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Thread is about the various issues surrounding Japan in the aftermath of the recent earthquake. Don't bring the shit side of the internet to the thread, and post with the realization that this thread is very important, and very real, to your fellow members.
Do not post speculative and unconfirmed news you saw on TV or anywhere else. Generally the more dramatic it sounds the less likely it's true. |
On March 22 2011 06:03 NIJ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2011 05:26 dump wrote:On March 21 2011 22:59 Rabiator wrote:On March 21 2011 18:24 Danjoh wrote:When did a physics class in Uni (north of Sweden), one lab test was to measure radioactivity in mushrooms. For our class, we managed to get mushrooms from 3 different locations. -Hand picked from a nearby forest 1 week earlier -Canned mushrooms from the nearby supermarket (well known brand) -Dried mushrooms picked in Chernobyl 2 years earlier. The result, if I'm not mistaken was that Canned < Local <<<< Chernobyl in terms of radiation. (Tho, my memory is a bit hazy, the canned and local might have been the other way around). But all students were amazed that we managed to find radiation both in local, and canned. But niether of them came even near to the chernobyl ones. What's my point with this? Not anywhere in the article did they mention how much radiation they found, nor did they compare it to radiation from unexposed food. I read one explanation for the existence of radiation in mushrooms 25 years after Chernobyl. The reason is that the soil in forests is really good at storing the radioactive elements which we had as fallout from the cloud in central / northern Europe. Thus forest mushrooms = bad; industrial "cave mushrooms" = good. The mushrooms simply concentrate the radioactive elements present in the soil. http://www.leifiphysik.de/web_ph12/geschichte/11tschernobyl/umwelt.htmSince there isnt a huge radioactive cloud (at least we can assume the amount radioactive elements is limited) in Japan they might not have as big of an impact. There are too many small farmers in Japan who would be economically devastated if their small piece of land is useless due to radiation. I'm concerned that they're going to whip out their excessive food standards again and ruin a bunch of farmers' lives... I don't know what it's like nowadays, but last time I checked, every apple, every cucumber, every everything was selected meticulously to be absolutely spotless and perfectly shaped. It seemingly doesn't matter whether the fruit/vegetable still retains its taste or nutritional value; it just has to look like a work of art -- hence the disturbingly expensive produce in a lot of places. Even the smallest anomaly is enough to botch a ton of perfectly good food, so you can imagine what radiation from elements of decades-long half-lives would do even if it's minute. Ugly fruits get processed. Juices, mashed ingredients etc. Whether they like it or not, I'm sure it will end up in their tables for better or worse. Most people don't know where their food comes from. Even if they think they are putting an effort to be diligent.
The "problem" with radiation is the dosage and you could make poisoned food "safe" to eat again if you dilute the radiation to acceptable levels (mash them up and stir a lot with safe stuff). Obviously this isnt done usually, so it seems unlikely to be done on an industrial level (and consumers would probably mistrust such products in any case).
I can still remember that we had a whole train full of radioactive potatoes in Germany which had to be destroyed after being carted around the country for a while after teh desaster of Chernobyl (IIRC).
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The fact they have already found food with radiation is a bad sign since things like this are always just the tip of the iceberg. I expect farming in the region to be ruined for decades and fishing off the coast to be put under extreme scrutiny, justified or not.
Horrible situation which will only get worse (even if it isn't a catastrophe with a full meltdown).
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On March 23 2011 02:46 On_Slaught wrote:
The fact they have already found food with radiation is a bad sign since things like this are always just the tip of the iceberg. I expect farming in the region to be ruined for decades and fishing off the coast to be put under extreme scrutiny, justified or not.
Horrible situation which will only get worse (even if it isn't a catastrophe with a full meltdown).
