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Photos Show The Lingering Radioactivity At Chernobyl And Fukushima (mashable.com)
mdsolar quotes a report from Mashable: In areas of Russia and Japan that have been decontaminated by the government, allowing for people to move back, life has tried to continue but evidence of radiation remains. Greg McNevin, a photographer working with the environmental group Greenpeace, set out to visualize the radiation that persists in many of these areas. The resulting project juxtaposes radiation data onto long exposure photographs from the affected regions. Using a programmable LED rod that when connected to a Geiger counter (a device that measures ambient radiation) translates the analog signal into a light display, McNevin walked through long exposure photographs he was taking of affected areas, showcasing the live radiation data his counter was reading.
Here is something actually useful. http://ramap.jmc.or.jp/map/eng...
It is a map of the area surrounding fukushima with radiation measurements in microsieverts
The pictures are indeed quite deceiving.
"A school in Starye Bobovichi, Bryansk Oblast, Russia.", oh my, look at that white trail of radioactivity going up the stairs of that school!
Then you read the explanation: the bars are just where the guy passed with the detector, and white means "background radiation". That means that there's absolutely no extra radiation at all. But that's not what it looks like when uninformed people see the picture.
Then orange and red mean a "higher radiation dose". How much higher? Twice the background level? Three times? Ten times? That's still way less than you get when living in the mountains or visiting a Brazilian beach.
If they would make the same kind of pictures in other places, they would look the same or a lot worse while no nuclear incident has ever happened anywhere near them, and local people are perfectly healthy.
The only picture that worries me, is the one of the nursery school in Soramame Fukushima City. Radiation levels there are so low there, I wonder if those children are getting enough bananas.
The artist is welcome to do my basement, my house is built on granite and radon gas is a recognized problem in this area.
They're welcome to do Ontario too. My house is built on limestone and radon is a recognized problem here as well, some parts of Southern Ontario have higher radon levels then Michigan where the homes are built directly on granite and require venting. The problem of course, is that radon detection isn't a requirement here, even though it's one of the leading causes of lung cancer in Canada for non-smokers. But I can go out on a 10 minute walk and find entire neighborhoods in my city where radon venting is done, and one area where the levels are so high that building houses was fully scrapped back in the 1970's and was considered a threat to human health. The area is was built over as a park in the 1990's, but they had to install a mitigation system to reduce the chance that people would develop lung cancer even being in the open air.
The photos are interesting and have artistic merit, Greenpeace however are just behaving like cancer. I support environmental awareness and have done since the 70's but I regard Greenpeace as an enemy of the environment because of their moronic publicity.
Agreed, artistic merit but that's about it. Greenpeace has long since become a hyper-partisan political group, and they'll happily whine about nuclear power, or GMO foods while people die from lack of refrigerated medicines, foods, or simply starving to death. A good reminder is that Greenpeace is against drought resistant corn(for Africa), and vitamin A-enhanced rice(for Africa and Asia), despite millions of people either dying due to a lack of food or having increased serious illnesses risk or other serious health problems(like childhood blindness which is easily treatable) due to a lack of proper nutrition.
Om, nomnomnom...
Bingo. It doesn't have to be scientifically accurate or in any way meaningful, it just has to be bounced around on social media with a scary caption to the point where the FUD moves faster than the facts. Standard Greenpeace MO. Notice how they opted to use images of schools and nurseries too, gotta work in that nice 'think of the children!' bonus.
Its even worse than that. They claim they can distinguish between background and Chernobyl radiation, but that is impossible to do with a radiation detector. What they erroneously assume is that background radiation is steady, and that all that changes while you walk around are due to Chernobyl. This demonstrates the ignorance of the author, because background radiation varies as you move around, and probably accounts for all of the measured radiation they show.
Evidence of their ignorance is even further shown in the schoolhouse, where they assume there is no background radiation.
Basically, they just arbitrarily decided what to call Chernobyl radiation. They have no clue.
Chernobyl is not in Russia. It is in Ukraine. It is closer to Belarus than to Russia. To travel from Chernobyl to Bryansk, you would drive about 500km cutting across Belarus. In contrast, Kiev is less than 150km from Chernobyl, directly down river. Why not photograph a school there? It is hard for me to believe that Bryansk is a scarier place for radiation than Kiev.
It seems to me like a Schrodinger's cats fight. You are both right and wrong at the same time.
You just do not take into account there is no such thing like two types of radiation: internal vs external. These are only the exposure to the actually four types of radiations: high-energy photons (UV, X-rays and gamma-rays), beta radiation (electrons in fact), alpha radiation (helium nucleus or any other atom fragments) and neutrons. Some of these are actually blocked by the skin and a very thin layer of it in fact and others are not.
But skin cancer is due to exposition to high-energy photons which are penetrating (think about why we use X-rays in first place).
However, it is true, if the radioactive isotopes are ingested, they are much more likely to reach, damage critical organs and cause death. It doesn't mean exposition to radiation without ingesting it is harmless.
So, in conclusion, both arguments are strictly wrong. Opening the box shows us both cats are dead.
Achille Talon
Hop!