WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2011-03-21 Time: 21:00:01 Posted By: News Poster
A massive earthquake measuring 8.9/9.0 on the Richter scale hit the Pacific Ocean’s nearby north-eastern Japan at around 2:46pm on March 11, with an attendant tsunami, causing substantial damage to life and property, and bringing most parts of Fukushima into blackout for several days.
The most worrying thing about the quake is not about the thousands of lost lives and a city buried in mud, but about a grave threat posed by a potential nuclear meltdown and its associated spread of radiation way beyond the boundaries of Japan. According to officials the quake-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has reached harmful levels, causing Japanese officials to extend the danger zone, warning residents within 30 kilometres to evacuate.
Industry experts say explosions at the three reactors in Japan will seriously affect what many call a nuclear renaissance, a growing shift towards nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels. The World Nuclear Association, which promotes nuclear power and related industries around the world, 155 new nuclear reactors are planned or are under construction – – most of them in Asia.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano says it’s too early to say how the crisis in Japan will affect the nuclear power industry. “In my view, this is not the accident by design or by human error. This is an accident caused by natural disaster that is unprecedented,” he said.
Germany reviews the safety of its nuclear programme
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday announced a three-month review of plans to continue operating her country’s 17 nuclear power plants.
The plants had been scheduled to be phased out by 2021, but she said the government agreed last year to keep them online for an additional 12 years.
“We know how safe Germany’s nuclear power plants are. But it is also true that we cannot yet ignore the importance of nuclear energy as a bridging technology, if we want to continue to cover our own energy consumption as Europe’s largest economy and if we want to respect climate protection,” she noted.
China will learn from the disaster, but Australia says it doesn’t need nuclear
Chinese officials say they will learn from what has happened in Japan, but stressed that the pace of the country’s plans to build new reactors will not be affected. China is aggressively expanding its nuclear power industry.
He explained that, the situation in Japan does not change the fact that the world needs a stable source of clean energy to mitigate the impact of climate change.
On her part, the Australia’s Prime Minister, Julia Gillard says her nation has plenty of alternative sources of energy and does not need nuclear power.
Switzerland and India also take precautions
Switzerland has suspended the approval process for three nuclear power plants, so safety standards can be reconsidered.
And India has ordered safety inspections for all of its nuclear plants.
Safety inspection looms in the U.S.
The United States has not brought a new nuclear power plant online since the accident at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island facility in 1979.
Speaking at a White House press briefing on Monday, Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman said nuclear power accounts for 20 percent of U.S. energy production and must be a part of the nation’s clean energy policy.
“We do see nuclear power as continuing to play an important role in building a low-carbon future. But be assured that we will take the safety aspect of that as our paramount concern,” he stressed
President Barack Obama is seeking tens of billions of dollars in government loan guarantees for the construction of new U.S. nuclear power plants.
But Ellen Vancko of the Union of Concerned Scientists says the situation in Japan will only add to the troubles nuclear power faces in the United States. “The nuclear industry was in trouble in the United States, was in trouble long before last week’s earthquake and tsunami. Spiraling construction costs estimates, declining energy demand, low natural gas costs and the failure to put a price on carbon already spelled trouble for this industry,” she said.
For now, Vancko says, the crisis in Japan will likely lead to safety inspections at all U.S. nuclear power plants.
Chernobyl disaster still fresh on our minds
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine). It is considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, and it is the only one classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale.The disaster began during a systems test on 26 April 1986 at reactor number four of the Chernobyl plant, which is near the town of Pripyat. There was a sudden power output surge, and when an emergency shutdown was attempted, a more extreme spike in power output occurred, which led to a reactor vessel rupture and a series of explosions. This event exposed the graphite moderator components of the reactor to air, causing them to ignite. The resulting fire sent a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area, including Pripyat. The plume drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Northern Europe. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were evacuated, and over 336,000 people were resettled. According to official post-Soviet data, about 60% of the fallout landed in Belarus.
The accident raised concerns about the safety of the Soviet nuclear power industry, as well as nuclear power in general, slowing its expansion for a number of years and forcing the Soviet government to become less secretive about its procedures.
Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus have been burdened with the continuing and substantial decontamination and health care costs of the Chernobyl accident. More than fifty deaths are directly attributed to the accident, all among the reactor staff and emergency workers. Estimates of the total number of deaths attributable to the accident vary enormously, from possibly 4,000 to close to a million. Despite the accident, Ukraine continued to operate the remaining reactors at Chernobyl until 2000, when the last reactor at the site was closed down.
Ghana presses on, regardless
Following the nuclear disaster in Japan many are raising the question as to whether Ghana can contain such situations if they should occur. The management of disasters such as perennial floods, fire and mine and road accidents in the country is a major source of worry.
An accident at a nuclear power plant is not like any other accident. This is why Chernobyl is still fresh in the minds of many people all over the world. Several years after the disaster, an area of radius up to 30 km from the site remains an exclusion zone; more than 100,000 people who were initially evacuated cannot return. Also in the Fukushima Daiichi case residents living within 30 kilometers of the plant are being asked to evacuate.
But Prof. Sefor-Armah says the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission is fairly on the ground and such disasters can be contained. The greatest risk he said, however, is the developers who are encroaching on the radiological barrier.
The Commission has therefore urged government not to abandon its nuclear energy programme.
Original date published: 18 March 2011
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201103211361.html?viewall=1