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Elevated Radiation Claimed At Tokyo 2020 Olympic Venues
An anonymous reader writes "A citizens' group in Tokyo claims to have found elevated levels of radioactivity at 39 sporting venues earmarked for the 2020 Olympic Games. Expert and organizers are cautious about the findings but see no problem, as the levels do not pose an immediate threat to human health. From the article: '"It is difficult to have this debate unless we know for sure whether this radiation is from Fukushima or whether it is naturally occurring background radiation," said Pieter Franken, founder of the Japan office of the environmental monitoring organization Safecast."
to allow the glowing comments about the athletes.
Lucky for them, 2020 is a few years away. Less lucky for them (and us), another earth-quake, breaking the spent-fuel pools and creating havoc can happen any time...
...Mother Nature experiments with her creatures, giving them longer legs, sharper claws, or in this case, radioactive super powers. If she finds the changes favorable the creatures will multiply and a new race of superhumans will be created. I would not mind having super powers, would you?
to Utah's natural background radiation?
...in the three-eyed poll vault and a dramatic uptick in hulk-related pants shredding.
'"It is difficult to have this debate unless we know for sure whether this radiation is from Fukushima or whether it is naturally occurring background radiation" -Pieter Franken. I always find this sentiment a little odd. People care too much about if the radiation is measurably above background radiation or what the source of the radiation is. What they should care about is if the radiation is at a dangerous level. We have gotten better at measuring this stuff, so just because we can measure (very small) increases in radiation from Fukushima doesn't mean we should change our lives around it. Anything that is on the same magnitude as background radiation is pretty much safe. For example, you get increased radiation from flying in a plane because the atmosphere is much thinner. Also, natural radiation is much higher near the poles than near the equator, but nobody gets upset about this because it is "natural" like kale.
Why do we care whether its from background or not? The only thing that matters is whether it will cause significant harm to anyone. If you can't tell the difference, it's probably entirely irrelevant in terms of health effects.
Brett
Using my Safecast Onyx (hi Safecast folks!) I measure ~0.32 uSv/h in Dublin, next to a granite wall (granite is everywhere around here, and naturally radioactive). The article speaks of of 0.484 uSv/h, not much higher than that. On an airplane at cruising altitude I get about 2.0uSv/h. At home I might see 0.08uSv/h, and in the middle of the street somewhere around 0.15uSv/h. *
I just visited japan and took the Safecast everywhere I went. At no point did it go significantly above what were normal background radiation readings in Dublin (not even when I was passing by Fukushima station, though admittedly that was on a high-speed train).
Radiation is everywhere. Unless you can identify the source as the Fukushima disaster, it might be perfectly normal. Even if the source is Fukushima, at low levels, at some point you have to stop worrying about it and realize that plenty of other places on Earth have higher naturally occurring background radiation.
* Rough numbers pulled from memory in CPM and converted to uSv/h using the conversion factor in the firmware source code, since my Onyx battery is dead at the moment. Take with a grain of salt.
All stories about radiation not intended for a specialist audience should measure radiation levels in 'bananas/year.'
So what's a little more rads here and there anyway. The tidal wave killed more than the failed reactors (20000 versus 0). These acts of god need to be addressed first and foremost.
It is difficult to have this debate unless we know for sure whether this radiation is from Fukushima or whether it is naturally occurring background radiation
For anyone considering going then you can't know, and at this point it matters little what anyone says. There have been so many denials, and incorrect information put out by TEPCO and the government there how could anyone trust anything they say now?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
This appears to be the letter and the data that started all this:
http://olympicsokuteikai.web.fc2.com/encontents.html
Perhaps the most crucial part of the letter is this:
"Just before the Fukushima power plant accident, the mean value of the atmospheric radiation in Tokyo was estimated as 0.04 Sv/h, and radioactive Cesium was almost non-existent. Therefore, atmospheric radiation value above this level can be regarded as the effect of the nuclear accident."
Is that a valid assumption?
Once again, possibility is not the same as probability.
Yes, it's possible that the elevated radiation levels will cause problems. Now, what's the risk, and what's the tradeoff between mitigating *that* risk versus mitigating some *other* risk?
