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All Belgians To Be Given Iodine Pills In Case Of Nuclear Accident (phys.org)
mdsolar quotes a report from Phys.Org: Belgium is to provide iodine pills to its entire population of around 11 million people to protect against radioactivity in case of a nuclear accident, the health minister was quoted as saying Thursday. The move comes as Belgium faces growing pressure from neighboring Germany to shutter two ageing nuclear power plants near their border due to concerns over their safety. Iodine pills, which help reduce radiation build-up in the human thyroid gland, had previously only been given to people living within 20 kilometres (14 miles) of the Tihange and Doel nuclear plants. Health Minister Maggie De Block was quoted by La Libre Belgique newspaper as telling parliament that the range had now been expanded to 100 kilometers, effectively covering the whole country. The health ministry did not immediately respond to AFP when asked to comment. The head of Belgium's French-speaking Green party, Jean-Marc Nollet, backed the measures but added that "just because everyone will get these pills doesn't mean there is no longer any nuclear risk," La Libre reported. Belgium's creaking nuclear plants have been causing safety concerns for some time after a series of problems ranging from leaks to cracks and an unsolved sabotage incident. Yesterday, a nuclear plant in Germany was reportedly infected with a computer virus.
I highly doubt the failure of a Belgian nuclear plan will come as an accident. They're afraid of terrorist attacks on their nuclear plants, and are preparing by handing out iodine pills instead of eliminating the underlying threat.
But it is much cheaper to hand out iodine pills rather than deal with the terrorists or even to properly maintain an aging reactor.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
A couple plants in Belgium have bad safety records without a need for extra bad guys.
Unless the pills come with a warning less than two sentences long in large print explaining WHY the instructions should be followed*, this will hurt more people than it will save. Some people won't trust advice like "do not take this except in the case of a nuclear accident." They'll take them for their cold. They'll take them to treat cancer. They'll take them to see it it gets them high. And if, God forbid, there is an accident some will take disastrously large doses leaving others without. You could publicly distribute clearly marked salt pills and expect 10 cases of salt overdose within the week.
*and a huge public education effort as well
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
You don't use iodine pills to commit suicide!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The fossil fuel industry must be paying mdsolar a lot for him to post this much anti-nuclear bs propaganda.
Yes, you can overdose. Heck, you can overdose on salt or even water, and they are not normally considered poisons. If you want to play it safe, or if you don't have an iodine pill, the best thing to do when your local nuke reactor goes critical is to grab the little bottle of iodine that has been in the medicine cabinet for ages and smear the iodine solution liberally all over you. Your thyroid wants iodine and it is going to do what it can to get it, The reactor just released some nasty radioactive isotope of iodine. So the best thing that you can do is get the hell out of there and expose your body to as much non-radioactive iodine as you can safely, so that the thyroid takes up that rather than the nasty radioactive isotope.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Do I take radiation pills for an iodine accident?
Table-ized A.I.
They did this in Ireland about 10 years or so ago at a cost of a few Million Euro as Dublin is closer to the Sellafield Nuclear Power station in England than Leeds is. However the tablets had an expiry date of 3 years or so and it has never been repeated so that was a useful investment. :-)
Most of the "green" credit in politics here comes from shutting down stuff that has reached it's end of life anyway or getting close to it and getting free publicity for something that would be done anyway. Keeping that old plant going would mean serious rebuilds. Remember it's not just reactors - there's a lot of pipework under stress that doesn't last forever.
The real decision was made years ago because you can't have a civilian nuclear industry without building a reactor every few years so that the skillsets are not lost - so the choice was made to halt and we're seeing nothing but the tail of what was. Outside India, China and Russia the civilian nuclear industry is effectively dead and would require a very expensive restart before anything better than early 1980s technology (AP1000) can happen.
is now going to be a nation of ghouls!
It's perfectly safe and anyone who disagrees is a tree-hugging enviro whack-job!
This has been the case in Switzerland for some time. You get them when you first move to a "danger area". Then you rapidly forget where you've put them.
soylentnews.org
Given that Brussels, where the EU bigheads find themselves fairly often, is in Belgium this would appear to include them as well.
Wonder how long it'll be before the EU puts pressure on BE to actually make safe (however that needs to be done) the reactors in question.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
This must be the thinking of the early nuclear days of around 1945. Iodine pills will cause your thyroid gland to absorb the iodine from the pills, rather than radiated iodine from the environment (water, food, etc). That's great, because you don't want your thyroid going all super-mutant on you. But, radiation can have bad effects on you in more ways than messing up your thyroid! It would seem to me that if there were a nuclear incident, it would be better to evacuate, than to just sit there and take a couple of pills and think "OK, now I'm safe".
