AP says we have nothing to worry about with Japanese radiation

[Bluebear]

AP:

Q. Will ocean creatures be harmed by the discharges of the radioactive water?

A. Experts say animals very near the plant may face problems like higher rates of genetic mutations, but that this would probably happen within only maybe a half a mile or so.

Sounds perfectly safe... so long as the fish in the sea don't move beyond their current small area, and so long as other fish from outside of the area don't eat the radioactive fish and then, you know, swim somewhere else, everything will be just fine. Right, because none of that ever happens. I feel so much more confident about this problem now. How could anything possibly go wrong?

http://www.americablog.com/2011/04/ap-says-we-have-nothing-to-worry-about.html

[inademv]

1. If you're going to worry about that kind of stuff

then by all means be consistent and worry about every single nuclear bomb test that we carried out in the Pacific and Southwestern deserts.

[Mimosa]

4. Some of us have learned, we do care and we ARE CONSISTENT.

Now go away if you don't get the point. The OP point is pretty clear.

[Maru Kitteh]

6. shooing people away from your cause is SO HELPFUL to your cause.

perhaps not.........

[Bluebear]

5. Yes, this disaster and a 1954 test are equally troublesome.

:eyes:

[inademv]

7. There was far more than 1 test

and yeah, they kinda are.

[WinkyDink]

20. Then which IS your position?

[Warren DeMontague]

8. Er, that was pretty much the reason for the 1963 partial test ban treaty.

An acknowledgment that long-lived radioactive isotopes in the environment were and are a threat to the health of everyone unfortunate to come into contact with them.

Just out of curiosity, do you have any information on the sheer mass of radioactive isotopes released by a medium sized fission bomb explosion? how about a fusion bomb? How about the meltdown of a single nuclear reactor, like chernobyl?

Then how much- quantity- radioactive material could be expected to be released in a multiple meltdown scenario at a complex like Fukushima?

Then, add to that the tonnage of high level radioactive material that is contained in the spent fuel pools. What is it, again, at Fukushima? Oh, I'm sure a nuclear expert such as yourself must know... let's see. Total amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima? According to Forbes, there's some 4,277 tons on that site, total. That's 24X the amount of nuclear fuel at Chernobyl.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/03/18/business-financial-impact-as-japan-earthquake-plutonium_8363305.html


So do the math.

[inademv]

9. All i'm saying is

that OP is inconsistent in his concerns and is jumping to illogical conclusions in his post.

[Warren DeMontague]

10. I don't see any conclusions in the post.

I see a chiding of the idea that 'there is nothing to worry about'. Anyone who says 'there is nothing to worry about' doesn't understand radiation or is engaging in empty happy-talk (or as Richard Alvarez put it, "the spin is all about reassurance").

A whole buttload of strontium 90 in the oceanic food chain off the coast of Japan? Yeah, I'd worry a little.

[inademv]

12. its an implied conculsion

that there WILL be something to worry about when the whole fiasco is still going on. I just don't get why people, especially here, don't take the "wait and see" approach with serious matters like this and collect the facts as they become available without jumping to conclusions or laying out doomsday scenarios.

Thread should be "AP reports something, here's what they reported". The chiding attitude does nothing to elevate the conversation or thought surrounding this situation, it just serves to promote an atmosphere similar to that of the frepers forum and to be quite honest, it would be the one thing that makes me never come to DU again.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. Because 'the spin is all about reassurance', which isn't terribly reassuring.

Every time there has been a nuclear 'event'- every. damn. time. the official word has been "the public is in no danger", before anyone even knows boo about whether or not the public actually is in danger. Chernobyl. TMI. Of course that's what they're going to fucking say. What else are they going to say- "freak the fuck out"? No, that's bad for business. Far better to keep the calming, reassuring line, then 5, 10, 20 years down the road, when statistically significant higher levels of everything from lung or bone cancer to childhood leukemia start showing up, what do you suppose the 'offical word' will be then?

I know what it will be-

"prove it".

No, see, you can't prove it, so it must not have happened. And we told you, at the time, you had nothing to worry about, didn't we?

I'm all for elevating the conversation, and nothing does that more than ACTUAL FACTS. So, okay, facts. We know that large amounts of radioactive material have already been released into the air. We know they're showing up in the soil. We know they've measured levels of I-131 at 7.5 Million times the legal limit in the ocean near the plant. We know they've measured Cesium at 1.1 Million times the legal limit.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-nuclear-20110406,0,2697428.story

These are facts. Cesium-137 has a half life of 30 years. Again, a scientific fact.

There have been several analyses of the situation in Fukushima, apparently, that the we easily led sheeple are not allowed to be privy to, like the "confidential" assesment from the NRC. Because as Robert Alvarez, the "reassurance spin" guy put it, "public authorities have sought to avoid grim technical details". Because, you know, facts might upset us.

