Posted on 10/20/2013 6:46:51 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Fukushima situation calls for international emergency work – expert
Sharp radiation growth was registered in ground water samples throughout just one day, October 18th, in the area of the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant. Tritium concentrations, for example, exceeded the admissible values 6,500 times. This is the gravest situation since the 2011 Fukushima accident.
The area of the nuclear meltdown remains open and is being cooled by flowing water, says an expert in nuclear physics and nuclear power generation, Igor Ostretsov.
"Radioactive water keeps coming and should be stored somewhere, Igor Ostretsov says. They have deployed a great number of tanks there and keep bringing more. There must be no place left by now for still more tanks to store radioactive water in. A lot of water has been naturally spilled out, since the tanks just cannot hold all the water. Workers have recently done something wrong, causing massive water discharge. They’ve built a border dyke 100 metres deep, but subterranean waters are deeper still. This way the radioactive water makes it to the ocean. I can’t make out just why the Japanese are reluctant to take strong measures. Japan is clearly unable to cope with the situation on its own, so what’s needed is an international emergency effort."
The Fukushima plant operator, - the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, is incapable of regulating or controlling the processes under way at the nuclear plant, says the co-chairman of the Ekozashchita, or ecological protection, international ecological group, Vladimir Slivyak.
"The Company is actually reacting to emergencies as they occur, Vladimir Slivyak says. When something happens, they start considering the situation. In other words, they are absolutely unable to control the situation. By far graver problems may arise at the Fukushima plant than the ones we now know of. Now, Friday’s jump in radiation levels most likely means fresh leaks."
TEPCO is going to go ahead with its effort to decontaminate soil, to prevent more radioactive leaks from seeping into ground water. Igor Ostretsov again.
"The only method to be used is evaporation, but this is not a radical decision, since it is not 100% efficient. In other words, we don’t have absolute technologies."
Scientists believe thorium power engineering could be a solution. This means any heavy elements are burned down through the use of accelerator. The future of nuclear power production, as well as the doing away with the aftermath of the Fukushima plant accident are due to be addressed by an international conference at the European Nuclear Research Organization, CERN, later this month.
They claimed to have achieved 'cold shutdown' 22 months ago. IF (a significant if) they can maintain that, production of new radiation will be limited, accumulated fission products within will decay away and they will become safer to handle over several years, just as do cores removed during normal refueling. We survived all the uncontained nuclear testing of the cold war, the sinking of multiple nuclear subs, all the nuclear dumping by the Soviets into the Arctic and the Urals (much worse than our dumping at Hanford, etc.). This, presuming shutdown can be maintained, will be less of a hit than that.
The Russian's ability to coverup Chernobyl effects took a large hit with the fall of the Soviet Union a few years later. Free Ukrainians were much less willing to hide what Russian stupidity had done to them. My comments regarding its eventual death toll being much less than expected were based on imperfect recollections of the UN's multiagency (including IAEA), 25th anniversary report, which can be found here. It didn't admit to potentially 40k+ extra deaths as you'd claimed they'd admitted and as you claimed was too low. The report estimated merely 4000 excess deaths — 3% over baseline cancer rates — an increase they said would be difficult to detect.
It looks like pretty reasonable science to me. Of course there will be loads of anecdotal stories about dire consequences. It was a big, scary, REAL event. There was dramatic physical damage and certainly major psychological trauma. God knows we've had GB full of stories of dire alleged consequences from events we now KNOW weren't real problems generated by fear of the unknown in scared honest people fanned by fear mongers and a media blessed with either an agenda, or at best with incompetence. The stories are data; they aren't, alone, science.
The atomic bomb survivors, the experience of 100+ years of medical radiation use and the experience of sundry other accidental exposures gives us some ideas of the risks resulting from exposure patterns and dosages. It also gives us an idea of the timing of those risks. Thyroid cancers and leukemias happen early. Other cancers take longer to develop, longer than the 'Soviet' propagandists lasted. Skin, the largest organ and the one with the most cancers (over half of all cancer in the US is skin cancer of various types) As a Dermatologist I do know something about that. Fortunately radiation mostly seems to cause low risk basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas; melanomas aren't much increased.
Most radiation induced skin cancers will be indistinguishable from their epidemic sun induced cousins, but sometimes they stand out. My non-nudist patient presenting with three at once on his scrotum, 30 years after curing testicular cancer with radiation therapy, was one such. My literature suggests the skin cancer risk starts rising 15 years out and probably remains elevated for life. I've not seen reports of increases in weird skin cancers coming out of Kiev, etc. and I've been paying some attention. That dog isn't barking in Chernobyl. Yet I've heard it barking in Bangladesh. Even with less media attention and with coverups by a guilty UN. I've seen reports of weird skin cancers from UNICEF's mass arsenic poisoning there.
