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Elevated Radiation Claimed At Tokyo 2020 Olympic Venues

Posted by samzenpus on from the mutant-games dept.

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."

11 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Fukushima or naturally occurring by TurtleBay · · Score: 5, Insightful

    '"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.

    1. Re:Fukushima or naturally occurring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Slashdot has been posting sketchy articles lately, they're becoming the CNN of the internet. Worthless babble, and it gets worse when you read the linked stories. The one thing posted on the slashdot report is the fact they said "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" and then then a commenter

      "

      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."

    2. Re:Fukushima or naturally occurring by AK+Marc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      There's nothing we can do about background radiation. It's coming from the radiation in the rocks and such. The only way to get away from that is move, and even then, you'll end up to other radiation.

      There is no such thing as "safe" radiation, so eliminating all man-made causes is a good thing, even if the levels are lower than background in some areas.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    3. Re:Fukushima or naturally occurring by greg_barton · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is no such thing as "safe" radiation

      Horse shit. If that were true all life on Earth would have been wiped out long ago.

  2. New proposal. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All stories about radiation not intended for a specialist audience should measure radiation levels in 'bananas/year.'

    1. Re:New proposal. by nickersonm · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The highest reading mentioned in the article, 0.484uS/hr, is approximately 1.07 Denver, or 0.96 Boulder. Exact values are hard to find, but it seems Denver is around 4mSv/year, and Boulder is ~4.5mSv/year, which is about .45 and .5 uSv/hr.

  3. So we can't have a debate than by DarkOx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  4. Re:2020 by thesupraman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And sadly, for them, they will be exposed to much higher levels of radiation in the aircraft flying to japan - lets hope they all take ships!

    Oh, and for a bonus they can avoid eating bananas, why havnt those radioactive horrors be banned yet? think of the children!

  5. OMG! The possibility! by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  6. Huh? by sjames · · Score: 3, Insightful

    '"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?

  7. Re:2020 by Christian+Smith · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sigh, more misdirection and sleight of hand from the nuclear power lobby.

    The risk to health in Japan is from ingestion ... . Conflating these real risks with bananas and flights is unethical and misleading.

    What do you normally do with your bananas? I certainly ingest mine.

    And I don't think athletes will be ingesting much water from the storage tanks, broken or not.