Here’s an assorted list of things that once seemed archetypally American, but have pretty much reached the end of the line. More precisely, there are no new ones, or hardly any, and the existing examples look increasingly down at heel
-
Shopping malls
Nuclear power stations
Republican intellectuals
Feel free to discuss, deny, add to the list and so on.
John Quiggin 
JQ, are you sure you want to do this? You have penned the “Niagara Falls” phrase. Slowly they return… argument by argument… fallacy by fallacy… I mean the supporters of nuclear power of course.
Shopping malls is an interesting one. Richard D. Wolff has noted the recent collapse in the spending power of the poor and middle class in the USA. While shops that cater to the 1% are expanding the rest are struggling or collapsing. This is a simplistic caricature of Wolff’s position but you get the drift. Many malls that cater to the lower end of the market are struggling. As people cut back on driving they also stop driving to malls and superstores on the edge of nowhere. The predictions of James Howard Kunstler come to fruition.
Your phrases “there are no new ones, or hardly any, and the existing examples look increasingly down at heel..” can increasingly be applied to nearly the entirety of US infrastructure. North America is turning into a rust belt. In the decade from 2003 and 2013 the figures changed as follows;
2003 Crude Steel Production as a percentage of world production.
China 22.9%
NAFTA 12.8%.
2013 Crude Steel Production as a percentage of world production.
China 48.5%
NAFTA 7.3%
Apparent steel use as finished steel products closely follows these crude steel numbers. If use of structural steel is not matching or exceeding “infrastructure entropy” then North America is literally rusting away.
“* According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, more than 25 percent of America’s nearly 600,000 bridges need significant repairs or are burdened with more traffic than they were designed to carry.
*According to the Federal Highway Administration, approximately a third of America’s major roadways are in substandard condition – a significant factor in a third of the more than 43,000 traffic fatalities in the United States each year.
*The Texas Transportation Institute estimates that traffic jams caused by insufficient infrastructure waste 4 billion hours of commuters’ time and nearly 3 billion gallons of gasoline a year.
*The Association of State Dam Safety Officials has found that the number of dams in the United States that could fail has grown 134% since 1999 to 3,346, and more than 1,300 of those are considered “high-hazard” – meaning that their collapse would threaten lives.
*More than a third of all dam failures or near failures since 1874 have happened in just the last decade.
*According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, aging sewer systems spill an estimated 1.26 trillion gallons of untreated sewage every single year, resulting in an estimated 50.6 billion dollars in cleanup costs.”
I can’t help quoting a bit of Kunstler in full from his post “Omenland”;
“A day later, I was in Stockholm, being forcefully reminded what an actual city is like, one designed for human activity, not just some abstract political notion of “mobility.” People live in the center of Stockholm, lots of them, in five and six story buildings that display great variety and conscious artistry within strong orders of architectural unity. The motifs are a northern folkish classicism. The effect is both reassuring and powerfully coherent. You feel civilized. Your neurology is constantly nourished as you walk. Unlike Americans, the Swedes don’t go about in their pajamas. Also absent were cholo caps, team sports toggery, and clown sneakers. How refreshing to see young people aspire to act like grownups instead of the other way around. And, of course, almost no one is supersized over there.
Then, too soon, I landed back in Newark Airport, Lord have mercy. I grabbed a taxi to the Newark train station to get to the Hudson River line out of New York City back upstate. Along the way on Route 21, I passed a graffiti on an overpass. It said “Omenland.” The anonymous genius who sprayed that there sure caught the US zeitgeist. Newark compares to Stockholm as an Ebola victim in the gutter compares to a supermodel at poolside. The scene in the Newark train station was like the barroom from Star Wars, a creature-feature extravaganza, intergalactic Mutt Central, wookies in hoodies with burning coals for eyes, ladies with pierced cheeks, crack-heads, winos, missing body part people, lopsided head people, and the scrofulous physical condition of the station is proof positive that Chris Christie is unqualified to be president. This is a gateway to New York, America’s greatest city, you understand, and it looks like the veritable checkpoint to the rectum of the universe. You know what occurred to me: maybe it is?” – J.H. Kunstler.
Is it too simple to see the decline of the first two as due to tech change? ie. internet shopping and fracking.
@kevin1 Yes! People are opting for something different, more personal – malls are inherently bereft of individuality and are usually full of retired and/or elderly who use the relative safety and trip free pavement to meet others for a cheap cup of coffee.
