What are your thoughts about this situation? Should children really be allowed to play in a field contaminated with radiation that is constantly being absorbed through their skin and lungs into their bloodstream and tissues/organs? Why do you think this is taking place?
My reasoning is that the Japanese public does not know the full extent of the radiation problem, because the Japanese government is reluctant to release radiation measurements in order to suppress panic and protests. However, it may also be cultural. The Japanese seem to be very stoic and patriotic, which means that they would sacrifice their lives for their country.
This video portrays the view of the Fukushima nuclear disaster from the Japanese public's perspective:
As a non-Japanese, I have somewhat mixed reactions. I would never risk myself or my children to live in an environment where radiation readings are at the level as those in Fukushima and other areas of Japan. Although, I admire the resistance of the Japanese people to crises such as these, I'm not sure if it's a sheep mentality or if they are really stoic (or both). Some of the comments from the video above (2nd video) worry me. It seems as if the Japanese public are not concerned about their health at all.
Radiation-related health effects include infertility, increased cancer risks and birth malformations. And the effects are cumulative over the long-term, rather than short-term. Short-term high dose radiation exposure can kill someone within seconds to minutes, but this is different from long-term low dose chronic radiation exposure.
A study on Fukushima butterflies found severe mutations and abnormalities in newborn Fukushima butterflies and the severity of the mutations increased every successive generation, which means that the mutations are inherited and become worse over time. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-19245818
On May 11 2016 12:55 RapidTiger wrote: This equivalent to a full-body CT scan every 30 days!
Or eating 38 bananas a day!
Just putting an exclamation mark after an unscientific and vague measurement doesn't make it shocking. CT scans are not an accepted unit of radioactive danger.
Additionally you mention that the impact of the radiation is compounded over multiple generations of butterflies because each successive generation not only inherits the mutations of the previous but also endures the radiation poisoning. I'd say that this is insufficient to draw conclusions because people aren't butterflies and therefore you'd need to do human trials in order to actually draw a conclusion but given the vast difference in generation between butterflies and humans it's likely to not be an issue at all. It's like you'd said that the radiation was causing insects to have issues with their carapaces and were attempting to argue that we should be worried about the damage it could be doing to our own carapaces.
On May 11 2016 12:55 RapidTiger wrote: This equivalent to a full-body CT scan every 30 days!
Or eating 100 bananas a day!
Just putting an exclamation mark after an unscientific and vague measurement doesn't make it shocking. CT scans are not an accepted unit of radioactive danger.
I was gonna make a joke about this but after reading some article it said that a ct scan = 100,000 bananas
can we get some sort of confirmation on a banana to ct scan ratio?
7000/30 gives us 233 uSv/day. Divide that by 24 gives us 9.7 uSv/hr. Divide that by 6.1 uSv gives us 1.6 bananas/hr.
Oddly enough banana equivalent units are an accepted unit of radiation. The people getting this long term exposure are consuming about a banana and a half of radiation every single hour.
Using ehs.research.uiowa.edu and converting 5 rem to mSv to uSv. You get an annual allowable full body dose of 50000 uSv. So 5000 hours to reach your maximum annual dose at 10 uSv/hr. There's 8760 hours in a year so I guess you could hit your annual limit but I doubt it's a consistent 10 uSv/hr.
CT scan dose depends on which part of the body you scan, resolution, how new the machine is and even which brand. Its also more an approximation since its incredibly hard to measure. A serious scientist would not compare anything to a CT scan.
On May 11 2016 12:55 RapidTiger wrote: This equivalent to a full-body CT scan every 30 days!
Or eating 100 bananas a day!
Just putting an exclamation mark after an unscientific and vague measurement doesn't make it shocking. CT scans are not an accepted unit of radioactive danger.
I was gonna make a joke about this but after reading some article it said that a ct scan = 100,000 bananas
can we get some sort of confirmation on a banana to ct scan ratio?
This is correct. A CT scan = roughly 100,000 bananas.
On May 11 2016 12:55 RapidTiger wrote: This equivalent to a full-body CT scan every 30 days!
Or eating 38 bananas a day!
That's mathematically incorrect.
On May 11 2016 13:54 KwarK wrote: Banana is 6.1 uSv. CT scan is 7000 uSv.
7000/30 gives us 233 uSv/day. Divide that by 24 gives us 9.7 uSv/hr. Divide that by 6.1 uSv gives us 1.6 bananas/hr.
Oddly enough banana equivalent units are an accepted unit of radiation. The people getting this long term exposure are consuming about a banana and a half of radiation every single hour.
Edit: Corrected the math on my first response.
You're using incorrect figures there. The radioactive dose of a banana is 0.098 uSv. CT scans are generally about 10,000~30,000 uSv. So, on average, let's say a CT scan is about 15,000 uSv.
On May 11 2016 22:25 Nesserev wrote: Anti-intellectualism and pushing agendas at its best. Greenpeace does some great things, but whenever nuclear energy gets involved they love to turn it into a shitfest.
