Koki on 25/3/2011 at 15:28
Quote Posted by Kolya
Glad we established now that thousands of Japanese didn't die because they were
too stupid to run away.
I wanted to blame the government really, for not educating the people better, but if you want to put it this way...
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Now we can discuss how they could be so stupid to build reactors at the shore line. Mmmaybe because they need a lot of water to cool them? Well damn. But why didn't they build them in an earthquake free region?
But why didn't they protect them from a tsunami? I believe that was my actual question.
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This could go on and on.
Yeah, your bleeding heart whining does seem to drag on.
june gloom on 25/3/2011 at 18:20
So what's it like having no soul? Do you get a monthly check?
Renzatic on 25/3/2011 at 18:44
Quote Posted by Koki
I wanted to blame the government really, for not educating the people better, but if you want to put it this way...
They had 7 minutes to run to the higher ground lying roughly a half mile inland after a severe earthquake, dipshit. All the government educational videos in the world can't prepare you for something like that. Your best case scenario is to hope to find a tall, sturdy building, get on the roof, and pray.
Yakoob on 25/3/2011 at 22:03
Ladies and Gentlement, Koki - the best human being in the universe.
Quote Posted by Kolya
But why didn't they build them in an earthquake free region?
It's Japan, I don't think there exists an earthquake-free zone. But I do agree about the shoreline thing.
At the same time, though, I always try to stop myself from jumping on a reactionary armchair response like this ("they built it on a coast? how retarded are they!") I mean, it's not like some dude in a suit just says "lets built it there cause the view is pretty." You get a huge panel of engineers, geology experts and nuclear scientists who probably spend a good few months (if not years) researching the optimal design and location for a plant. If building on a shoreline was utterly retarded, I'm pretty sure someone would have pointed it out at some point. But they still built it; so even though we bitch about the stupidity of their choice, I'd wager there is some good, solid reasons behind it.
Nicker on 27/3/2011 at 06:40
Quote Posted by heywood
A short term effect shouldn't be discounted if it kills people.
I'm not discounting short term effects, it's just that nuclear power has short-term, long-term, extremely long-term and inconceivably long-term risks.
Quote Posted by heywood
Second, there are many long term effects from other energy sources. Accumulating greenhouse gasses, poisoning forests & lakes with acid rain, huge open mining scars, slurry ponds, changing whole landscapes with dams, contaminating oceans and long stretches of coastline with oil - these are not short term effects.
Compared to the persistent danger of certain waste products of nuclear power, the effects you list are short term by several orders of magnitude, decades and centuries compared to millennia and eons.
Quote Posted by heywood
Also, the 5000 generations is a bit of an exaggeration. The main radioisotopes which pose a health risk from nuclear accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima are Iodine 131, Cesium 137, and Strontium 90. Iodine 131 has a half life of just 8 days, which is why the pills are effective. Cesium 137 and Strontium 90 have half lives of something like 30 years.
We must remember that half-life doesn't mean the risk vanishes. It diminishes but it persists.
A generation is normally considered to be twenty years. Cesium 137, like other radioisotopes, causes genetic damage. So while it would “only” directly effect three or four generations, its indirect effect would be transmitted to many more than that.
Plutonium 239 has a half-life of 24,000 years. That's 1,200 generations that could be directly affected. Given that some toxic radioisotopes have half-lives measured in millions of years, 5000 generations is an understatement of the deferred risk, not an exaggeration.
Quote Posted by heywood
EDIT: As you can probably tell, I have a bit of bug up my ass about energy policy. I just get frustrated because there is always widespread support for the IDEA of reducing CO2 and moving away from fossil fuels, but the support always falls apart when you get real about doing it. The only sources of energy that don't draw opposition are the hypothetical ones that people haven't really thought through yet.
Nuclear power could indeed reduce atmospheric CO2. Unfortunately hubris, greed, neglect and ignorance guarantee that serious nuclear accidents will occur more frequently than we'd care to admit. Given the time scale of the contamination, can we justify burdening people in the deep future with invisible poisons? Isn't the deferral of risk to subsequent generations the reason we are still mired in fossil fuel?
heywood on 28/3/2011 at 03:41
Quote Posted by Nicker
A generation is normally considered to be twenty years. Cesium 137, like other radioisotopes, causes genetic damage. So while it would “only” directly effect three or four generations, its indirect effect would be transmitted to many more than that.
That's speculative. The damage from ionizing radiation is random and not targeted to particular DNA chains, so theoretically it would increase the overall rate of common birth defects just like alcohol, drugs, and other poisons do. But the impact to subsequent generations would be no worse than other causes of birth defects. It wouldn't breed a race of mutant humans like in science fiction movies.