Paris has a tight control on new developments and is invariably packed – a city museum that is the most visited in the world. And in the SW the salt industry on Ile de Re has been revitalised by those seeking more than just a condiment.
Did Sydney benefit from the loss of its once grand Georgian architecture? Its trams?
@rog
I’m intrigued by the salt comment, what’s that all about?
@kevin1
Certain forms of heavy industry are going to be necessary for a considerable while yet. I won’t say forever but I think we can confidently say for many decades to come. The steel industry is a key one. I don’t see that a major nation failing at steel production and its use of finished steel relative to its growth and maintenance requirements is going to prosper. Decaying infrastructure, decaying built environments, decaying transport and decaying agriculture (to say nothing of a decaying military) are going to be its future.
Is the US failing in this sense? I don’t know for sure. I would have to check a lot more numbers. However, I suspect from the general evidence of infrastructure decay that it is failing. We are seeing a nation decaying from a very high base. This decay, if it continues, will take a long time to play out, at least another 50 years. Could the US arrest this decay? Yes, with very enlightened policies the US could arrest this decay. However, the chances of the US adopting enlightened policies now are so close to zero it’s not worth quibbling about the uncertainty… IMO.
Well, here’s another thing the US has seen the last of: water in the Western states.
@Ikonoclast
One of the biggest areas is water and wastewater provision. Their maintenance is still very much in public domain where there simply isnt the money so what you get is patchup jobs across the country but without spectacular disasters on the scale of the Michigan bridge collapse (But a water supply dam collapse say in California when it finally rains is an interesting one to contemplate).
But in truth its everything. Its instructive to have a look at LCA literature. Central to LCA calculations are the 1/2 life calculations. Basically everything we construct that isnt overengineered decomposes at a perceptible rate. By overengineering I mean something like the pyramids. For buildings the longest half life I’ve seen is about 75 years.
An interesting aspect of this is the more you construct the more you need to maintain and this needs energy and resources. Its something that doesnt figure highly that I’ve seen yet in sustainability calculations but its certainly a gorilla in the background and represents another barrier to growth. The much maligned EROEI concept illustrates the issue perfectly or having to put an increasing proportion of resources into maintenance in effect promoting the vested interest of maintenance. (At the risk of being boring) the story of petroleum shown here nicely illustrates the dilemma nicely. MURPHY, D. J. 2014. The implications of the declining energy return on investment of oil production. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 372.
But for me the related issue is all the roads and highways we keep producing without solving the traffic problem within the current paradigm. Talk about wear and tear to just maintain the existing stock.
A related and perhaps more critical issue is land production of crops and timber – this is where I originally developed a loathing for current neoclassical or Keynesian growth economics and the short term view they promote whereby technology, energy, human brilliance and some mystical equilibrium will sort things out – this empirical cargo cult seems probably embodied in the Jevon’s Paradox now that I think about it.
By contrast the real story is environmental science 101.
Basically if you look around the world you seen increasing conversion of ‘pristine’ land to forestry and agriculture subject to local climatic constraints which maintains the illusion of growth but is in reality as Paul Ehrlich nicely puts it a case of living of the capital – party on.
What has happened over a longer period that economics is capable or recognising
(leaving aside the feeble example of carbon accounting and discount which illustrates how this issue is ignored)
is you firstly use the nutrients and soil profile/structure built up over millennia maybe adding one or two input subsidies like irrigation water. Things go ok for some decades but slowly you accumulate problems. You may do a bit of token ‘environmental management’ like recycling wastewater but this only compounds the problem e.g. it overloads the sodium content of soils destroying structure and fertility and promoting erosion – and so gold courses start dying several decades after the start. Then things get worse because of the pursuit of short term profit is still the driver and maybe you get more and more erosion and salination.
Ultimately the inputs become too costly locally or in some other location which was indirectly impacted. The Snowy River is a great example.
And thus you see the slow degradation of the whole landscape, just like with infrastructure, and successions of exploitation. It happens so slow that the general populace the banks the rest dont notice or see it as trivial. Occasionally government tries to sort things but in the end things get better for a short time and the cycle of bad decisions continues.
Today you see the cycle repeating itself in North Queensland – build dams, exploit the last frontier – while forgetting the disastrous management of the Murray Darling Basin yet again because our society and its economy is inherently incapable of genuine holistic long term thinking and planning.
In conclusion what I would add to John’s list is America’s verdant fertile landscape though it will probably take a little longer.
