NOAA Study: Radiation From Fukushima Very Dilluted, Seafood Safe

JSBiff writes "Ars Technica is reporting on a study by NOAA scientists who surveyed the ocean near Fukushima, which concludes that while a lot of radioactivity was released into the water, as would be expected, it diluted out to levels that pose little risk to wildlife or humans, and that the seafood is safe to eat. Perhaps we needn't worry so much about "millions of gallons of radioactive water" being released into the ocean, like it's a major environmental disaster, as it's really not — the ocean is many orders of magnitude larger than any accidental release of radiation which might happen from a nuclear plant."

Comments

Sanity vs. politically motivated scaremongering

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I wonder which will prevail ?

I lied. Heh. I wish I wondered.

Re:Sanity vs. politically motivated scaremongering

[Hatta]

Failing to realize that there are different degrees of safety, and that nuclear is much, much safer than coal, is even stupider.

Re:Sanity vs. politically motivated scaremongering

[dragonhunter21]

Where do we put the waste from fossil fuels? Remember, a lot of those byproducts are toxic or carcinogenic, too. But we just pump them into the atmosphere.

Fossil fuels make a lot of moderately deadly waste that just goes everywhere. Nuclear power makes a little waste, which is admittedly very deadly, but we know exactly where it is. So far as storing it, the only reason it's a problem at all is that we're so scared of radioactive waste that we end initiatives to safely store it. How sick is that? If we had Yucca Mountain, we could stop storing nuclear waste at the plants and put it out in the middle of Fuckall Nevada under a mountain! How much safer can you get?

Re:Sanity vs. politically motivated scaremongering

[Raul654]

"simply claiming scientific fraud because you happen to disagree with the results is not a valid argument, sorry." - while this is true a philosophy class, in the real world it falls down. In the real world, there are plenty of scientists whose results can be discounted a priori. I automatically discount anything a "scientist" employed by a tobacco company has to say about cigarette safety, or that an oil company scientist has to say about global warming or the safety of fracking. It's too easy for them to cause bias in their results in ways that are nearly impossible for a non-expert to figure out.

In this case, the results were from NOAA, which doesn't have a horse in the race, as far as I'm aware.

Re:Sanity vs. politically motivated scaremongering

[GungaDan]

"the results were from NOAA, which doesn't have a horse in the race"

It has two in the ark.

Re:Sanity vs. politically motivated scaremongering

[michelcolman]

On the contrary, they will all go to the beach to be protected from radiation. After all, a lot of homeopatic "medicines" work by diluting a harmful components so much that only its "memory" is left, and this supposedly protects you from that component.

radiation is from coal

[vlm]

Unless they were doing a lot of extra work to match isotopes, most of the "bulk" radiation in the ocean from power generation is from burning coal.
There's really quite a bit of U in coal, and if you burn a gigatons of the stuff a ppm here and there starts to add up.