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Perhaps I was mixing up the guidance found here: http://www.epa.gov/mercury/spills/

Sure thing: http://www.epa.gov/mercury/spills/

I don't see where it says to destroy clothing. It particularly allows you to clean up carpet. http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup-detailed.html

Here is what the EPA says about handling a broken CFL: http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup-detailed.html It DOES say what to do with rugs. It DOES NOT say to throw them out. Also, I read it a couple of times but could not seem to find the bit where you need to throw out your clothes. Perhaps you could provide a citation?

...
After much research, I discovered that a CFL has about 4 milligrams of Mercury that is released as a vapor (which is readily absorbed by the body unlike the solid form). ...
The EPA website's cleanup instructions were vast.

Quote from CFL Mercury myths:

One study looking at long tubular fluorescent bulbs found that over a two week period, only 17 to 40 percent of the mercury in the bulb evaporated. The rest remained stuck in the bulb. Roughly one-third of the mercury that evaporated did so in the first eight hours after the breakage; the rest seeped out slowly over the remainder of the study period.

That works out to 0.2 to 0.48 milligrams in the first eight hours. (Assuming average content of 4mg) So getting your son out of the room with 30 seconds, the amount becomes trivial.

You consider these EPA broken CFL clean-up instructions to be vast? Instructions to cook a turkey can be more complex. It highlights some common sense tips to minimize exposure and handling of the broken bulb, and the off-gassing (I take it) of the mercury vapour from the glass.

Unnecessary paranoia. Four milligrams. And some CFLs have only 1mg. If you carefully cracked the bulb open to avoid producing glass shards and immediately tried to snort the result you probably wouldn't inhale all of it, some of the mercury would stay coating the particles on the inside of the glass, you wouldn't need a trip to the hospital because of the mercury, and you wouldn't get brain damage or genetic disorders. You'd be stupid but healthy. Do the same thing every day -- chronic exposure -- or start smashing whole boxes full of large fluorescent bulbs and stay in the room with the windows closed, and you would be in trouble. Most people probably get more chronic mercury exposure from coal-fired power plants, eating tuna, and from amalgam tooth fillings than a single smashed CFL in a room.

Clean broken CFLs up like any other broken glass from any kind of lightbulb (i.e. carefully and thoroughly), put it in a sealed plastic bag, and dispose of it at a proper disposal center rather than ordinary trash. The EPA website instructions aren't "vast" unless you consider 2 or 3 pages "vast" for detailed instructions, and most of the information there is kind of obvious (like: don't vacuum it up if you can avoid it, but if you must do so, do it while the room is well ventilated and dispose of the bag after). The simple instructions are half a page. If the issue bothers you that much, get LED lighting.

Unnecessary paranoia. Four milligrams. And some CFLs have only 1mg. If you carefully cracked the bulb open to avoid producing glass shards and immediately tried to snort the result you probably wouldn't inhale all of it, some of the mercury would stay coating the particles on the inside of the glass, you wouldn't need a trip to the hospital because of the mercury, and you wouldn't get brain damage or genetic disorders. You'd be stupid but healthy. Do the same thing every day -- chronic exposure -- or start smashing whole boxes full of large fluorescent bulbs and stay in the room with the windows closed, and you would be in trouble. Most people probably get more chronic mercury exposure from coal-fired power plants, eating tuna, and from amalgam tooth fillings than a single smashed CFL in a room.

Clean broken CFLs up like any other broken glass from any kind of lightbulb (i.e. carefully and thoroughly), put it in a sealed plastic bag, and dispose of it at a proper disposal center rather than ordinary trash. The EPA website instructions aren't "vast" unless you consider 2 or 3 pages "vast" for detailed instructions, and most of the information there is kind of obvious (like: don't vacuum it up if you can avoid it, but if you must do so, do it while the room is well ventilated and dispose of the bag after). The simple instructions are half a page. If the issue bothers you that much, get LED lighting.

The EPA website's cleanup instructions were vast.

Cleaning Up a Broken CFL

When a fluorescent bulb breaks in your home, some of this mercury is released as mercury vapor.

These steps are precautions and reflect best practices for cleaning up a broken CFL. If you are unable to follow them fully, don't be alarmed. CFLs contain a very small amount of mercury -- less than 1/100th of the amount in a mercury thermometer. However, if you are concerned about the risk to your health from a potential exposure to mercury, consult your physician.

Before cleanup

Have people and pets leave the room.
Air out the room for 5-10 minutes by opening a window or door to the outdoor environment.
Shut off the central forced air heating/air-conditioning system, if you have one.
Collect materials needed to clean up broken bulb:

stiff paper or cardboard;
sticky tape;
damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes (for hard surfaces); and
a glass jar with a metal lid or a sealable plastic bag.

During cleanup

Be thorough in collecting broken glass and visible powder.
Place cleanup materials in a sealable container.