@kevin1 Historically salt production was an important industry on Ile de Re but with the advent of modern production methods, and refrigeration, the salt ponds fell into decline or were converted over to oyster beds. More recently there has been a resurgence in demand for salt produced the traditional way and today the industry is back in business.
US nukes on the way out? See Vogtle units 3 and 4 in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant
There are several others that have re-commenced construction after a pause. However the big test will come when New York tries to replace 30% of its electricity supply if Indian Point nuclear plant closes. They hope to replace it with renewable energy and storage OK maybe a fair bit of new gas plant. California has already closed its San Onofre plant and is now burning more gas and importing more coal fired electricity from interstate. Way to go.
Hi all,
I may be summarising the above responses but here are my responses to Prof Q in a nutshell. I am against malls but would their decline ba a symptom of a declining middle class? I am against nuclear power but would the lack of capacitiy for new reactors signal a fall in technological ability or the drive to foster innovation? I am against nearly everything that republicans stand for but would their decline in intellectual capacity indicate a general failure of the less visible but vital aspects of democracy?
When good thongs happen for bad reasons any celebration must be tempered by the need to change the directions of underlying trends.
Cheers
Cam
Isn’t the TVA finally going to open Watts Bar 2 in 2015?
I was discussing this yesterday on twitter with an occasional contributor here, Chrispy_Dog
Hermit: “However the big test will come when New York tries to replace 30% of its electricity supply if Indian Point nuclear plant closes.”
Indian Point provides 11.9% of New York’s electricity, not 30%.
http://www.eia.gov/nuclear/state/newyork
Hi all,
I may be summarising the above responses but here are my responses to Prof Q in a nutshell. I am against malls but would their decline ba a symptom of a declining middle class? I am against nuclear power but would the lack of capacitiy for new reactors signal a fall in technological ability or the drive to foster innovation? I am against nearly everything that republicans stand for but would their decline in intellectual capacity indicate a general failure of the less visible but vital aspects of democracy?
When good things happen for bad reasons any celebration must be tempered by the need to change underlying trends.
Cheers
Cam
On gas vs nukes we’re talking 450 direct grams of CO2 per kwh vs 30 lifecycle grams or less. However it now seems Ukraine wants US gas and Old Blighty wants Australian gas. The reason is neither importing country wants to be blackmailed by Russia. It wouldn’t take long for gas fuel prices to escalate dramatically despite the low capex and fast construction time for gas plant. There are already signs of a coal comeback in both the US and Australia to wit closing Swanbank power station and re-opening Tarong.
Hermit, what percentage of its imported gas does the UK source from Russia?
And how much are the Vogtle 3 & 4 reactors costing again?
If instead of building them, you diverted that same money into renewables + gas backup, how much coal-fired generation would you displace?
For the purpose of this thread it should be kept in mind that Stockholm is in Sweden, a country that is shall we say, not without nuclear reactors.
The centre of Stockholm may be nice to live in, but it is something like a 15-year waiting list to get into one of those nice city-centre apartments.
@Charlene MacDonald
Sweden may once again adopt its former phase out nuclear policy following the recent elections, according to an article in World Nuclear News (1 October 2014).
Also Sweden currently gets almost 50% of its energy from renewables (mainly hydro) and is aiming to increase wind power significantly, according to https: // sweden.se / society / energy-use-in-sweden/
(Can’t send proper links because will go into moderation)
No more noisy American tourists. (In fact they no longer want to be identified as Americans abroad.)
Now the noisy annoying ones are the English.
No more Americans telling you that they have the finest democracy in the world. (In fact, they want to discuss with you how bad their Government is. ((But are they Republicans or Democrats or what?))
Hollywood.
The major studios (MPAA members) output half the number of cinematic releases they did in 2004.
And fewer and fewer of those are shot and/or set in California, as they rely more heavily on out-of-state or country subsidies and tax breaks to get them off the ground.
The Economic Collapse Blog is a crazy “End Times” site. However, its lists if accurate are quite indicative of the relative and perhaps even absolute decline of the USA. The list is 40 items long so I have culled it a bit.
#1 According to the World Bank, U.S. GDP accounted for 31.8 percent of all global economic activity in 2001. That number dropped to 21.6 percent in 2011.
#2 The United States was once ranked #1 in the world in GDP per capita. Today it is #14.
#3 The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.
#6 In the year 2000, about 17 million Americans were employed in manufacturing. Today, only about 12 million Americans are employed in manufacturing.
