Olympic Organizer Wants To Feed Athletes Fukushima Produce

New submitter Grady Martin writes: Toshiaki Endo, Japan's government-appointed parliament member in charge of planning for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, has expressed hopes of supplying the Olympic/Paralympic village with foods grown in Fukushima [Google's autotranslation], stating, 'Using foods from Fukushima in the village is another possibility. I wish to strengthen ties with ground zero in numerous ways.' Would you eat it?

Comments

Re:Yes.

[AmiMoJo]

Reading comprehension failure. I didn't say that the equipment wasn't accurate, in fact I'm sure it is. I imagine it is properly calibrated and checked regularly. That's not the problem.

Sample size is an issue. If you test a large sample with a single detector it might give a low reading for say a palette of vegetables. The problem is that one vegetable might have a dangerous concentration of cesium, but it averages out over the palette. That's actually how the test is done by the way, it's not just speculation, and NHK demonstrated this failure mode is possible.

I prefer testing and proof over speculation and assumption.

This is a common mistake made by nuke fans. They think that because there is some equipment that checks fit some problem they can assume it is taken care of. In practice, it requires someone to design a test and others to carry it out correctly.