After cleanup

Promptly place all bulb debris and cleanup materials outdoors in a trash container or protected area until materials can be disposed of properly.
Avoid leaving any bulb fragments or cleanup materials indoors.
If practical, continue to air out the room where the bulb was broken and leave the heating/air conditioning system shut off for several hours.

Cleaning Up a Broken CFL

Future Cleaning of Carpeting or Rugs: Air Out the Room During and After Vacuuming

1.The next several times you vacuum the rug or carpet, shut off the H&AC system if you have one, close the doors to other rooms, and open a window or door to the outside before vacuuming. Change the vacuum bag after each use in this area.

2.After vacuuming is completed, keep the H&AC system shut off and the window or door to the outside open, as practical, for several hours.

Detailed Recommendations

These clean-up recommendations are more or less what you expect for any accidental toxic spill in the home.

Actions You Can Take to Prevent Broken Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs

Always switch off and allow a working CFL bulb to cool before handling.
Always handle CFL bulbs carefully to avoid breakage.
If possible, screw/unscrew the CFL by holding the plastic or ceramic base, not the glass tubing.
Gently screw in the CFL until snug. Do not over-tighten.
Never forcefully twist the glass tubing.
Do not install CFLs in table lamps and floor lamps that can be easily knocked over, in unprotected light fixtures, or in lamps that are incompatible with the spiral or folded shape of many CFLs.
Do not use CFL bulbs in locations where they can easily be broken, such as play spaces.
Use CFL bulbs that have a glass or plastic cover over the spiral or folded glass tube, if available. These types of bulbs look more like incandescent bulbs and may be more durable if dropped.
Consider using a drop cloth (e.g., plastic sheet or beach towel) when changing a fluorescent light bulb in case a breakage should occur. The drop cloth will help prevent mercury contamination of nearby surfaces and can be bundled with the bulb debris for disposal.

The EPA website's cleanup instructions were vast.

Cleaning Up a Broken CFL

When a fluorescent bulb breaks in your home, some of this mercury is released as mercury vapor.

These steps are precautions and reflect best practices for cleaning up a broken CFL. If you are unable to follow them fully, don't be alarmed. CFLs contain a very small amount of mercury -- less than 1/100th of the amount in a mercury thermometer. However, if you are concerned about the risk to your health from a potential exposure to mercury, consult your physician.

Before cleanup

Have people and pets leave the room.
Air out the room for 5-10 minutes by opening a window or door to the outdoor environment.
Shut off the central forced air heating/air-conditioning system, if you have one.
Collect materials needed to clean up broken bulb:

stiff paper or cardboard;
sticky tape;
damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes (for hard surfaces); and
a glass jar with a metal lid or a sealable plastic bag.

During cleanup

Be thorough in collecting broken glass and visible powder.
Place cleanup materials in a sealable container.

After cleanup

Promptly place all bulb debris and cleanup materials outdoors in a trash container or protected area until materials can be disposed of properly.
Avoid leaving any bulb fragments or cleanup materials indoors.
If practical, continue to air out the room where the bulb was broken and leave the heating/air conditioning system shut off for several hours.

Cleaning Up a Broken CFL

Future Cleaning of Carpeting or Rugs: Air Out the Room During and After Vacuuming

1.The next several times you vacuum the rug or carpet, shut off the H&AC system if you have one, close the doors to other rooms, and open a window or door to the outside before vacuuming. Change the vacuum bag after each use in this area.

2.After vacuuming is completed, keep the H&AC system shut off and the window or door to the outside open, as practical, for several hours.

Detailed Recommendations

These clean-up recommendations are more or less what you expect for any accidental toxic spill in the home.

Actions You Can Take to Prevent Broken Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs

Always switch off and allow a working CFL bulb to cool before handling.
Always handle CFL bulbs carefully to avoid breakage.
If possible, screw/unscrew the CFL by holding the plastic or ceramic base, not the glass tubing.
Gently screw in the CFL until snug. Do not over-tighten.
Never forcefully twist the glass tubing.
Do not install CFLs in table lamps and floor lamps that can be easily knocked over, in unprotected light fixtures, or in lamps that are incompatible with the spiral or folded shape of many CFLs.
Do not use CFL bulbs in locations where they can easily be broken, such as play spaces.
Use CFL bulbs that have a glass or plastic cover over the spiral or folded glass tube, if available. These types of bulbs look more like incandescent bulbs and may be more durable if dropped.
Consider using a drop cloth (e.g., plastic sheet or beach towel) when changing a fluorescent light bulb in case a breakage should occur. The drop cloth will help prevent mercury contamination of nearby surfaces and can be bundled with the bulb debris for disposal.

Nope.
http://ibasecretariat.org/lka_us_congress.php
http://www.epa.gov/asbestos/pubs/ban.html
Go ahead, try to find evidence that there's an actual outright ban on asbestos in the US that would prevent the manufacture of said flag.

You could also try reading non-fiction, e.g. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/

According to what we've been told the dose we receive from the backscatter scanners is, it's supposed to be far less than the additional radiation we receive flying for five hours at 38,000 feet. In other words, your groin has always borne the increased risk when you choose to fly. Nowadays you simply get some extra bonus radiation exposure without the inconvenience of flight.

