Arjay,

"Isn't ignorance bliss" You should know, as clearly you didn't read what I said. I was not talking about shutting reactors, I was only commenting on the storage of spent rods which you included in your post, not on what Gunderson was discussing. If you are going to attack me then at least do the courtesy of reading what I said and comment on that, otherwise you look incoherent and muddled.

I also have spent some time as a senior electrical engineer reviewing a proposed tie up between an industrial concern and a nuclear plant with nuclear design engineers, and have more than a passing knowledge of nuclear design.

Fester, you said..."There is no evidence that radiation will eat away at the DNA and degrade the genome of a population."

Radiation High energy radiation from a radioactive material or from X-rays is absorbed by the atoms in water molecules surrounding the DNA. This energy is transferred to the electrons which then fly away from the atom. Left behind is a free radical, which is a highly dangerous and highly reactive molecule that attacks the DNA molecule and alters it in many ways.
Radiation can also cause double strand breaks in the DNA molecule, which the cell's repair mechanisms cannot put right.

cc

ybgirp, welcome, hard work you under take pushing that verbage so over loaded along in front of you.
Its uphill, for both of us,you pushing I trying to find your point in that stack.
I am trying to find a reason the tragic events in Japan, should be seen as possible in any Nuclear plant.
We may build ours at say Airs rock, Tsunami seems unlikely there.
I will sit this one out,only came back to welcome you.
And to try to get some of that load off you haveagooddaymate!

Belly said..."We may build ours at say Airs rock, Tsunami seems unlikely there"....lol do you want to get speared by a black-man or something?

You say no Tsunami will reach Airs Rock?....Perhaps your right in the fact end of things, but there will be another type of Tsunami...........a wave of indigenous people bigger than what Japan had:)....I'd pick another location;)

A nuclear plant at Airs Rock..lol.....

Sorry, dry sence of humour:)

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Hi Third Try
We Ignore Fukushima Nuclear Power plant disaster at our peril. Every company and the Japanese Technocrats involved in the design design and it location near so near to the undersea fault line that created the surnami, where at fault and you have seen nothing yet.

Think of the number arrogant emails on some of these forums after Reactor No1 had problems. There will never be any real problems and within months it blew up, seawater screwed up the cooling system and flooded the Pumps. And now the same bunch of clowns say that it cant get any worse. How could they say that they Know the unknowable?

This Nuclear Titanic is soon to be sunk by mother natures creation of an iceberg that rips out 90 metres of rivets along its hull.. When the other 3 reactors Join No 1 in a nuclear meltdown the world has never experienced before is possible . If only the creators of all the spin on this list had sense to match their wit.

< Left behind is a free radical, which is a highly dangerous and highly reactive molecule that attacks the DNA molecule and alters it in many ways.
Radiation can also cause double strand breaks in the DNA molecule, which the cell's repair mechanisms cannot put right.>

All true and put in very scary terms, but how do the molecular observations translate to populations? You only get that information from epidemiological studies, and the major studies to date suggest that the risk of harm is small. e.g. In the case of Hiroshima survivors, note that the radiation exposure has attributable deaths of fewer than 1%. In comparison, 50% of smokers will die from a smoking related illness.