What is the impact of the events at Fukushima?

reply to post by larapa


I have provided facts. You have chosen not to consider them as anything more than, "nonsense".

This is the problem I encounter when dealing with average people regarding complex issues. They are completely confused and attempt to extrapolate seemingly similar, yet entirely different things together. Drives me nuts!

So bombs going off on two parts of the world, in different regions of the prospective countries involved... no poo that's going to cause a bit of damage. Take note that it mentioned FIRES, which... ya know... would be related to the BOMB going off.... which is... ya know... ENTIRELY different than the situation at FUKU.

It's not even worth trying to bring the data here. Most people can't focus in on what matters, and have little understanding of the technical aspects. I can only go so far with my limited education.

I guess, if you don't want to listen to my "nonsense", and just want to believe it's a potential ELE to fulfill whatever is going on in your life... go for it... I'm not stopping you.

All I'm saying is the people who are talking about ELE are clueless dimwits. Try not to be associated with that. Or not... your choice!

larapa

15,000 hiroshimas= 187.5 megaton bomb
(0.0125*15000)

edit on 16-10-2013 by larapa because: (no reason given)

It's not a bomb!!

reply to post by webedoomed


Thanks for the condescending helpfull info (again great!), i hope one day you find a forum of people on your intellectual level that you deem worthy to have rational discussions with. In the mean time feel free to overlord it over the majority of us "average people".

Sorry for wasting your precious time, you know you would make a really good teacher so patient and informative...

reply to post by larapa


It's good that you are looking for the truth behind this highly emotional issue, rather than just blindly believing the fear mongers and the end-of-life-as-we-know-it crowd. Fukushima represents no threat to anyone outside of Japan, and in reality there was very little threat to anyone in Japan either, but the mainstream media feed on peoples fears of the unknown. By understanding, fears are reduced, or eliminated altogether.
Here is a page, with some links to other information sources, that might help you decide for yourself about this whole affair.
Radiation and Reason:
radiationandreason.com...

reply to post by larapa

Instead of writing a book which I did and deleted, Suffice to say that what happened at Fukushima is a worst case scenario times 4 (8 counting the fuel pools).
Its the largest nuclear science experiment ever undertaken on planet earth. In the open environment on earth. Where that leads is still up for debate. The results of the test are not in yet.

Not looking good though.

larapa
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

I understand that the fact is maybe that no one knows, thanks for the link however it seems to be broken ...

The link is not broken and it will answer a lot of your questions. It even has a diagram showing where they think the fuel is, having left the primary containment to varying degrees but according to their diagrams not having left the secondary containment. There could be some question about the accuracy of the diagrams, but in reality it's not possible to know the exact location of the melted cores. I think they used estimates, simulations etc to determine the location but they aren't 100% sure.

I was hoping for a layman terms blow by blow of the situation: reactor 1 stable, impacton surrounding environment minimal etc

Again you need to read that source. But to summarize what it says, the radiation levels in the reactor are lethal, but at the boundaries of the property they are 1/70th of the background radiation above background. I'm not sure I believe them, but that's what it says.

However it may just be a simple case of acomplicatedsituation with limited information released to ascertain basic theories on what is happening ( and potentially large amounts of hersay/disinformation)...

Yes it's complicated and there's disinformation, but I can tell you some things we do and don't know. We do know what radiation levels are harmful/lethal, like LD50 with is the radiation dose that will kill 50% of people exposed to it. So right off the bat you have some uncertainty, 2 people get exposed to the exact same radiation level and one lives and one dies (or 100 exposed and 50 live and 50 die), so you know it's not completely predictable. I'm sure you can get such lethal exposure if you get close enough to the melted cores but of course nobody goes there.

Now here's what we don't really know. How much does exposure to low levels of radiation increase your chances of illness or death? One hypothesis is the "no safe level of exposure" that says any increase is harmful and will cause deaths. Another hypothesis is that extremely low levels of additional exposure are not significantly harmful.

I've looked at both sides and I don't have any particular bias to believe one or the other, I just want to know the truth. The facts seem to be insufficient to prove either hypothesis at this point. See this powerpoint in pdf format which on page 7 basically summarizes that point as follows:

deqtech.com...

We lack scientific data to determine a precise risk of cancer in the future from radiation exposure today

That's the reality, in the middle between "any amount will kill you" and "low levels are safe". That's a pretty useful document that even gives you things to think about if you're considering medically related radiation exposure.

But you can forget about ELE you mentioned in the OP. Fukushima is in no way an ELE, nor was Chernobyl. In fact more people will probably die from exposure to coal burning power plants than either one of those nuclear disasters, but few people ever mention that.

www.the9billion.com...

I can't vouch for the accuracy of that graph's specific data but I can say if you have better data, present it, and I know that burning coal kills people too, heck burning coal even releases radiation! (There are small amounts of radioactive materials in the coal that get released when it's burned, not to mention other potentially harmful/toxic substances).

The biggest problem I have with nuclear power is the lack of a good plan to dispose permanently of high-level waste. Of course in Chernobyl and Fukushima type accidents large tracts of land can also be rendered uninhabitable for a long time.

I think there are many things much more likely to kill me than Fukushima radiation, but as a precaution I haven't been eating fish from the Pacific since the disaster. I don't know how irradiated they may or may not be as they aren't tested for radiation as far as I know. Some fish right off the coast of Fukushima have been measured for radiation and were found to be highly contaminated, so you definitely wouldn't want to eat them, though I thought I read that TEPCO was going to put up a net to contain those fish or something?

Arbitrageur

That's the reality, in the middle between "any amount will kill you" and "low levels are safe". That's a pretty useful document that even gives you things to think about if you're considering medically related radiation exposure.