Security is a tradeoff, always. The value of something is not the face value, but the face value times the probability of occurrence.
So if the probability of damage (say, the number of people getting cancer from going to the event) times the value of damage (taken informally as $1 million per human life lost, but depends on estimates and philosophy) is higher than other foreseeable risks, then we should address the problem.
Risks shouldn't be ignored, just compared to other risks. If the utility losses for other risks are higher, then we should spend our finite resources on the other risks first.
How much risk utility is embodied in this problem compared to, say dying from accidentally swallowing (and choking on) a bee?
...but journalism must sell news. I suppose someone swallowing something wouldn't be very interesting.
'"It is difficult to have this debate unless we know for sure whether this radiation is from Fukushima or whether it is naturally occurring background radiation,"
So as long as it's natural it doesn't matter how strong it is but if it's from the plant then any amount is too much? I wasn't aware that natural radiation was safer than man-made radiation, when did that memo come out?
Saw a documentary once about this irradiated Japanese Olympic sight. Don't worry about extra drug testing, but DO bring along your targetting device for your space laser.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
And planes. And travelling significantly north or south toward the poles. And granite (mountains, countertops, building facades).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Why should we care, really? Thousands of dollars to get there, thousands of dollars to stay, thousands of dollars to see the events. There are only two kinds of people there - (1) athletes who are sucking off the generosity of others and producing nothing but entertainment and (2) very rich people. I'm going to just tick off both of those boxes as expendable.
If I remember by Navy nuclear training correctly, the half life of Cobalt 60 is 5.27 years and it is one of the largest sources of radiation from fission decay products. It's a half off sale, take those measurements and lower them by 50% folks!
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
I would say the evidence must be reviewed and evaluated and considered regarding the upcoming Olympic Games event.
Just do it.
Apparently, scientists in Japan are extremely concerned that Japanese users of Twitter are frequently reporting spontaneous nosebleeds.
Is it only Twitter causing nosebleeds or are other social media site users presenting similarly?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
I think the a three-eyed fish mascot named "Isotoppu" would be appropriate.
I see the anti-nuclear camp blending fire detectors and dusting them all over the place to ensure Fukushima is "taken as seriously as it deserves!"
Will 3-legged mutants be allowed to participate in the games?
They kicked out Rudolf for having an iridescent nose.
Table-ized A.I.
In many mountain region you get more than that per year, without even getting to extremes like those region with highly abnormal radioactive background (like that water source in iran). An example of that is limoge in France : 4 mSv.year-1 is quite the norm due to the geology.
You are stupid. Meteorites are no immediate threat until you get hit by one, but do you wear a hard hat every time you go outside?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
We have a distinct lack of knowledge of what is hapenning at low radiation level. The precautionary principle and some funky linear regression made us say there is no "safe radiation level", but this is not a fact. There are quite a lot of indication that the linear model is false. Look up Radiation hormesis. The most well known case indicating that the linear model is wrong, were steel bar used in building which were contaminated with radioactive cobalt, people lived 10 years irradiated with a factor of magnitude more than 10 time above the local radioactive background, and there was no increase in cancer/leukemya. IIRC it was in hongkong or Seoul, somewhere in that region.
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spain should host 2020 olympics..
I bet the movie how ever crap it is, will be a hit.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Well, that's the Olympic motto, "Faster, Higher, Stronger" so I'm sure a bit of a radiation boost can help.
Why is it that 'citizen's groups' are (almost) always so unrepentantly dumb?
If they're concerned about those dosage levels, they had better guard the banana stockpile and ensure that athletes don't ingest too much radiation!
*insert pithy sig here*
That these people will ON TOP of normal exposure to radiation suffer additional exposure?
Gosh, it is a good thing radiation isn't cumulative... oh wait.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So, elevated levels of radiation in Tokio... hmmm.
Have they already measured the levels in the water of Tokyo Bay? And what about the seismographs? Already checked these ones?
Well, I guess we all know what's coming. I would start preparing a replacement for the Tokyo Tower as we all know how fond Gojira is of crushing it every time he visit the Nippon capital.
-- 29A the number of the Beast