Slashdot Mirror
The Panic Over Fukushima
An anonymous reader points out an article in the Wall Street Journal about how irrational fear of nuclear reactors made people worry much more about last year's incident at Fukushima than they should have. Quoting:
"Denver has particularly high natural radioactivity. It comes primarily from radioactive radon gas, emitted from tiny concentrations of uranium found in local granite. If you live there, you get, on average, an extra dose of .3 rem of radiation per year (on top of the .62 rem that the average American absorbs annually from various sources). A rem is the unit of measure used to gauge radiation damage to human tissue. ... Now consider the most famous victim of the March 2011 tsunami in Japan: the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Two workers at the reactor were killed by the tsunami, which is believed to have been 50 feet high at the site. But over the following weeks and months, the fear grew that the ultimate victims of this damaged nuke would number in the thousands or tens of thousands. The 'hot spots' in Japan that frightened many people showed radiation at the level of .1 rem, a number quite small compared with the average excess dose that people happily live with in Denver. What explains the disparity? Why this enormous difference in what is considered an acceptable level of exposure to radiation?"
Off topic but: What's with the red heading?
"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker
The governments around the world have a great way of dealing with "dangerous levels" of radiation...just increase the "safe level"...and presto - you no longer have "dangerous levels." This has been done in MANY places!
Not by the Fukushima thing - but by the fact that the tsunami was 50 feet high at the plant. I understand how it can happen; but that is truly awesome (in the literal sense of the word).
#DeleteChrome
http://www.naturalnews.com/images/Radioactive-Seawater-Impact-Map-March-2012.jpg
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Tell you what, WSt dudes, buy that lsnd off the indiginents. Go live there. You can telecommute.
It's all rather amusing from a country that goes completely apeshit whenever the thought of a trrrist being alive somewhere occurrs to them.
These people are obviously the progeny of survivors from those atomic bombs a few years back. They survived because of natural resistance, and now so do their offsprings, and offsprings offspring etc...
Radiation in Denver is unavoidable. Radiation in Fukushima was manmade, and the inadequate safety features and inept management seem to be common problems with nuclear (and other) power plants. The furor is because the Fukushima radiation release could have been avoided, but wasn't.
Not a sentence!
Ignorance and then fear of unknown is what is driving this. People think about "radiation" and their eyes glaze over. And it is not even regular people - scientists do it too!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2012/08/17/radon-lung-cancer-risk.html
What do they know? They know that there is a little bit more radon than they thought.
Their conclusions? FUD! Death!
They made up a non-threshold model for radiation based on WWII nuclear bombings, and they they keep applying it everywhere like if it applies to low level radiation levels. Anyone with any clue, knows that it does not work this way. But then when does reality stop a widespread belief??
Heck, no one even did much work on low level radiation and their effects on living beings. For that they would need a nil-radiation environment to do experiments and no one cares enough to fund that yet.
So no, I'm not surprised that there is a lot of FUD about Fukushima. And I'm not even surprised at the radon-linked-paper-deaths either.
The news channels can't educate people on what a rem is, or why its important, in under 30 seconds, and nobody knows that from school anymore, so the news spin cycle is forced to sensationalize.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Fukushima wasn't scary because of what happened. It was scary because one of the most developped countries in the world had absolutly no control over what happened.
Untill now everybody was reassured that these things only happened to old sovjet reactors.
Fukushima learnt the ignorant masses that when nuclear shit hits the fan it doesn't matter much which country the fan is located in.
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
The primary concern was contamination of ground/drinking water by ionizing radiation as a byproduct of the coolant leaks and supplementary/emergency coolant runoff. Overall background radiation offset is a minor concern compared to the continuous and ongoing damage that can be caused by a contaminated drinking water supply.
This isn't why people are generally concerned, but it is why they SHOULD be - even OP has failed to understand spot exposure versus whole body exposure. Fukushima hot particles are a big health concern, and they are not factored into many of the recent models equating Chernobyl. Here are some links:
"In the USA, the average effective whole body dose from radon is about 200 mrem per year while the lungs receive approximately 2000 mrem per year,"
http://www.jlab.org/div_dept/train/rad_guide/sources.html
"The Fukushima nuclear accident dispersed airborne dusts that are contaminated with radioactive particles. When inhaled or ingested, these particles can have negative effects on human health that are different from those caused by exposure to external or uniform radiation fields. A field sampling effort was undertaken to characterize the form and concentration of radionuclides in the air and in environmental media which can accumulate fallout."
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/5840
and I thought living in a cave was safe!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
But over the following weeks and months, the fear grew that the ultimate victims of this damaged nuke would number in the thousands or tens of thousands. The 'hot spots' in Japan that frightened many people showed radiation at the level of .1 rem, a number quite small compared with the average excess dose that people happily live with in Denver. What explains the disparity? Why this enormous difference in what is considered an acceptable level of exposure to radiation?"
Because the government and the electrical utility had been completely opaque and not forthcoming with any useful information and preferred to treat the public like children and tell them to go pound sand at public meetings. The government's handling of this from the beginning was a textbook example of how to *not* handle something like this.
So what do people do when they can't get any valid information from their own government? Assume the government is covering it up and assume the worst. And there are plenty of people out there willing to fill the information void with the most outlandish "facts" going.
That's why.
--
BMO
Radon, from unventilated places, is the leading cause of radiation induced death. Not nuclear power, nuclear weapons, or nuclear medicine. People need to wise the fuck up, and look at the actual facts and see what is going on. Not only is nuclear power safe, but efforts are underway to make it safer still. Modern nuclear reactor designs using liquid fuels instead of solid are the way to go. But all this anti-nuclear sentiment from alarmists (some of whom are funded by the petroleum industry) make utilities wary of funding the replacement of aging plants.