Maybe it's still too early, but I haven't heard of any spikes in thyroid cancer or leukemia in Japan either. Or maybe the harm there is less than feared also. Japan will collect and release solid data on this. In very few years we'll KNOW whether there were any such spikes — the first solid biomarker whether we're panicking too much or too little.
Skin, the largest organ and the one with the most cancers (over half of all cancer in the US is skin cancer of various types) is a relatively common site for radiation induced cancers.
Your information is rather outdated, plentiful but limited and slanted the direction of optimism.
31 isotopes were detected in Japan, according to the IAEA. Tritium and the other 31 isotopes (there may be more with radioactive decay) cause genetic damage which exceeds a human lifespan. And some of those radioactive contaminants have half lives of thousands of years.
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For example, since the disaster, school children have been fed “untested” beef which was later found to be radioactive. In fact, in a never ending nightmare of conscience free propaganda, Japan continues to beg it’s inhabitants to “support Fukushima” by eating contaminated foods and the government continues to help growers, sellers conceal the origin of their contaminated foods. Here’s search results on “beef” from a good site if you want to do some research (the blogger is quick to point out inaccuracies or uninformed panic reportage) http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/search/label/radioactive%20beef
Tea is contaminated with cesium but sold anyway - after all, it’s tea, right? Peaches etc. Lots of contaminated food being consumed. Contaminated rice mixed with non contaminated rice and “spot tested” (one sample per 3 or 4 farms).
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Since tritium is almost always found as water, it goes directly into soft tissues and organs. The associated dose to these tissues are generally uniform and dependent on the tissues’ water content. Saying the skin can stop the beta of tritium ignores the fact that it is consumed and irradiates soft tissues, increasing the risk of cancer.
Are you aware that a well in Fukushima contains intense concentrations of isotopes, thousands of times over the “safety limit” and that this indicates corium has reached the water table - which it shares with Tokyo? (possibly much of Japan?) And there’s no way to stop it nor to prevent more corium from reaching the water table? http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2013/10/21/fukushima-watch-parsing-the-latest-radioactive-spike-in-zen-beta/
They lied about cold shutdown. Radioactive iodine were detected after their “cold shutdown = we lost control and don’t know where it is.” Presently, steam is sporadically venting out of the reactors. Steam....there’s your “cold shutdown.” Here’s search results for “steam” http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2013/07/fukushima-i-nuke-plant-reactor-3-steam.html
“accumulated fission products within will decay away and they will become safer to handle over several years” Are you aware that they have detected plutonium and other fuel grade isotopes in the surrounding areas and that these take MUCH MUCH longer to become safe? “It is unclear how the underground water is being contaminated,” Araki said, speculating that it’s the result of plutonium near the reactor core having melted and dropping somewhere inside the reactor.” (Kenji Araki, a nuclear engineering guest professor at the Fukushima National College of Technology)http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-japan-nuclear-20131020,0,3287177,full.story
“We survived all the uncontained nuclear testing of the cold war, the sinking of multiple nuclear subs, all the nuclear dumping by the Soviets into the Arctic and the Urals (much worse than our dumping at Hanford, etc.).” Who’s “we” Kemosabe? People developed cancer and died from nuclear testing. Research “Down Winders” and read of the financial settlements the US government settled on the remaining survivors. In 2000 the US congress created laws to protect Defense department workers from litigation - prior to that law workers would be sued by the government if they tried to collect compensation for cancer or other illnesses related to working with radiation. Congress acknowledged that even below the “safety limits”, radition can cause cancer and now allows workers to collect.)
Part of the cancer toll in the US and world wide is related to radiation released (burped) or vented from nuke plants but 20 years from exposure, the victim cannot prove where the cancer originated - there’s no cellular marker. (Oh I’ve seen maps of cancer clusters for breast cancer which form rosettes around the NP’s in the US and I’ve seen the same kind of map someone created for leukemia in England) The government(s) doesn’t like to settle so it denies that incidents ever happened and only counts it’s official measurements as valid. BEIR VII and medical science dating back to John Gofman’s work proves exposure = cancer risk and some cancer cases. Medical science has proven that their is no “safe limit” for exposure, all exposure is cumulative and increases risk and an individual’s body has individual capacity to repair itself (there isn’t one response to exposure, we respond differently). US plants are legally permitted to vent radioactive gases based on the nuke power industries baseless insistence that their is a safe limit below which they “try” to stay.