#7 The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
#8 The United States has lost32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#10 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Today, China’s high-tech exports are more than twice the size of U.S. high-tech exports.
#11 In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in “advanced technology products” of $16 billion with the rest of the world. In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.
#12 The United States has lost more than a quarter of all of its high-tech manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#13 The number of full-time workers in the United States is nearly 6 million below the old record that was set back in 2007.
#14 The average duration of unemployment in the United States is nearly three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.
#15 Throughout the year 2000, more than 64 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.7 percent of all working age Americans have a job.
#16 The official unemployment rate has been at 7.5 percent or higher for 54 months in a row. That is the longest stretch in U.S. history.
#17 The U.S. government says that the number of Americans “not in the labor force” rose by 17.9 million between 2000 and 2011. During the entire decade of the 1980s, the number of Americans “not in the labor force” rose by only 1.7 million.
#18 The average number of hours worked per employed person per year has fallen by about 100 since the year 2000.
#19 The U.S. economy continues to trade good paying jobs for low paying jobs. 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.
#20 The U.S. economy lost more than 220,000 small businesses during the recent recession.
#21 The percentage of Americans that are self-employed has steadily declined over the past decade and is now at an all-time low.
#23 In the year 2000, there were only 17 million Americans on food stamps. Today, there are more than 47 million Americans on food stamps.
#24 In the year 2000, the ratio of social welfare benefits to salaries and wages was approximately 21 percent. Today, the ratio of social welfare benefits to salaries and wages is approximately 35 percent.
#27 Right now there are 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
#28 The price of ground beef increased by 61 percent between 2002 and 2012.
#29 According to USA Today, water bills have actually tripled over the past 12 years in some areas of the country.
#31 Median household income in the United States has fallen for four years in a row.
#33 Back in the year 2000, the mortgage delinquency rate was about 2 percent. Today, it is nearly 10 percent.
#35 Back in 2007, about 28 percent of all working families were considered to be among “the working poor”. Today, that number is up to 32 percent even though our politicians tell us that the economy is supposedly recovering.
#36 According to the Federal Reserve, the median net worth of families in the United States declined “from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010”.
#37 According to the New York Times, the average debt burden for U.S. households that earn $20,000 a year or less “more than doubled to $26,000 between 2001 and 2010”.
#40 Today, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.
Out of interest, why is it that Australian and American urban planning is so inferior to European? Is it just the blank slate thing?
@Lt. Fred
Because space is infinite and car is king.
@Nick
There may be little Russian gas in current UK imports but that must increase as other sources dwindle. There’s talk of induction cookers and reverse cycle heaters replacing gas in homes. World Peak Gas is expected by 2030 and eastern Australia is expected to feel the gas pinch as early as 2016. Therefore any long range plans that require gas must be suspect. While Vogtle 3 & 4 are expensive they will probably run glitch free at near full capacity until the 2070s. During that time solar panels and wind turbines will probably need replacing twice. Meantime gas will become prohibitively priced.
@Hermit
World uranium peak is about to occur, therefore any long range plans that require uranium must be suspect.
Look up “The coming nuclear energy crunch” on the Guardian website.
It’s funny how people accept “peak” realities for many things but never for their pet idee fixe.
@Ikonoclast
Funny how they’ve mothballed some mines (eg Honeymoon) because the U308 price was too low.
@David Allen
That’s nice rhetoric — great for a rally, but I suspect the drivers (ha! an unintentional pun) lie in the desire of our governments to minimise their exposure to political risk.
A largely ad hoc transport system supported by roads carries very little political risk, because people tend on the whole to scatter responsibility for traffic crawls amongst the various levels of government, to other drivers and even accept some of it themselves for living too far from their work. If roads are not maintained well, they may be more hostile but the marginal cost of maintaining roads is not something either side makes an issue out of.
Building a new road is an announceable, and so when someone announces a new road, the critics tend to be outnumbered by the supporters as people served by the road imagine their commuting pain being reduced, as improbable as this is. By contrast, new public transport services are either impracticable (because existing services are near capacity) or would be even more expensive than roads to build (in the short term when governments are accountable). And if the project runs late or over budget, or is delivered but isn’t quite as efficient and reliable as people had hoped, then people are far more likely to blame the government than if they are stuck in a traffic jam.
As with other public services, privatisation of transport relieves the state of some of its political burdens.