Am I right? Did I win something?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I guarantee you that "journalists" were being paid to sensationalize the issue. And people are STILL comparing the fukushima plant to some 1970s Soviet power plant? Incidents like Chernobyl happened due to cheap building and cheaper maintenance; the Fukushima "incident" happened due to a giant tsunami and record seismic activity.
But just look at what's going on now. Japan's shutting down ALL their nuclear power plants so they can import oil from foreign companies, and several European politicians have been pushing for the same thing; meanwhile in the US, this sensationalism has just been cannon fodder for the mindless ranting made by people who own $100 in Exxon/Shell/etc stock.
And these people wouldn't be able to get away with it if it wasn't for the idiots who eat all this up. If you're one of those people who bought into the scare tactics, you share just as much blame as the companies behind it.
If anything, Fukushima has shown the world that everyone should be in a panic all the time about every nuclear reactor, not to mention all the spent fuel. As the official report from the Japanese government said, a nuclear reactor disaster like Fukushima is capable of causing "infinite damage". There have been a number of predictive models that indicate there will be 5-10M+ cancers caused by Fukushima, mostly in Japan and the western US. This number could grow radically if there are more serious issues with Fukushima.
Maybe the WSJ should restrict themselves to writing about lifestyle porn for all the super rich banksters. If one wants to keep up with the ongoing disaster that is Fukushima, a better site is ENENews.
The author: —Dr. Muller is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. This essay is adapted from his new book, "Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines." Oh, he doesn't even mention that we have to find a way to keep the nuclear waste safe for 150.000 years. We are destroying the world with this. Sure, those reactors can be quite safe, but anyone know of a human-made building that is 150.000 years old and still intact? Didn't think so. Even mountains go and come over that period of time.
I always find it funny that the generations of people who grew up living in absolute terror of all things nuclear are the same generations that believed hiding under a piece of furniture would protect them from all things nuclear.
The radiation in Denver is natural organic radiation, but the toxic killer rems in Japan were made by an evil corporation.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
It's easy to look at the data today and form an opinion. But back when their reactors were exploding on TV and Japan and the US couldn't agree on how far to evacuate with no end to the disaster in sight other than a real possibility of all the fuel escaping containment a little panic was justified. Had TEPCO been forthcoming about conditions instead of hiding them the panic would have been worse. It's the unknown at the time that caused the most concern. And had there been a SSW wind for the first few days then it would be a much different story instead of most of the radiation going into the toilet that is the Pacific ocean so I don't buy the argument that "See, it's safe because it wasn't worse."
Yes, people are stupidly fearful of radiation but, to be fair, cancer can be a very unpleasant and painful way to die and the treatments are often unpleasant as well.
Perhaps because your numbers aren't really accurate. According to this web site: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/03/fukushima_crisis_radiation_exp.html
"The peak doses recorded at Fukushima Daiichi have been around 400 mSv per hour, enough to induce radiation sickness in about two hours’ time."
Initially, no one knew what levels of radiation the general public was being exposed to. And, as others have pointed out, by the time measurements were available there were plenty of reasons for people to mistrust them. In fact, is there any reason to trust the numbers now?
The threat from nuclear radiation is quite possibly more real in the minds of the Japanese population than one could expect from inhabitants of Denver. Or any other people on the planet, for a good reason; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
Many more species have become extinct than now exist or have existed any any one time. But those ignorant of this make a tremendous fuss about the extinction of a minor species.
Sea level rises and falls over a range of hundreds of feet over geological time and has done so for millions of years with wide variation of warming and cooling rates. Yet people ignorant of this imagine that the current warming trend, which began thousands of years ago at much higher rates, is being caused by man.
Inorganic toxins occur naturally in varying amounts all over the earth. But because we now have the ability to detect them at parts per billion levels people fear any amount no matter how small.
In short, it is far more fashionable to shout about things than to learn about them in depth. A mob of excited, ignorant people are far more likely to get themselves on television than someone who has spent a lifetime learning the facts. In any event, "democracy" will require giving more weight to the opinions of the ignorant than to the knowledge of the learned.
Welcome to the modern world. Instead of fear of witches, we have fear of facts.
I would say that dying in general is rather unpleasant. In fact, I can all but guarantee it. I know that I personally plan to have a nasty surprise for the Reaper when he comes knocking.
if you're a nuclear radiation expert dealing with a invisible substance. however, the general public are not radiation experts, they can't see what is and isn't dangerous, and the only guidance they get is from the government, who has not been a reliable source of information. In fact, nobody seems to have the complete story because there were a lot of variables involved in just how much risk there was, due to changing conditions. Perhaps the government provided all the information it had, and it still isn't enough to declare "yes it's safe". It seems like it's relatively easy to monday morning quarterback how to handle a nuclear meltdown. But if I was a resident of Fukushihma, I would have chosen erring on the side of caution rather than being overtly assertive over the radiation readings provided by so called experts.
This is just crap. Nuclear power is a silly remainder of the cold war: the power output was just too big for one faction not to have it. In a world where one as to balance reasonable risk against reasonable gain, nuclear power is just a no go. Get over it.
People always panic when things don't go according to plan. Radiation from rocks in the area is a known risk. A nuclear reactor melting down is unexpected. The amount of radiation is irrelevant.
