Nuclear accident follows Japanese earthqauke

[Ippoippo]

Gradually, the data are being compiled:

http://maps.google.co.jp/maps/ms?ie=...257202&t=p&z=8

Link doesn't work, just keeps downloading a javascript file on my machine

[biffvernon]

Hmmm...seems to have disappeared

[biffvernon]

They just can't kick the secrecy habit:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-2 ... eting.html

The United Nations nuclear agency’s decision to hold talks about the Fukushima disaster behind closed doors this week ignores the “blindingly obvious” need for greater transparency, said a former official in the U.K. atomic industry.
“People deserve openness from the industry and its regulators,” Malcolm Grimston, a former information officer at the U.K.’s Atomic Energy Authority who is a London-based policy adviser at Chatham House, said in a June 17 interview. “It is blindingly obvious that greater transparency is needed.”
The crisis, which involved three reactor meltdowns, has been dogged by complaints that the plant operator and safety watchdogs haven’t been transparent enough. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s decision to shield the inquiry in Vienna from public view may backfire, analysts and scientists said.
The handpicked participants include scientists, diplomats and people from the industry who will have a chance to question Japanese authorities about what went wrong in the worst nuclear disaster in 25 years. Journalists are excluded.

[kenneal - lagger]

If the situation wasn't as bad as it seems they would have every press man they could manage shoe horned into the room. As they aren't doing that ......

[biffvernon]

The diplomats are there because the nuclear industry has it's worst ever problem - that nobody ever orders a new nuclear power plant again - and the way to solve it, now that technology has failed, is to get the diplomats on side.

[mr brightside]

Since the start of the nuclear boom in the 1970s, Japan's utilities have relied on temporary workers for maintenance and plant repair jobs, the experts said. They were often paid in cash with little training and no follow-up health screening.

Aah yes, lean manufacturing. Brilliant on paper.

[raspberry-blower]

Oops - no more aerial photos of the Fukushima wreck for the time being:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/drone- ... -reactor-2

[biffvernon]

A thoughtful piece on Japanese politics and marine pollution:
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/perspectives/new ... 4000c.html

[emordnilap]

Another side effect of reduced energy availability:

http://jotzoom.com/heatstroke-skyrockets-in-japan/1475/

[biffvernon]

I wonder if this is a very tangential side-effect. Have we forgotten, in our assumption of infinite air-conditioning, how to build and live in warm places?

Not that I know anything about this first hand, the Lincolnshire coast tending towards bracing.

[emordnilap]

The cheapness of air conditioning units has always struck me as being a fine irony. Now, everyone can play their part in climate change.

[kenneal - lagger]

The problem is that architects like to design gleaming phallic symbols as a complement to their egos. These will only work with air conditioning. On the smaller scale of housing, their wish to enjoy the outside and their fear of actually being in fresh air mean that they again resort to glass boxes to keep the reality of the outside at bay. This leads to high heating and air conditioning bills.

People who actually live and work outside much of the time often like a more enclosed womb-like structure in which to live; one that gives enough light to read by but doesn't let all the hard won heat leak to waste in the atmosphere or cold leak the other way. The older parts of cities in tropical countries show the way to design for comfort in the particular conditions of any given country. There are almost as many different conditions and answers as there are countries. Architects have to reinvent the wheel every time they design something to justify their fees.

[RenewableCandy]

I wonder if this is a very tangential side-effect. Have we forgotten, in our assumption of infinite air-conditioning, how to build and live in warm places?

Dunno about "forgotten" but it's just cheaper to build thermally-light crap. I've even heard of cases where thermally-massive materials were specified, but the contractors bought a light alternative because "it looks the same" The gaffe wasn't rumbled 'til too late.

[emordnilap]

The gaffe wasn't rumbled 'til too late.

Gaffs usually rumble during an earthquake.

[kenneal - lagger]

I have a lot of trouble with builders telling clients that an aircrete block is better than the dense concrete one that I have specified. The builder likes the aircrete one because it's lighter and easier to cut and handle than the dense one. He's also been told that it has a better insulation value than the concrete one, which is true. But I don't specify the internal skin of a wall for insulation because I've already provided enough of that in the cavity. The concrete block inner skin of the wall provides thermal mass which an aircrete block can't. To sum up on aircrete blocks, they are useless as insulation compared to a non-structural proper insulation material and they are useless for thermal mass compared to a concrete block. In fact they are useless all round.

The concrete block is also cheaper than the aircrete one although in a high rise the additional weight could be a problem, depending on how the high rise has been designed, and could add cost.