Forget Covid, Fukushima is what you should be really worried about

[CapnBazza]

Originally Posted by UFO

So after losing a couple of nuclear cores, creating a law which gives monster fines and 10 years in prison for any journalist to report anything but the government line, they are now going to release over a million tons of contaminated water straight into the ocean - But of course its been cleaned and is Totally safe


So get off your covid high horse and think about what this actually means.

So here in the Southern Hemisphere, New Zealand and Australia have done our best to restrict the impact of Covid19 with a significant degree of success. It appears that “The Economy” is more important than people in other places. Nevertheless, just what do you suggest we do about Fukushima instead of dealing with Covid19?

[sdowney1]

They are treating the radioactive waste in the water by dilution in the ocean, get rid of pollution by dilution. They can not do anything else with it. The damaged plant will also be leaky for ever.

[barnakiel]

I think a risk from a controlled release is small.


I remember seeing some images of much bigger, intentional uncontrolled releases - done by the US (Bikini) and France (Mururoa).


Can't remember CF members protesting about that.


b.

[Boatyarddog]

Originally Posted by roverhi

First, much of the Nuclear Power Plant waste can be recycled and reused to produce power. It's only misguided fear of nuclear proliferation from the '50s that has kept it from being recycled.

Second, there is a viable plan that has been available for years to safely store nuclear waste that can't be recycled. Unfortunately a sleaze ball former Senator from Nevada and the anti nuclear crazies have kept it from being used.

Nuclear power is the only viable 'Clean' means of electrical generation besides Hydro. Both of which are violently opposed by the those supposedly fighting for clean power.

If the back up generators to power the cooling pumps had been placed on the roof of the plants instead of on the ground there would have been no melt down at Fukushima. There was virtually no radioactive material released from 3 Mile Island. Modern nuclear plants are designed so they require no emergency back up power source in the case of a power failure. You can buy tritium gun sites at any gun store and probably Walmart.

"There was virtually no radioactive material released from 3 Mile Island."

They were not so lucky in other instances such as Chernobyl.
It's still No way to Clean Power‼️
SV Cloud Duster

[LakeSuperior]

More to the point...

"In 2018, Tokyo Electric apologized after admitting its filtration systems had not removed all dangerous material from the water, collected from the cooling pipes used to keep fuel cores from melting when the plant was crippled." https://www.usnews.com/news/world/ar...to-sea-reports

The concern is not the tritium but rather everything else that may not get removed. Who is doing the QA prior to release of the water. How clean is it really. The other stuff is the stuff of great concern as it enters the food chain.

[cal40john]

Even if you somehow managed to eat something that somehow had a concentration of tritium, which is unlikely, the biological half life of tritium is less than 10 days. Your body exchanges hydrogen as part of organic material quite rapidly.

[billgewater]

So, what's all this about? The Japanese, if any one, would be be expected to behave as cautiously as possible. Their response is being overseen by international authorities which is more than can be said for many other countries.
However nuclear power stallions are still staggeringly expensive to build and do pose really serious health risks BUT .......
the fossil fuel industry which is clearly creating problems today with predictions for much worse to come, is actually advocated by major political groups and industries.
Plastic waste pollution is now out of control.
As island Time 025 makes clear, the consequences and mitigation costs should be tied directly and firmly to the producers. Not the taxpayers or our children.
These other environmental pollutants vastly outstrip this minor short lifetime radiation issue.

[Nibiruwayne]

A bit of advice. As a practicing dentist for over forty years, one of the best ways to stave off disease, including Covid or any virus, is to make sure you don't have any active dental disease or trauma. If you are unsure get in to have an examination and then accept treatment.
One of the daily preventions to any bacterial or viral infection is to brush and rinse with baking soda, multiple times a day. This regimen will raise your mouth ph to a neural , slightly alkaline level of 7 to 7.5. The bad bacteria, viruses, fungi, etc. don't like neutral ph and it slows them down and lets your immune system keep all the bugs in check. We all have several million organisms in our mouths all the time and many more in our gut.
Without them, we'd die. The key is to keep the balance and not let a rogue bug take over.
Good sailing.

[aa1bflyboy]

Why not just get a couple billion ice cube trays, freeze all the water into cubes while the ship hauling the water/ice maker/biodegradable paper bags of cubes to Antarctica and we can cure two birds with one stone; no more nasty water and global warming cured. TADAH!

[aa1bflyboy]

👍👍👍👍👌

[UFO]

Originally Posted by StuM

You've got a fitting user name

LOL - I think you guys have all missed the point and simply focused on the release of water, the point is that they have lost Nuclear Cores which have breached their containment (AKA Burnt through to the Earth/Groundwater below). Remote control robots sent in last a matter of minutes and "a radiation reading taken deep inside Japan's damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor No. 2 shows levels reaching a maximum of 530 sieverts per hour, a number experts have called unimaginable" - Years after the accident.