While the Fukushima disaster may have increased the background radiation by a small amount, this isn't the end of the story on radiation exposure from that event. Fukushima also released radioactive particles that, when inhaled or ingested by humans, will expose their tissues to ionizing radiation for the rest of their lives. This is why you can't compare the exposure from events like international flights, which are distributed across your entire body and are transient in nature, to the total effects of a nuclear disaster. Some of the exposures from Fukushima were and will be much more than tolerable, transient increases in the background radiation a la living in Denver. For many people, the hot particles they inhaled or ingested will stay with them forever and will lead to significant cell damage and cancer.
we have irradiated material washing up on the coast a canada ffs yea nothing to worry about....as the dolphins fled earth formt he vogons
so long and thanks for the the GLOWING fish....
I remember hearing about the Soviet response to Chernobyl, and how they initially said things were less dangerous than things actually were. It's a survival instinct to run and question something invisible and dangerous. It's safer to be wrong and flee, then be wrong and stay.
I posted a reply to a comment in a story a few days ago where I pointed out the same thing, namely that peoples' common sense and ability to assess risks both go straight out the window when the word 'nuclear' is mentioned.
But further down the thread, someone responded with some fairly disturbing links describing what sounds like an extremely high incidence of thyroid damage (or at least potential damage) in children near the Fukushima site. How seriously are these claims being taken? If even some of this stuff is true, perhaps we aren't doing a good enough job at gathering data about the effects of the Fukushima accident. If that's true, then my existing opinion becomes harder to support.
The truth was certainly the first casualty at Chernobyl. In addition to the usual prompt pronunciations of global doom from the simply-uninformed, other people with specific political motives waved monstrous images of deformed children around, claiming that they were harmed by radiation during pregnancy. Only later did it come to light that the photos were taken in an existing home for special-needs children who were nowhere near Chernobyl and whose health problems had no possible connection to it.
So... is someone trying to pull the same bullshit again... or should ozmanjusri's post be taken seriously?
They come from nature. That makes them ok. The ones in Japan, on the other hand, come from CHEMICALS!!1!!!
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
why there are no permanent decontamination facilities in Denver?
I think we all here at /. know, though the WSJ is apparently ignorant of the FACT, that reptilian life off the coast of Japan is HIGHLY sensitive to radioactivity in any amounts, and in the past, have caused TREMENDOUS amounts of damage to Tokyo and the surrounding country side.
Many people believe the hydrogen was not enough to cause the mess at #3
Many People also believe in Santa Claus.
At least the ones believing in Santa Claus have an excuse.
INFORMED people know that the reactor building was designed to explode exactly as it did when hydrogen gas built up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Radon is not cesium. Different things happen when you ingest them. While the level of background radiation is an easy metric to report, the real dangers are from ingesting or breathing material directly or ingesting that which has entered the food chain, which has happened to a significant extent around Fukushima.
Comparing a nuclear accident with a place with high background radiation is ignorant at best, willfully disingenuous at worst.
Average kids pool in Denver:
http://community.avid.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.04.28.10/red-square.png
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Cherry picking low levels isn't the issue. I'd be far more concerned with multiple sources. So the background in some areas is .1, how about food and water? They've detected much higher levels in working farms around the plant that are still producing food for sale. The problem isn't whether your house is safe but whether you are getting too much exposure for multiple sources. Your new leather couch could use cow hide from an animal that couldn't be eaten but maybe it was considered safe for industrial use. I'm just saying you could have dozens of sources for exposure from sea food to milk and even your drinking water. Ultimately we'll never know the harm or damage since the numbers will be dispersed in national statistics. Even if there's a spike in cancer how do you know it wasn't from a more western diet or industrial toxins from Chinese goods?
Radiation in Denver is unavoidable.
Yes, and yet hundreds of thousands of people live in Denver, by choice. Many people in Colorado have lived here their whole lives. And yet they are not a city of cancer-ridden tentacled freaks.
So what does it mean when people like you get freaked out by even lower levels of radiation that obviously harm just about no-one living in Denver their whole lives?
It means your luddite fear of anything nuclear is utterly stupid, irrational, and you are causing way more harm than good by being freaked out about the tiny levels of radiation present in the area and trying to freakout others too.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The first and foremost reason is a lack of understanding, by the general public, as to what amounts are normal, what amounts are safe, and what amounts are dangerous in either short or long term exposure.
The lack of knowledge is further complicated by the seemingly arbitrary use of several different and completely foreign, to the general public, scales of measurement. This article talks of rem, but others talk of curie, rad, sievert and more that I can't remember. None of these do I understand. Nor do I know the meaning of their subunit multipliers, pico, milli, micro, peta... Furthermore, they mix dosages and exposure and absorption, which all mean different things!
Further compound the lack of understanding with a lack of credible and non-contradictory official information. In the beginning, official announcements lacked information, possibly intentionally or perhaps because they didn't know. Neither case is reassuring, especially to the uninformed.
Finally, it is easy to sit back and judge now, after the fact, saying that people were unnecessarily scared. But, in the heat of the moment, a nuclear reactor was smashed and melting down, officials seemed helpless to stop it, and most importantly, no one knew what would happen next. That is the biggest issue of all , the unknown is the greatest fear. And though it may have been unwarranted, that doesn't mean that it is irrational.
People worry because they fear the authorities might lie to them (or be mistaken) about the levels of radiation.
http://xkcd.com/radiation/
However, the Fukushima numbers are off on the chart due to fudging by the Nuclear plant operators and officials.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/10/27/141776752/report-fukushima-released-more-radioactive-material-than-japan-estimated
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=157194628
Nuclear is nothing to fuck around with. Not something your average person understands, or is capable of dealing with problems involving.
