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Post by geoffrussell on Jun 20, 2012 13:25:17 GMT 9.5
Just a few potted comments on the article, from the perspective of someone who lives near the disaster areas. Stress: yes, there is definitely an increase in stress - largely due to fantastical claims from the anti-nuclear movement: Greenpeace, Caldicott, Alvarez, Gundersen and others. The overwhelming flooding of the web with regurgitated claims of mass-extinction makes finding sane comment hard. ... Thanks Eamon. The same shunning and stigmatization happened with Chernobyl people as well, so it isn't just a Japanese thing.
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Post by James Greenidge on Jun 21, 2012 23:46:52 GMT 9.5
Super-fine article I wish I post every school in and subway in NYC! Couldn't be said better. You'd almost swear by the Japanese gov't knee-jerk response that the reactors CAUSED the wave that killed so many. I mean, to be accurate press-wise, shouldn't this be called a Tsunami Disaster rather than a "Nuclear Disaster" because I was brought up thinking that it's a "disaster" when people are killed, right? It'll be a cold day in the hot place when fanatic dispassionate Greens own up responsibility for fanning groundless panic, but the real maddening and appalling tragedy is that the mainstream media has yet fessed up to its role riding the wave of fear, and in many cases abetting it.
James Greenidge
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Post by georges on Jun 29, 2012 2:23:42 GMT 9.5
Great article. Thx for posting it. Always good to read CyrilR responses.
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Post by Linda Williams on Jul 2, 2012 23:09:55 GMT 9.5
MODERATOR Comment deleted for several violations of the Comments Policy. Your personal opinion was not backed up by a single citation/link. You also attributed motives to organisations and individuals which were your own preconception and not supported by evidence. BNC is a science based blog based on fact not supposition and innuendo. Re-submit your comment, with supporting evidence if you wish to post here.
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Post by believer81 on Jul 23, 2012 17:36:53 GMT 9.5
apologies that I do not yet have any opinion/specific questions as I have not had time to read the report, but is anybody familiar with this recent paper, and/or have any response to it? Worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/TenHoeveEES12.pdf
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Post by Janne M. Korhonen on Jul 24, 2012 0:13:59 GMT 9.5
apologies that I do not yet have any opinion/specific questions as I have not had time to read the report, but is anybody familiar with this recent paper, and/or have any response to it? Worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/TenHoeveEES12.pdfMark Lynas wrote a critique of it here: www.marklynas.org/2012/07/fukushima-death-tolls-junk-scienceHowever, I disagree with calling this "junk science." It's based on the LNT model, which makes it probably conservative i.e. overestimates radiation effects, but it doesn't make it "junk" per se. Personally, I think the study is great news - using conservative assumptions, the most likely death toll of Fukushima over 50 years is mere 130, and a similar accident in the continental U.S. would cause only 25% more casualties. As the key assumption i.e. the LNT model is conservative, it is likely that true value is even less. It looks like I'm winning a whiskey bet I made last March - that the final death toll due to radioactive release will be less than 100 over 25 years. In any case, just in Japan some 52 000 000 ± 50 000 people will die of cancer during the same period, meaning that the long-term health effects of triple meltdown accident are insignificant. Even if the high estimate (1300 premature deaths) should prove to be the correct one. The author also concludes that at least some evacuations (which caused perhaps 600 premature deaths) were unnecessary. And Jacobsen has some anti-nuclear credentials so the study can hardly be accused to be biased, although it undoubtedly will be loudly ignored by the usual suspects.
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Post by jmdesp on Jul 25, 2012 2:28:55 GMT 9.5
Guys, if you thought the picture with the kid was the most incredible of the radiation screening in Japan, here's another one which is just as unbelievable either : en.rian.ru/photolents/20110316/163043916_4.htmlen.rian.ru/photolents/20110316/163043916_5.htmlSo here we see the girl that was confined behind a wall of glass because her radiation level was too high !! The mind boggles, who needs antinuclear militants when the authorities are this crazy. Remember the girl is obviously perfectly well, from the OMS report we know that nobody in the general public was exposed to a level higher than the hundred mSv range, and nobody either ever has had to use a glass wall to protect oneself in front of the Chernobyl worker who just died from acute radiation syndrome after receiving a large number of Sv exposure.
