Japan's largest utility falsified data at its nuclear power plants for three decades

[bananas]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4518470.html

Feb. 1, 2007, 1:18PM
Japan: Utility Admits Past Data Fibbing

© 2007 The Associated Press

TOKYO — Japan's largest utility operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., admitted that it falsified data at its nuclear power plants for three decades in an attempt to easily pass compulsory government inspections.

<snip>

The falsifications have passed the three-year statute of limitations and the company is likely escape punishment, Kyodo News agency reported.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged METI to determine how the falsifications were possible, and called on TEPCO to come up with measures to prevent an occurrence.

"Residents around the plants feel unsafe over the fabrications. They need to be able to trust in the safety of nuclear power," Abe told reporters Thursday evening.

<snip>

[jpak]

1. Those Trust Fund Kids are after The Precious again - hoo boy

:eyes:

[phantom power]

2. The Precious?

How we hates them, with their nasssty solar panelssss and their wind farmssssss. Eeeee! The light! It hurtssss! It burnsss!

[jpak]

3. Nasty little Trust Fund Kidses

We hateses them...HATESES THEM...

:evilgrin:

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Taking it a little personally, are you?

Somewhere, the evil overlord NNadir sits overlooking his empire of evil, and laughs.

He laughs the Official Internet Laugh.

Bwa. Ha. Ha.

--p!

[jpak]

6. Naw - just having a little fun (at someone's expense)

:evilgrin:

[Dogmudgeon]

5. In the opinion of a pro-nuclearist

Heads must roll.

Long prison sentences for the entire executive population of Tokyo Electric.

Punishment. Dishonor. Provide them with swords for seppuku if necessary.

--p!

[JohnWxy]

8. The problem isn't the management - its the technology!

[jpak]

9. It's not the technology - it's the coverup!!!111

:evilgrin:

[JohnWxy]

10. of course the cover-up is bad. But even without the cover-up you would still have the technical

problems. They seem to keep cropping up. Failing pumps, leaks, malfunctioning pressure realease valves, ...... on and on.

But still, where you have a mentality that it's better to lie and falsify test data than incur additional costs (like due to being closed down while the problem is rectified) you will have more lieing and falsification of test data and cover-ups.

[jpak]

24. Japan's nuclear establishment has seen more than one accident cover-up scandal...

The Tokaimura criticality accident...

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/17663/newsDate/09-Sep-2002/story.htm

and the Monju breeder reactor fire...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju

http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/new_articles.cfm?articleID=395&journalID=59

But only a few people were actually killed so it's OK...

[JohnWxy]

7. I hope you aren't advocating more Government monitoring of the Private Sector

Oh the horror! I mean, nobody got killed. Where are the bodies? No bodies, no cares, Right?

This is what profit making entities call operating efficienctly (cheat whenever necessary). Being responsible to their stockholders.

No need for (real) public over-sight. No dead bodies. Whatchyer problem! Jeez!


" The company also faked test operations at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in northern Japan in 1992, when an emergency core cooling system pump failed during government inspection.

TEPCO came under fire after another safety data cover-up scandal in 2002, stirring public distrust of Japan's nuclear industry."

[buddysmellgood]

11. Another step back for nuclear. This type of thing is devastating. We're expected

to trust the experts that it's safe, and then some asshats lie to us.

[NNadir]

12. Everyone in Japan has died from nuclear power.

The deaths toll is enormous.

This is why we have done so well with the fossil fuel industry, which is completely safe, so safe that the fact that the teeny weeny insignificant renewable energy industry has not been called to account for 50 years of talking big and doing nothing.

[BeFree]

13. Yeah

The sun and the wind have never produced an excess of energy, it is only by virtue of nukes are we able to live. Why won't renewalists bow before the great nuke plant and thank heavens for the high technology that is their birthright and liken unto their mother's milk?

[NNadir]

14. Produce an exajoule of magical solar industrial energy, just one

and you will demonstrate a milligram of rationality.

But you won't do that. You'll just be witless.

I could point out to the end of the world - which may be coming relatively soon because of magical thinking - and still you wouldn't get it.

Where are the Japanese dead from the forged documents? How many to do you and your bananas buddies estimate? As many as died from air pollution in Peoria last week? Last year? The dead from burning biomass in Madras?

How is the documentation for biomass burning in Malaysia? Do you and bananas-boy stay up all night searching the internet to find out?

Oh.

I forgot.

Only nuclear energy needs to be perfect. Everything else can kill endlessly and the children don't give a fuck.

Where are there any documents relating to fossil fuels and how many they kill regularly?