Until humans are willing to be less greedy and shortsighted and do it 100% exactly correct. No cut corners. No profit over safety.
Don't fuck with nuclear unless we really NEED to. And we don't really have that level of demand yet.
I'm not sure why we treat nuclear as an all or nothing choice. We can do alot on cutting energy usage and using other alternative energy options before nuclear becomes the only choice.
Unless someone comes up with a way to make better humans and smarter companies.....
I gotta agree. Less nuke plants. And only to replace many old ones with fewer new safer ones.
Lets minimize the risk of killing people and contaminating bits of land for centuries.
It's the wisest move. Well. Until we have wiser people and companies willing to do it 100% exactly right with no fuckups.
Who cares about background radiation, I'd be terrified of inhaling reactor core dust.
Complete garbage that seems like it was underwritten by the nuclear industry.
1) He ignores the difference between interal and external exposure.
2) He treats natural disasters as somehow equal to man-made disasters.
3) Doesn't even address the true costs of nuclear energy (tax payer supported subsidies, and tax payer supported long-term storage costs)
4) He ignores the fact that Tepco was ready to leave the site alltogether--- you realize this WOULD HAVE been a meltdown that would have required the complete evacuation of Tokyo.
All I can say, is the guy that wrote this is a total muppet!
You can't have a radiation level measured in rem. Rem measures absorbed dose. Level of radiation refers to the rate at which one absorbs radiation. It's like saying the car is moving at forty meters...per second/minute/hour? Makes a difference.
FUD sells, truth just does not cut the mustard.
Fucushima reporting is of course a wee bit better than the classic Scharansky's 3D (Demonisation, Dehumanization, and Double standards) of Middle East reporting, but not by a wide margin. The world wants disaster porn, the world wants evil corporations porn, the world wants evil Juice settler porn.
The truth is not a simply casualty, the truth is simply raped and thrown naked and beaten into the latrine to die. Who gives a damn? I don't give a flying RC helicopter shaped like the word "F**K" about what really happened. I want my my FUD-induced adrenalin rush, portion of daily infotainment porn, and anyone who thinks that we have become more sophisticated since the epoch of bread and gladiator fights is smoking something that clearly should be outlawed.
I wonder if the mutated insects around Fukushima know that the radiation is only increased by 0.1 rem ... ...
Especialy if you consider that insects can stand roughly 100 times the radiation a human can
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Does Denver also have mutated butterflies flying around, like at Fukushima? Or might the fear be justified after all, and this 0.1 rem be a gross unrepresentative measurement?
If someone would be so kind to illuminate.
Well the author of the article is a professor of physics, not a medical doctor and while he has done some research, I don't agree with his opinions . This is another article on the subject http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/evolution/166544196.html After reading this article , this author has been following up on this story since it happened and I agree that there just aren't enough studies on the long term effects on radiation which is obvious If even the experts can't agree on this issue.
This sort of rational discussion of actual exposure levels is not discussed widely before nuke incidents, and the media forsakes fact for drama and fear mongering.
The solution is to have a team of talking heads do what political surrogates do. Go on TV shows that are exploiting fear and present the facts and deflate that fear. It requires effort.
Of course most political surrogates amplify fear, but that is a choice that can be reversed by my proposed nuke surrogates. Public opinion matters in this country to the extent many politicians govern by pole not by best practices. Once public opinion is swayed toward factual nuke data public opinion will support it and 2 years later, so will politicians.
Look how long Democrats have been demogaging Mediscare and the results is entrenched fear of R and blind faith in D on the issue, which is of course contrary to objective fact on actual votes and policy proposals.
JJ
There is a whole lot more use for nuclear waste if you have reprocessing plants - France makes money reprocessing nuclear waste then providing energey for their neighbors like the UK and Germany who are too chicken-shit to properly manage nuclear power. Even the US, due to the "proliferation" scare has basically killed nuclear power by crippling reprocessing as an option for at least several generations (until we have no other choice).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Here.
Colorado is in the lowest sixth of US states for overall cancer rates. This despite being in the top third for skin melanoma. When you go in for a check-up, the docs don't ask you whether you've checked the radon levels in your house. But they will ask you if you wear sunblock, and UV-blocking sunglasses (UV has been linked to cataract development). Cause the UV levels that go with living at 5,000 feet are much more dangerous than the other radiation exposures.
Well, to those who are comfortable with the idea then: Build your house next to a reactor. Or on top a disposal facility.
People are afraid of what they don't understand. Many people don't understand how nuclear reactors work, how much radiation is bad for the body, or even that they're getting low doses of radiation from the general environment.
I was on a kenjutsu seminar last week in germany. The japanese instructors, about 15, where totaly ashamed about the incompetence of their government regarding fukushima.
The Japanese get ashamed if you napkin is not exactly square-on with the edge of the table.
They where completely upset about the inability of anyone to act on that emergency.
Well then, they were as ignorant as you so we can ignore the lot of you.
I think it is shameful to say the workers at the plant had any kind of inability, after they heroically maintained a plant that encountered a disaster literally an order of magnitude greater than it was designed for.
Sorry, if you want to talk about global matters, you should stop listening to US media and inform your self from global news sources.
I agree with this at least, but you should stop reading the crackpots.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While the author concedes that 1500 deaths will be the long term impact of this accident, I love that he maintains that Nuclear power is safe and clean.
There is a discussion in SlashdotJapan about the power industry tried to conceal worker's exposure statistics.
They tried to seal radiometer by thin lead plate and it reduce energy of radiation. But as you know, the affection by Gamma-ray is not related to photon's energy but related to total photon number.
