On the Brink of a Meltdown

[Youngstownshrimp]

Unless Governor Spisak can set in motion a project, funded and can match the mega watt demand we have today, he is "The False Profit"

[Rick Rowlands]

To give you an idea of how much electrical power this area needs, here is a list of just some of the power plants within 100 miles of Youngstown.  Over 6,000 MW of power generation.

Sammis coal fired plant Stratton, OH  2,230 MW
Cardinal Power Plant Brilliant, OH  1,830 MW
Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station  Shippensport, PA 1,890 MW
Niles Power Plant 266 MW
New Castle Power Plant 348 MW

[Youngstownshrimp]

Man, how disappointing, what a let down, I thought Governor Spisak had the holy grail of engineering, the discovery of over unity.  Man. I'm tired of leaving carbon footprints if only the Governor had the real McCoy, the machine to end all suffering, the machine that produced energy out of nothing, "The Spisak Perpetual Motion Machine", I have a dream!

[irishbobcat]

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Harnessing off-shore wind power saves consumers money, helps clean up the environment and creates jobs, according to a study released Thursday by Environment Maryland and the United Steel Workers.

The report comes as the General Assembly considers legislation designed to jumpstart the industry.

Industry officials estimate a 500-megawatt wind park off the coast of Ocean City would create 2,000 manufacturing jobs over a five-year period, along with 400 permanent supply and maintenance positions.

"We are all hoping this wind energy industry creates a manufacturing hub for suppliers of off-shore wind farms throughout the Mid-Atlantic," said Brad Heavner of Environment Maryland.

Each wind turbine would contain up to 300 tons of steel. The cables that connect turbines to the grid are another piece of the manufacturing possibility.

Builders and steel workers said they see it as an opportunity to turn their industries around.

"Construction is the first to feel the pressures of an economic downturn, and we are the last to recover," said Rod Easter of the Baltimore Building Construction Trades Council.

"We no longer make things, not only here in Maryland but throughout the country. We no longer make things like we should," said Jim Strong of the United Steel Workers Union.

The O'Malley administration is sponsoring legislation directing the Public Service Commission to require state utilities to sign 20-year contracts to buy electricity from wind farms off Maryland's coast.

"The investors know that if they put in a $1 billion, $1.5 billion, they are going to have a commitment that their energy is going to be purchased for the next 20 to 25 years. Without that, it's hard to go ahead," said Sen. Paul Pinsky, D-Prince George's County.

AC Wind, a wind energy manufacturing and services firm, is partnering with a company called MFG to open a blade manufacturing facility in Salisbury. Company President John Congedo said he believes Maryland is well-positioned to take the lead in off-shore wind projects along the East Coast.

"We stand ready to take the truly skilled labor force that exists in the Salisbury area and to put them back to work and build these epic-sized composites," Congedo said.

The bill is meeting resistance in the Senate and is being referred back to the Finance Committee. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.

A House committee heard the bill last week.

[Youngstownshrimp]

Governor Spisak what do we do for energy NOW , where is your Perpetual Motion Machine?

We all know coal, nukes, gas, oil, are bad, bring out your secret energy that will FREE us from the shackles of the old energy.  We are from Missouri, the show me state.  All you do is rant and rave but you still drive a combustion engine machine.  All of us here will follow you right now if you can only produce.....................

[irishbobcat]

Shrimp, I am leading the way......

I am fighting you neo-cons on every corner so you don't turn our valley, state, and nation into an environmental disaster.....
You support nothing but a quick buck... at the expense of our environment and legacy we leave our children and grandchildren....

Shrimp, you just need to go away NOW!

KORIYAMA, Japan - Japan's nuclear crisis intensified Sunday as authorities raced to combat the threat of multiple reactor meltdowns and more than 170,000 people evacuated the quake- and tsunami-savaged northeastern coast where fears spread over possible radioactive contamination.

Nuclear plant operators were frantically trying to keep temperatures down in a series of nuclear reactors - including one where officials feared a partial meltdown could be happening Sunday - to prevent the disaster from growing worse.


Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano also said Sunday that a hydrogen explosion could occur at Unit 3 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, the latest reactor to face a possible meltdown. That follows a blast the day before in the power plant's Unit 1, as operators attempted to prevent a meltdown there by injecting sea water into it.

"At the risk of raising further public concern, we cannot rule out the possibility of an explosion," Edano said.

[Youngstownshrimp]

As one who experienced several AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) inspections, I am more qualified than Spisak to make a statement about nukes.  Nukes are not safe.  Neither is fracking or crapping as debated here,  the real issue here is the question that Spisak refuses over and over again to answer.  What is the alternative and lead us , show us by example?

"Spisak lead, follow, or get the #$%# out of the way!"

[irishbobcat]

Nukes are not safe, Dan........

get over it......

[Dan Moadus]

Well this will be a good test then Dennis. Let's just see how many casualties come about due to one of the world's biggest earthquakes. I guess if no one gets injured, you will admit that even under these circumstances "Nukes" are safe, correct?

[irishbobcat]

170,000 now evacuated from the reactors in Japan.....

And Dan thinks Nuke Power is still safe......

Keep Drinking the radioactive kool-aid, Dan.....

[Dan Moadus]

Wind power would work just fine if we didn't have to turn lights on in our houses every day.

[irishbobcat]

And the neo-cons on this board want more nukes......

IWAKI, Japan - Cooling systems failed at a second nuclear reactor on Japan's devastated coast Sunday, hours after an explosion at a nearby unit made leaking radiation, or even outright meltdown, the central threat to the country following a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.