If you are truly that concerned about radiation, you should stay safely below ground in your basement abode.

I understand that the cancer patient will be treated in the ER, but explain how cost of cancer treatment is even related to an ER visit. Do you think there's a special cancer doctor in every ER that charges double his normal rate?

Realistically the setting makes no difference at all. They're admitted in the ER, then quickly diagnosed as having advanced lung cancer via an x-ray or something, then sent to the same old place they would have gone if they had made an appointment two weeks in advance and done everything without involving the ER.

So are you saying we'll save the cost of an x-ray? Like $150 plus some inflated ER visit costs? Out of a $150k cancer treatment we're going to save $150 in actual costs, maybe $1k or $2k total? And in the meantime pay for a huge bureaucracy to enable these savings?

Or are you assuming that in the magic world of universal health care, the smoker will still continue to smoke, but knowing that it causes lung cancer, he'll make frequent trips to the doctor to monitor his health, so we'll catch the cancer earlier?

To me that sounds like it would cost more. Read this: http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/coi/pubs/II_5.pdf

To summarize the pdf, the first 3 months of initial treatment for lung cancer cost about $26k (this is in 1990s dollars). That would be the same, I guess, in both scenarios (I'm not a doctor, perhaps this initial treatment thing would be skipped if the patient were so advanced that they came to the ER because of complications from the cancer). The last 6 months (terminal stage) cost about $30k. That would also be the same in both scenarios I guess. The maintenance stage is $11k per year. It may be callous, but it's quite obvious that under the universal coverage plan where things are caught earlier, smokers will cost society more.

In conclusion, keep in mind I'm not saying they shouldn't be treated, I'm saying using a smoker with lung cancer as an example of how universal coverage will save on ER bills makes no sense at all.

http://epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads11/US-GHG-Inventory-2011-Executive-Summary.pdf

Methane is 21x more effective as a greenhosue gas than C02 according to the EPA.

Moreover, the EPA converts everything to 'equivalence' of greenhouse effect vs C02;

The amount of greenhouse effect from methane is significant, but is _far_ from the major source of greehouse heat retention - around 10 %. Unlike C02 (where combustion or industrial emission sources are counted, but not respiration), methane emissions also count 'natural' sources of emission, like methane formed in animal intestines (you just HAD to have that burrito, didn't you?), and excrement decomposition.

Given that methane is a carbon based molecule (and in fact, has more carbon per unit mass than C02), it shouldn't be surprising that methane is often counted as a carbon emission.

Heck, I remember a few Sci-Fi TV series from the 1990's where beef was banned because of the methane gas released by cattle...

The 'great conspiracy' of AGW is there is no conspiracy: The biggest result from the climate research unit email 'scandal' of 2009 is that they received more funding so they could actually publish their data. There was no finding that there was a conspiracy or collusion to falisify data. In fact, the findings of all of the official investigations exhonorated the behavior of the scientists involved - so much so that (to no surprise) climate change denialists now claim the investigations are part of the conspiracy. In fact, the official finding was that the volume and tone of FOI requests classified as 'vexatious' - which is certainly true to a point - the volume was so high that the scientists could either do their research, or they could respond to a fraction of the FOI requests. Unsurprisingly, the scientists used their funding for what they were requried to use it for - research.

Sometimes, when you're given public money in an 'no win' situation, the best option is to use the money for what it is officially given to you for. Legislators (and judges) are more forgiving if research funding is used for research. If the funding had been used to respond to the FOI requests, then not only would there be charges of fraud for using research money for non-research purposes, but they still wouldn't have been able to fulfil all of the FOI requests. They were between a rock and a hard place without enough funding or manpower do fulfill what the law required of them (if you think electronic distribution would have solved the problem then you have no idea the amount of data involved.) The investigators recognized that fact, and decided that doing research with research funding was the correct course of action.

You mean like this?

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/BF822DDBEC29C0DC852577BB005BAC0F
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/05/10/ethanol-mess-with-your-engine-you-may-be-on-your-own/

Where I currently live we've regularly had gas stations caught selling gas that was 12-13% Ethanol coming from disreputable refineries. It happens all over the country.

And causes problems.

If? In the last 15 years 84 incidents happened worldwide.

http://www.ccnr.org/SMA_Radioactive_Scrap.pdf

http://www.epa.gov/radtown/orphan-sources.html

Do you live in Japan directly downwind of Fukushima? Otherwise, you are lying, simple as that. Either that, or using your detector for 6 years continuously has brought it out of calibration.

The dose rates in Tokyo, directly downwind of Fukushima, at the peak of the radiation release, was 0.30 uSv/hr. The detected radiation on the west coast of the united states was about one part in a million above background. This is not an amount that is detectable using common geiger counters.

Now you're just sounding silly. This is unproductive for me so I'm moving on after this reply.