How come the TEPCO executives didn't volunteer to work on the site during the disaster and live there (with their families) afterward?
From what I remember, TEPCO's engineers were doing all of the work and the executives were staying *far* away.
If they think it is safe, why don't they put their own bodies and families in harm's way, and demonstrate how safe it is?
Yeah....no several reactors were possibly damaged and possibly in meltdown. The fear of that dwarfs the fear of long term radiation exposure. Nice bit of revisionism by the WSJ....but of course.
Particulate Cesium is the scariest. And I just had little kids in a hotspot 120k from Fukushima.
I think a lot of the fear is because it could have very easily been a lot worse than it turned out.
.. can kiss my behind
Poisons that *accumulate* over time, in your *food chain*
Unknown effects of radiation on the small chemical bonds that form life, not as an adult, but in *reproduction*
*Unnecessary* poisons that last many generations
off the top of my head
............What explains the disparity? Why this enormous difference in what is considered an acceptable level of exposure to radiation?"
It is largely because, so far, the Japanese are still the only people in the world who actually have been hit by a nuclear bomb.
That's something you don't forget. That's something that you teach your grandchildren and great-grandchildren every detail about.
Japan would have you believe that "there's nothing more to see here" but that simply isn't true. http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3532725.htm
We'll never make it.......oh! we made it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWf3iJjqYCM&list=FL7kKrE4eTs17mQl7eyvJIOg
[quote] Why this enormous difference in what is considered an acceptable level of exposure to radiation?[/quote]
Probably because Japan has had a nuclear weapon dropped on them - twice - and they're a little sensitive about this kind of thing.
Pick up a history book - you fucking moron.
Long term waste are *weakly* radioactive. If it was not for the heavy metal toxicity you could hold radioactive Uranium or plutonium im hand. The problem are short term waste (a few dozen year to maybe 300-400 years) which is dangerous because it emits dangerous radioactivity in short term, and are dangerous for a few helf life (so maybe up to 1000-2000 years). And for those time period we had building which stayed up. Heck even longer. Radioactive material which has half life much longer are much less dangerous because the radioactivity they emit is very low per second. So a 10.000 year half life is much less dangerous than a 10 year one.
Furthermore the TYPE of radioactivity is important , alpha can be stopped with a glove or clothing (see above rubber glove holding an alpha emitter). Beta or gamma OTOH I would not like to be near, but I can't recall long term element waste for which we have them in a lot of quantity.
So when you say " Oh, he doesn't even mention that we have to find a way to keep the nuclear waste safe for 150.000 years. " this is pure bullshit propaganda from greenies which have no idea which radioactive waste pose us the biggest problem.
According a report in the BBC, the nearby town of "Namie" is being exposed to 10-50 millisievert because of the Fukushima melt-down.
One Sievert is equal to 100 rem.
So 50 millisieverts = 0.05 sieverts = 5 rems.
Five rems is far more than the 0.65 rems quoted for Denver.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18181224
Look up banana equivalent dose. You ingest radioactive particle all your live. The particle in fukushima were not that different, if any were ingested by human. "hot aprticle" please , this is pure BS. Radioactivity is characterised by the type , alpha, beta, gamma, energy, and the half life of the atoms. You ingest radioactive particle all the time like 14C, and various element. Saying in fukushima were "hot particle" without saying which atioms, which radioation type, and which quantity was ignested is pure FEAR MONGERING BS. Hint for you : the nuclear scientific are not as much concerned as you for a good reason.
Just so much more minimisation of a real disaster.
Listen to Dr kodama on YouTube... At the bottom you can turn subtitles on
http://dotsub.com/view/970ac7d2-c282-4d67-a7c6-e8fb978ba12f
Also government enquiries found it was likely AVOIDABLE answer government was hoodwinked by the supposed infallibility of modern power plants.
The tune always is that the next generation will be failsafe. So governments and corporations think they are justified to leave emergency generators IN THE UPEN.
Also with chernobyl, three mile island and fukushima the first thing to be destroyed is the instrumentation so the experts haven't a clue what is happening.
The lack of preparation is all part of the failsafe myth.
...is that it is so easily measurable.
My kids' summer sailing camp is routinely disrupted for the same reason: it's trivially easy to have a pimply adolescent lower a white disc into the river to measure algal bloom.
As a reasonably numerically literate parent, I'm far more worried about the crap they're exposed to that can't be so easily measured.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/07/is-nuclear-power-good-for-you.html
The article above mentions what this one does not: that around 600 people died due to the rapid nature of evacuation of the area around Fukushima due to radiation concern. The paper the article summarizes also mentions that its best estimate for deaths due to radiation exposure prevented by this evacuation is far lower than this number (28 fatalities prevented). The policy implications are clear: that fear and precautionary measures cause far more harm than the radiation itself.
Yes, I'm being an anonymous coward, deal with it.
people worry much more about last year's incident at Fukushima than they should have. Who gets to say what the proper degree of worry is? People at papers like the Wall Street Journal like to claim that the free market is good at deciding what value things should have, both negative value and positive value. If you subscribe to that view, than whatever degree of worry people have about something reflects the importance they place on it, and is fundamentally correct, no matter how strongly or weakly they feel about the subject; and, furthermore, taken in agregate, that value reflects exactly the value that particular item/scenario has in the context of society. An alternate view would be that maximizing GDP is the fundamental good. In fact, I think that's what people usually mean to strive for when they claim that the free market should decide things...they make a tacit assumption that the free market would always choose that course of action. Using that rubric, yes, of course people worry too much about Fukushima. The true economic damage which would be caused by the radiation is much lower than the hit to GDP for ditching nuclear power, assuming you relax safety standards and put all but the hottest of hot-spots back into productive use.
