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Fukushima Radiation Still Poisoning Insects
sciencehabit writes: Eating food contaminated with radioactive particles may be more perilous than previously thought — at least for insects. Butterfly larvae fed even slightly tainted leaves collected near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station were more likely to suffer physical abnormalities and low survival rates than those fed uncontaminated foliage, a new study finds. The research suggests that the environment in the Fukushima region, particularly in areas off-limits to humans because of safety concerns, will remain dangerous for wildlife for some time.
In other lingering radiation news, reader Rambo Tribble writes:
Forest detritus, contaminated in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster (abstract), is decaying at a much slower rate than normal, building up and creating a significant fire risk. This, in turn, is creating a real potential for the residual radioactive material to be distributed, through smoke, over a broad area of Europe and Russia. Looking at different possible fire intensities, researchers speculate, "20 to 240 people would likely develop cancer, of which 10 to 170 cases may be fatal." These figures are similar to those hypothesized for Fukushima.
Yup, unbelievably more likely. The suffering caused by coal is just more decentralized, so fucking idiots will continue to ignore it in favor of more easily visible problems. People are goddamn retards.
Radiation == bad, got that. What I didn't see in the article is any mention of baseline data. What was the radiation level in the area before the reactors blew their tops? What naturally occurring radioactive material was in the leaves fed to the butterflies? How much radiation did that produce? What is the rate of naturally occurring mutations in the butterflies without the radioactive cesium in their diet?
I've got even more questions about this study but they didn't seem concerned with actually collecting data, they wanted to tell us that radioactive stuff can cause mutations. We knew that, but they neglected to state how much of a real effect this has on the environment.
This "study" would probably be good for a "B" grade in a high school science fair. This does not look like something worth publishing in a scientific journal.
A few more quick thoughts. We can detect radioactive cesium in the grass miles from Fukushima. We can also detect the radio transmissions from a space probe that has left our solar system. Just because we can detect it does not mean it has any real effect on our lives.
Nuclear power is the greenest energy source we have in carbon output per kWh produced, even better than solar and wind. Yet we hear people scream, "What about the radiation!" I thought that if we don't reduce our carbon output now every coastal city will be under water in a decade. Seems to me that a few mutated butterflies is a pretty good trade-off to having the Statue of Liberty up to her neck in sea water.
The risk of having radioactive cesium getting blown miles from a nuclear reactor accident is something inherent to solid fueled/water cooled reactors. If we use liquid fueled/gas cooled nuclear reactors we remove that risk. Molten salt reactors simply cannot melt down and blow up like Chernobyl and Fukushima. Not only do MSRs not blow up they eat radioactive waste from current solid fueled reactors.
To get rid of the scary radioactive stuff we need more nuclear reactors, not fewer. We just need the right kind of reactors.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Those responsible for this study likely picked this species to serve as an indicator species. Indicator species must be indigenous to the area (check) and are generally the most susceptible to ecological upset (also check).
In high-profile environmental disasters (like reactor leaks), factors such as bio-amplification and bio-accumulation may lead to delayed consequences throughout an ecosystem; indicator species are used as canaries of sorts.
This seems to me like a commonplace study being somewhat misconstrued and given a click-bait headline (in the traditional Slashdot manner).
This is what the consequences of radionuclides in the food chain looks like. The next step are the lizards and birds that eat these insects. It's not surprising that this is hard to understand, because it happens so slowly.
We are seeing the slow consequence of releasing radionuclides into the environment, they are absorbed into metabolisms because they present as micronutrients that biota can utilise for growth and maintenance. Once ingested into the body they act in two ways.
The first, as alpha, beta and gamma emitters they act directly on the surrounding tissues to gestate cancers in the body, a process that takes about 6 years in humans depending on how energetic the radio isotope is.
The second is through genetic damage to the DNA. These damaged genes are passed down through generations and when certain combinations meet the result is transgenic disease.
These cover the radioactive effects of the emitter, however there is also some elements that are highly toxic as well which introduces a third vector based on toxicity. For those people directly exposed who ingested radio-isotopes at 3/11 it will be roughly 2017 when the cancer rates start increasing, following that bio-accumulation inserts a random period of time and distributions of radioactive materials before they are absorbed causing a statistical increase of particular types of cancer deaths in humans.
Over time we will no longer be talking about death rates but failed births and an overall reduction of the capacity for species, including humans, to reproduce. This will be coupled with a higher rate of mutations and abnormalities for successful reproductions. This will continue to occur for the halflife of the isotope multiplied by 20 daughter products before an isotope is benign. For sr90 with a half life of 600 years this means a 12000year decay cycle, for pu-239 it's a 500000 year decay cycle, from humanities perspective this is effectively permanent.
If anyone wanted a plausible explanation for the Fermi Paradox I believe this is a candidate.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Evolution has no apex. Humans are no more evolved than any other creature. Evolution is a process, it has no "goal" other then it's an expression we smart apes use to describe semi-random chemical connections that "work" better in their environment than others. Sometimes the "evolutionary" changes are a "positive", yet even our intelligence comes at a huge metabolic cost in comparison to the bulk of lifeforms (ie enough electricity to light a light bulb). When the planetary environment changes rapidly, even on a local scale from volcanoes, certain members of species inside the extinction area might have some quirk that makes it run a bit faster to escape so it reproduces. That's it, there is no "upward" driving force in evolution. We could evolve to be more stupid like Idiocracy if it meant life spread further.
Every time I see the word "radiation" used interchangeably with "radioactivity", I cringe.
And then I start wondering what else they got wrong....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The second article refutes you. There is a die-off of soil bacteria, so the fallen trees, leaves, etc are not rotting properly. This is currently on-going, and we just don't know if the radiation poisoning will work it's way up the food chain either. Mineral content in the soil will start to drop, trees might start dieing and basically starving. Russia might need to bring in fresh, non-radiated dirt and hope it's microbes colonize the now-dead zones, if it's not still too irradiated for them. Small microbes, thin cell walls, doesn't take much radiation to really damage and kill them. The animals have already had mutant offspring a few years afterwards but healthy animals have moved back in. Hopefully the soil microbes will either move back in too or have a radiation-resistant mutation that allows them to grow there again.
The oceans around Hawaii will probably be damaged too, and a huge swatch of Asia / Europe could be irradiated if the forests around Chernobyl burns all it's accumulating debris. I have no idea how much study has been done on plant growth rates in Japan after we nuked them; I doubt anyone there had the time or knew about soil die-off with all the other damage from the war.
Sadly Chernobyl was due to human stupidity and lack of communication. The equipment only failed because the head engineer purposely pushed the reactor and didn't even bother telling his engineers working in said reactor. Japan plant was also plagued with low-quality construction in addition to being built in a bad location geographically. Safety measures that should have worked failed, the valve that is still leaking is in a very tight space under several feet of highly radiated water, so radiated their submersible drones keep dying.