Year: 2011

Anatomy of a nuclear crisis: A chronology of Fukushima

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Even now, 10 days after the crisis began, the situation at Fukushima is still not under control. The disaster is clearly worse than the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, yet not as grave as the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, which spread radioactive material over large portions of Europe. A chronology of how the Fukushima crisis has unfolded demonstrates that even a country as advanced as Japan — and as practiced in dealing with natural disasters — was unprepared for an earthquake of this magnitude, the largest in Japan in 1,200 years.

The butterfly and the boiling point

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And finally, there is always the surprise of: Why now? Why did the crowd decide to storm the Bastille on July 14, 1789, and not any other day? The bread famine going on in France that year and the rising cost of food had something to do with it, as hunger and poverty does with many of the Middle Eastern uprisings today, but part of the explanation remains mysterious. Why this day and not a month earlier or a decade later? Or never instead of now?

Transition in action: ‘From the ground up’

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FGU follows a cooperative working model, although it is not formally registered as one. FGU has an ‘each voice counts’ membership, inviting all members to participate in decisions. We operate within the Transition Town umbrella but are autonomous in the pursuit of our objectives. We aim to become a source of information on the benefits of healthy eating and responsible farming and are sharing ideas and best practices with other like-minded initiatives, starting with participating in a mentoring scheme with Stroudco. And, most importantly we aim to engender a spirit of community with designated meeting and working locations.

Calculating calamity: Japan’s nuclear accident and the “antifragile” alternative

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It is irresponsible to ask people to rely on the calculation of small probabilities for man-made systems since these probabilities are almost impossible to calculate with any accuracy. Natural systems that have operated for eons may more easily lend themselves to the calculation of such probabilities. But man-made systems have a relatively short history to draw from, especially the nuclear infrastructure which is no more than 60 years old. Calculations for man-made systems that result in incidents occurring every million years should be dismissed on their face as useless.

Fukushima: the nuclear martingale

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When we design machinery that is dangerous and prone to failure we try to reduce risks by tight regulations, specifics, and centralised control. Of course, these strategies are expensive and therefore are best implemented over large scales. So, we are raising the stakes by building bigger and more expensive systems in order to hedge the risk of failure. In the case of nuclear energy, the result is the concentration of power production in large plants. That strategy seems to work, within limits: on the average, the safety record of the nuclear industry is not bad. But when something goes wrong with a nuclear plant, it tends to go wrong in a big way, such as with Chernobyl and Fukushima.

ODAC Newsletter – March 18

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The earthquake and tsunami which ripped apart the northern half of Honshu in Japan on Friday has caused a massive humanitarian disaster and a nuclear emergency which may still develop into a major catastrophe. The wider knock on effects could be a backlash against nuclear power, and further global economic instability as a result of damage to what is the world’s 3rd largest economy. Meanwhile in Libya the civil war raged on, and in Bahrain protests became bloody as the government turned to military force and outside help to retain power.