Actually, the Navy (I was there.)
Radiation from natural sources is ignored; radiation from Navy reactors and related sources is all important.
Example: a sailor took his TLD home on leave (personal dosimeter, attached to your belt. You don't think about it.) His parents ran a veterinary clinic that had an old fluoroscope. When that TLD was read at the end of the month all hell broke loose, resulting in a new Navywide rule that TLD's be turned in to (and signed for by) the officer signing one out on leave. The main concern was proving that the exposure wasn't from a Navy source; hanging around that clinic might have been... unwise, but wasn't a problem for the Navy.
I was underwater for Chernobyl, and not scheduled to get surface air for a month or so. We were concerned that when we did, we might 'suck in' some radioactivity and set off alarms (yes, they were that sensitive.) If that happened, everyone in the ship would have to wear respirators for an hour or two while we proved it wasn't our reactor, after which we could relax and breathe freely, radioactivity and all. (Nothing happened, but we were standing by.)
Why? Not so much legal liability (though I'm sure that's considered), but the Navy's delicate relationship with the NRC. As one senior officer observed, during any given Christmas week there were at least a dozen reactors floating in the river at Norfolk, tended by a couple of (admittedly highly trained) 20-something high school graduates and one sleepy officer and CPO. No one gave that much thought, but imagine the outcry if someone suggested building a commercial reactor nearby (with much greater oversight and safety features than a submarine) to provide power to the city. The Navy, by virtue of its overachieving training, documentation, and safety programs, not to mention Cold War precedents and institutional secrecy, gets to run its reactors without NRC or much civilian involvement; anything that goes wrong and reaches the press threatens that arrangement, without which the program realistically couldn't exist.
I'm not complaining or trying to blow some kind of whistle, BTW: the program works. I probably averaged less rads underway than on a sailboat; certainly less than on a fossil fuel fired ship. I don't live in Denver but I would, and I don't worry about chest x-rays or long airline flights. I'm glad the Navy took good care of me, but I also understand their reasons.
Is this yet another article from the nuclear energy lobby groups trying to claim nothing serious happened? Its so hard to tell what is fact and what is spin?
If this really isn't an issue, why doesn't the Japanese government allow people anywhere near the plant?
>> They had systems in place for a loss of power event. The problem was they didn't anticipate the length of time the loss of power event would continue
They didn't want to anticipate long power losses, so they pick the cheap option. Anyway, there is evidence that the reactors were badly damaged before the power loss
They didn't want to anticipate faults directly under the complex (and there can be unknown faults everywhere !) so they just took the most economic option of ignoring strong earthquakes
They didn't want to anticipate tsunamis, so they just build a ridiculous but cheap protecting wall.
and the list goes on.
Take risks, be "cheap" when possible, but give a false illusion o security. It's just the way the whole industry works
aaaaaaa
Why are Leukemia, prostrate and ovary cancer happening at a significantly (measurable) higher rate in Colorado? It's not a fair question just as the original post's strawman is invalid. The level in Colorado isn't safe because it's natural. Given the slightly better lifestyles measurable in lower obesity rates, one would 'expect' Colorado to be slightly better than average except for melanoma because of the thinner atmosphere/UV radiation.
http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/pp/cccr/1997-2007/CIC9707%20First%20Half%20(web).pdf
Would media covering bad places to live ever of that nature be tolerated excluding political motivation or a disaster event? There is a consistency in how information is filtered. There is a natural tendency for the media to keep a wet finger in the air to know which way the wind is blowing. The blowback from standing against the wind and being wrong is far riskier than standing with the wind and the wind being wrong.
>> No. I have seen no evidence that the one-time release of a small amount of radioactivity into the ocean
small amounts ?
ocean ?
We don't speak about the same event.
In the 2011 fukushima disaster, big quantities of dust went in the athmosphere, and go worldwide. Any particle in your lungs is a potential lung cancer.
For the ocean, you probably never eat fish, do you ? and you probably never heard the term "food chain"
aaaaaaa
This isn't panic. It's more of a "Houston, we have a problem" sort of situation. You've got a problem, you deal with it. "Panic" means people going "AAAAAAAAAHH!" After screaming for a year and a half, they must be getting pretty hoarse. On the other hand, the must have been screaming "AAAAH" for just about long enough to warm up a cup of coffee. So my advice would be, by now, Keep calm and have a cuppa.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
In some regions of my country, the temperature is very stable the whole year at 27C (that is, before global warming). People die when cold winds from the Andes make it drop to 10C.
In nordic countries, I read, people swim in rivers when it's 5C outside.
Maybe people at Denver have even been selected to endure better radiation. I've read there are animals more resilient to it.
In any case, it's not a witch hunt; people are not fearing zombies; the Japanese are among the most educated on Earth. We're because our fear protected us. It may be irrational, but it is indeed useful... and with mutations on butterflies starting to show up, I'd wait a little longer before dismissing all risks.
Not sure why the OP is surprised by the fear of an unlikely horrible event v. the fear of a more likely daily event. Easiest example is the fear of flying v. the fear of driving. Far more people are scared they'll die in a plane crash but have no fear or driving a car. Similarly, people are fearful of a nuclear reactor killing them via a radioactive release or meltdown but happily live near or downwind of coal fired power plants which have a much more deleterious effect on people's lives. People fear things they know little about but aren't scared of the things they see daily and have grown accustomed to.
The difference by normal background radiation, radiation from granite etc on the one hand, and the radiation released from Fukushima on the other hand is that the radiation from Fukushima contains particles of Plutonium and Cesium. Not all radiation is equal.
