Checking in for Dagny’s take she has some frilliant considerations – (IamDagny AKA. Ann Barnhardt) The internet is not 100% evil. One of the confirmations of this has been the amount of information posted all over the web by retired nuclear physicists, engineers and military personnel, purely voluntarily and solely for the public good. Almost all of them are doing this under anonymous handles, but I still feel compelled to offer my personal thanks. Here is what I have gleaned from reading several of these expert threads.
The earthquake in Japan was devastating beyond description. It may be the worst earthquake ever given its strength coupled with its proximity to densely populated areas. When the first reports came out, it was pegged as being 8.8 on the Richter scale. This was soon revised up to 9.1. You might think that this is not much of a change – only 0.3 Richter points. But you would be wrong. The Richter scale is a LOGARITHMIC scale, so every point change in magnitude is equivalent to a factor of 31 times more energy release. So when the Japan earthquake was revised from 8.8 to 9.1, this actually meant that the quake was almost three times stronger than the original estimate. An 8.8 quake is the energy release equivalent of 16 metric gigatons of TNT. A 9.1 quake is the energy release equivalent of 46 gigatons of TNT.
The 2004 Indian Ocean quake that caused the Tsunami in Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka was bigger than this quake, BUT the Indian Ocean quake was very deep, and out to sea. This quake in Japan was right off the coast. Satellite GPS measurements confirm that the entire island of Japan was shifted EIGHT FEET by this quake. Get your head around that. Get your head around the energy required to move that much mass that far in a matter of a few seconds.
Here is where we get to the nuclear power plants. Japan has some of the best earthquake-resistant structural engineering on the planet. Earthquake-resistant structural engineering focuses on designing structures that can withstand waves and undulations in the ground beneath the structure. Reinforced concrete is a major tool in this, along with systems which allow for significant flex, especially in skyscrapers. There is a video floating around that someone took of skyscrapers in Tokyo waving back-and-forth like reeds in the wind during this quake. It is nauseating to watch, but that waving and flexing is exactly what the building was designed to do.
All of this engineering is great, but it is limited in that it assumes that waves of energy move through the ground, and that the ground then settles back close, or fairly close, to its original position. That is the only assumption that CAN be made. What happened in this quake is that the ground heaved and collapsed, thus drastically altering the lay of the ground beneath structures within a matter of a few seconds. There is no engineering that can defend against that. Imagine what would happen if the ground under your house heaved such that the ground beneath the north side of your house was suddenly FOUR FEET lower. This is what happened in Japan. At the nuclear plants, the problem with this is not the structural integrity of the reactor or the reactor casing. The problem is with the PLUMBING. The massive permanent heaving of the ground caused the plumbing and power delivery conduits to break. Hence the lack of water delivery to the core, hence the overheating, hence the meltdown.
Marxist “green” freaks are already screaming that this is all proof of why we can’t have nuclear plants. And this comes to the point of this essay. In life there are things which are completely and totally out of human control and can never, ever, ever be 100% protected or defended against. The systems in question are simply too large, such as the weather, movement of tectonic plates, or movement of meteors and other bodies in space. This does not mean that we should stop all activity that contains risk – because at the end of the day ALL human activity contains risk. Life IS risk. An asteroid or meteor COULD hit any point on earth at any time. Does this mean that we build NO STRUCTURES – because there is a risk that any structure could be hit and destroyed by a meteor? Of course not. Given this, not only were the Japanese right to build their nuclear reactors in the first place, but they should also rebuild them as soon as they can. Other countries should continue to operate their nuclear plants without fear. Nor should this event cause others any hesitation in building new nuclear plants. We assess the risks as best we can. We manage those risks as best we can (which the Japanese did). And if something happens that is on a scope and scale completely and totally outside of human control or experience, we deal with it and move on.
Now to Marxism. Marxists are, at the end of the day, attempting to be God. They teach and preach that EVERYTHING can be controlled, and it is their duty to exercise that control. If everything can be controlled, and controlled by human beings, then everything that happens, both good and bad, MUST be the result of some human action. When bad things happen, such as this tsunamiquake, the Marxists immediately begin to bang their drum. First they attempt to assign personal blame – because EVERYTHING is SOMEBODY’S FAULT. The tacks I have seen so far from Marxists are blaming capitalism via “global warming”. One argument was that the melting of the polar icecaps (even though there is no melting of the polar icecaps) altered the stress load on the tectonic plates, thus causing the earthquake. Another line involves earth-worship (which is not an uncommon phenomenon among Marxists – the Nazis were big into earth-worship), namely that the earth is “getting even with humanity” for “raping” the earth of its resources. I’m not kidding. Stuff like this is ALL OVER the leftist-Marxist-Obamaist websites.
After the Marxists pin blame for all bad events on their enemies, they attempt to claim that if they had been in power, and if they were able to execute their vision unencumbered, none of these things would have happened. If it weren’t for American and Japanese capitalism, the tectonic plate would not have shifted. If we lived in a more “economically just” world, those several trillion gallons of water could have been held back.
Finally, once the Marxists have convinced the people that THEY could have prevented the disaster, they then tell the people that they have the power to fix it. They can PREVENT the next earthquake. They can PREVENT the next tsunami. They can PREVENT the next hurricane, tornado, ice storm, influenza outbreak, forest fire, car wreck, cancerous tumor, stroke, heart attack, brain aneurysm, food poisoning, diarrhea, indigestion, headache, emotional distress, personal offense, stress, or instance of physical or psychic discomfort of any kind. All they need is . . . total and complete power. When people are desperate, they tend to want to believe that there is a human answer to their problems, and are thus more likely to fall for the siren song and snake oil of the WANNABE MARXIST DICTATORIAL class.
The red flag to look for in all of this is ARROGANCE – the failure to acknowledge that some things are indeed completely outside of human control of influence. After pondering the enormity and the quantities of power and energy involved in these massive systems such as geophysics, hydrophysics, meteorology and even astrophysics, if you see human beings trying to claim power, dominance and authority over them, that’s your red flag. If you see human beings attempt to claim total power, authority and the ability to control human life, health and happiness, that is your red flag. I’ll conclude with what is, quite possibly, the single most arrogant quote in human history. It was made by Barack Obama on the occasion of his securing the democrat party nomination to the Presidency of the United States. The enemy’s flag was hoisted, and it was hoisted very early on. Ignore it at your extreme peril.
“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal . . .”
-Barack Hussein Obama