it depends on how much radiation is being measured on the food
a lot of food items are inherently radioactive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose
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On March 22 2011 17:01 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2011 06:03 NIJ wrote:On March 22 2011 05:26 dump wrote:On March 21 2011 22:59 Rabiator wrote:On March 21 2011 18:24 Danjoh wrote:When did a physics class in Uni (north of Sweden), one lab test was to measure radioactivity in mushrooms. For our class, we managed to get mushrooms from 3 different locations. -Hand picked from a nearby forest 1 week earlier -Canned mushrooms from the nearby supermarket (well known brand) -Dried mushrooms picked in Chernobyl 2 years earlier. The result, if I'm not mistaken was that Canned < Local <<<< Chernobyl in terms of radiation. (Tho, my memory is a bit hazy, the canned and local might have been the other way around). But all students were amazed that we managed to find radiation both in local, and canned. But niether of them came even near to the chernobyl ones. What's my point with this? Not anywhere in the article did they mention how much radiation they found, nor did they compare it to radiation from unexposed food. I read one explanation for the existence of radiation in mushrooms 25 years after Chernobyl. The reason is that the soil in forests is really good at storing the radioactive elements which we had as fallout from the cloud in central / northern Europe. Thus forest mushrooms = bad; industrial "cave mushrooms" = good. The mushrooms simply concentrate the radioactive elements present in the soil. http://www.leifiphysik.de/web_ph12/geschichte/11tschernobyl/umwelt.htmSince there isnt a huge radioactive cloud (at least we can assume the amount radioactive elements is limited) in Japan they might not have as big of an impact. There are too many small farmers in Japan who would be economically devastated if their small piece of land is useless due to radiation. I'm concerned that they're going to whip out their excessive food standards again and ruin a bunch of farmers' lives... I don't know what it's like nowadays, but last time I checked, every apple, every cucumber, every everything was selected meticulously to be absolutely spotless and perfectly shaped. It seemingly doesn't matter whether the fruit/vegetable still retains its taste or nutritional value; it just has to look like a work of art -- hence the disturbingly expensive produce in a lot of places. Even the smallest anomaly is enough to botch a ton of perfectly good food, so you can imagine what radiation from elements of decades-long half-lives would do even if it's minute. Ugly fruits get processed. Juices, mashed ingredients etc. Whether they like it or not, I'm sure it will end up in their tables for better or worse. Most people don't know where their food comes from. Even if they think they are putting an effort to be diligent. The "problem" with radiation is the dosage and you could make poisoned food "safe" to eat again if you dilute the radiation to acceptable levels (mash them up and stir a lot with safe stuff). Obviously this isnt done usually, so it seems unlikely to be done on an industrial level (and consumers would probably mistrust such products in any case). I can still remember that we had a whole train full of radioactive potatoes in Germany which had to be destroyed after being carted around the country for a while after teh desaster of Chernobyl (IIRC).
well at the dosage of radiation they are reporting on the so called "tainted" food, it seems there isn't even a need to 'dilute' the food. So the problem will lie in the lack of demand for what public will avoid out of over caution, not really with whether the food is safe to consume.
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Well, then again he was 10 times more correct than 95% of the other "scientists" out there knowing it would be a new Chernobyl and that the whole area would be unhibitable for very very long. Seeing what little damage the radiation actually did we should be very happy and I don't get why this guy gets shit now because he was to a very large degree correct and not the others who were far from arn't getting any shit whatsoever, pretty sure they will quote "luck" as to why it didn't get worse.
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On March 23 2011 11:23 Yttrasil wrote:
I don't get why this guy gets shit now because he was to a very large degree correct
Reason for him "getting shit" is because he was to a very very large degree incorrect and spreading wrong information.
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http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/80435.html
Tokyo tap water has been found to contain increased levels of Iodine-131. Since the disaster, there have been small increases in the amount found in the tap water, but recently it has been measured at 210 Bq/kg, over the limit for infants, and close to the 300 Bq/kg limit for adults. This is possibly due to the rainfall we've been getting here over the past 2 or 3 days.
(Japanese source: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20110323/t10014850321000.html)
This value of 210 Bq/kg was taken yesterday. The values found this morning had a maximum reading of 190 Bq/kg.
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On March 23 2011 11:23 Yttrasil wrote:Well, then again he was 10 times more correct than 95% of the other "scientists" out there knowing it would be a new Chernobyl and that the whole area would be unhibitable for very very long. Seeing what little damage the radiation actually did we should be very happy and I don't get why this guy gets shit now because he was to a very large degree correct and not the others who were far from arn't getting any shit whatsoever, pretty sure they will quote "luck" as to why it didn't get worse.
"What little damage the radiation actually did" is a bit premature, dont you think? The crisis is far from over and no one knows if the bottoms of the reactor shieldings are intact or damaged. If they are damaged there might be a major contamination. Chernobyl wasnt just a cloud of radioactive things, it still is a large part of land which is unsafe to live in and certainly not safe to produce food in. They might still get that in Japan ...
I say we better count our chickens when they hatch and not before! Otherwise we arent better than those journalists who interpret the things scientists say to get the most dramatic headline. No one can say "nothing too bad has happened" and no one can prove otherwise yet. Thats the problem with radioactivity ... it takes time to see the effects.
