[ RadSafe ] After Five Years, What Is The Cost Of Fukushima?

Fri Mar 11 13:05:30 CST 2016

Radsafe/Karam,

     Rivers do not cause tsunamis, but I wouldn't want to be in the
vicinity of the Puget Sound when a big
earthquake occurs in the Cascadia fracture zone.  Faults are everywhere in
Japan --- build nuclear plants away from the
ones that are associated with large/great earthquakes. There have been
several or more large/great earthquakes in Japan in the last
100 years.  The Japanese knew this.  A 7.0 magnitude earthquake might not
produce much of a tsunami.  Magnitude 8.0 to 9.0 earthquakes do produce
tsunamis.  We can build nuclear plants in better locations.  The nuclear
plants do not have to be 10 miles inland.  Just figure out the maximum
tsunami size, couple that with local topographic information and figure out
how far inland a nuclear plant needs to be.  In Italy, they have recently
put seismologists IN JAIL for not predicting a magnitude 6.7 earthquake.
Might this happen in Japan someday to nuclear plant designers who don't
design an acceptably safe nuclear plant.???

     Joe Shonka, a San Andreas earthquake is a land earthquake primarily
(strike-slip) and it will not generate a tsunami.

     Much is known about earthquakes.  In his 1977??? JGR (Journal of
Geophysical Research) paper Kanamori shows a pretty good correlation of
large/great earthquakes with peaks in the Earth Orientation Amplitude
(Chandler wobbles (2) and Annual wobble).  These peaks (which are rather
broad in time) were in 1910, 1954, 1998, 2042 etc.  2042 is coming.  The
large/great quakes associated with the 1998 peak were something like:
Indonesia (3 quakes --- remember these tsunamis), Chile, Japan
(Fukushima).  Some of the quakes associated with the 1954 peak were the
1960 and 1964 Alaska and Chile earthquakes.  Remember these earthquakes???
I guess the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was associated with the 1910
peak. Remember seeing pictures from this earthquake???

     Clearly, we can't do much about cities that are already on the San
Andres fault zone or other fault zones.  We can engineer better the
buildings in these cities.  We can build reactors in less-seismic
locations.  I guess ALARA works for nuclear plant construction also???

     Joe Preisig

On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 1:15 PM, <jjshonka at shonka.com> wrote:

> I have read the earthquake produced $300 billion in total damages, over
> 18,000 fatalities (including missing and 1600 from poorly executed
> evacuation from Fukushima), entire towns wiped off the map, and over
> 1,000,000 buildings damaged or totally destroyed.  Many coastal areas had
> seawalls which were not able to stop the tsunami that reached over 40
> meters in height.
>
>
> To put things in perspective, on a safety basis (or lives lost), any
> dollars might be better spent hardening coastal towns and cities.  The
> costs and impacts of the Fukushima reactor meltdowns is a small piece of
> the overall disaster, greatly aggravated by excess public concerns.  For
> example, should we move San Francisco 10 miles inland in case the San
> Andreas fault has a similar earthquake?  What about San Diego, etc.
>
>
> The safety of nuclear power reactors is quite good.  Lessons learned from
> Fukushima (such as getting electrical switchgear in hardened structures not
> susceptible to flooding) will make existing or new plants even safer.
>
>
> Joe Shonka
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from Windows Mail
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Dan McCarn
> Sent: ‎Thursday‎, ‎March‎ ‎10‎, ‎2016 ‎1‎:‎11‎ ‎PM
> To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
>
>
>
>
>
> This is from my friend, Jim Conca.
>
> *After Five Years, What Is The Cost Of Fukushima?*
>
> The direct costs of the Fukushima disaster will be about $15 billion in
> clean-up over the next 20 years and over $60 billion in refugee
> compensation. Replacing Japan’s 300 billion kWhs from nuclear each year
> with fossil fuels has costJapan over $200 billion, mostly from fuel costs
>  for natural gas, fuel oil and coal. This cost will at least double, and
> that only if the nuclear fleet is mostly restarted by 2020. Since 2011,
> Japan’s trade deficit has become the worst in its history, and Japan is now
> the second largest net importer of fossil fuel in the world, right behind
> China. Strangely, the costs that never materialized were the most feared,
> those of radiation-induced cancer and death.
>
>
> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/03/10/after-five-years-what-is-the-cost-of-fukushima/#3a7a79346016
>
> Dan ii
>
> Dan W McCarn, Geologist
> 108 Sherwood Blvd
> Los Alamos, NM 87544-3425
> +1-505-670-8123 (Mobile - New Mexico)
> HotGreenChile at gmail.com (Private email) HotGreenChile at gmail dot com
> LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwmccarn
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