Cesium is known to cause Thyroid cancer when ingested, many thousands of such cases around Chernobyl is known.
Plutonium released after a hydrogen explosion or otherwise blown around into farm fields, tea plantations etc can cause large amounts of people to INGEST plutonium. Some scientists say there is no safe limit of ingested plutonium. It will cause cancer, somewhere, sometime, as the particle remains in your body forever while slowly decaying and releasing other particles inside the body ripping DNA to pieces.
Radon gas in houses is a problem as well as you inhale it. There are strict limits on radon gas in Sweden inside buildings. I assume the same is true for USA. This is a "normal" radiation source and there are ways to shield yourself from that. But what about limits for ingesting plutonium. You will hear of no safe limit for eating plutonium. None.
And I'd like to see this article's author be one of the brave Japanese nuclear plant workers that exposed themselves willingly to cancer-causing levels of radiation in order to get the fuel rod temperatures down.
Remember, the desperate times... if they had not done that, there was the likelihood the fuel rods would have melted into a self-heating, critical slag (China Syndrome). That would ultimately melt straight through the ground until underground water caused a massive steam explosion, with a much larger fallout area hit by radioactive debris.
You can't talk about some parameter in two different populations without talking about how the parameter was measured, specifically the sample chosen and methods used to estimate.
In Denver, people receive 0.3 rem per year excess radiation purely because of elevation. The sample we're talking about is everyone who doesn't live in a lead-lined house.
In Fukushima, presumably different people received different doses. What does "[some hot spots] showed radiation at the level of .1 rem" even mean? Did they measure? If they measured, how big was the sample? As an extreme example, suppose the estimate was based on measurements of a single person? Or did they estimate? Whether they estimated or measured, what do the data actually say? That the *average* exposure was .1 rem or the *maximum possible* exposure was .1 rem?
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Always casually avoided as a topic of discussion by those wishing to "sweep under the rug" the dangers of poor quality and poorly maintained nuclear power facilities are the hot particles. Everyone receives quit a bit of radiation naturally throughout their lives but 1/30 millionth of an ounce of plutonium dust into the lungs produces cancer 100% of the time. Industrial poisons are so easy to ignore because they don't cause immediate results. Rather, 10-20 years from now people who would otherwise normally be free from illness now face harsh morbidity and untimely death as a direct result of these carelessly tracked or just downright ignored deadly substances.
You may find that many cancers and mental issues were quite rare 60+ years ago.
You may also find that standardizing medical test results (and more testing) results in increased levels of various maladies.
----
The sane thing to do is stop testing.....
1. The author of the WSJ article is the same person who denied climate change while working for a Koch funded group with the purpose of denying climate change. He seems hardly unbiased or honest.
2. The claim about background radiation is not an accurate comparison. Background radiation comes from natural sources and is a different mix of isotopes. The ARTIFICIAL radiation people are now living among in Japan is a very different mix of isotopes with different energy levels and spectrums.
3. Internal and external exposure are quite different. Those wishing to cloud the issue or who have no clue what they are talking about will use inaccurate comparisons like comparing internal exposure to a plane ride. Not the same.
The reality about Fukushima is it is UNKNOWN what the outcome will be. Anyone making definitive statements right now either direction is being dishonest. Little bits of information are trickling out about exposures and damage but there is nowhere near enough of it to make big conclusions. There is also the problem of the govt. downplaying data. The current air dose readings in Japan are taken at the top of buildings in many cases. They give that much lower dose in big print. The calculated to 1m high dose is either not available or buried in the fine print. So people see the big print and get a false impression of the radiation level.
If you want to know what is going on in Fukushima go look at the factual information coming out. Don't take the word of some shill babbling junk in the WSJ. I would hope people on Slashdot would have more sense than to do that.
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/14/mutant-butterflies-a-result-of-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-researchers-say/
It'll still be a minute or two before I eat a cabbage grown near the plant, though.
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My faith in the WSJ has just fallen significntly.
"The maximum external dose recorded is 199 mSv (0.19 Sv), and the maximum internal dose that has been calculated is 590 mSv (0.59 Sv). The maximum total dose recorded to one worker was 670 mSv."
That's 19, 59, and 67 REM/HOUR. Not to mention these are actual readings from people who had geiger counters on.
http://www.hps.org/documents/ANSFukushimaReport.pdf
Straight from a recent and official Fukushima report.
American governments and corporations protect themselves above all else. Also, Japan has experience with radiation exposure and the long term effects.
I wouldn't say it's a completely irrational fear. It's been found to be true that many of the US of A's nuclear plants are subpar in some ways, especially against damage from earth quakes. There is a fault line in our area, and there is a power plant about one hundred miles from where I personally live. Many people think it to be foolish to worry about such a devastating event, but since this hype and fear, there have been at least two earthquakes in our area. This is something most people here were misinformed about. Then there were a few small quakes, which only caused some minor damage. One of them was actually pretty close to where I live. "That'll be the day" is the phrase that most people would have used to describe a situation like the disaster in Japan occurring in the area I live in prior to the recent quakes. I wouldn't say to rush out and buy a huge stock pile of potassium iodide, but it's important to have that around in an area like this one anyway. There is a base near by, and you never know. Nothing to have panic attacks over, but it's something to keep in mind. I heard that the disaster in Japan may have left many of the women infertile. This is disturbing to me because for a number of years, the Japanese have been allies to us. I have a cousin that was adopted from Vietnam, and I worry that their race may become extinct. Rational fear is healthy. Irrational fear causes more problems, like shortages of potassium iodide in areas where it really is needed immediately. Anyway, I wouldn't put my head between my legs and kiss it good bye just yet.