1) Tokyo is Southwest of Fukushima -- which means it's *upwind*.

2) You can estimate your annual dose here: http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/calculate.html
Convert the result to match units and you'll probably get an answer of about ~0.35uSv/hr. Make sure your "bogus numbers" are actually bogus before you declare someone a liar.

3) Google "fukushima radiation us". You'll find several articles to choose from.

4) Background radiation varies a lot, *much* more than one ppm that you entirely made up. The sun could "burp" and incident cosmic rays on a detector can double on a whim. They have to be monitored continuously during experiments for this reason.

I'll worry when someone proves non-ionizing radiation causes cancer.

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/ionize_nonionize.html

Not all scientific articles which are published are correct. Far from it. The two articles about GM corn upon which you are basing your argument were funded by Greenpeace and seem to be more propaganda than science. Read the Wikipedia article about it.

That doesn't mean I don't agree with you that this could be a problem. The articles merely rehash the (forcibly) published data from Monsanto's studies, and I was appalled to see that those studies were: (1) very short-term (only 90 days compared with an average lifetime of 2-3 years), and (2) seem to have been run on very small numbers of animals (it's hard to understand the wording of the anti-GM paper but it seems to me that no more than 80 mice ate the GM corn, of which only 40 had extensive testing like blood tests).

This seems to be because separate studies were done which just fed mice large doses of the pesticide which is being produced by the introduced gene (and the results were negative for significant toxicity). Still, living systems are complex and I'd prefer that the authorities would make Monsanto fund an independent lab to do more comprehensive testing of the whole plant.

If the problem with the plant was cooling and atmospheric radiation release, why don't we have undersea nuclear plants? The ocean is a helluva heatsink and in the event of catastrophe, radiation would not spread as far as long as the plant wasn't near a major current. According to this source, water also acts as a radiation shield. Waste from the site would need to be disposed of on land, but most of the global population is near the sea *and* desalinization takes a lot of energy if we need drinking water as well. It's a no-brainer.

RF radiation is is up to 300 GHz = 3x10^11 Hz according to wikipedia ( https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Radio_frequency ). Ionizing radiation is about 100 billion billion Hertz = 10^20 Hz (according to http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/ionize_nonionize.html ), so to get multiple RF photos to have ionizing energies, you only need about 10^8 of them to join together. If the cross section decreases just by a factor of two for each additional photon absorption (which I figure is a huge underestimate) the cross section for a 10^8 photon absorption would be decreased by a factor of 2^(10^8).

That's like a really big tiny number you know.

It does not happen.

Oh - you were probably being a bit sarcastic. There is a way to calculate it.

I think you misunderstand the burden of proof, the party making the affirmative assertion provides proof. I'm not making an affirmative assertion, you are (that levels are presenting a significant health risk). The WHO website has a FAQ here:

http://www.who.int/hac/crises/jpn/faqs/en/index.html

EPAs link to radiation monitoring:

http://www.epa.gov/japan2011/data-updates.html

But if you have an independent source that shows there is a release that presents a significant threat to health of the public, I'm a big enough man to acknowledge facts.

Here are the numbers for US plants as of 1998 http://www.epa.gov/ttn/caaa/t3/reports/eurtc1.pdf the section on radiation begins on page 325. For a much easier read the epa radiation risk calculator counts living within 50 miles of a nuke plant as an exposure of .009 mrem per year and a coal plant within the same distance as .03 mrem per year. There is less radiation released with modern scrubbing than there used to be, but it is still more than general operation of a nuke plant.

Don't forget sulfur - for the last few years, sulfur content in automotive fuel has been noticeably higher, regardless of what the regulations say, you can smell it in exhaust much more than 10 years ago.

I'm sure we'll have even more interesting contaminants coming from tar sands and the other new sources of crude.

"Well Artoo, this is another fine mess you've gotten us into"

Obligatory Useful links: A very good description of radiation by the EPA
http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/understand/index.html

Follow the link under the green heading at the right of the page

The so-called "study", however, did claim that a coal plant *emits* radiation like a dirty bomb. Now it is staying in the bottom ash and gets deposited? What is it now? Here are real data. So, we are seeing 3.5-4.5 pCi/g in bottom ash and 5.8 pCi/g in fly ash. As a comparison - let's look at a banana then 3.5 pCi/g. Coal ash is at average twice is active as a banana. God, yeah, hellish technology. Average soil according to the same site: about 14 pCi/g. It is less bloody radioactive than soil. So, these are the data. Also: Mercury retention in fabric filters is greater than 80%.

Apparently you were mind controlled by the coal industry.
at a minimum, 2-5% of the fly ash escapes.

And the disposal of captured ash is not held top the same level of safety as it's equivalent nuclear waste. I mean/ most of it is put into a dry landfill.

And that ignores the coal plants often get variance excepting them from using the filters.

http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/tenorm/sources.html#summary-table

Coal plants put about 50 or so Curies of radiation into the atmosphere every year.