THe catastrophes you mentioned don’t have the nuclear payload of Fukushima - bombs have little fissile material by comparison with fuel in a nuclear reactor and are more efficient at converting it to energy than are the three core melt-throughs and, shudder, the vast amount of fuel suspended in open, damaged buildings (let’s call them shacks).
Your comparisons are too optimistic and unrealistic. If it’s an isotope then you focus on one that is beta and shorter lived than all that nasty gamma or heavier fuel isotopes. Areas in Japan are awash in serious contaminates and will be for the foreseeable future. The radioactive wastes are being distributed world wide starting with the northern hemisphere and right now, most actively in waterways.
Re the Urals, there weren’t any survivors there, were there? Miles of trees knocked down, their tops falling pointing away from the blast. Russia also had a region where they cooled water directly from a river which supplied the local population with water. People were dying in gruesome ways there - it’s offensive to me to read that “we’re’ fine” when the human toll of nuclear incompetence is ghastly.
“This, presuming shutdown can be maintained, will be less of a hit than that.” This sentence indicates that you are not aware of the physical circumstances of Fukushima.
“Free Ukrainians were much less willing to hide what Russian stupidity had done to them.” But records weren’t kept in fact, records were intentionally destroyed. For example, the government let the local populace hold a parade under the shadow of smoldering reactor, all photographs of the parade have been destroyed. Russians went to Japan to share their expertise re Fukushima. Japanese officials declared they were learning “The Lessons OF Chernobyl” from them. Around that time it was announced that medical doctors are not allowed to examine Fukushima residents without government approval. Reports are now leaking out about illnesses and indicating the physicians have been told not to tell their patients if they are ill from exposure (and these physicians are horrified).
I do believe that the IAEA admitted to more than 4k, I’ll try to search my links from FR going back but I sure find it a needle in a haystack process using the FR search engine. Internal group of scientists analyzed medical records from the region and spikes in death tolls which coincided with Chernobyl in countries world wide (spikes in spontaneous abortions etc.) and came up with a much much larger number (1 million). Some of the science is individual medical records based (doctors treating patients), some is analysis of spiking death tolls reported by country coinciding with timing of Chernobyl (and you probably know that radiation from Chernobyl was distributed throughout Europe in “spots”). Their research is controversial (do you believe that decades of obfuscation on the part of the IAEA and others would pave the way for acceptance of this kind of research?) but having read portions of the 400 page document, I find some of it quite good and it gives the best picture of the real toll of Chernobyl in that it details so many other illnesses and syndromes we never hear about, taken from the records of physicians treating patients. FOr example, early dementia from accumulations of cesium in the brain. Many syndromes which are not organic illnesses but seem to be the result of irradiation knocking down single chemical processes or little understood functions of the body resulting in human suffering previously unknown. Here’s a wiki web page describing the research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the_Catastrophe_for_People_and_the_Environment
Here’s an excerpt of the webpage: “The IAEA’s exclusion of data where estimated dose is below a certain threshold (following ICRP recommendations) is contrary to normal practice, even the ICRP’s own practice, and contradicts the linear no-threshold model (LNT). The ICRP’s recommendation in this regard is inconsistent with LNT and its own practices.”
Here’s a comment critical of the report: “A devastating review in the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry[12] points out that the book achieves this figure by the remarkable method of assuming that all increased deaths from a wide range of diseases – including many which have no known association with radiation – were caused by the Chernobyl accident. There is no basis for this assumption, not least because screening in many countries improved dramatically after the disaster and, since 1986, there have been massive changes in the former eastern bloc. The study makes no attempt to correlate exposure to radiation with the incidence of disease.”
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This gets at something seldom discussed - irradiation of a population suppresses immune functioning. I read a pro nuclear international report on Chernobyl when I first started studying the issue. A sentence in the literature caught my attention indicating that “all illnesses” in the Ukraine increased. Doctors reported increased levels of all illnesses. We know that radiation suppresses immune functioning, it’s a key concern when patients are treated with radiation therapy. SO, irradiate entire populations and then all diseases increase. With immunity down, more people dying from more diseases and many not “directly related to radiation exposure”. This is no doubt why the report counted spikes in death toll. I agree that it’s a controversial approach and yet I don’t want to ignore the obvious medical effects of radiation. SO I look at their overall death toll of 1 million and look at how much of it was documented by physicians treating patients and the fact that the contaimination is causing illnesses and killing today and will continue to do so and I don’t think they are that far off. Divide by 4 if you like, you’d still have about 250,000. WHatever it is, 4k or 40k is too low. And key to my study of this issue - there’s far more human suffering then that which is quickly captured in terms like “cancer” or “leukemia.”
