Posted on 03/21/2011 2:07:54 AM PDT by Kartographer
Plant operators evacuated workers from Japan's tsunami-stricken nuclear complex Monday after gray smoke rose from one of its reactor units, the latest of persistent troubles in stabilizing the complex after it was damaged in a quake and tsunami.
Smoke rising from the spent fuel storage pool of the plant's Unit 3 prompted the evacuation, Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Hiroshi Aizawa said. The problem-plagued Unit 3 also alarmed plant officials over the weekend with a sudden surge of pressure in its reactor core.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
What distortion? Coal power plants do release more radiation and radioactive material than nuclear power plants. The spill of a fly ash slurry pond at the Kingston plant in Roane County, Tennessee released about 1.5 tons worth of uranium into the watershed, for example, and coal plants routinely emit radioactive materials during normal operation.
As more and more people buy their own Geiger counters in the wake of this situation, this dirty little secret will start to get out.
That's a really great question. Between the Japanese trying to save face while trying to save their people from two simultaneous catastrophes, and the media absolutely whoring themselves for as much abusive reporting as they could get away with - and completely ignoring getting the necessary facts out to the right people - it is a wonder anybody was recovered or anything was put to rights at all.
Post-catastrophe Japan is a catastrophe. The humans are at fault.
"They scanned 19,000 people and found 38 with higher than average, but non-hazardous, levels of radiation - 2/10ths of one percent. I wonder how much useful work in restoring food, water, and shelter could have been done in the time spent on the hysterical scanning of nearly 20,000 people to no meaningful benefit?"The "non-hazardous level of radiation" is likely misleading to a lot of people, because they are probably talking about the equivalent gamma ray dosage the affected people would receive from being contaminated with low-level radioactive contamination. While the equivalent rad exposure from being contaminated can be low, actually ingesting or inhaling radioactive particles can produce significantly higher cumulative exposure over time. Stuff like beta or alpha radiation which is hardmless when it is a particle stuck to your skin, but can be very dangerous if it is embedded in your lungs or other tissues and is irradiating those tissues continuously over years. This is why there was a need to scan these people and properly decontaminate them.
Come on, be serious. You know the discussion is about plant failure. This is supposed to be a place for serious discussion
This is far from resolved.
The point most fail to appreciate is reactor #3 is fueled with 7% Pu-239 which is far more dangerous than U-235. The good news is its half life is only 24,000 years vice U-235’s 700 million.
It started to look like a lost cause to me when they were fighting it with water dropping helicopters as if it were a forrst fire. Now wait a minute, does a forest emit more radiation than a nuclear powet plant? Maybr I am being irrational here.
♫ "Always look on the bright side of life!" ♫
No, again you misrepresent the debate. And your resorting to ad hominem attack is no support for your position either.
You’re not a skeptic. You’re also not very well informed.
The TMI comparison some people on here want to use shows where the distortions are coming from. Your points in comparison between TMI and Japan were good. I dont see in some of the posters on here the level of objectivity they claim to have or needed to address this issue srripusly. Cheerleading seems to be the ordet of the day for some.
Neither is spelling so bad that I can't understand your sentence.
But I guess we'll have to agree to disagree since I have no idea what position of mine you're even talking about.
“Im not sure what it is about nuclear power that makes people irrational.”
It can all be traced back to Public Schools,the press, Hollywood,and poor parents distorting the facts. Oh, and Godzilla.
You are really sugar coating the present situation in Japan. I would say diving into the ridiculous does your argument more harm that good.
If we are going to have a meaningful discussion we need to be talking from the same starting point. Let me finish your sentence to see if we can get there.
It is irrational when you cannot appreciate the comparision to the radiation encountered in everyday life to the radiation emitted by a nuclear power plant that has experienced a significant failure like the one happening in Japan.
I believe you know that is the discussion at hand and are purposely trying to distort the discussion. I do not want to draw the other possible conclusion because I have come to know people on here as being pretty smart.
Give me a break. I'm typing on a smart phone with a 2 inch screen at 4 a.m. in the morning. I'd be using my regular computer but I forgot to bring it with me into my fallout shelter.
You should look at the size of the area around Chernobyl and reconsider.
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