This has been releasing radioactive particles into the groundwater and ocean for years and as someone else said its the West Coast of the USA that is getting Nuked! But hey the Japanese said they contained all that, so its OK - From memory one thing they tried or were going to try? was to Freeze the entire bedrock/groundwater area to stop the flow - Can't imagine how that would work against an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.



As I said earlier they passed a law with harsh penalties to report ANYTHING but the official line and have in main shunned outside help.


Now if you believe the official line that all is OK there are No bad effects from the accident, good for you, but I for one with many others do not and will not be Cruising or sailing ANYWHERE in the North Pacific and certainly not eating anything that comes from there.


Its pretty easy to find plenty of scientific research undertaken on marine life on the the West Coast of the USA and North Pacific as a whole since the accident with some pretty unpleasant findings - Some even compare pre and post states, you just won't find any of them highlighted in main stream media - Gotta ask yourself why that is.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by UFO

...Its pretty easy to find plenty of scientific research undertaken on marine life on the the West Coast of the USA and North Pacific as a whole since the accident with some pretty unpleasant findings - Some even compare pre and post states, you just won't find any of them highlighted in main stream media - Gotta ask yourself why that is.

Of course (!) research would compare pre and post states...that's sort of a requirement in research, isn't it?

Please cite your concerning research studies, particularly from the past 3 years.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Ded reckoner

See GordMay's post. My understanding is there have been process delays filtering the stored water, but that will be resolved soon. After filtration of the long-lived radioactive components, the remaining water solution, with whatever tritium is present, will be released. The release is relying upon the principle of dilution with massive amounts of seawater to reduce the remaining radiation to an acceptable level. Tritium has a half-life of about 12 years and occurs naturally in water everywhere. There is context here, which is difficult for some people to understand or accept. Did you know bananas are radioactive?

Yes, that's it. And granite countertops are radioactive. And burning coal spews tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere, and produces radioactive waste: https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...nuclear-waste/ Radioactivity is all around us, and should be thought about with an objective, unemotional, scientific point of view, not emotional, irrational repulsion. There are safe and unsafe levels of radiation. Radiation also comes in different flavors, some of it much more harmful than others.

A million tons of tritiated water is a million cubic meters, which as someone else posted above, is a cube 100 meters on a side. This amount of slightly tritiated water will disappear into nothing already in a few cubic miles of ocean. And the Pacific Ocean contains about 714 million cubic kilometers of water.

Tritium produces beta radiation, which can't even penetrate human skin, and tritium decays quickly, with a half life of only 12 years. Australian health rules allow 76 103 Bq/l of tritium IN DRINKING WATER; in the U.S. if's 740. A certain amount of dilution will make that discharge from Fukushima even safe to drink, if you were to drink seawater.

With all due respect to UFO, this story is a big bunch of nothing. The main source of radioactive contamination from Fukushima is not tritium, but cesium.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Singularity

Of course (!) research would compare pre and post states...that's sort of a requirement in research, isn't it?

Please cite your concerning research studies, particularly from the past 3 years.

Indeed.

So there's a conspiracy in the "mainstream media" to cover this up? Really? But I guess that wouldn't apply to scientific literature, right? So -- where is it?

Here's a useful survey of the scientific research of the effects on marine life: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161018141309.htm.

The main takeaway: "population-level effects have not been observed."

So nothing too horrible. Research is ongoing and not everything is clear, but there are no signs so far that the long term damage from the Fukushima disaster is comparable to that of even a month of the world's coal burning.

[Jim Cate]

Gotta ask yourself why that is.

Well, one reason is that scientific studies usually use really big words, words that don't mean anything to a lay person.

Like in an upthread post, a dose rate of 530 Sieverts/hr is mentioned. To most, that is completely meaningless, even when an unknown authority is said to have called it "unimaginable". Does that mean really high, really low or just that his imagination is feeble? FWIW, that is a high dose rate, but hardly unimaginable in or near the remnants of an aged reactor core.

For studies of aquatic life, the numbers will be really small, bt again, not meaningful to a lay person. That's when journalists start applying spin, depending upon their agendas, and this is one reason that the US population mistrusts "science"... they don't understand it and they get politicized interpretations from the media. Who would trust that crap?

Anyhow, if sailing in the north Pacific is scary to you, well, stay away from it. Not sure where you will go, though, for there are radioactive materials in all the oceans... just as there have always been. Maybe go climbing in the continental mountains, far from those dangerous waters... but up there the cosmic radiation is much higher than at sea level, and if the mountains are granitic, the radiation from radium daughters and a few other naturally occurring isotopes is markedly higher than in coral islands, for instance.

Damn... there's just no escaping it, and for sure, you're gonna die, mate!

Jim