You are wrong this is not the worldwide number for cost, it is definitively US cost : see top left of the PDF where it says "smoking account for 6% of the health care cost of USA in 1999" then below cost per country : "USA 76 billion ; germany 14.7 billion etc..." it is QUITE CLEAR this is not a world wide cost but USA cost ( heck it even says Health care costs attributable to tobacco 2002 or latest available estimates selected countries)
Counting only the number of lung cancer (there are other) there are 200.000 person it cost about 60.000$ to treat in average http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/coi/pubs/II_5.pdf so that is about alone for lung cancer 12 billion dollar. And that is only the treatment, does not count day of absence, administrative cost , fire injury, fire hazard and so on, all totalled this come to the 50 billion.

If you think the number are over inflated, then point the finger at your health care system which is very costly. But the number are there. And the basic point still stays : the MINIMUM money to cover health care cost would be 2$25 per pack, and a similar rise on all other tobacco form (snuff , pipe , etc...). This is definitively not covered in all the states.

EPA regulations a broken CFL requires a hazmat team to properly clean up after it.

The EPA's website disagrees with you. Do you have a source for your claim?

Recycling CFL's doubles their cost

Bullshit. Cite? I find this hard to believe when Ikea recycles them for free.

Not recycling them guarantee's that the mercury will end up in your water table.

Guess what? Not using them guarantees that mercury will end up in water (from coal plants) regardless (unless you're in a rare non-coal-powered area).

The near-religious irrationality of the anti-CFL brigade pisses me off - your use of logic is as poor as the intelligent design crowd.

I wonder if they were really being shut down, or if the licenses were ending and they planned to get an extension as has been done fairly routinely in many other places. (until now)

If they'd really planned to shut them down, I would have expected that something to replace them would be ready or nearly so. Japan does have a few odd issues with power that complicate things though....
The northern part of the country uses 50 Hz while the rest is 60 Hz. There are only a couple of places where they're doing the conversion (not sure if it is from DC or the other frequency).

If the output of the plant is DC, it would be okay to run the generators off-speed. If that were the case, I'd think they could actually remove some heat the way it happens in operation, by having steam go through the turbine, into the condeser, and water pumped back from there to cool the reactor.

If the fuel really has melted down, doesn't that mean it's all in one blob with no moderation by control rods (as in gone critical)? Unless it can be spread out, to not have critical mass, and maybe have accomplish that at a higher mass with the help of some boric acid to absorb neutrons, it'd seem that it'd keep burning down to where it hits ground/sea water then continually spew out steamy nasties...

There were reports of large amounts of boric acid being procured from France and South Korea, and I saw reports that about 25 tons was being transported from Diablo Canyon in California by Vandenburg Air Force Base personnel

This Reactor Concepts Manual from the NRC explains the various cooling methods for these reactors. Unit 2 uses the G.E. Mark I Containment as pictured on page 16.

One of the cooling methods involves "poisoning" which is adding water with boric acid. I've wondered if any of the water being injected had boric acid in it. I haven't heard it mentioned in the NHK reports or those from TEPCO.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/teachers/03.pdf

The airborn radiation around Japan is not as high as is has been previously.

http://www.bousai.ne.jp/eng/index.html

TEPCO Daily reports
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/index-e.html

Some of the U.S. data looks to be of questionable authenticity (but I believe that any nastier looking data still wouldn't reveal a serious threat since brief spikes don't add up to much long term) Look at various parts of the U.S. Some also show spike before the earthquake... and earlier quake or complications from other problems? (Stuxnet???)

http://www.epa.gov/japan2011/rert/radnet-data-map.html

TEPCO has been slow at some reporting in previous incidents.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/07072001-e.html

Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo just shut down one of the two units due to a (secondary) cooling issue.

Please allow me to inject some sane, rational, and most importantly, qualitative data into this: http://www.epa.gov/radiation/rert/radnet-sacramento-bg.html

Having just attended training in emergency preparedness, we trained not to release details, so the Japanese are just following the standard script. They also said never lie, or you will never be believed in the future. They seem to be following the script.

Silence is not a substitute for candor.

Silence can fuel rumors far more dangerous than the truth. Silence does not inspire trust.

Yes sad isn't it. But we are dealing with a forth estate here. The media will twist things the best they can to scare people and so sell their product.

The script is not the performance:

I think script is the right word. You know that a good Public Information Officer (and team) is expected to have already written the answers to 95% of the questions that will come up at a news conference. FEMA Public Information Officer

[Tepco] has already been severely criticised by Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, for failing to inform him immediately that a serious explosion had taken place following the earthquakes. "What the hell is going on?" asked Kan last week when he finally caught up with Tepco officials, in remarks picked up by a stray microphone. "Retreat is unthinkable," he told the firm, fearing that the decision to evacuate 740 staff from the stricken reactor site was the start of a complete abandonment.

Embattled Tepco faces its BP moment over Japan nuclear disaster

Now I can't give any more details of the training. Sorry.

Why not?

