In the middle of a pissing match between the President and Congressional leadership it’s good to remember that the United States isn’t the only government that seems to have lost touch with reality. I was reminded of that today when I read this story about the contaminated water problem at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Now here’s a government that is truly paralyzed!
The story from Japan Times, if you choose to read it, says Japanese Prime Minister Abe is reaching out to foreign experts in an attempt to deal with the problem of radioactive cooling water that is accumulating in hundreds of makeshift tanks that are now beginning to leak. “We want your expertise!” Abe proclaimed in a speech given in English.
No he doesn’t.
Longtime readers will know I have a background in physics and was a zillion years ago an investigator for The Presidential Commission on the Nuclear Accident at Three Mile Island. I actually know about this stuff and have written previous columns about it including what may have been the first accurate predictions of the accident’s severity and likely outcome. Only hours after the tsunami I said the plant was a goner and why — explanations that have held up with time.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese government have done a spectacularly bad job of managing this accident. In large part they haven’t managed it. Rather they’ve extended the Japanese patronage system to benefit from the disaster at the expense of public health, public safety, and the Japanese economy. As a result, the usual suspects in Japan are getting richer than ever while the real problems not only haven’t been fixed, for the most part they haven’t even been addressed.
Let me tell you how I know this. For the past couple of years I have been advising an environmental remediation startup that has excellent water treatment technology. Yes, I own three percent of the company.
Within hours of the accident I offered this technology to TEPCO, which never replied. I offered it to the Japanese Embassy, which never replied. I offered it to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, which replied, said they’d do their best, but nothing ever happened except I am now on a couple mailing lists. In the meantime TEPCO spent more than $200 million installing a French water treatment system that took months to install and then functioned for less than a day.
The system I proposed would have taken two weeks to get operational and at the time would have cost TEPCO $2 million.
Today, with so much more water to be processed it would cost more than $2 million, but not two orders of magnitude more.
Understand that I did business in Japan on almost a daily basis for more than 20 years. I have deep contacts there and know how business is done. Why is it that a guy like me can’t even get a reply?
Because Japanese industry is too busy making money at the country’s expense.
I have continued to communicate with the right parties in Japan, most recently resorting to trying to reach Prime Minister Abe directly through people I know who know him well right up to Mrs. Abe.
No luck.
Nobody on this side is trying to make money on this, we’re just trying to save lives. So if you know someone who knows someone who can get things done in Japan, let me know because I have a very viable solution to this one particular problem.
But after two years of trying to help Japan help itself, I’m losing hope.
Wow, is that a recent photograph of the Fukushima nuclear power plant? OMG! One mild earthquake, one good storm, one upset worker with an agenda, and they would have another huge problem on their hands.
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Shortly after the fall of the USSR several countries sent in their nuclear experts to help shutdown the unsafe nuclear facilities and to make the other power plants more safe. One of my friends from college was one of those experts. He spent years working with the Russians. This wasn’t a big, obnoxious, expensive project. A small number of experts with years of industry experience were sent over to help. The Russians did most of the work and deserve most of the credit for a very successful project.
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My friend and his peers happened to be meeting at a nuclear conference when the Fukushima accident began. They know the Japanese need help. They are willing and able to help. They’ve spent the last two years wondering and hoping the Japanese will come to their senses.
With all due respect, Bob, what kind of resume as a nuclear engineer/process engineer do you or your mystery company have? What kind of establish contacts do you have in the industry? Explain how you will magically fix Fukushima, please.
I’m sure both TEPCO and Japanese government have been bombarded by “offerings” of “fixes” by all kinds of cranks. Unless you have credentials, contacts, and logistics, why would they take you seriously?
In contrast… http://atomicpowerreview.blogspot.com/2013/10/below-is-very-interesting-press-release.html
Wow. For $2 million why not just buy it and try? I’m kind of appalled, but it’s the Japanese who are suffering and perhaps almost glowing. 🙂
Your dour prognosis doesn’t make me think misery loves company as I contemplate our own government dysfunction. Rather I’m wondering if human societies just don’t scale to a certain size and we’re now past that point. So social institutions that worked in the tribe and perhaps a bit larger are now breaking down.
Perhaps this is how nature got rid of the dinosaurs?
Perhaps it is also that social institutions and cultural precepts that worked well in an age of relative material scarcity fail catastrophically when confronted with relative material abundance (think of that productivity-and-wages over time graph).
