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Will Japan Win the Darwin Award?
Will Japan Win the Darwin Award?
Japan Re-Starts Nuclear Plan Near Active Volcano
We reported last October:
Scientists warned that an earthquake could take out Fukushima. The Japanese ignored the warning … and even tore down the natural seawall which protected Fukushima from tidal waves.
Fukushima is getting worse. And see this and this.
Have the Japanese learned their lesson? Are they decommissioning nuclear plants which are built in dangerous environments?
Of course not!
Instead, they’re re-starting a nuclear plant near a volcano which is about to blow …
A month ago, there was an eruption at Mt. Ontake:
Screenshot from Youtube Video shot on September 29th of Mount erupting. 57 hikers were killed by the explosion
But – as Newsweek reports – a nuclear plant only 40 miles away will be re-started anyway:
Local officials have voted to reopen a nuclear plant in Japan, despite warnings of increased volcanic activity in the region from scientists.
The decision comes despite a warning on Friday that Japan’s Seismological Agency had documented an increase of activity in the Ioyama volcano, located 40 miles away from the power station.
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Sendai will become the first Japanese nuclear plant to reopen in since 2011.
However the decision comes as scientific authorities warned of increased seismic activity on the island. Volcanologists have warned that the 2011 earthquake, which measured 9.0 on the Richter scale, may have increased the likelihood of volcanic activity throughout the region. [Background.]
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The Sendai plant is also situated only 31 miles from Mount Sakurajima, anextremely active volcano which erupts on a regular basis.
The documentation of new activity comes barely a month after the eruption of Mount Ontake, when 57 hikers were killed on its slopes. There were no accompanying signs of seismic activity prior to the eruption which might have alerted Japanese authorities to the impending disaster.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Bad Timing: Japan Opens First Nuclear Plant Since Fukushima As Neighboring Volcano Erupts
Bad Timing: Japan Opens First Nuclear Plant Since Fukushima As Neighboring Volcano Erupts
In case last week’s deadly chemical explosion in the Chinese port of Tianjin wasn’t enough to satisfy your thirst for black swan-ish disasters that could serve to accelerate the ongoing global currency wars, Japan is now warning that Sakurajima, one of the country’s most active volcanos may be set to erupt.
As Reuters notes, Sakurajima erupts “almost constantly,” but based on the mountain’s “increased activity,” experts say this eruption could be “larger than usual.”
The Japan Meteorological Agency has raised the warning level from 3 to 4 and because these arbitrarily assigned numbers are largely meaningless to the anyone who doesn’t track volcanic activity, the agency is kind enough to provide a description for each level: 4 means “prepare to evacuate.”
“The possibility for a large-scale eruption has become extremely high for Sakurajima,” the Agency warned on Saturday. As for what fate would befall someone who failed to heed an evacuation warning, well let’s just say that molten stones “could rain down on areas near the mountain’s base.”
But the real problem is Sakurajima’s location – it’s just 50 kilometers from the Sendai nuclear power plant.
As fate would have it, last Tuesday Sendai became the first nuclear reactor to be restarted in Japan since the Chernobyl redux at Fukushima in 2011.
Critics, Reuters adds, have warned that “the plant is also located near five giant crater-like depressions formed by past eruptions, with the closest one some 40 km away” and as The Guardian points out, some experts claim “the restarted reactor at Sendai [is] still at risk from natural disasters,” despite the fact that it was the first nuclear plant to pass new regulations put in place by the country’s Nuclear Regulation Authority on the heels of the disaster in 2011.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