Oops that was a bit dramatic. It really is just a personal problem for me. No standing rules or anything nefarious.

Radiation Protection - Protective Action Guides

My choice would be release details so the people who wished to become educated on the issue could make their own decisions. You know the slashdot crowd. This is not how it is done.

They said:

What is the status of the PAG Manual update?

The PAG Manual is an important science-based guideline that addresses emergency action levels for radiation exposure. Draft revisions were approved by the former Deputy Administrator shortly before the inauguration. The new team at EPA wishes to review the PAGs revisions before proceeding with a notice of availability and public comment.

Which means because they fear the preceding administration's guidelines were politically biased rather than science based, so the next PAG Manual will be politically motivated and not science-based to correct the previous situation.

Having just attended training in emergency preparedness, we trained not to release details, so the Japanese are just following the standard script. They also said never lie, or you will never be believed in the future. They seem to be following the script.

Silence is not a substitute for candor.

Silence can fuel rumors far more dangerous than the truth. Silence does not inspire trust.

The script is not the performance:

[Tepco] has already been severely criticised by Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, for failing to inform him immediately that a serious explosion had taken place following the earthquakes. "What the hell is going on?" asked Kan last week when he finally caught up with Tepco officials, in remarks picked up by a stray microphone. "Retreat is unthinkable," he told the firm, fearing that the decision to evacuate 740 staff from the stricken reactor site was the start of a complete abandonment.

Embattled Tepco faces its BP moment over Japan nuclear disaster

Now I can't give any more details of the training. Sorry.

Why not?

Radiation Protection - Protective Action Guides

With all the lies that we get told out of all governments these days who knows what to believe. There was a report earlier that was taken down that US West Coast readings were up to ten times normal. Then a report that the EPA radiation meters were down(now apparently working) and a retraction of the story in my first link. Who knows what to believe any more. Even I could be a sock puppet. I loved sock puppets when I was young. Isn't it awful how words change from denoting nice things to nasty.

The ash from coal plants is radioactive. Coal has low concentrations of radioactive elements in it. When you burn the coal the radioactive elements are among the ash and are at a higher concentration of the ash than they are of the source coal.

http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/tenorm/coalandcoalash.html
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html

A lot of the commentary about radioactivity and coal plants come from this Scientific American article:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

Many people read the headline of that article and didn't really bother to read the article. The argument that Scientific American makes is that a coal plant puts more radiation into the surrounding environment than a nuclear plant. The nuclear waste is still obviously more radioactive than the ash. However, the nuclear plant carefully controls their waste and materials.

In both cases the radiation released is low and not a health risk.

The US estimates 320 radiation caused deaths world wide from coal electrical generation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation#Human-caused_background_radiation
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/202/4372/1045.abstract

Nuclear power puts out 1% of the radiation that coal does.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_nuclear_power#Risk_of_cancer
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/calculate.html

Do you live within 50 miles of a coal fired power plant? - .03 mRem/year
Do you live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant? - .009 mRem/year

Coal releases Uranium, Thorium, Radium, Radon, and Polonium into the atmosphere, how are those less radioactive than what a nuclear powerplant generally doesn't release?

We'll make more.

Nuclear sounds good in theory but in practice there are problems, long-term residual ones. NIMBY is a term that can be an excuse to not take responsibility, it can also be used to dismiss real concerns. Just ask those who have actually, not theoretically, mined it. For example: the damage to humans and groundwater from nuclear mining in New Mexico

As opposed to damage to humans and groundwater from drilling for "clean" natural gas.
Or from mountaintop removal for "safer" coal mining.
Or the risks associated with more traditional coal mining.
And finally there's the somewhat controversial issue of carbon dioxide emissions from coal and oil.

Ultimately, any form of energy production will have its inherent risks and we as a society have to choose if the benefits outweigh the risks. The risks are of oil are varied and diverse and coal is not much better and in some ways worse. The risks of solar, wind, and even nuclear energy pale by comparison. We won't solve our problems by picking winners and losers but by investing in a wide variety of alternatives rather than putting all of our eggs in one basket.

I personally like the promise of Thorium nuclear power but I'm skeptical of its lofty promises. I doubt if we'll know for sure how practical it is until billions of dollars have been poured into it and dozens of plants are in operation. That's just the nature of our energy hungry culture.

there's a few documentaries out there to raise awareness already, but they seem to gather very little attention.

Gasland is already under question for many of its "facts". Instead of documentaries we could look at studies by the EPA that say there is no impact. Of course, that study was questioned by a whistleblower, so maybe it isn't reliable either.

In short, I've read at least 50 comments in this thread stating with great certainty that ground water pollution is occurring from fracking, TFA says earthquakes are likely caused by fracking, yet there aren't any studies to support any claims for or against those statements. How 'bout we all wait for the EPA lifecycle study to do its thing and then we can have an informed discussion instead of a /. discussion?