Maybe allowing particular classes of persons to isolate themselves from consequences (but not particular other classes) is an idea whose time has passed? I mean, if kids can’t play nice with their LLCs in the sandbox, shouldn’t they get them taken away? Why do we recognize that particular classes of employees have more right to wreck up the factory and sell off the machinery for cheap to their best friends until the scheduled end of their shift than the employer (us) have to stop the pillaging? Because the rule of men was always the goal, and a porous enough set of laws and thin enough set of guarantees would ensure that would happen.
Government officials at all levels need to feel the same sheer terror of drawing the short straw and getting escorted out of the building by security as the rest of us. Maybe Bitcoin should morph into a verifiable voting technology. Daily votes of confidence as a condition of service for every Congressperson, undersecretary-and-up, and SCOTUS justices would focus their minds where they ought to be and restore some form of recourse against a government that has demoted most of its citizenry to labor stock. These people are not entitled nor fit to rule.
If that logic makes any sense, I’ve got an immortality potion to sell you. Only $1,000. At that price, why not buy and try? $1,000, is a pittance compared to how you value your life.
Also for sale: bridge in Brooklyn, winning lottery tickets.
Human nature is pretty much the same everywhere and in every century. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power (like the top layers of a national government) corrupts absolutely.
They are not going to clean it up. They are just going to quarantine the area just like at Chernobyl. Using Occam’s razor, it seems they do not actually want to clean it up. Business is about privatizing profits and socializing losses. Soon they will stop measuring the radiation, bury radiation data, shift liability onto individuals for fallout, and people will be told everything is now “safe”. The newly classified “safe” seafood will be unchecked and unregulated and sold around the world. Pleas from pacific islander nations about the contamination will be ignored by everybody. The data will be classified and any whistleblowers will be punished.
“…Business is about privatizing profits and socializing losses…” Not sure government is any better. At least business has a financial incentive to succeed. The government has no financial incentive to succeed since it is funded by rule of law.
I think in this example, government is the means for business to privatize the profits and socialize the losses. It’s just an extension of bad business.
This actually sounds very plausible, and I am ashamed of my cynicism. Someone somewhere has to believe that the right thing will happen and the Japanese govt won’t leave this mess sitting on a fault at the edge of the ocean, but I’m not that guy. It saves time, money and face which means it’s adding up all too nicely. Yikes.
Bob said “Within hours of the accident I offered this technology to TEPCO, which never replied. I offered it to the Japanese Embassy, which never replied.” I can’t help but think what a prudent computer user is supposed to do if Bill Gates calls him and offers to solve all his computer problems.
“the usual suspects in Japan are getting richer than ever while the real problems not only haven’t been fixed, for the most part they haven’t even been addressed.”
Well replace Japan with almost any developed country and this sums up inaction on climate change – of which nuclear power might play a role in reducing coal use. Are there any leaders anywhere willing to stand up to monied interests?
That’s all well and good, but if they just let it run into the ocean it wouldn’t have added much, if anything to the backround radioactivity that occurs naturally.
http://atomicinsights.com/another-update-highly-radioactive-water-leaks-fukushima/
Much of what’s being detected is beta particles, not peticularlly dangerous and certainly able to be delt with. Part of the problem is that there’s very little information that actaully gets out and when it does, it’s presented as doomsday (much like everything else on TV).
I wonder if James Watt had days like this?
For someone who didn’t seem too fond of trees, it should have come as no surprise that Ronald Reagan would appoint James Watt to be his Secretary of the Interior. James Watt was, according to the Audubon Society, “arguably the most anti-environment secretary ever.” Watt was not just anti-environment, he was a simpleton. Testifying before Congress, Watt was asked if he agreed that natural resources should be preserved for future generations. His response:
“I do not know how many future generations we can count of before the Lord returns.”
–James Watt, February 5, 1981
However, it was not Watts’ stance on environmental issues that compelled the Reagan administration to eventually force his resignation. It was the fallout from the following comment he made to a group of lobbyists regarding the makeup of his coal-leasing commission:
“We have every kind of mix you can have. I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”
–James Watt, September 21, 1983
Eighteen days later, Watt resigned.
http://thereaganyears.tripod.com/environment.htm
I’m just glad there were no “environmentalists” around to preserve the dinosaurs. When trees become scarce, and if they are still necessary for or otherwise desired by civilization, their value will increase, causing the market to devote resources to preserve them and grow more. If unnecessary or undesired they will become extinct like the dinosaurs.
