Tim Worstall

Flood defences and nuclear power are expected to receive funding from the green investment bank, according to detailed plans for the new institution set out on Tuesday by Vince Cable, the business secretary. It’s sensible of course, nuclear is indeed part of the solution to our climate change problems. But there is that rather large [...]

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And not a single death nor even the likelihood of a single death in the years to come: Tokyo Electric Power Co. confirmed a meltdown of fuel rods in two more reactors at its Fukushima nuclear plant, which has been emitting radiation since an earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and cooling systems. Fuel rods [...]

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The fuel in reactors No 2 and 3 is suspected to have melted amid reports that the operators Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) failed to cool the plant in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The news came only days after it was confirmed for the first time that a meltdown had [...]

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So says the scientific report into it all. And just look at the comments section: outright denial of reality all over the place. It’s weird how science gets used in certain quarters. It’s scientifically proven that we face resource constraints, scientifically proven that we’ve peak oil, scientifically proven that there’s climate change: but when it’s [...]

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It’s all that thrusting of rods into the core, innit? That’s (no, really!) the view of the Low Carbon Kid. Incredibly this man used to be employed by DEFRA to tell us all about climate change.

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Not Russian: In a rare interview on the eve of the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl on Monday, Col-Gen Nikolai Antoshkin said he was shocked at how poorly Japan had coped with its own nuclear disaster. “Look at advanced Japan,” he said. “People are housed in stadiums and are lying about on the floors of sports [...]

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There’s a special type of radioactivity you see, much more dangerous than the type that everyone’s talking about. No, really, there is. In his article on “the confusing world of radiation exposure”, readers’ editor Chris Elliott was right to point out that getting a whole year’s sunshine in an hour would fry him to a [...]

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Much better than nuclear, oh yes:

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We just know that there’s going to some patns wetting over this release of radioactive water from Fukushima. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. released a total of 10,393 tons of radioactive water April 4 to 10, according to the report published Friday evening local time by Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, made up [...]

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A report from a reader: The BBC was interviewing a very reassuring, even matronly, expert this morning – Professor Gerry Thomas I think – from the Chernobyl Tissue Centre.  She totally surprised the BBC interviewer by estimating that the number of deaths from this reactor incident will turn out to be zero. Not zero now, [...]

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Worth repeating this in full: The Guardian has reported: Japan has raised the severity level of its nuclear crisis to the maximum seven, putting the emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant on a par with Chernobyl. Officials from the nuclear and industrial safety agency (Nisa) confirmed that the crisis level had been raised from [...]

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So goes the headline: Japan nuclear crisis: Fukushima 50 ‘expect to die’ Workers who have been fighting to bring the reactors under control at Japan’s strick nuclear plant expect to die from radiation sickness, according to the mother of one of the men. Of course, knowledge of one’s own eventual mortality is a sign of [...]

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Most amusing: In fact nuclear power plants could not be built in the granite areas of the county because the natural background radiation at the boundary of the power station would be higher than is allowed under the strict rules governing the operation of nuclear plants.

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Snigger: Double standard six: research Last week I argued about these issues with Caroline Lucas. She is one of my heroes, and the best thing to have happened to parliament since time immemorial. But this doesn’t mean that she can’t be wildly illogical when she chooses. When I raised the issue of the feed-in tariff, [...]

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Slightly odd: Japanese officials have conceded that the battle to salvage four crippled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has been lost. The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco], said the reactors would be scrapped, Hasn’t everyone known that since they started using sea water in the reactors?

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Pull the other one! The Government has given provisional approval to the building of at least 10 new nuclear reactors, costing around £50 billion each, That’s £50 billion in total dear. Blimey, don’t journalists have editors? People with at least a rough idea of relative sizes and costs? As to this: The Lib Dems had [...]

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Not a lot actually: The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco], said readings of plutoinium-238, 239 and 240 were similar to those recorded in other parts of Japan after nuclear tests conducted overseas. No, not the amounts of plutonium found after someone exploded a plutonium based bomb over a Japanese city, but the amounts found [...]

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Some people, and unfortunately those some seem to include large numbers of journalists, just don’t seem to have a handle upon numbers. Just cannot spot when someone is quite obviously spouting nonsense. The cost of the disaster has crippled the national budgets of Ukraine and Belarus. In 1998, Ukraine said it had already spent $130bn [...]

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Even as engineers tried to pump puddles of radioactive water from the power plant 150 miles north of Tokyo, the nuclear safety agency said tests on Friday showed radioactive iodine had spiked 1,250 times higher than normal in the seawater just offshore the plant. Sounds terribly scary, doesn’t it? And in 8 days it will [...]

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Japan crisis: nuclear workers exposed to 10,000 times more radiation than normal Ooooh, my, how terrible! Are they OK? The three injured workers now brings to 17 the total number of workers exposed to more than 100 millisieverts of radiation at the plant, an annual exposure level considered the lowest at which any increase in [...]

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