Just take a look at what the EPA expects you to do if you break one of these super-deluxe wunder-bulbs: http://epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html

You should look at their steps for changing a lightbulb. You need to put on rubber-soled sews to hit the switch.

Government is incapable of rational action. Some activists/lobbyists push a policy (like banning real light bulbs) either because they have some utopian dreams or they stand to profit from the action, and meanwhile other parts of the government are warning of the hazards that will result. In the real-world, some rational cost-benefits analysis would occur and a rational path would be selected, but in government you simply write more rules for all the "little people" (anybody who pays taxes and has no lobbyist or leader) in "fly-over country" (everything between LA and NYC) and establish new agencies with lots of new employees to enforce the rules and warn people that what you are forcing them to do is stupid

Just take a look at what the EPA expects you to do if you break one of these super-deluxe wunder-bulbs: http://epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html

You choose to avoid all insignificant risks to your health? I have to assume you are trolling.
You are going to miss your flight, be detained, then have pissed off nurses ever so gently probe your anal cavity, and if you resist the police will hold you down and they'll do it regardless of how much you resist? Getting cavity searched is extremely unpleasant, by design. Ever see crack dealers squirm when they know they are about to get cavity searched? It really sucks.
"The Health Physics Society (HPS) reports that a person undergoing a backscatter scan receives approximately 0.05 Sv (or 0.005 mrems) of radiation; American Science and Engineering Inc. reports 0.09 Sv (0.009 mrems). At the high altitudes typical of commercial flights, naturally occurring cosmic radiation is considerably higher than at ground level. The radiation dose for a six hour flight is 20 Sv (2 mrems) — 200 to 400 times larger than a backscatter scan. According to U.S. regulatory agencies, "1 mrem per year is a negligible dose of radiation, and 25 mrem per year from a single source is the upper limit of safe radiation exposure". Of course, this is assuming you flew without your trusty tin-foil hat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray
http://www.epa.gov/radtown/cosmic.html

It doesn't scale as you imply. It's not about the amount of water, because oil doesn't really dissolve all that well in water, and it doesn't stay dispersed in water for very long. It's all about surface area at the interfaces: the interface with air, the interface with seabed, and perhaps a thermal or density boundary or two in between.

So, let's redo the math and see what difference it makes (if any).

Supposedly, we had Vs=780E3 m^3 spilled.
Per EPA, there's Vg=2.4E15 m^3 of water in the GOM; the area of the GOM Ag=1.6E12 m^2.

The volumetric fraction is Vs/Vg=3.2E-10; this makes your tank's absolute spill volume of vs=7.0E-11m^3 imply total tank volume of 0.2m^3, or 200L. So far the numbers are in the right ballpark at least.

So now, let's look at the areas. Your tank could be a cube about 0.58m on the side, having the water surface of at=0.34m^2.
The spilled oil, if it were to cover the whole surface of the GOM, would do so in a layer Vs/Ag=0.5um thick. That's a volume of 1.6E-7m^3 = 0.2ml. This is nothing to scoff at, and it may make a mess in your tank. Assuming the hydrocarbon molecule diameter in crude to be on the order of 1nm, we're looking at a layer about 500 molecules thick.

You'd probably need to check if agitation or some other artificial wave action would help with evaporation and coalescing the heavier hydrocarbons into tarballs. Then of course tarball behavior may be benign, or it may be messy, I have no clue. Could it kill your coral and other life in the tank? Maybe it's worth checking it out.

Actually 99% of american food doesn't come from farmers

So 99% of all that corn, wheat, pork, beef, chicken just magically springs into existence in those megacorp factories?

http://www.grains.org/corn
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/wheat/YBtable04.asp
http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/cropmajor.html
http://www.fas.usda.gov/dlp/circular/2010/livestock_poultryfull101510.pdf

If you say it's converted into "american food" by those factories, that's what I'm talking about - specialization etc :).

BTW I'm not saying subsidies are good.

Say the US has 1000 nonfarmers for every subsidized farmer. As long as countries buy US products (canned food, snacks, music CDs, software, hardware, military equipment, etc) some of those 1000 nonfarmers get $$$ and the US can afford to subsidize those farmers.

Whereas if some random African country has 0.5 nonfarmers for every farmer, their farmers are not going to be able to have much of subsidies.

Of course the picture is a bit more complicated because petroleum is bought and sold in US dollars and US energy companies profit from the petroleum, and much of US agriculture is basically "leveraging" petroleum for food (fertilizer, machinery, fuel etc). So the farmers are more important as a "strategic reserve", while petroleum and coal is critical :).

Do you have any reputable citations showing professional climatologists engaging in groupthink or responding badly to reasoned criticism? I ask because, once again, your description of the climatology community sounds like a description of a cult... [Dumb Scientist]

You mean like how they circled the wagons around Phil Jones, even when actual bad behavior on his part was discovered? For example: [ShakaUVM]

“This has some similarity to the CRU email theft, where precious little was discovered from among thousands of emails, but a few sentences were plucked out of context, deliberately misinterpreted (like “hide the decline”) and then hyped into “Climategate”.” [RealClimate]

Presumably you meant to say that scientists in general are circling wagons and responding badly to reasoned criticism.