So, please, yes, more facts. The more, the better.

[inademv]

18. Legal limit numbers

Another inaccurate point of the story that I'm highly dissatisfied with. Two things that I've not been able to find in any of the stories linked and I lack the formula knowledge to do the math myself:
1) 1.1 million times the legal limit doesn't tell what the "legal limit" is. Logically one would assume that the legal limit for a radioactive isotope would be exceedingly low, along the levels of natural occurrence.
2) exactly how much 1.1 million times the legal limit is in measures that have any consequence to human health. Given that the human body has about 4400 becquerels of potassium decaying in it, the figures of "526 becquerels per kilogram" (in fish) provide no tangible value on their own and are even less useful with given the context of the OP in this thread.

I am not advocating the "it'll all be fine" or the "there's no danger" spin, I am saying that jumping to the opposite end of the spectrum in response does nothing to inform people here or elsewhere about the actual implications or impacts of this event.

[Warren DeMontague]

23. Well, the only opposite postion of "there is absolutely nothing to worry about"

is "there is (or may be) something to worry about"

If it's either or, I'll go with the possibility of something to worry about.

[marions ghost]

15. oh yeah?

"wait and see" :eyes: Oh Behave...

"collect the facts" you mean scrounge for any shred of what is the real truth? AP & News Corp will tell us. Really?

"elevating the conversation" --Why is it about conversation? Why is it not about reality in a world of "reality shows"? This isn't a book or a movie or an episode of South Park, unfortunately.

Nuclear pollution is now poisoning Japan, threatening other places, far from under control. We are witnessing a real time nightmare of epic proportions. News for the empathy-challenged, guess what--it's probably normal to have concern for the people over there. And we can all too easily identify with their predicament since we have the same potential for it to happen here. The implications of this latest man-made disaster are profound. Far-reaching. Historic.

So--after Katrina, 9-11, Deepwater Horizon, the ravages of the Bushites, the balancing of state budgets on the backs of the lowest wage earners, social programs & education--we should still put our faith in the government to care about us in the event of such a disaster? :eyes: oh sure Smokey the Bear and the Ultimate Betrayers are playing in the Lounge.

I only wish you were right--that there's no need to worry. The EPA will rewrite the tolerance levels and everything will be OK children. Be cool. Why don't we all watch The War In Libya for a little fun?

[WinkyDink]

21. And the inconsistency would be where??????

[inademv]

22. It is in his

ignoring of the absent global impacts of the concentrated nuclear testing in the Pacific. The only still present long term effects of which that I can think of off the top of my head being the mutated nurse sharks that have only lost a dorsal fin. So his level of concern over this even is inconsistent with the observed results of those quite stupid nuclear tests.

[Bluebear]

24. Then go to the link and comment to the author.

[aquart]

11. Yeah, that rash the Tahitians got was nothing nuclear.

Itchy as hell, though. And it showed up after the nuclear testing coincidentally. So I was told by a Tahitian.

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Mimosa]

2. Oh, Lordy...

Now I lay me down to sleep. Dreams of poisoned dirty seas make me weep. Mankind, we took Paradise and poisoned it, treated our oceans like garbage dumps.

[Newest Reality]

3. While we are subject to

various forms of radiation, no amount of radioactivity is considered safe. We should expect the methods used to allay our fears though.

The radioactivity will get into the food chain and, to one degree or another, we will ingest it. Radiation is one thing, but when a particle or particles of radioactive matter are in your body, they will continue to affect you until you die if the half-life is long enough. That means they will break-down your cells and allow for the formation of cancers.

So, they can tell us that we won't dissolve into goo or die soon, in order to manage our response and keep us from panicking, but we still have to deal with an increased potential for cancer in our lifetimes and that may be something that is a threat in the future, but it is one that we all know can be a horrible and painful result. It matters just as much as an immediate threat to our lives.

I am not moved or consoled by attempts to keep us thinking in the short-term about a threat that can most likely become ubiquitous and unsettling in any frame of time.

[cutlassmama]

14. Thank you for saying what so many of us are probably thinking right now

I, for one, am so tired of being poo pooed ahd hushed away for these sentiments (not on this board, but another one).

[Cetacea]

16. Hey, da big 'ol ocean 'il dissolve it. Now where is my ipad?

[Cetacea]

17. ps. Gulf sperm whales to go extinct. 20k dolphin deaths

Because those PPM numbers we were fed told us that there was nothing to worry about. (new official method for calculating dolphin/whale deaths in the gulf is to multiply by fifty the amount of known carcasses). The unique gulf sperm whale population could only suffer a total loss of THREE. I seem to recall a few people ridiculing concerned DU'ers as being just so "doom and gloom" about the matter, using the PPM numbers and early numbers to back their ridicule.