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So what's your suggestion as to what the Obama Administration should do about Fukushima? Bomb the reactors?

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Tell the Japanese government they don't know what they're doing and send in the Marines and the NRC to take over the reactors and fix them?

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Tell the Japanese government they don't know what they're doing and send in the Marines and the NRC to take over the reactors and fix them?

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

But there is an international cadre of nuclear cleanup experts, including Russians and Americans, plus a lot more capital than Japan can scratch up by itself. It seems to me than most Pacific nations could kick in either personnel, money, or technology.

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Originally posted by G:
Oh, the irony of our military fixing their nuclear problems... someone tell me that isn't great writing.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Tell the Japanese government they don't know what they're doing and send in the Marines and the NRC to take over the reactors and fix them?

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Yep, pretty much. Obviously not the Marines, they don't know any more than Japan. But there is an international cadre of nuclear cleanup experts, including Russians and Americans, plus a lot more capital than Japan can scratch up by itself. It seems to me than most Pacific nations could kick in either personnel, money, or technology.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The reason why I suggest these ideas, Geezer, is to point something out- something you haven't picked up on yet.

We SAY we want peace. We SAY we want to mitigate global climate shift. We SAY we want to protect the environment, or that we want a truly free market, or any number of these "goals" that we have in our heads. But we don't do what we say. Not because it's technically infeasible, but because of OTHER ideas that we have about "the way the world should work". So we quite often don't achieve goals we SAY we want because we've set up a conflict, and we just walk around with our minds abuzz with cognitive dissonace.

Now, ideas (and people) should be changeable. They (we) should be flexible enough to follow a changing understanding of our world, or changing circumstances. But what I find is that people are actually mentally quite rigid. Despite the fact that "thinking" is -in many ways- the safest activity one can undertake (certainly safer than posting online!), people refuse to do it. Although they could run through all kinds of scenarios in their heads without consequence (if they chose), they don't. Which is why they won't come up with alternatives that might be more effective than the ones that were planted in their heads.

You've certainly come up with all kinds of "legitimate" reasons to invade other nations before, and often for far less important reasons: bananas, copper, phantom WMD, dominoes. And those invasions have happened, too. It's not like they stayed in the realm of ideas. So be a mentally flexible person, and tell me why this is any worse.

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When Tokyo finally said last month it would deal with the festering Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the world might have cheered.

It didn't. Instead, the government's belated call to arms showed how dangerously haphazard the response to history's second-biggest nuclear-plant disaster has been.

We now watch as tons of contaminated water spill daily into the sea off Fukushima. It's a new phase of the crisis. It's a danger to Japan. And, fairly or not, it's a challenge to the nuclear industry's credibility.

Until its recent change of heart, Tokyo largely stiff-armed Tokyo Electric Power Co., 9501.TO +1.37% the utility that operates the plant. It kept its distance, focusing blame on the company. U.S. firms and groups sent experts to help, but that effort diminished over time, in part because of Japan's reluctance to accept outside aid.

No surprise, the broader crisis overwhelmed cash-strapped Tepco. Watching the drama unfold, some consumers, such as Germany, decided to abandon nuclear power altogether.

"There was a lot of international involvement early on assessing the situation, but I haven't seen as much saying, 'Here are the issues you now need to address,' " says Dale Klein, former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who now heads a panel of experts advising Tepco. "The international business community needs to give Tepco a roadmap."

"The imagination of the people in [U.S.] industry who thought about these things stopped after a few days," says Ed Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "You're now seeing the legacy of that short-term view. Their impression was that the crisis was over."

... But outside influence has played a less potent role with Tepco. "We've said that, if we're asked, we'll provide assistance. But there hasn't been a request," says a spokesman at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

So it is that the crisis never quite stopped. Two-and-a-half years after an earthquake and tsunami sent three of the six Fukushima reactors into meltdown—the result of inadequate backup systems and seawall protections—Tepco has barely begun to tackle the job of dismantling the wreckage.

Instead, the utility is frantically trying to halt hundreds of tons of groundwater that flow into the site daily. A large amount is washing through the broken buildings, picking up radioactive material and carrying it into structures or out to sea.

Tepco is pumping the contaminated water into an ever-expanding mushroom field of containment tanks—some 1,000 to date. As the world watches, the utility appears to be losing the battle. Leaks above and below ground are sprouting. Now Tepco and the government want to freeze a mile-long stretch of earth in an unparalleled experiment to block water before it reaches the site. Construction will take two years.

Sound desperate? "They're utility operators, not water managers," says Marvin Fertel, CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. industry trade association.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yes, I have an issue with national sovereignty when a nation is seriously harming other nations. It's like with people. You can't claim that your individual rights allow you to punch someone in the nose, and you can't claim your sovereign rights allow you to harm other nations.

Well, SOMEbody needs to give Japan a whack on the back of the head and assistance because what they're doing just isn't cutting it. This WSJ article seems to be recognizing the blindingly obvious.

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