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Post by anonposter on Jul 25, 2012 2:54:57 GMT 9.5
The mind boggles, who needs antinuclear militants when the authorities are this crazy. Well someone has to convince the authorities to do that kind of crap (or even become the authorities in some cases).
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Post by jmdesp on Jul 25, 2012 3:45:24 GMT 9.5
The Chairman is a known anti-nuke scaremongerer. There was never any risk in a 50 mile radius. Wrong. Heatup is non-adiabatic. I'm familiar with the NRC estimates, which assume adiabatic heatup. I quite regret the way most of the discussion with Philip White went. I feel White was at least partially willing to engage a conversation and also to come with rational, informed arguments. This was a rare occasion to discuss with someone on the "other camp" who would not just content himself with blindly throwing a massive amount of irrational fears and who was making an effort to have a realistic rationale for everything he was saying. He was actually right about the water accidentally flowing from the reactor well to the spent fuel pool, which helped it to avoid overheating, and the forum here was wrong about the pool situation. I've repeatedly seen people here stating that the pool heating thing had been purely scaremongering, when there was a material explanation why it didn't happen. At the end, the discussion was sufficiently aggressive and insufficiently justified in the details to give him the opportunity to call it "uninformed nonsense" and retreat from it which is very regrettable. For exemple, cyril, I know you're correct with the above statements but on one side you were losing your cool when stating them and on the other they are likely to seem surprising and improbable to anyone insufficiently informed. So they need to be carefully introduced, and very duly justified. Actually I think we should have somewhere here a discussion topic about why the chairman of Atomic Energy Commission would not defend the industry and actually weaken it, and a separate one about the spent fuel rods in pool 4, how old they were at the time of the accident, with source links for that info, so a detailed calculation of how much heat they were releasing, and also a detailed calculation with reference to physic books of how a fuel rods would heat up outside of water, with detailed explanation of what is unrealistic in the NRC estimates. And then we could refer anyone to it if the question rises again.
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Post by BNC Moderator on Jul 25, 2012 18:45:54 GMT 9.5
I have been away for a few days and the blog has been un-moderated since 20/7. I agree the discussion has become heated and some remarks would normally have been edited for violating BNC Comments Policy. Would everyone please take note and abide by the policy - in particular by keeping the conversation civil and respectful. Thankyou.
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Post by Asteroid Miner on Aug 10, 2012 0:21:27 GMT 9.5
Please read this book: "Radiation and Reason, The impact of Science on a culture of fear" by Wade Allison. Professor Allison says we can take up to 10 rems per month, on the order of 1000 times the present "legal" limit. The old limit was 5 rems/lifetime. A single dose of 800 rems could kill you, but if you have time to recover between doses of 10 rems, no problem. It is like donating blood: You see "4 gallon donor" stickers on cars. You know they didn't give 4 gallons all at once. There is a threshold just over 10 rems. You are getting .35 rems/year NATURAL background radiation right where you are right now. Divide 5 rems by your present Natural Background Radiation. For Americans, Natural Background Radiation is at least .35 rems/year. Our Natural Background Radiation uses up our 5 rems/lifetime when we are 14 years old. Fukushima: 573 certified deaths were due to evacuation-related stress at Fukushima. Zero due to radiation.
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2012/2/4/japanese-authorities-recognize-573-deaths-related-to-fukushi.html The people who died were evacuated from such things as intensive care and old folks homes. Here are some natural background readings from "Power to Save the World; The Truth About Nuclear Energy" by Gwyneth Cravens, 2007: Guarapari, Brazil: 3700 millirem/year Tamil Nadu, India: 5300 millirem/year Ramsar, Iran: 8900 to 13200 millirem/year Denver, Colorado 1000 millirem/year A not entirely natural reading: Chernobyl: 490 millirem/year Calculate your annual radiation dose: www.ans.org/pi/resources/dosechart/
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