Please read the history of Easter Island, and rethink that comment. When humans arrived it was forested,now all grassland. Or maybe that was all due to global warming?
Neither trees nor humans are immune from the forces of evolution. Environmentalists contribute awareness and are free to make cases for preservation on an individual basis.
“When trees become scarce, and if they are still necessary for or otherwise desired by civilization, their value will increase, causing the market to devote resources to preserve them and grow more.”
Like oil? Like some kinds of fishes that are overfished? Like some tigers, elephants and other animals hunted to extinction because their value was/is great? I don’t see the market devoting resources to preserve all these things and growing more. The market only sees a few days and months ahead, it’s blind to it’s own survival. The market will hurry to take all it can until extinction.
And what about the market value of things we can’t sell like oxygen? If there is no market value for clean air should the market be allowed to pollute it until we can’t breathe?
Each case is different, and subject to market forces as long as governments don’t get involved. When government gets involved environmentalists don’t absorb the cost, taxpayers do. Since animals contribute most of the pollution…
Well I’m sure youv’e heard, they killed all the trees on Easter Island, then the natives were trapped there.
But it’s also true of Britain. They used trees to heat their houses. They ran out of heat. Lucky as they were, they started using coal. They quickly went through the coal on the surface and started digging down to get more. Soon they had to contend with flooding in the coal mines. That eventually lead to the invention of the steam engine. Meanwhile, in other parts of England, they had already moved textile manufacturing into the factory system using water wheels as a source of power. They quickly adapted the steam engine to the factory and the first industrial age was on in earnest. This lead to gemetrically exploding demand for cotton, which enriched the Southern United States, right when everyone thought that slavery was about to die out.
The invisible hand of the market did stop the British from consuming all their own timber near the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century. Ironically America was so rich in timber that we used it to power our locomotives deep into the 19th century.
Ronc, your responses ignore the “tragedy of the commons” concept entirely. Common resources get overused and destroyed in that scenario and it has happened MANY times throughout history. The simple application of supply and demand is inadequate and misleading.
“Common resources get overused and destroyed…” Quite true; but as it happens their value will increase so that the same market forces will cause preservation and increased supply. Of course, that depends on the government not deciding that a particular commodity is so necessary that it must be available to all at a low price. That kink of meddling will indeed accelerate the scarcity of valuable resources.
“Quite true; but as it happens their value will increase so that the same market forces will cause preservation and increased supply.”
You mean like when air is polluted enough it will have a value? Makes sense, the market will be able to sell bottled air and breathing masks. It will be great for the economy! Let the industries pollute! We don’t need clean air or water, we need money!
Good point Ben. Historically, governments have been concerned about the “public interest” which includes public health (NIH) issues, about which there is little controversy. The issue becomes more controversial when it tends toward issues of personal preference or imaginary dangers. As I grew up in the crowded and overpopulated city of New York, it always seemed like an enormous waste of space to devote huge swaths of land to national forests that only a tiny minority of the public can afford to see, and then only to visit briefly. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the “public interest” from “private interests”. As a taxpayer I want to pay with taxes only for those things that are clearly and incontrovertibly in the public interest and to pay for private interests with my own after tax income.
Wrong James Watt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt
The one I was thinking of changed the world when he figured out how to harness the power of heated water (steam) to do work. I often wonder if the press of the day fed the FUD of the new-fangled steam engines and their inherent danger over slave and Irish muscle.
How many people died after TMI? How many civilians after Chernobyl? Where are the widespread cancers in Europe due to fallout?
He was referring to this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Watt “Watt’s tenure as Secretary of the Interior was controversial, resulting primarily from his perceived hostility to environmentalism and his endorsement of the development and use of federal lands by foresting, ranching, and other commercial interests.”
It’s not in your links, but didn’t you post a 90% chance of another meltdown at Fukushima within three years? What are we down to now, six months?
Bob, I’d be interested to know what your take is on these reports about Fukushima Unit 4 potentially collapsing before they have a chance to remove those spent fuel rods. It seems that the leaks get all the press while this problem (i.e. the end of Japan and dire consequences for the rest of the world) doesn’t appear in the mainstream media. Is it all alarmist nonsense or do we need to be stocking up on potassium iodide now?
http://disinfo.com/2013/10/fukushima-unit-4-shown-signs-collapsing/
No offense, but maybe they don’t want to trust a startup with essentially no track record to clean up one of the worst nuclear disasters in history? It might be patronage, but it might just be that they want to go with a company that has at least some heritage and experience. A minority of times, startups have groundbreaking technology. A majority of times startups fail and the money is lost as investment risk.