There's actually still a third option which isn't in that middle. What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger?!

All of life is exposed to radiation every day, and we all eventually fade out. Perhaps our bodies are able to adapt to fluctuations in radiation exposure. Perhaps some more effectively than others.

It kinda fits with the notion that from the start, we're dealing the probability, as in assumptions because we don't have the best information. It couldn't hurt to look for genetic patterns between large groups who had similar radiation doses, and either did or did not develop cancer after a given period of time.

webedoomed
There's actually still a third option which isn't in that middle. What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger?!

True, that's covered on page 3 of the pdf link I posted, and it's called the "hormesis hypothesis", which I was aware of, but omitted for the sake of simplicity since my post was already so long.

The same lack of scientific evidence which is inconclusive about the other two options is also inconclusive about that option. To me it doesn't seem as likely as the other two but I can't rule it out, but the final conclusion is the same regarding all three hypotheses regarding low level exposure:

insufficient evidence

The hormetic model makes sense for things like consumption of iron, where a little bit is good for you and a lot is toxic. Why? You need a little bit of iron for your blood to do its job, right? To me it doesn't make as much sense for radiation, where it's not clear to me how a little radiation helps you, like a little iron does.

This shows the hormetic model versus the other two in graph form:

www.hiroshimasyndrome.com...

reply to post by webedoomed

An issue for Japan but not the world? Apparently you aren't aware of ocean and air currents? When there is a dust storm in China, it arrives in the U.S.. When a storm builds off of Africa, it becomes a hurricane in the Caribbean and Gulf and Atlantic. When the the currents of the planet move, it creates the Gulf Stream, the Humboldt Current, many others, and eventually circulates around the entire world. When Mt Tambora in the Indian Ocean blew, much of the Northern Hemisphere had no real summer that year. There were mass food shortages. Winter pretty much sucked. Much the same after Krakatoa. After Fukushima's earlier spoutings, radiation beyond normal background levels were found in milk, which is often a marker, as far east as Vermont and New Hampshire. To say the problem is only for Japan is simply untrue. The world is connected, and not just by the internet.

In Europe we had Chernobyl and it affected us very well,
so looking for the Ukraine, Belo-Russia, Bulgaria, Turkye,
and the whole of West-Europe will give you a direction
and the basic Data!

Until now you should not eat many things grown in the Wild,
some Areas even in Scotland, Wales, Austria, Bulgaria and Turkye
are still Off-Limit for Food-Production!

But you will not get clear Numbers for Cancer,
because the Numbers are alienated with/from (?) all the other Toxics
we use since the Industrial Revolution!

reply to post by jaxnmarko


The radiation levels outside of Japan are negligible.

Dillution is the solution!

reply to post by Arbitrageur


It makes sense the same as how slightly toxic herbs stimulate the kidney and/or liver to upregulate genes necessary to handle the toxicity. This upregulation more than compensates for the toxin, leading to a "detox" effect. After a threshold is reached, variable from individual to individual, the net effect is detriment.

Intuitively it makes good sense.

webedoomed
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

It makes sense the same as how slightly toxic herbs stimulate the kidney and/or liver to upregulate genes necessary to handle the toxicity. This upregulation more than compensates for the toxin, leading to a "detox" effect. After a threshold is reached, variable from individual to individual, the net effect is detriment.

Intuitively it makes good sense.

I said it makes sense with Iron, you said it makes sense with some Herbs, and maybe both of those are true, but it doesn't follow to me that the same is true for radiation. Take a closer look at what happens after radiation damage occurs:

deqtech.com...

Let's look at how exposure to low levels might help (or not).

-The option of the cell repairing itself: The rest of the cell might be repaired, but chromosome damage is difficult to repair. And I know of no mechanism that makes low level radiation exposure help cell repair.

-Damage to reproductive cells: This occurs even with background radiation, and you see it even more with extra radiation. The damaged genetic code might be apparent in birth defects, or the damaged part of the code might have no special purpose and lie on a dormant part of the gene, meaning it will have no real effect. Between these are a whole host of other possibilities which may be very difficult to measure. I think if there is an argument for the linear no threshold model this is one of the most convincing, but due to the difficulty of detecting small genetic damage it may be a century before this is better understood.

-Damage causes cell to become cancerous: I suppose you could argue that if the body starts finding more cancerous cells, that it would beef up the defense mechanisms to find even more and destroy them before they get out of control and turn into a malignant tumor. But I've seen no evidence for this, and your intuition doesn't suffice (My intuition tells me the body has problems dealing with cancer cells, since so many people die of cancer).

-Stop Functioning/be killed: Here again I don't see any benefit of low dose exposure. On the other hand, this could be support for the threshold model, because low numbers of our cells die all the time for many reasons and they are simply replaced. If a few extra cells die from radiation exposure, it's no big deal.

So if we look at the dead cell support for the threshold model and the reproductive cell damage support for the no threshold model, maybe it's not as simple as one or the other being right. Maybe one model applies to reproductive cells and another model applies to non-reproductive cells? That's my intuition. Only time will tell as data is scrutinized from Chernobyl and Fukushima type disasters, over many decades, and to look for reproductive cell genetic damage, it takes generations. You could have sperm or egg cell genetic damage that doesn't show up in your kids but shows up in their kids.

Considering genetic damage/alteration is one mechanism of evolution, in a very tiny percentage of cases, the genetic damage could be beneficial, to your kids and their future generations, but it's far more likely to be detrimental.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


We're going to have to disagree to disagree.

Simple as that.

I think there's more than enough reason to think hormesis is correct, but you don't.

All good.