I'm usually in either Silicon Valley or western Nevada.
After Fukishima, but before the fallout cloud got here, I tried to get some iodine supplement pills, to load up on non-radioactive iodine before the cloud arrived.
Couldn't do it.
There were no iodine supplements in the drug stores, or the health-food stores.
Also no tincture of iodine, iodine-based water purification tablets at the camping stores (where it used to be available as a water purifier - and has since been replace by other chemicals, ultrafilters, and backpack-sized pressure-cookers.)
(Even iodized salt was hard to find - and would have been poisonous at the necessary levels absent major iodine extraction.)
A compounding pharmacy offered to make up some - for an exorbatant fee - but they didn't have potassium iodide or other iodine compounds in stock. They would have had to back-order it, and the pills would have taken a month (while the fallout cloud would arrive in a couple days.
WTF?
Turns out that it's a casualty of the Drug War. Iodine is used in some street-drug manufacturing process. So (like pseudoephedrine) the government has imposed massive red tape on sales to the general population. These make it unprofitable, so the major outlets have all dropped it and moved on to other things.
Many months later I heard someone being interviewed on a conservative talk radio show, suggesting that the government should stock iodine supplements around the country and make them available on a moment's notice for protection from radiological attacks and other events - and for people to stock them themselves. He and the host were lamenting that the stupid bureaucrats wouldn't take such an obvious preventative measure. If I hadn't been on my way to work at the time I'd have called in and told them "It's the Drug War, stupid!"
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
here, and do not forget that, if you see a mushroom cloud, you have to pick up the phone and call the local police!
Until now, everyone living within 20km of a nuclear power plant had to have immediate access to iodine pills. The High Council for Health (a scientific body responsible for giving advice concerning health regulations to the government) has advised to increased this radius to 100km, and the government has followed this advice. Everyone in Belgium lives within 100km of a Belgian, Dutch or French nuclear power plant. Hence, iodine pills for everyone.
Donate free food here
They didn't get the same "no child left behind" or "ebonics" cut-price education that would require what you suggest.
One thing I've learned over time is that idiocy is pretty universal. Us Americans just like talking about it more.
I don't read AC A human right
Those crying, leftist idiots, soon will be voted out by country population.
Because she didn't destroy security for all Europe, or even Germany?
Also, it's spelled "Merkel". If you can't even get that right, why should anyone listen to anything you have to say on the matter? Clearly you don't have a full grasp of the situation.
"Thousands of terrorists"? Are you really that scared? Or just massively ignorant? Either way you are not operating rationally, and seem woefully confused about reality.
I'm a Belgian and used to live 5 km from the Tihange nuclear power plant as a kid. We never received those pills. Never.
Anyway Belgium is tiny and has several power plants. Then there's one in France that's pretty much enclaved in Belgium (thanks, fuckers). If one of those goes Tchernobly/Fukushima, I doubt those pills would actually help anything.
They'd better phase out of this shit, but instead of that, they keep prolonging them. OTOH, to phase out you need credicle alternate energy sources. With this stupid country's chronic inability to actually decide and invest fast, we're nowhere near having enough alternate sources. We're actually getting further from such a scenario with the on-going fiasco of home owners solar panels.
Also: Germany is very concerned. They are phasing out of nuclear (by 2022), but what they don't want to be known too much is that they use coal plants to partly replace nuclear energy. Way to have a better environment, especially for neighbor countries. So yeah, maybe we should express concern about that too.
TL;DR: we're so fucked in this stupid country.
The verb "given" is slightly misleading since nobody will actually get any pills.
The pills will be distributed to pharmacists in the country.
Belgians will be able to retrieve (women and children first) their box of pills only after a nuclear incident has occurred.
What a surprise!
Those pills will be of no use. The Belgian media will just ignore it when a nuclear reactor explodes in order to not stigmatize pro-nuclear people. 'Constructive journalism' or whatever they call it. And weeks after the disaster, when enough people have complained about the colored media, they'll just claim that 'Nuclear power is save. This explosion has nothing to do with real nuclear power' followed by a crowd singing 'Imagine', lighting candles and a couple CEO's of the multinational energy companies who condemn disasters (that of course had nothing to do with nuclear power).
http://thesolutionsproject.org...
Rueters urges all nuclear plants be under international security control. http://blogs.reuters.com/great...
There have been drone incursions as well. http://m.smh.com.au/world/dron...
Chinese communists are old and no longer believe much in their own politics. That makes nuclear safety there somebody else's problem. There will inevitably be an accident at one of the cheap plants they are building, and it will topple the government, but probably not before these guys are dead.
There, fixed it for you.. This is all about dirty bombs, which terrorists are probably already in possession of.