So if you seriously want them to drop $2+ million on your water treatment system, you probably need to tell them what other installations you have, how big they were, and how well they worked. Does your technology scale up? They don’t know you from Adam, and contractor low-balling to win contracts is endemic. How do they know you’re not gonna come back with a $20 million or $200 million invoice when you find out that you can’t scale up as cheaply as you thought?
Any government administrator is going to see trusting an unproven startup to handle a huge nuclear disaster based on the word of a journalist they don’t know personally as a huge risk. And rightly so.
Try reading the article again. Bob knows how to do business in Japan. The powers that be didn’t have a problem dropping 200 million on a non functional system. For a price much lower than what I suspect was just the kickback component they had a real chance to help many people.
I read the article. The fact that the system that they purchased didn’t work doesn’t make it any more likely that Cringely’s startup will be successful. They can easily both fail.
And you may suspect corruption, but failure and cost, in and of themselves, are not at all suggestive of corruption. Sometimes engineering projects fail for good reasons and at great expense through neither corruption or incompetence.
Moreover, Cringely doesn’t provide any real details about this french filter, but I’m pretty sure they’re not going to just toss the filter because it had some teething problems. A lot of things fail on day 1. Sometimes you need to iterate. Just with hardware it costs more and takes longer to fix the problems. (Costs often neglected by new entrants when they make vague claims about miraculous technologies at implausible costs.)
Maybe they’d have taken his offer more seriously if he tossed another 0 on the end and the appearance of room for graft later in the project. $2m isn’t much to hope on.
Thanks for the article! Been hoping you’d comment after they announced they were going to do ground freezing to isolate the groundwater. They keep making choices that assume an ongoing power supply.
Why are repair plans and the means not required to be built-in/available nearby when a nuclear plant or deep sea oil well is built? Why do the responsible parties run around for weeks trying to find a solution?
The Japanese have a very bad case of Not-Invented-Here. (NIH) At nuclear safety conferences for example, participants look at the failure mode of every component and system in a facility. They assume anything made by a person can and at some point of time will fail. The Japanese feel that if you make it right, it will never fail. It if never fails, then they don’t see the need to do a failure analysis.
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The Chernobyl accident contaminated a large area and it impacted the food supply of neighboring countries. While it is impractical to clean up all the contamination, the Soviets were highly motivate to contain the accident and the further release of radiation. They were also highly motivated to improve the safety of all their nuclear plants and that included the shutdown and dismantling of their graphite reactors.
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We are not seeing this type of behavior from the Japanese. First as a country they are geographically isolated and their accident hasn’t adversely affected other countries….yet. Take a close look at the photo with this column. A good rain, a good hurricane can wash a lot of those storage containers into the Pacific. Fortunately, for the rest of the world there is a lot of water in the Pacific and the chances of Japan causing a serious environmental crisis is low. Because Japan is not harming other nations, there is less pressure on them to do things better.
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After Chernobyl the former Soviet Union changed their ways and did the things needed to make the technology safe. The Japanese haven’t even secured the accident site yet. They are still in denial about the serious dangers that are awaiting them.
Today I read at the MIT Technology Review about Japanese plans to build a freeze wall around the plant to exclude groundwater which is carrying away and diluting to leakage from the plant. Apparently no US firms or experts with experience in such walls has been consulted yet.
https://www.technologyreview.com/news/518801/how-the-fukushima-ice-barrier-will-block-radioactive-groundwater/
Different technology, similar approach it seems, but it could lead to conditions where water treatment would have a chance to work on a reasonable volume. Keep trying Bob.
I suspect if this had occurred in the US prior to 2009, Halliburton would be in charge of the clean-up and trying to inject the radioactive water into deep rock fissures.
Not that anyone in the prior administration has ANY connection to Halliburton at the time… Hmmm….
It is a tragedy that will continue to grow. But don’t think for a minute it couldn’t happen the same way for the same reasons. “Money makes world go around, the world go around, the world go around.”
Even unto death.
You liberals have an odd fetish when it comes to Haliburton. Our current clueless criminal president rules by fiat decree and all you can do is talk about Bush and obsess about Koch. But then we always knew you femmy lib dudes love Koch.