The Japanese government said radiation emanating from the plant appeared to have decreased after Saturday's blast, which produced a cloud of white smoke that obscured the complex. But the danger was grave enough that officials pumped seawater into the reactor to avoid disaster and moved 170,000 people from the area.

Japan's nuclear safety agency then reported an emergency at a second reactor unit when its cooling systems malfunctioned.


Japan dealt with the nuclear threat as it struggled to determine the scope of the earthquake, the most powerful in its recorded history, and the tsunami that ravaged its northeast Friday with breathtaking speed and power. The official count of the dead was 686, but the government said the figure could far exceed 1,000.

Teams searched for the missing along hundreds of miles of the Japanese coast, and thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers that were cut off from rescuers and aid. At least a million households had gone without water since the quake struck. Large areas of the countryside were surrounded by water and unreachable.

The explosion at the nuclear plant, Fukushima Dai-ichi, 170 miles (274 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, appeared to be a consequence of steps taken to prevent a meltdown after the quake and tsunami knocked out power to the plant, crippling the system used to cool fuel rods there.


The blast destroyed the building housing the reactor, but not the reactor itself, which is enveloped by stainless steel 6 inches (15 centimeters) thick.

Inside that superheated steel vessel, water being poured over the fuel rods to cool them formed hydrogen. When officials released some of the hydrogen gas to relieve pressure inside the reactor, the hydrogen apparently reacted with oxygen, either in the air or the cooling water, and caused the explosion.

"They are working furiously to find a solution to cool the core," said Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the Nuclear Policy Program for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Nuclear agency officials said Japan was injecting seawater into the core - an indication, Hibbs said, of "how serious the problem is and how the Japanese had to resort to unusual and improvised solutions to cool the reactor core."


Officials declined to say what the temperature was inside the troubled reactor, Unit 1. At 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit (1,200 degrees Celsius), the zirconium casings of the fuel rods can react with the cooling water and create hydrogen. At 4,000 F (2,200 C), the uranium fuel pellets inside the rods start to melt, the beginning of a meltdown.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said radiation around the plant had fallen, not risen, after the blast but did not offer an explanation. Virtually any increase in dispersed radiation can raise the risk of cancer, and authorities were planning to distribute iodine, which helps protect against thyroid cancer. Authorities moved 170,000 people out of the area within 12 miles (19 kilometers) of the reactor, said the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, citing information from Japanese officials.

[irishbobcat]

An 8.9 Quake Could Have Irradiated the Entire US

by Harvey Wasserman

Had the massive 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit off the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the entire United States.



The two huge reactors each at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are not designed to withstand such powerful shocks. All four are extremely close to major faults.

All four reactors are located relatively low to the coast. They are vulnerable to tsunamis like those now expected to hit as many as fifty countries.



San Onofre sits between San Diego and Los Angeles. A radioactive cloud spewing from one or both reactors there would do incalculable damage to either or both urban areas before carrying over the rest of southern and central California.



Diablo Canyon is at Avila Beach, on the coast just west of San Luis Obispo, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A radioactive eruption there would pour into central California and, depending on the winds, up to the Bay Area or southeast into Santa Barbara and then to Los Angeles. The cloud would at very least permanently destroy much of the region on which most Americans rely for their winter supply of fresh vegetables.



By the federal Price-Anderson Act of 1957, the owners of the destroyed reactors---including Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison---would be covered by private insurance only up to $11 billion, a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars worth of damage that would be done. The rest would become the responsibility of the federal taxpayer and the fallout victims. Virtually all homeowner insurance policies in the United States exempt the insurers from liability from a reactor disaster.



The most definitive recent study of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster puts the death toll at 985,000.  The accident irradiated a remote rural area. The nearest city, Kiev, is 80 kilometers away.



But San Luis Obispo is some ten miles directly downwind from Diablo Canyon. The region around San Onofre has become heavily suburbanized.

Heavy radioactive fallout spread from Chernobyl blanketed all of Europe within a matter of days. It covered an area far larger than the United States.

Fallout did hit the jet stream and then the coast of California, thousands of miles away, within ten days. It then carried all the way across the northern tier of the United States.

Chernobyl Unit Four was of comparable size to the two reactors at Diablo Canyon, and somewhat larger than the two at San Onofre.

But it was very new when it exploded. California's four coastal reactors have been operating since the 1970s and 1980s. Their accumulated internal radioactive burdens could exceed what was spewed at Chernobyl.



Japanese officials say all affected reactors automatically shut, with no radiation releases. But they are not reliable. In 2007 a smaller earthquake rocked the seven-reactor Kashiwazaki site and forced its lengthy shut-down.

Preliminary reports indicate at least one fire at a Japanese reactor hit by this quake and tsunami.

In 1986 the Perry nuclear plant, east of Cleveland, was rocked by a 5.5 Richter-scale shock, many orders of magnitude weaker than this one. That quake broke pipes and other key equipment within the plant. It took out nearby roads and bridges.

Thankfully, Perry had not yet opened. An official Ohio commission later warned that evacuation during such a quake would be impossible.

Numerous other American reactors sit on or near earthquake faults.



The Obama Administration is now asking Congress for $36 billion in new loan guarantees to build more commercial reactors.

[ForumManager]

This topic has been reported to the moderator.  Please be civil.

[irishbobcat]

and you want to continue using nukes until the whole countryside glows green......
Continue to kill mankind, Ricky-poo.....or should I use your term, sub-humans?