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Here's an obituary of him (he died in 2008, 51 years after the incident, aged 91). No mention of any health effects from the incident. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/thomas-tuohy-windscale-manager-who-doused-the-flames-of-the-1957-fire-800546.html EDIT: Ooops, repeat Interesting...

Which it clearly isn't. If you're under attack, do you open the Stock Markets only to get a battering from international investors? I mention this example only because I have no real idea of how the emergency effort in the plant is progressing. But the continuing "business as usual" operation...

This is a phenomenon called "denial" - it basically means that in front of a huge problem, either personal or in this case a catastrophe in society, people convince themselves that the problem doesn't exist. We all do it - nobody is 100% honest with him/herself. When you're educated about a...

Hope you don't mind that I quote this leading article from Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily, in full http://www.facebook.com/AJW.Asahi If an "establishment" newspaper is talking like this about the handling of the disaster, there is evidently a lot of discontent. From the BBC video above...

There is not one single culture on earth where stealing, violence, sexual abuse and murder are considered good things, though they are practised by some of the members of all of those cultures. This is probably because half the world is female, and women recognise that they are more likely to be...

This BBC video (from a local Japanese news crew) shows what it is like for the civilians within the 20km exclusion zone. Extremely spooky http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12765859

I know that most of the contamination problems are solved in fusion, but what about safety issues? Couldn't a catastrophic shock equally breach a fusion reactor and allow a stream of radioactive plasma to come shooting out?

I already said it doesn't cover all cases, Kant tied himself in knots trying to get it to cover all eventualities. Maybe his "universal law" formulation has it covered, I couldn't say. And anyway I don't believe it is about being liked or wreaking revenge on those who harm you. It's very...

Disagree with that. The golden rule formulated by various philosophers over history including Jesus, Buddha and Kant forms an excellent basis for distinguishing right and wrong, though it doesn't cover every single case. The Golden Rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pardon my ignorance, but could high levels of radiation zap the delicate circuitry of a robot with EMP type bursts? @Wishbone re: IRC, nobody's perfect, I'm sure not all rescue operations go 100% smoothly. IMO they're to be commended for their transparency in recording their mistakes so that...

Very happy you think so. Appreciate your comment very much :thumbup: They won't necessarily be deployed in contaminated zones, their exact deployment will be up to the Japanese govt.

More on the UK team, in the British parliament at 1224 GMT PM David Cameron made a statement: Seems very clearly a case of incompetence by the British Embassy in Tokyo, which the PM now wants cleared up so that the team can go back to do its work. No indication that the Japanese govt had...

I invite you take a look at their webpage and then to retract the description "amateur". http://www.intrescue.org/ They have been present in 32 international disaster scenes. [CORRECTION: UK and International emergencies, most of the UK operations were fairly minor]. From the website on...

Further to that: in countries which have never had a Judeo-christian tradition, nearly identical laws exist about theft, violence, murder, etc. Obviously the details vary from one country to another, but there is nowhere in the world where killing someone is actually legal, for example (though...

Just unbelievable report about a highly qualified rescue team from the UK who were actually sent back home when they arrived in Japan because the paperwork was not correct. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12756366 They are blaming the UK Embassy, the UK Embassy is (diplomatically) blaming the...

Yeah, the video is still unavailable anywhere. Not that I could understand it, my Japanese is not so good. But I'm still very curious to see the speech. EDIT: Looking for a full transcript of the speech, I found this version, in pure Jinglish...

No, nor were there 6 units to deal with, just one. Nonetheless, whatever the level of infrastructure damage, containing this is going to be the number one priority and all possible resources both national and international will be available for the job. It might even go faster than in 1986. BBC...

Agree totally with Tommy, especially with his diagnosis of hubris. Urwumpe quoted a poem a few days ago that expresses that same idea very strongly. Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph in the UK found leaked material of a secret IAEA meeting in 2008 from the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables cache...

In the case of Chernobyl, it took Soviet authorities from 26 April 1986 to 8 May to more-or-less safely contain the leak. 12 days. You could take that as an approximate estimate in this case. Though of course there will be less material leaked. The concrete sarcophagus was completed by December...

My experience of religion during my earlier years was entirely about mental and social control. I was brought up in an Irish Catholic family where nearly every aspect of day-to-day life was influenced by the church, from schooling by sadistic nuns to the racism that existed in my family and...