Public transport, more urban consolidation and better design of suburbs, more dedicated bicycle ways — all of these would be excellent ways to reduce competition for road space and ensure that much more of road space was occupied by those with no feasible alternative. We’d definitely have cleaner more liveable cities and people would spend a lesser proportion of their income on transport costs and spend less of their lives sitting in cars staring blankly at the vehicle in front of them.
Sadly, our governments prefer the more politically feasible option of choosing the option with the best risk-reward in the short term. That this course also aligns with the interests of other major stakeholders in the system — oil companies, the motor trade, the housing industry is all to the good of the people officially in charge.
Is it? Why do you say it is? I can’t speak for the USA, or really even for Australia, but I think in Victoria, once you get past the fact that we have a booming population and a financial system that declares new heavy rail to be too expensive, I think we have a pretty decent planning system, I’m not sure what its obvious inadequacies are.
Judging from the comments on the Crooked Timber blog on this same post, the other thing going extinct in the USA is interesting, intelligent blog comments.
Another interesting difference with the Crooked Timber comments is the reaction to John’s comment about the prevalence of run-down shopping malls in the States. John does not literally mean that shopping malls will go extinct in the States. He is speaking in a whimsical way to make a point. But some of the USA posters have gone to town and think if they find one example of a flourishing shopping mall they have disproved John’s point.
Hermit: “While Vogtle 3 & 4 are expensive they will probably run glitch free at near full capacity until the 2070s. During that time solar panels and wind turbines will probably need replacing twice.”
Regarding wind turbines, I presume you mean they’ll need new rotor blades, gearbox, and assorted other bits and pieces, slip rings and brushes etc? All up, around 15-20% of the total materials cost of a new wind turbine.
Not sure why you’d think the entire tower structure would need replacing (by far the bulk of the labour costs).
Likewise, after 20-30 years Vogtle 3 & 4 will require new 800 tonne heat exchangers…
Nuclear reactors, like everything else in this world, not being magically immune to wear and tear.
And “glitch free”? That’s really pushing it, Hermit. Check the ‘incidents’ section for the Indian Point reactors you mentioned earlier:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center
Coal it is then
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/21/us-fossil-fuel-obama-climate-change-energy-heat
The article talks of the polar vortex when electricity supply and demand goes haywire. I’m wondering if we have one today in the southern hemisphere.
@Hermit
You see, this is exactly what I referred to. You are convinced of the finiteness of oil and gas supplies so a single downward blip in oil or gas prices would not impress you as in any way significant. You would know that short-term price movements have nothing to do with the finiteness of such resource stocks. On the other hand, you cherrypick one factoid about uranium prices as if this counters a peer reviewed scientific paper which demonstrates we are about to run slap-bang into a long term uranium shortage.
You want to believe that uranium stocks are effectively limitless so you throw out all the standard scientific data demonstrating finiteness which you routinely accept in relation to other fuel stocks. It’s double-think pure and simple.
@Ikonoclast
Of course uranium is finite but it has two overwhelming attributes…the energy density as a one pass fission fuel in Gen 3 reactors and the energy density of downstream products in Gen 4 reactors. That means we can either expend a lot of energy either extracting it from dilute sources or re-use it. Yellowcake U308 or equivalent salts is now nudging $A80 per kg. After 3-5% enrichment that original kilogram can produce 570 GJ of primary energy in a light water reactor. Deductions need to be made for mining and enrichment effort and conversion to electricity. However a tonne = 1,000 kg of brown coal is lucky to produce 10 GJ of thermal energy. Like coal it can produce electricity 24/7 unlike coal there’s almost no CO2.
As for uranium depletion I don’t think we really need to worry about it this side of 2050. We’ll either make it or collapse. After 2050 there’s Gen 4 technology like Russia’s new Beloyarsk plant, abundant thorium power, fusion or maybe we’ll be living in caves.
@John Street
Yes, thankfully far less noisy American tourists. Also good to see no more drunkenly destructive Irish tourists. There are already far less English tourists. I’m just waiting for the Australian economy to tank so that there are no more annoying, embarrassing Australian tourists.
Hermit, you kind of dodged my question back there.
How much are the Vogtle 3 & 4 reactors costing again?
Democracy – in any serious, functional sense.
and
Journalism.
Just like Australia.
@Hermit
Hmmm, let me try to paraphrase your argument.
“Of course, uranium is finite but it still won’t run out, until it does, and then we will have something even better or we will be living in caves.”
I am not sure how I can argue against such dazzling logic so I think I should give up.
