Posted on 02/07/2012 6:22:20 PM PST by matt04
Trace amounts of a radioactive element found in fish near the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant have now been found in bass in an opposite corner of the state, apparently clearing the plant of any tie to the contamination, a state health official said.
Initial testing took place after Entergy Corp.'s Vermont Yankee, located in the southeastern town of Vernon, reported in 2010 that radioactive material had leaked into nearby groundwater.
Low levels of Strontium-90, an isotope produced by nuclear reactions, were found in fish caught in August where groundwater from the plant runs into the Connecticut River, state authorities said.
Now, new tests of bass caught 150 miles away in northwestern Vermont and outside the area affected by the plant's groundwater show similar levels of Strontium-90, said William Irwin, chief of the Vermont Health Department's radiological division.
The likely source, rather than Vermont Yankee, is residue from above-ground nuclear testing in the 1940s and 1950s and the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in the Soviet Union in 1986, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at ca.news.yahoo.com ...
Dammit! We can't use a radioactive fish against VY.
Look, kids—the hippies got ANOTHER one wrong! Maybe it’s a good thing they’re hippies and not nuclear plant operators!
You don’t understand, all leftists, especially Vermont lefftists know that radioactivity is super ultra plus ungood magical juju that can do anything including flow upstream and jump from river to river. Vermont Yankee is to blame and nothing anyone can say will change that
And in other breaking news, radioactive potassium-40 was detected in the banana Al Gore had with breakfast today.
I sure hope they don’t find coal littering the ground in WV.
"These are very very tiny amounts of radioactivity," Irwin told Reuters on Tuesday. "They were very close to being non-detectable."
These isotopes are from Japan.
To get the truth that the radioactivity is not from VY, you have to read to the 5th paragraph. Of course they are banking on most people just reading the headline.
That’s how they caught me. Now is that good headline writing that attracts the reader or is it propaganda posing as a good headline?
“These isotopes are from Japan.”
That was sarcasm, right?
The first samples were from 2010.
Unless they are from Hiroshima or Nagasaki they are most certainly NOT from Japan.
Actually the isotopes are from open-air bomb testing in the 1950s.
Yes. It was sarcasm. Sorry for not placing a tag or something similar.
Well, I had to ask.
We have a group of atomiphobes here on FR who think we are all going to die because of Fukushima.
It only takes one view of the surface radiation maps measured around 160 miles West of Fukushima to see just how devastating this disaster will be.
I would trust no product being manufactured within 100 miles of Fukushima either. This includes machinery, electronics, clothing, foods, or vehicles.
Probably from some medical waste from cancer patients after they were injected with radioactive dye.
They probably flushed it into the water or took a pee while outside one day.
“We will certainly not die from Fukushima, but the citizens in Japan will be ill from it.”
I don’t think any rational person is saying that there won’t be negative effects from the Fukushima disaster.
However it is not the end of the world, and it is not a reason to abandon nuclear power.
Radiation doesn’t scare me. I respect it but do not fear it. I think all of the “atomiphobes” (my word, free for all to use) are that way due to ignorance. They only know what they read in the papers or hear on the news. (IE: they know very little)
You can protect yourself from harmful amounts of radiation exposure in the vast majority of likely imaginable scenarios.
What scares me most is biological and chemical weapons, and I have had a fair bit of training on that subject as well.
Nuclear power is not very dangerous until an accident occurs. It is not like a coal plant where 30 years of cleanup means all traces of damage are corrected.
If we just built reactors deep underground, disasters such as Fukushima would be a non-issue. Plug the hole and move on. Unfortunately we have so many reactors on fault lines, bodies of water just waiting to be flooded, attacked, or otherwise damaged they can essentially become a dirty bomb with all of the on-site waste located there.
We are not doing the right thing by building these plants so close to water supplies and at sea level or near oceans and fault lines. Build them deep underground. When fuel is expended, bury the fuel, then the reactor later on. Problem solved.
“Problem solved.”
The KEY point being:
The problems are solvable.
There is no need to abandon nuclear power.
You are totally correct. Nuclear power is still the most efficient power source on the planet.
The trick is getting governments and power companies to comply with safety requirements first. Then, a plan to shut down 50 year-old dinosaurs in a phase-out process while introducing safer, modern designs should be next.
It scares the living daylights out of me knowing most of these plants can not keep a meltdown from happening should their power sources fail for longer than 4 hours. Surely there is a better solution than this.
Make a plan. Stick to the plan. Use technology and stop wasting taxpayer resources and time on solar and wind power.
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