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Nuclear Safety Push To Be Softened After US Objections
mdsolar writes with news that the U.S. objects to a proposal to amend the Convention on Nuclear Safety put forward by Switzerland. The United States looks set to succeed in watering down a proposal for tougher legal standards aimed at boosting global nuclear safety, according to senior diplomats. Diplomatic wrangling will come to a head at a 77-nation meeting in Vienna next month that threatens to expose divisions over required safety standards and the cost of meeting them, four years after the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Switzerland has put forward a proposal to amend the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS), arguing stricter standards could help avoid a repeat of Fukushima, where an earthquake and tsunami sparked triple nuclear meltdowns, forced more than 160,000 people to flee nearby towns and contaminated water, food and air.
You do realize that it takes a while for cancer to be fatal, right? Generally years.
From the time my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer until her death was less than a month. She had had it for far longer, of course.
Most high level officials/employees in Japan are incredibly old.
I don't read AC A human right
So tell us how you cool a BWR
Depressurize. Core spray with fire trucks and sea water. Stop when temps drop enough to protect the zirc alloy cladding.
Big clouds of slightly radioactive steam for a couple days. No fuel damage.
containment vent system failure
Pure fiction. They prevented over pressure throughout the incident by manual venting.
How convenient it is to conflate the blame for mass suffering from the tsunami with the nuclear event.
Pretty convenient when you put the nuclear power plants right next to the sea and near a huge crustal rift.
not a single human has suffered any health impact due to radioactive releases from the accident
Holy shit are you unfactual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
Also, the impact was minimized BECAUSE THEY EVACUATED THE SITE.
Downwind, it's a shit storm too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
Again, minimized because of avoidance/restrictions.
Sounds like 'not a single human has suffered any health impact' to you?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Try looking for real perspective than repeating FUD and misreading facts;
http://link.springer.com/artic...
http://www.reuters.com/article...
http://blogs.scientificamerica...
http://news.discovery.com/eart...
http://www.insidescience.org/c...
After reading your references, yes, actually it does look like no one was injured by radiation. There is mention of a 70% higher risk of developing thyroid cancer and a 7% higher risk of leukemia and lower percentages for other cancers. To this level of risk I have to say "so what?". These increases in risk are far far lower than the increased risk of cancer just from being poor, or living down wind of a coal fired power plant, or being an airline pilot. Those are risks we all accept each day. This level of increased risk is laughable. You could probably more than offset this level of risk of death and injury by taking the bus instead of driving in a car for a month. Yes, the article mentions that there might be a lifetime risk of death of 2 to 12 onsite workers, which is immediately followed by a caution that the methodology used in calculating those numbers as a sum of risks for serial low level exposures is unproven and possibly suspect. It's also important to remember that the astronomical radiation levels reported during the event were from short lived isotopes of oxygen (oxygen-15 has a half-life of 122.24 seconds) and nitrogen (nitrogen-13 has a half-life of 9.965 minutes). Tritium with a half-life of 12.32 years was probably the most problematic, but given that it is hydrogen, it would have almost certainly diffused to negligible levels rapidly. Yes there was a release of some cesium-137 with a half-life of 30.17 years and strontium-90 with a half-life of 28.8 years, but we have a lot of experience with mitigating and dealing with the effect of these, to the point where the added risk is practically negligible compared to the other risks we face daily. I would expect the health effects of the panic, relocation, and losing one's home far outweighed any and all radiation risk. Or perhaps that was your point?