Hey Bob, what are your thoughts on moving the spent fuel rods from the top of the reactors into nearby cooling pools using remote control cranes? Tepco plans to start doing it next month and it will take about 1 year of non-stop accident-free work to complete. I’ve read that the very very worst case scenario would be very very bad (spent fuel rods move too close to each other, start a run-away reaction, tons of spent fuel catches fire, 100x bigger fallout than Chernobyl).
Radiation continues to spread across Japan from this disaster area, some by air and other by water. Given that TEPCO freely admits that the water table and ocean are being contaminated with radiation (what is happening that they hope we don’t learn about?) I will never again purchase a Japanese Christmas orange – I simply have no trust in any organic product grown in that country. I wonder when the first radioactive consumer products will “accidentally” end up on our shelves?
classic collapse – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter
“In Tainter’s view, while invasions, crop failures, disease or environmental degradation may be the apparent causes of societal collapse, the ultimate cause is an economic one, inherent in the structure of society rather than in external shocks which may batter them: diminishing returns on investments in social complexity.”
$200 million for ZERO return. How low can you go?
“When a society confronts a “problem,” such as a shortage of energy, or difficulty in gaining access to it, it tends to create new layers of bureaucracy, infrastructure, or social class to address the challenge.”
Is there a new department to manage nuclear waste cleanup?
I studied Japanese law under a prominent scholar, John O. Haley.
He had written the most elumninating article I’ve read on Japanese culture: “Inside Japan’s Community Controls: Lessons for America?” (The Responsive Community, Spring 1999). I also took his classes and participated in various seminars and directed research under him. Let me see if I can convey the salient narrative.
For 260 years Japan was ruled by the Shogun in a feudalistic arrangement. Local lords had to leave their families as hostages in Tokyo, and commute back and forth every 2 years. The local lords did the same thing to the next rung down on the ladder. Samarai were forced to live in the local lords castle towns. They were still paid a pension or stypen based upon the village they oversaw. The villages, for their part were ruled then, from a distance. They were taxed at the village level. It was left to the villages to determine how they’d pay the tax. However, any disruption, trouble, of any kind, was an invitation for the local lord to mount up the samarai, and intervene in the villages affairs. This meant looting, raping, killing and setting things to flame – this was a culture unfamiliar with the christian concept of mercy. As a result, village life in Japan learn to present a calm face of conformity to the external world, no matter how disruptive things might be internally. The villages, where 80% of Japanese lived, developed sophisticated but informal means of community controls and dispute resolution.
This characteristic of presenting a calm exterior, no matter how disrupted the interior is a dominating Japanese cultural trait. The Shogun out law Christianity at the beginning of its rule. But after the Meiji restoration in 1868, a bunch of christian villages were found to exist around Nagasaki. For over 250 years entire villages kept their christian beliefs a secret to the outside world.
This trait has an effect on how the Japanese deal with intractable problems. For instance a guy at a desk, in a branch, in a division, in a corporation might have a gigantic problem. He will hide it in his desk, or under the rug, and pretend everything is copacetic to the outside world. That is, until the problem becomes too big to hide, then the entire branch does the same thing, until it becomes too big to hide, then the entire division and so on, on up the ladder.
Again this is from my memory of my old professors description of Japanese culture.
Now, consider that trait in the current context Fukushima. The Japanese people are well aware of this characteristic. I’ve noticed from various press reports, that one of the problems that the Government has right now is that the people are extremely skeptical about the Governments response. It is in the nature of the Japanese to not admit a problem is as bad as it really is, and to keep a calm face to the world. The people know this. So they don’t believe the government, especially about leaking radio active water into the ocean. A country that consumes fish to the extent that you wouldn’t think there were any fish left out in the sea after touring their fish market, is suddenly not eating fish anymore. They don’t trust the government to report accurately if things were really bad. A nation of 125 million fairly prosperous people is likely to shift its diet. Beef and Pork futures might be looking pretty good – especially after all the beef that was killed off during the drought a year ago.
Now consider Bob’s comment on the fact that Abe government is admitting to the world that it has a problem and needs help. My goodness, what ever level of concern they are giving to the world, you can reasonably assume that it is vastly understated.
By the way, the corruption Bob describes of giving government contracts to business connections is one way of trying to keep all their concerns and disruption inside what would constitute as a vestige of their village at a government operations level.
That’s kind of the nature of Japan. The world should be insisting on the U N or some other multinational administrative body capable of candor administering the clean up – or at the very least, auditing with authority to look wherever they want.