You don't care about the non-existence of fossil fuel documents, because you're willing to let fossil fuels kill millions every year while you blather endlessly about the Godot renewable paradise?

What a surprise.

[bananas]

15. You're defending them for "making stuff up"?

I'm not surprised.

[NNadir]

16. Obviously the system is robust and relatively harmless.

You are very excited about this issue, but clearly the regulations have not saved a single life, since you are unable to demonstrate that a single life has been lost.

Instead you want to substitute a matter of paperwork for all the millions of lives that will be lost this year owing to air pollution from fossil fuels and biomass. You announce that the paperwork is more important than lives.

You are unconcerned - in this pixilated, confused, desperate, ridiculous, endless compilation of legalistic - and not technical - pile of distracted, weak, blathering crap with people who die every single day while you play games.

I am not defending the Japanese power companies for failure to comply with regulations, though clearly the regulations do not save any lives, since non-compliance had killed zero people.

Instead I am pointing out something rather obvious about you and your singlularly silly friends.

[BeFree]

17. Wow

Self-righteousness just drips from your words.

There are two reasons why the deaths from nukes are not well known. One, the facts have been suppressed just like the facts of death by air pollution and the resultant GW have been hidden and suppressed.

Two, the tight control on the nuke operations have kept people from being radiated. But the increase in certain cancers belies your idea that nukes are harmless, there being many reputable non-DU scientists who question the nukes responsibility in those cancers.

It is rather odd for someone who calls them self a scientist to go so low as to use personal attacks to further your agenda. If you really had facts that is all we'd here from you. Instead, you tell half the story and then fill the rest of your bucket with crap. Quite sad. You are a poor salesman for your precious nukes.

[NNadir]

18. Absolutely.

I can afford to be self-righteous, since I am right.

There are "scientists" who question evolution, and "scientists" who question climate change. Mostly they are simultaneously wrong, morally weak, and consumed by irrational biases.

You seem to think that being a scientist involves surrendering one's humanity. I do understand that you know almost zero about science and about scientists, but they are in fact, human. This means that they are perfectly free, just like the rest of humanity, to despise other people on a personal level.

Science requires no priestly personality. It involves the collection and interpretation of data and the construction of models - most often mathematical - that are predictive.

You will sit here and whine all month about cancer from nuclear power plants, even though you know zero about the subject and will specifically avoid discussing in any way whether the option you support by default, more fossil fuels, also causes cancer.

I would not support you taking science courses, since I'd rather see the space filled with someone who would profit by the experience of taking them. However, if you ever, for whatever reason, become interested in say, cancer etiology, or a related science, I suspect that you might be taught, but not necessarily learn, that coal emissions cause cancer.

The fact that you don't give a shit is not a scientific question however, but a moral one.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I have zero moral respect, and zero intellectual respect for anyone holding the position that any imaginable consequence from nuclear energy outweighs the existing and constant and immediately fatal consequences of not using nuclear energy.

[BeFree]

20. Ha

If you ever, for whatever reason, become interested in say, cancer etiology, or a related science, I suspect that you might be taught, but not necessarily learn, that nuclear radiation causes cancers.

And.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I have zero moral respect, and zero intellectual respect for anyone holding the position nuclear energy is going to save the world.

[jpak]

19. Here are some Inconvenient Truths

the assholes at the Nuclear Energy Institute want you to ignore...

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act

http://www.usdoj.gov/civil/torts/const/reca/

17,000 claims settled, $1.1 billion (tax dollars) paid.

Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program

http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/owcp/eeoicp/weeklystats.htm

27,000 claims settled, $2.4 billion (tax dollars) paid.

Total 44,000 claims - $3.5 billion paid - and counting.

The power of The Precious clouds men's minds - pay no attention to those under its spell...

:evilgrin:

[BeFree]

21. I try, my friend

To stay as far away as possible from the people who don't give a damn about thousands of years of radiation foisted upon this world just so they can make more shit. But they must be confronted, eh?

[JohnWxy]

23. and what we are talking about is known data for about 50 yrs of experience. The nuclear waste will

be with us for thousands of years (some of it will be around for over 10,000 years). given the rate at which 'goof-ups' and failures occur (which doesn't have to be all that frequent) and given the amount of time were talking about, the likelihood of more 'events' happening is quite high (some would say a virtual certainty).

The more nuclear waste we accumulate the greater the possibility of something going wrong and possibility of nuclear waste getting out into the environment becomes. Given all the variables involved in storage of nuclear waste, the more waste that is stored in more sites means the task of monitoring all this stuff will become quite challenging and costly as well as prone to failure (unless you believe in perfection on the part of technology and human competence).

[buddysmellgood]

22. I agree. That's why crap like this is such a set b back.