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Northern Ireland1200 Posts
On March 21 2011 16:05 IntoTheWow wrote:+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/radiation.png) Did anyone post this? It's pretty interesting regardless of the situation right now. The media loves spilling numbers all over (not only in this case in particular) but never actually explain what numbers mean. "XXX millions were used on our country this year to do YYYY". Proportion is something really important when doing numbers and this graph puts things a little into perspective. Questions numbers when a paper writes "specialists say..." or "very high levels". If they knew their shit, they would posts the numbers they got and a comparison to show if they are dangerous or not. Or at least a source to who the specialists are...
I cant tell if that is actually true because of the troll in it lol
"- Using a cell phone (0 uSv)-a cell phone's transmitter does not produce ionizing radiation* and does not cause cancer.
* Unless it's a bananaphone
lol
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I work in a video game store, and so many people were coming in that were SO pissed off that they couldn't get there newest final fantasy game, because shipping was delayed due to the crisis.
I really got tired of having to placate these angry morons whose only sense of grief over this crisis was the delay of a video game.
Just wanted to rant.
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Russian Federation1893 Posts
Just came back from Vladivostok to Moscow.
Looks like people lost interest of this after Nuke-part of crisis decreased.
R.I.P. to all dead in earthquake/tsunami
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On March 24 2011 03:58 Rus_Brain wrote:
Just came back from Vladivostok to Moscow.
Looks like people lost interest of this after Nuke-part of crisis decreased.
R.I.P. to all dead in earthquake/tsunami
Thats media for you. Once it turned out their fear mongering was wrong they just sweep it under the carpet and invent another thing to spread fear about (i.e. Terrorists) and everyone forgets about it.
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On March 24 2011 03:58 Rus_Brain wrote:
Just came back from Vladivostok to Moscow.
Looks like people lost interest of this after Nuke-part of crisis decreased.
R.I.P. to all dead in earthquake/tsunami
What nuke part?
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On March 24 2011 02:51 mrp1nk wrote:
I work in a video game store, and so many people were coming in that were SO pissed off that they couldn't get there newest final fantasy game, because shipping was delayed due to the crisis.
I really got tired of having to placate these angry morons whose only sense of grief over this crisis was the delay of a video game.
Just wanted to rant.
Sadly the situation is similar in Japan, with people complaining about the power outages and the trains not being on schedule and all that. And I'm not talking hospitals or anything that requires power either; there are some really petty complaints that people are throwing around.
Just as a lot of people are incapable of comprehending the distance between Vancouver and Japan or the difference between mSv and uSv and Sv, many people seem not to be able to understand that they're victims of the rippling societal effects of the earthquake. It's just too big for them to wrap their heads around, I think.
There's also people fuming at foreigners leaving the country -- as if the Japanese weren't among the first to flee New Zealand after the quake there.
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Yeah, that the English-speaking media completely swept the issue under the covers, the US media seems to have their eyes on Libya after the nuclear plant issue calmed down and became less urgent.
The only way for me to keep up on this stuff is to read Japanese sites, which is extremely difficult at my level.
Most of the complaints I've heard were actually directed towards people not helping; I heard Pro Baseball and Pachinko parlors were still running and wasting electricity when conservation was encouraged, or government telling people not to panic buy but people still doing it.
From what little news I could understand, I also heard that rolling blackouts could inevitably extend not to just this summer and winter (because of heating/airconditioning demands) but even to next summer and winter.
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There is a nice update on the situation of the power plants and the radiation in the surrounding area at the website of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html
It is a depressing read though since there isnt any real progress to be reported on the reactors. Power might be available, but the technicians need to test the components before switching the stuff on. That was to be expected with such a complicated machine and the increased radioactivity doesnt help it either.
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"Japan's nuclear safety agency says 2 workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were taken to hospital on Thursday after being exposed to high-level radiation at the Number 3 reactor.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says the workers were standing on a flooded basement floor while working to reconnect power lines in the turbine building adjacent to the reactor. As a result, their feet were exposed to 170 to 180 millisieverts of radiation.
The workers were taken to a local hospital before being moved to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences for treatment.
A third worker was also exposed to the higher-level radiation but apparently did not require treatment.
The maximum level of radiation exposure allowed for nuclear plant workers in Japan is normally 100 millisieverts. But the health and labor ministry has recently raised that limit to 250 millisieverts for emergency crews at the Fukushima plant.
Thursday, March 24, 2011 16:46 +0900 (JST)"
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/24_41.html
On NHK news they aired some footage of firemen setting up the hoses to pump water and tepco operators working to restore power in the dark. Tough conditions. Very brave men.
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EPT