And there's still no conclusive evidence of human birth defects caused by radioactive fallout. We've studied Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors and found no significant increase in birth defects among their offspring. For Chernobyl, the most scientifically authoritative study to date concluded that there were no reproductive or inherited effects. There have been smaller studies which found higher rates of birth defects in some regions impacted by Chernobyl compared to European norms. But unfortunately they haven't collected data on the parents' radiation exposure and didn't control for other risk factors for birth defects such as alcohol, diet, mental health, general poverty. So it's still not certain that nuclear accidents cause first generation birth defects, let alone inherited ones.
The primary health risk is cancer in parts of the body where radioisotopes accumulate due to natural body chemical processes, such as Iodine in the Thyroid. I don't think the typical radioisotopes accumulate in reproductive organs, which may be why they haven't had more significant reproductive effects.
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Plutonium 239 has a half-life of 24,000 years. That's 1,200 generations that could be directly affected. Given that some toxic radioisotopes have half-lives measured in millions of years, 5000 generations is an understatement of the deferred risk, not an exaggeration.
It is an exaggeration. Here are a few reasons why:
1. Radioactivity is inversely related to half-life. Long half life = slow decay = low radiation level = less dangerous. For example, you can handle enriched Uranium or Plutonium in your hands without shielding. Also, the long lived isotopes decay by alpha particle emission, which is much less harmful than beta decay.
2. Plutonium and Uranium tend to remain in the fuel rods because they are heavy and not water soluble and don't escape into the environment in significant quantities unless the core explodes. A core explosion happened at Chernobyl but would not happen at Fukushima due to the reactor design. In contrast, burning coal releases lots of radioactive Uranium and Thorium.
3. Because their oxides aren't water soluble and aren't involved in any metabolic processes, Plutonium and Uranium don't tend to be absorbed into the food chain. And if they are ingested, they generally pass right through the digestive system without being absorbed. The bigger risk of exposure to these elements comes from inhaling particles in dust and smoke, but that's a short term risk. Note the Plutonium released into the environment by above ground nuclear testing can be found in soil and sediment layers all around the world but poses no health risk.
Almost all the health risk from a nuclear accident comes from the fission products which beta decay, and generally the shorter the half life, the more dangerous. Of those, Iodine-131 is by far the worst because it's highly radioactive and concentrates in one place in the body. Cesium-137 poses the primary long term risk, with a half life of around 30 years.
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Nuclear power could indeed reduce atmospheric CO2. Unfortunately hubris, greed, neglect and ignorance guarantee that serious nuclear accidents will occur more frequently than we'd care to admit. Given the time scale of the contamination, can we justify burdening people in the deep future with invisible poisons? Isn’t the deferral of risk to subsequent generations the reason we are still mired in fossil fuel?
Then how do we justify killing people now AND burdening people in the future with other power sources more risky and damaging than nuclear? Also, what do you mean by "more frequently than we'd care to admit"? By my count, we've only had two accidents so far that posed a health risk. We can go through the numbers again comparing the human & environmental impacts of nuclear power compared to other sources. But nuclear accidents would have to occur far more frequently to make it an interesting comparison.
BTW, I personally think there as much or more hubris on the anti-nuke side from being impervious to logical and scientific argument.
Kolya on 28/3/2011 at 13:52
Quote Posted by heywood
For Chernobyl, the most scientifically authoritative study to date concluded that there were no reproductive or inherited effects.
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(
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2001/may/09/internationalnews) Chernobyl raised mutations 600%
Children of the "liquidators" - those drafted in to clear up the Chernobyl disaster - suffer seven times the mutation rate of offspring whose parents were not exposed to radiation, research published today by the Royal Society shows.
The "unexpectedly high" mutation rate, discovered by using DNA fingerprinting techniques, means that a significant proportion of the world's population doing jobs where even low-level radiation is present are exposing their unborn children to increased risk, the researchers say.
Families in which one child was conceived before the accident and one later were tested, along with control groups from areas with no radiation exposure. The increases in mutation rates as a result of the parents being exposed to ionising radiation was "highly significant", the paper says.
.
Gingerbread Man on 28/3/2011 at 14:31
You forgot my favourite part: "The new findings show that the radiation from the stricken Ukrainian reactor affected the sperm of fathers, leading to mutation in the DNA of the children. None of them showed physical deformities, because the DNA changes were slight, but the long-term effects are not known."
So, we have an article from the Guardian with a headline containing the word MUTATIONS and the fun number 600%!!!!! None of it means anything. There might be a potential increase in the chance of perhaps contracting a form of some disease. And their sperms are flying wonky.
lols at "unexpectedly high" because you know that's not a quote, it's a euphemism.