So what exactly about the documentary is contributing to this "shitfest"?
On May 11 2016 22:25 Nesserev wrote: Anti-intellectualism and pushing agendas at its best. Greenpeace does some great things, but whenever nuclear energy gets involved they love to turn it into a shitfest.
You being marked as from Belgium makes this statement funny. Because some of the country's atomic power plants aren't particularly up to snuff concerning structural integrity or above all security. Sweepingly discrediting Greenpeace's anti "everything atomic" campaigns seems fitting
Unfortunately it is indeed hardly informative. Another instance is the woman speaking about her berries having 6 becquerels and up when cooked, which means about nothing. For instance, human body radiates around 8 000 Bq, but without giving how much energy the 6 and 8 000 emitted particles per seconds have, this is completely meaningless in term of potential health hazard.
When speaking in sievert, the highest radiations shown (around 3 Sv/hr) are only half what you get when in a plane. It's higher than in the middle of nowhere, sure, but it is nowhere near an alarming level.
The Japanese isn't learning the lessons from Fukushima? I fail to see how the first cataclysmic event here in Japan just after four years should spark this total nuclear shutdown or "lessons to be learned." They definitely need to look into their practices (which they have been of course) regarding the care for nuclear facilities, but if you still compare this event to Chernobyl, Japanese handled the situation better despite how lazy they've been with their power plants over the past 10 or so years (if not longer). Greenpeace also mentions about how certain parts of Fukushima city and Iitate suffer from radiation above 7, but they fail to show us averages. They simply show us a few geiger readers and state "omg this area is filled to the brim with radiation." Would have been nice to see them show their works vs the governments work. Their website + Show Spoiler +
Jeez. They are getting the radiation equivalent of eating a banana every 17 seconds. That's just an insane level of radiation. Will someone think of the children!
Honestly, I can't help but fail to get why people are trying to debate over the subject of nuclear energy based on something written by Greenpeace...
It's not informative, not even useful. Just serves for misinformation and pure propaganda.
If you want to open a debate or speak about that subject, aim directly for scientific researchs and/or reports. There, you'll have data, supported by fact and stated hypothesis, that'll present objective facts.
I fail to see how you can pretend to be trying to discuss about something, whatever may the subject be, when you base your whole beginning statement on the work of someone (or of some organization) totally focusing on the 'good' or 'bad' thing of that something.
They don't even pretend to be objective. The next step of not being objective when you present something is rather to twist the facts or present them the way it fits you, or just straight up lie/invent things.
As a matter of fact, I just don't see how any good discussion can come up of that..
On May 12 2016 05:24 lord_nibbler wrote: You will not find a single space in Japan that is not near a vulcano or prone to earthquakes, it's Japan after all...
On May 11 2016 22:25 Nesserev wrote: Anti-intellectualism and pushing agendas at its best. Greenpeace does some great things, but whenever nuclear energy gets involved they love to turn it into a shitfest.
So what exactly about the documentary is contributing to this "shitfest"?
You call this a documentary? It's pure propaganda :/ - The only people that ever talked in this video were campaigners, or uninformed people. - No facts were supported, and statements lacked enough context or reasoning, but they were all presented in such a way to sound 'bad' or 'menacing'. - The government is not listening to their people, bwuehuehue - ...
Firstly, how do you know that the people that "ever talked in this video were campaigners, or uninformed people"? Are you saying that none of them were informed? Where's the objective proof to that?
Answer that question first, and then we'll have an objective discussion.
Radiation is strict science, it can be measured very accurately and down to specific gamma composition. If you want to talk seriously about such a controversial issue as radiation, you need to "bring out number, weight and measure"
Average background radiation in a clean area is around 0.075 uSv/hr, can be higher in an urban setting (I've read reports of up to 0.5 uSv/hr in Kiev for example). These levels may vary a lot from one place to another (especially if there was serious fallout or other artifical pollution), but 10 uSv/hr is extremely high and its not a range I would expect the government to be able to hide in an urban area. As a good comparison:
Chernobyl's middle school buildings provide an everage of 0.7 uSv/hr
The Pripyat city checkpoint entry has a 0.6 uSv/hr
The roofs of the highest buildings there reach 0.9 uSv/hr.
So the 10 uSv/hr reading at Fukushima city is approximately 10~20X higher than those of Chernobyl/Pripyat (where the Chernobyl nuclear disaster took place 30 years ago).
On May 11 2016 22:25 Nesserev wrote: Anti-intellectualism and pushing agendas at its best. Greenpeace does some great things, but whenever nuclear energy gets involved they love to turn it into a shitfest.
You being marked as from Belgium makes this statement funny. Because some of the country's atomic power plants aren't particularly up to snuff concerning structural integrity or above all security. Sweepingly discrediting Greenpeace's anti "everything atomic" campaigns seems fitting
I am glad that we can find on TL an expert on Belgian nuclear safety. Is that your job or is it more a hobby of yours to study technical reports?
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.targetmap.com/ThumbnailsReports/6329_THUMB_IPAD.jpg)