I also realize that the Japanese and Vietnamese are two distinctively different tribes, but you get my drift.
Why is the article using rem? rem is a complete obsolete unit for radiation. One that has been replaced by Sv since ages. Trust in WSJ fallen very strong.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
This article is Slashdot is very misleading because it ignores radiation dose rates. It implies that the dose rate in Denver is .92 REM per year, and then it states that "The 'hot spots' in Japan that frightened many people showed radiation at the level of .1 rem ...". REM per what? Per year? I think it is REM per hour, which gives an annual dose MUCH higher than what the people in Denver get--873.6 REM per year.
I see some misconceptions in the comments and offer some clarification. Having worked in radiation protection for a while (30 years this October) I'll offer some basic information.
Radiation can't be carried. If you get out of the radiation field, you get no more exposure. Think of getting out of the sun and you won't get a sunburn.
Radioactive contamination (radiation emitting material where it isn't supposed to be) can be carried with you. The type of the radioactive material, the chemical form of the radioactive material, and the solubility of the material will effect how it can be carried. The same factors will apply to bio-concentration of radioactive material.
The limits of exposure to radiation, both exposure and from radioactive material internal to the body, have limits based on studies published by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and the ICRP (International Commission on Radiation Protection) as far back as 1954. Some revision was recommended in 1976 in the accounting for internal dose received from internal radiation sources. The ICRP recommendations from 1976 gained the force of law in the United States with the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) revision to 10CFR20 (Volume 10 Code of Federal Regulations Section 20) in 1994. .. To paraphrase a bit on how this is implemented in the U.S.:
(Note to the non U.S. world: In the U.S. many still use the old CGS unit of REM as most radiation workers are accustomed to that unit. The SI unit of the Sievert was formulated in the 70s but didn't come into use in the U.S. until the 1994 NRC regulation revision. for reference: 100 Rem = 1 Sv)
The general public is limited to 0.1 REM per year from sources, internal or external, due to the operation of any licensed facility.
Radiation workers are limited to 5 REM per year. Most radiation workers work under administrative limits of 1 REM per year and rarely reach that.
If a worker gets an uptake (radioactive material taken internally) the amount is measured and the exposure he would receive over the following 50 years is calculated and assigned as his dose in his records for that year. If that exceeds a limit, the licensee is liable for severe legal penalties.
For reference: You get about a Rem a year for existing on planet earth with more at places with high background levels due to granite or basalt in the area such as Denver, Colorado or Reading, Pennsylvania. I once did an empirical experiment and wore a dosimeter when getting medical diagnostics. I read 0.1 rem for a Dental X-Ray and 0.2 Rem for a chest X-Ray. (Thermoluminescent Dosimeter tucked behind my ear while I was getting X-rays for a military physical.) I hope this puts things in a bit of perspective.
Radiation exposure from an accident at an electric power producing reactor will mainly be from a release of radioactive material to anyone but the trained radiation workers directly working on the facility.
What can escape? The main things that will get out are those nuclides that can be carried off in a steam plume.
What can be carried off in a steam plume?
Nitrogen 16: Activated Oxygen, 7 second half life, It will be gone very quickly.
Iodine 131: Half life of 8 days. Since it can be concentrated in the Thyroid it is a hazard to personnel. Prevention of exposure is to take Potassium Iodide pills to flood the system with Iodine so it won't be accumulated. Iodine 131 will be a problem for about a month and a half until it decays away.
Tritium (Hydrogen 3): 12 year half life. Radiation emitted is not very high energy. If taken internally treatment is to flush system by hydrating to flush it out. (I still giggle over the beer locker at a tritium producing facility I once worked at. If a worker got a Tritium uptake, they would be issued a 6 pack of beer to take home to flush their system.)
These are the main things that would be carried out in the air with a steam plume.
From an operational BWR (Boiling Water Reactor) the other
NRRPT/RCT
Cigars were popular for a long time and one big cigar must be equal to a few cigarettes.
I really need a cite here, but the explanation I got in school went like this, FWIW. Take it with a grain of salt, but it seems within shouting distance of the truth. It basically all comes done to particulate size and time of exposure. The smaller/"finer" the particulate size of the smoke, the deeper it gets into your lungs, the harder it is to get out, and the longer the exposure time it has for any carcinogens to wreck havoc.
Wood smoke from campfires has a large particulate size in the smoke. Burn an oak tree, and your nose and lungs do a pretty thorough job of filtering it out and hacking it back up. The thinking is that natural forest fires have been around long enough to actually influence evolution. This large particulate size is why putting sawdust in a pipe would be unpleasant.
Dried tobacco leaves have a smaller particulate size in their natural form than woodsmoke. Pipes and cigars produce smoke "finer" than wood, and carry carcinogens in the smoke, so pipes and cigars will produce higher rates of lung cancer than being downwind of a campfire. Additionally, since pipes and cigars sit on your lip for extended periods of time, they also produce higher rates of lip and mouth cancers.
Cigarettes produce extremely fine particulates that penetrate deep into the lungs. The particulates are fine enough that you have less ability to clear them out of your lungs, so you get even more exposure to the carcinogens. In addition, cigarettes undergo other industrial processes and additives that may contribute to the problem. This makes cigarettes by far the greatest danger.
Or at least, that was the explanation handed out in a public high school decades ago... :-) Consider it as reliable as the explanation of Bournelli's Principle. :-)
This was at least the explanation they were handing out in health class in public schools long, long ago. :-)
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