Or you can just read the editor’s comments left in the response sections of RC.org. Just skimming through that above article, here’s an interplay between Pielke and Stefan. [ShakaUVM]

Coincidentally, Pielke Jr. had similar things to say about that interplay. That's the interplay where he asked a bunch of 'questions' like "Was it appropriate for the IPCC to make stuff up about my views?". Then Stefan replied:

Clearly there are different views on this, which is why we called this graph "debatable". But let's keep things in perspective: we're discussing Supplementary Material and a response to one of those 90,000 review comments now, not even the report itself. You've been working hard to scandalize your personal quibbles with IPCC here - how consistent is this with your self-proclaimed role as "honest broker"? Stefan

That link leads to an in-depth comment, and neither seem to constitute "responding badly to reasoned criticism." In fact, it's not clear that Pielke's rant counts as "reasoned criticism" in the first place. As far as I can tell, he's got

This technology is nothing new. The EPA demonstrated several "Hydraulic Hybrid" delivery vehicles a few years ago. Wikipedia used to have a nice table comparing energy storage technologies (I can't find it anymore) and compressed air was one of the best IIRC.

The AGW community ... refuse to look at green technologies like nuclear because they’re ignorant. ... [ShakaUVM]

Already discussed, but note that nuclear plants do generate small amounts of CO2 due to current enrichment and mining methods, as well as the curing of concrete containment domes. Averaged over the projected life of the reactors, this CO2 is only a few percent of the emissions from an equivalently powerful coal plant. Pebble bed reactors might be capable of safe operation without containment domes, but that unfortunate incident in Germany makes it unlikely that they'll be built that way for a while. Nuclear power is our best hope of maintaining a prosperous civilization. Please don't oversell it by making claims it can't live up to yet.

... It is possible to reduce our CO2 by 50%, maily because we can attack the problem in a centralized way at the power plant level. 0 CO2 emission is simply not on the table, but the fact that climatologists think it is doable is yet another bit of evidence for the fact that being good at science doesn’t make you good at policy. [ShakaUVM]

Dr. Knutti's emissions graph makes it clear that he's examining a scenario in which CO2 emissions only drop to half of 2010 values by ~2030, and a quarter of 2010 values by ~2070. That doesn't seem too different from the Lieberman-McCain "Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007" which seemed doable.

Because much of the CO2 emitted by nuclear plants is emitted in a pulse as the concrete dome cures, any nuclear plants built in the next few decades won't be emitting CO2 past ~2070 (unless we still haven't perfected mining and enrichment in the next ~60 years.) As you say, centralized power plants are easiest to upgrade, but we've got ~60 years to perfect electric cars in order to hit Knutti's target. They certainly can't universally replace gasoline vehicles in time (especially in developing countries) but biofuels can be produced carbon-neutrally (albeit inefficiently at present) in a centralized fashion. Distributing biofuels just like gasoline will avoid the need to make and sell billions of electric cars by 2100. Even if that fails, I'd be astonished if ~60 years isn't enough time for humanity to devise and implement a carbon sequestration program capable of making up the difference.

In fact, the only way the human race could possibly fail to tackle climate change would be if there were legions of crackpots arguing that climate "scientists" are actually just deceitful, shady, laughably dishonest, perverting, badly reeking, dogmatic, anti-scientific, idiotic, disingenuous, scurrilous, nefarious, damned, indefensibly guilty, laughably wrong, fundamentally rotten, self-discrediting, fraudulent, bullshitting partisan hacks with something to hide who do bad things, don't fucking know

That was not the consensus view

No, I guess the consensus view then was that the globe was uncontrollably cooling due to man's pollution.

You are mistaken. The greenhouse effect has nothing to do with greenhouses.

From EPA.GOV

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere behave much like the glass panes in a greenhouse.

That was easy. Greenhouse effect is a unproven theory that lies at the heart of AGW. I'm telling you it's just a theory just like AGW is, and you should avoid calling it fact when it is not.

I asked that you explain your theory and make it falsifiable.

You actually quoted me and then went on to not answer the question? You cannot falsify it, can you? Doesn't that make you question the theory? Why not answer that simple question?

The 70's were 0.03C wamer than the 60's. The 80's 0.18C warmer than the 70's. The 90's 0.12C warmer than the 80's. The 2000's 0.24C warmer than the 90's. This is exactly consistent with the theory.

Citation please.

And then the warming stopped?
Fact of decreasing N. American temperatures over the last decade
decreasing European temperatures over the last 8 years (Compare Seasonal Averages) 2001 - 2009
decreasing Australian temperatures over the last decade

But really, you need to provide links to the sources of your information, I'm not going to just take your word for it. If you can't do that than this is sort of pointless.

I forgot to post this--I thought you might find it interesting.

http://www.epa.gov/history/org/resources/budget.htm