It depends what you call a terrorist of course. Is a terrorist someone who blows himself up? Well we don't have thousands of terrorists. Is a terrorist someone who actively supports terrorists with logistics and money and safe houses? Well then we have a few thousand terrorist, but indeed 'thousands' seems to be an exaggeration. Is a terrorist someone who sympathizes with the radical ideology and sees them as heroes, without active support? Well then we have tens of thousands of terrorists.
Terrorism is a spectrum. Not only those will kill or blow themselves up are terrorists. The entire system can be seen as a terrorist organization. It is up for debate where the boundaries of the system are.
All those post-democratic problems are a symptom of a failing state. This article is about nuclear power. Although a majority of the population wants them gone, and that's a fact for over 15 years, the last government decided against the will of the majority, and didn't close them at the agreed date, but even prolong their existence for another (at least) 10 years.
This decision was made by the industry against the will of the population. Practically all of the western democratic countries have the same post-democratic problems. In the US it's the same as in the EU. The US has Trump as anti-establishment, Europe has many more (less known because the EU is still a collection of smaller independent states). These politicians are all symptoms of the failing democracies.
They are in fact a voice against the left wing liberalism, against the so called political correctness, the propaganda that diversity is only good, that multiculturalism is the only way forward etc. For me personally multiculturalism is the opposite, it is mono culture. Regional languages are disappearing and are replaced by mono cultural Americanism. From East to West, South to North, everyone watches television or youtube, everyone watches the same programs or plays the same games. Local cultural initiatives no longer survive. Small sport and culture clubs can't survive the high amount of bureaucracy and the infiltration of incompatible cultural elements (this last element is a non recognized but real problem, it is still a taboo to talk about this problem). Many people have had enough but politicians don't listen. And this is why extreme politicians become so popular. Instead of looking at the real problem and listen to how the people feel, the current people in charge decide to focus on the messenger and ignore what is on peoples mind.
How the fook is this bombastic claim a "+5 Informative" without even an attempt at a citation?
MDSolar is, obviously, pushing solar electricity — which competes with nuclear he hates — but the rest of us, presumably, aren't so biased.
Has /. been infected with sock-puppets upmodding the masters and downmodding opponents? That would explain the overall trend towards Socialism here — which, incidentally, MDSolar also shares.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Next time I hear Europeans talking shit about fat Americans I'm going to show them her. She's as big as 3 Americans!
If you read that, you'll see I oppose a carbon tax. So, your claim seems unsupported.
Different energy range and particle composition. You seem confused.
Cause only real men hide in white robes and murder the people they are scared of.
You are completely wrong about radiation release from fossil fuels. https://slashdot.org/journal/2...
http://www.chernobylreport.org...
Only because you prefer "regulation" — which is even worse for its arbitrariness.
But you would not deny being a Socialist either. Which is curious, because this would've been a perfect opportunity to do so. Instead, you chose to remain coy.
Why wouldn't you simply state for the record, that you do not approve of Socialism?
Your favoring of regulation to smother an activity you dislike certainly indicates that you are one. Modern Socialists have shifted from the Marx' "government must own means of productions" to the seemingly milder "government must regulate means of production". It is more convenient that way — being owners, government officials may be asked inconvenient questions about the failures (as is the case with public schools, for example).
But when you regulate something to death (such as rail-roads, mortgage-lending, air-travel, or healthcare, or Internet-service, or indeed, the power-industry) the blame falls on the "evil KKKapitalists", who nominally own the banks, airlines, hospitals, ISPs, and electric plants. You can then "save" them with subsidies and bailouts, which, naturally, give you a right to attach additional strings and impose more regulation. Voila, government control of the means of production (and service-provision) is further solidified...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
A terrorist is someone who uses violence or the threat thereof to enact political change. So no, you can't just say "it's a spectrum" and include anyone you want. Well, you can, but it's illogical and anyone with more than a fleeting familiarity with critical thinking knows you are off your rocker.
So yeah, you are an Anonymous Coward par excellence.
http://www.chernobylreport.org...
We have had these pills for as long as i can remember, the only difference is that now everyone gets them, not just hose living close to the nuclear plants or research centers. But since this is a tiny country it's only a small part of the population that didn't already have them.
Just not as easy to fix. Cesium and strontium are both a problem https://vceenviroscience.edubl...
No wonder Europeans/hipsters use Western Europe as a paradise for bike lanes/WiFi/carbon taxing. 100km wouldn't fit into some counties in the US.
US debates plan to hand out ice cubes in case of global warming.
In Poland, after the Chernobyl blew up, every child was given Lugol's iodine. It was a quick decision, very easy to execute.