@Hermit
From about ’75 on I’ve been a practitioner/student of the junk, that is, rubbish side of the equation. From then ’till now I have never seen a sensible proposal for dealing with radioactive waste.
I think the (barking mad) proponents of nuclear power have been lying doggo for this moment: an energy and eco-crisis as a resolution to which crisis they offer more hubris as the resolution to the problem. The modernists! As if human hubris wasn’t the cause of the problem.
In my opinion nuclear waste is a beat up issue. When not re-used it can stay in 35 tonne casks in parking lots until the end of time. Some envision Mad Max type goons prising the containers open for nefarious purposes. If they still have the equipment to do that perhaps society didn’t quite collapse after all. Here in Oz landowners in both NT and WA have said they will happily take the ex Lucas Heights material.
Power from Vogtle 3&4 will cost more than gas (for now) or coal. Perhaps there is some other way of providing gigawatts of low carbon power day and night in all weathers. Let’s see it.
That doesn’t sound too bad to me if you’re living in the burbs versus desperate for any accommodation. if you’re on the heteronormative trajectory, put yourself on the waiting list while the kids start school and by the time they’ve finished uni you’re ready to downsize and enjoy inner city life. Sounds pretty sweet to me. If you’re not following the heteronormative thing, then ditto, just without the kids.
I do agree there are a lot of things wrong with that post, though, Charlene, especially the portrayal of the not-beautiful and disabled people as people who should not be seen in public, and the use of a supermodel as a metaphor for the ideal!
Hermit, who can forget the MOX fuel stored on top of reactor 4 at Fukushima?
Which brings me to the second major failure of nuclear industry after storage, no one is really in charge nor bears any responsibility. Just see the buck passing between Japanese Gov, TEPCO and IAEA after the event or for that matter the proverbial collective eye, ear and mouth shutting before hand and the disastrous consequences there after.
@wilful
The obvious example is our shocking public transport systems, though (in Brisbane) our lasting contempt for heritage buildings, massive uncontrolled urban sprawl and silly waterfront death traps are some other problems.
@ Ootz I think blame must go where it belongs. With the Japan 2011 quake we had
tsunami deaths – about 16,000
evacuation deaths – about 1,600
radiation deaths – about 0
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/fukushima-evacuation-has-killed-more-earthquake-tsunami-survey-says-f8C11120007
So hermit … you are blaming the earthquake for the systemic blunders before and after the Fukushima disaster? With such an argument You only further degrade the credibility of the nuclear industry.
@Hermit
Apparently someone decided to store nuclear material in drums with ‘kitty litter’ , which combusted, thereby making unsafe the largest US nuclear storage site unusable.
@Ootz
I’m blaming the panic merchants for most of the evacuation deaths. Much of the exclusion zone is less radioactive than natural granite country. A few weeks ago former PM Shinzo Abe visited Ranger NT to urge locals to forgo mining. That plea was as effective as the evacuation. Note that dozens of N plants in Japan were not impaired at all but were closed anyway.. a bonanza for our coal and gas exports. Richter 9 quakes are very rare events.
@Ootz
Speaking as someone sympathtic to the inclusion of nuclear power in the dlivery mix, it’s undoubtedly true that disaster was the intersection of an entirely predictable natural event and human malfeasance.
Here’s a few things that once seemed typically Aussie, but no longer:
swagmen
hitchhikers
sheilas
cobbers
drovers
newspaper delivery (milk, bread)
backyard dunnys
blokes
zacs, dieners
remembrance driveway
blueys
Holden utes
bush dances
Fran, that is the tragedy of nuclear, it could be a legitimate and viable energy source if only the industry, governments and regulatory bodies would be more responsible, transparent and accountable. It is for exactly that reason the rest of the reactors in Japan were temporarily shut down and other countries are seriously looking at phasing out their reactors. To emphasise jungney’s point, the nuclear industry would regain enourmeous credit for solving the waste problem once and for all, as well as demonstrated its viability with a credible, transparent and accountable regulatory body.
Hermit, in case you are still missing the point, the first accounts of leaking radiation after the Fukushima incident was provided by a third party, not affiliated to the nuclear industry, which to some extend still has got it’s collective head in the sand. Just because “Richter 9 quakes are rare events” does not excuse the utter lack of preparedness for a critical event to occur, with appropriate evacuation and decontamination plans in place and practiced. It is for this reason nuclear is not considered a save energy source and it is not just me saying so.