All that is interesting from a historical perspective. However, I would not want my behavior to be prejudged by the behavior of my great grandfather.
You obviously don’t understand the point of the post.
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The point isn’t to describe the history, the point is to describe an existing cultural trait and where it came from historically in order to understand it better.
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If you want to understand the post better you can googlescholar the article and read it. My former professor talks about current cultural attributes, using an anecdotal test he gave to colleagues while in Japan and their response. Then he uses the historical experience to explain the cultural trait. I tried to convey the salient aspects of it in a few paragraphs. Obviously I failed.
“… describe an existing cultural trait and where it came from historically…” I understand what you are saying but that doesn’t mean that the cultural traits of past generations are incorporated lock, stock, and barrel into the current generation. The so-called “existing cultural trait” may not in fact exist today in Japan any more or less than any other country. All bureaucracies have a tendency toward “cover your ass” or “save face” policies.
What’s the compamy and product you idiot Robert X?
Or do you want a billion dollars finders fee!
The problem with new inventions is that the experts don’t know about it so can’t advise to use it!
Japanese FACE & deference to an ignorant elder expert is the problem, — its in the blood for 1000’s of years!
Say good by to Japan!
I like Chenoble because it exploded and reduced the potential for explosion.
The water in Japan is a moderator and coolant — stop it and the place explodes.
That’s why it hasn’t yet! One or two cores have fused (welded togeather all the rods) — How do you seperate 10 tons of explosive radioactive HOT material welded together Cringley?????????????
With a bomb — with a thermal lance opps a hundred thermal lances — with the muslim ginnees — you’re the expert Robert X? YOU TELL US SAVE JAPAN Cringley!
They’re going to freeze the water and stop its inflow and outflow and its moderator and coolant properties. SAVE JAPAN Cringley!
Bob, based on an earlier article of yours, I have to ask this question. Are you trying to sell them a solution to their problem, that is, a problem they don’t have the face to admit? Even you said that wouldn’t work in their culture, right? Instead, maybe they have something of benefit that they can proudly provide to you, that is, the opportunity to prove your technology. Instead of you solving their embarrassing problem, they can feel superior by solving your problem. It just so happens that everybody benefits.
> I have deep contacts there and know how business is done. Why is it that a guy like me can’t even get a reply?
Sounds like you don’t know how business is done.
[…] Cringley on Fukushima […]
Why shouldn’t TEPCO take Bob’s offer seriously? Lets think about this for a minute.
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What characteristic is often the reason some companies excel while others flounder? It is the ability to listen, to think outside the box, to know when the status quo is not the correct course of action.
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Many great firms started off with nothing more than an idea.
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The world has many problems and for most of those problems there IS a solution. An individual or a group of people somewhere has the ability to solve a difficult problem. They may not have the fame, status, or certification — but they have the skills. Do you accept their help? Or do you ignore them?
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I have a degree in engineering. I can tell from the photo the folks at TEPCO are in trouble. I’ve never worked in the Nuclear industry, but to me that photo tells me a great deal. I have friends who DO work in the nuclear industry and are internationally known experts. They were gravely worried about TEPCO BEFORE the accident.
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The best leaders have an open mind; and will accept and act on feedback. It is one thing to be close minded when you are running a small business. At most you can only hurt a few people and yourself. TEPCO is operating very dangerous technology. If it is mismanaged it can hurt many and the environment. For them to ignore outside help is well, criminal.
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I was in college during Three Mile Island. I was working in engineering during Bhopal. I can tell you as an engineer it is not hard for technical experts to quickly figure out what is happening. I suspect TEPCO has some good engineers. I can tell from the photo the “suits” are running the show and they are probably not listening to their own experts.
Have you seen the above post from Eric G: “Much of what’s being detected is beta particles, not peticularlly dangerous and certainly able to be delt with. Part of the problem is that there’s very little information that actaully gets out and when it does, it’s presented as doomsday (much like everything else on TV)”?
Took a few minutes out for myself and just read the piece your wrote about Snowden last June. Thought you might enjoy hearing about the tee shirt I just had made up. It reads:
WHY
IS
BIG BROTHER
WATCHING?
And truly it is the WHY that bothers me so much.
Fukushima – A Global Threat That Requires a Global Response
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers
https://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36649.htm
“News you won’t find on CNN or Fox News” That’s actually in their logo!