Why? Because, being a communist heaven and potential nuclear wasteland with places in nuclear shelters only for those "more equal", it was decided that in case of WW3 every survivor was to be given a dose of Lugol's iodine and because the government has made a reasonable assumption that some/most pharmacies were going to be destroyed, every pharmacy had to have a reverve of Lugol's iodine times 1000.
1 millions young muslim bulls were let into Europe by leftist governments, skipping all identification procedures. Let's assume only 1% percent are ready to blow up yourself IS radicals. That is 10 000 terrorists.
We have huge problem on our hands, because of irresponsibility of German politicians, Europe again is on fire.
In common fictional TV shows, nuclear disasters ALWAYS end with a big flashy atomic mushroom cloud. Also, radiation kills people in about 5 to 15 seconds after giving them epileptic seizures.
Due to the way certain news agencies presented facts, some people honestly believe that Fukishima had three atomic explosions that killed 10,000 people.
And then they pray to there imaginary sky fairies for help. Sadly there are entire TV channels dedicated to just that specific retardation.
The EU gang led by Merkel are too arrogant to accept that have goofed up over this uncontrollable surge of terrorism.
I can see a civil uprising happening in Europe due to this mindless situation. We the Belgian people can see that we are losing our identity.
In some areas of Brussels there are people on the streets confiscating alcohol and telling people how to behave. Worse than that, we encourage extremism-allowing discussions on Sharia Law, allowing places where Sharia Law can be conducted and allowing extremists to speak at our universities while banning others. VOTE OUT. VOTE TO KICK OUT ANY AND ALL EXTREMISTS!
Surprised? No! We are losing our Country and no one is listening , So sad for future generations as Benelux will be unrecognisable, thanks to the wretches who govern us.
You rape little children.
I work at a nuclear power plant. They don't hand out iodine tablets to us. You know why? Because the plants are safe and the dangers of living near one are overstated by a jittery public who believe everything they see and hear in the media. The iodine tablets are handed out by the local government to people living in a 10-mile radius of a plant as some false reassurance that it'll save them in the event that something happens at a nearby nuke plant. Pretty much a placebo affect.
The real deal is that radioactive steam from a boiling water reactor is only radioactive for less than a minute (radionuclides in water and steam have a half-life of 7 seconds... we can walk up to the turbines as soon as the reactor is shut down).
The other mass-media fallacy is terrorism at nuclear power plants. For starters they're very secure places - 25-30% of a plant's workforce is armed security. Very well trained and armed security with authorization to use deadly force to those who try to get past the physical barriers in place. The physical barriers include 20-ton concrete blocks interlocked around the entire fence line, razor wire / barbed wire, motion sensing equipment, and fortified security huts around the perimeter of the plant that are staffed 24/7. Not too different than what you see at military Q areas and maximum security prisons. Assuming a bad guy can get past all that without being turned into swiss cheese - he would need to know how to navigate through the maze of passageways to get to the reactor building - and someone's ID card with the appropriate level of physical access to the vital areas of the plant - all heavy fortified doors. Should he amazingly by some miracle make it into a reactor building alive - he'll find that the drywell / primary containment is sealed off by very locked and heavy doors (and even if he did get in - the heat and radiation would render him useless quickly). OK - so now he has to get up to the refueling floor. Oh - guess what - the spent fuel in the pool is 40 feet under water. Hope be brought SCUBA gear with him. Once he gets a fuel assembly up out of the pool - the radiation and heat coming from it will kill him pretty quickly. Getting to the reactor pressure vessel itself - the heat and radiation once you get the 8-foot thick concrete and lead shield plugs, drywell head, reactor pressure vessel head, and steam dryer up out of the reactor - then super hot deadly radioactive fuel assemblies are waiting to kill him as well. Good luck with all that.
OK - so what about the fuel that's stored in casks outside. Again - they're within the secure boundary of the plant (inside the fence)... and assuming he can get in the sealed concrete vault and pull out the 100-ton cask stainless steel cask that's bolted and/or welded shut - then sure, he can grab the still highly radioactive fuel assemblies that will still kill him before he can do anything meaningful with it.
Oh and finally, once word gets out that some terrorist is in the plant - the reactor operators (in another building away from the reactor) gonna scram the reactors and shut everything down anyway limiting any potential damage that someone can do.
Oh and so far this year I've received less radiation than I get from my annual dental X-rays.
So yeah - little to worry about there folks. Unless you're running a graphite moderated plant along a major earthquake prone fault line at sea level run by total retards in a plant with no security whatsoever - then maybe you might want to think about stocking some iodine tablets - just in case.
Why not just say "LEARN TO SPEAK AMERICAN!" and save me from sitting through a fucking advertisement before making it to some sort of joke as lame as mine above?