that public when we have further information.” He was speaking amid fears that a disastrous meltdown could be imminent because of critical cooling failures at that plant and another nearby, Daini, after both were shut down.
Images on Japanese television showed that the walls of one building had crumbled, leaving only a skeletal metal frame standing with smoke billowing from the plant. The Associated Press reported that the damaged building housed a nuclear reactor, though that report was not immediately verified by nuclear officials. The cause of the explosion was unclear, with some experts speculating that it may have resulted from a hydrogen build-up.
There was no immediate confirmation of news reports that the container of the nuclear reactor itself had escaped damage.
Bloomberg News quoted Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant’s operator, as saying the explosion happened “near” the No. 1 reactor at around 3:40 p.m. Japan time on Saturday. Four people were reported injured. The explosion came roughly 26 and a half hours after an 8.9-magnitude earthquake caused a deadly tsunami that killed hundreds and caused both plants to be shut down. Authorities issued broad evacuation orders on Saturday for people living near the plants and warned that small amounts of radioactive material were likely to leak out.
Officials said even before the explosion that they had detected cesium, an indication that some of the fuel was already damaged.
Who was that guy again?
Oh, right - this guy.
Wasn't he the same guy who said offshore oil platforms are very safe and never explode just 18 days before one exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and unleashed millions of gallons of oil into the environment?
Yes, it was the same guy.
How is it this guy manages to avoid accountability for the stupid things he says about energy and the environment?
Right: nuclear is "clean" energy," which President O-Bait-and Switch is pushing for.
ReplyDeleteNuclear is STILL preferable to complete dependance on oil....how many have died in the Middle East over THAT one? What's the cost? Once every 30 years something happens with nuclear. We face extinction with oil dependance. The U.S.A. is bankrupt from this dependance. Except of course the oil, military indust., banking, Zionist cabal....which is all intertwined of course. The rest of us can "suck wind"...Solar, wind power....yeah right...when is that going to happen?
ReplyDeleteAnd Obama is doing what even his idol "Morning in Amreeeka" Reagan didn't dare to do - propose 30 nuclear plants after a 30 year moratorium. And even Wall street never goes there because of the huge liabilities involved. But predator state is alive & even thriving under Obama. Public money (at the time of huge cuts in public programs under the deficit hysteria mask) doled out for private gains. Oh, losses - we the peasants will bear them.
ReplyDeleteAnd boy, Obama did it in style - by using conservative rhetoric. Just like he echoes conservative rhetoric reg deficits, ed deform, war expansions, national security ....
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