But, decide for yourself. Here is the report: WOW! No longer available! I knew the industry was outraged by that report but I’ve never seen a PDF pulled as “unavailable” or “out of stock”! WEll it is out there in the wild. Many people downloaded it. If you are interested, I hope you find a copy. WOW!
“It was a big, scary, REAL event.” Was? Is. It is an ongoing unprecedented disaster and for the next few decades, much more fuel can be vented into the environment if the damaged fuel pools are compromised. Say....another typhoon headed for eastern Japan. *sigh* And earthquakes etc. or the NP becomes too radioactive for people to maintain those precious pools. Is.
“Maybe it’s still too early, but I haven’t heard of any spikes in thyroid cancer or leukemia in Japan either. Or maybe the harm there is less than feared also. Japan will collect and release solid data on this.” Japan is demonstrating that it has learned the lessons of Chernobyl and is suppressing information and lying to the public. In the months following the disaster, a Japanese official went to the most contaminated region to educate the public. WHile there he assured pregnant women that as long as they smiled and were happy, their baby would not be harmed by radiation but if they were scared or worried, then that could harm their child. Can you imaging a)lying and b) causing women to experience guilt if they lose the baby or it is otherwise unhealthy?
Re thyroid cancer Fukushima:
“The prefectural government has so far released thyroid testing results for 193,000 children. The number of children who have been diagnosed as or suspected of having thyroid cancer totaled 44, up from 28 as of June.
Eighteen of them have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and 25 are showing symptoms of the disease. The remaining child was suspected of having the cancer but was later diagnosed with a benign tumor.”
go to 7 min mark
I came into this thread initially to answer questions of why distillation alone couldn't remove all the radiation from the water. There had been news articles complaining that their intended purification process only removed 99 or whatever % of the radiation. So my thought first focused on the tritium. IF (again) they can keep the tritium in tanks it is not a problem there, its radiation won't penetrate any tanks walls and it will decay to irrelevancy within a humanly manageable time. Obviously leakage and evaporation from the tanks are less than perfectly controlled, much the less capture of the T2O into the tanks so some T2O is escaping. However "a drop in the ocean" is proverbial for a reason; it's the most extreme dilution possible on earth. I don't recall how much tritium was created in the accident, although I presume it's roughly known. As I presume is how much tritium is in the escaping water. Which water certainly is much less than 100% T2O or THO. Wiki says there was an estimated 3-4kg tritium on earth's surface prior to the atomic tests, presumably mainly as water and mainly with most of the other water in the ocean. Nuclear testing increased that 2-3 orders of magnitude, so maybe to 4 tons of tritium worldwide. "We" survived that. Who’s “we” Kemosabe? Mankind is "we!" Although some individual persons and non-human lifeforms suffered harm Mankind as a whole thrived during the nuclear test era with large increases in population, life spans and wealth. It was certainly not an end of the world problem and objectively did much less harm than some of mankind's other bad ideas and habits. I'd be surprised if Fukishima threatened us with more escaped tritium than the nuclear testing plus the similarly "survived" Chernobyl. Obamacare is a MUCH larger medical risk. Just compare cancer survival rates in the US and the UK.
What the Soviets did in the Urals was horrid. Dumping pure waste straight into an arctic river. Storing it by pouring it into shallow lake, which subsequently dried out exposing it. But the beliefs and culture of the USSR did much more damage in other ways than even their dramatically bad nuclear crimes. The affected area of the Urals was sparsely populated even before their accident. Some in the west knew 'something' had gone terribly wrong in the Urals, but they were able to keep the details hidden for decades. That level of coverup is impossible in Japan post McArthur and the Japanese would not tolerate that level of inaction. If humanly possible they will do better than the Urals. The USSR hid the existence of Chernobyl as long as they could and downplayed its consequences as long as it could. Which was about four years. But are you saying subsequent, independent, free government of the Ukraine has continued to cover up the late consequences (cancer and others) for the benefit of Russia? Russia has bullied the Ukraine at times, but at least some Ukrainian governments have been very pro-western and anti-Russian. They could have destroyed records of cancers during the Soviet years, but hiding any current cancer outbreaks at the time of that 25 year UN review would be a different matter. And if pre-Chernobyl radiation induced cancer theories were correct there should be a large one to hide.
Citing a 2000 act of Congress as evidence that low levels of radiation are harmful — on FreeRepublic.com — isn't going to get you very far. Whether or not low levels of radiation are dangerous, Freepers understand that Congresscritters are generally scientific ignoramuses who are quite willing to act politically and claim science as an excuse. And 2000 would have been leading up to the hoped for replacement of President Clinton with Al Gore who hyped everything conceivably environmental... except Daddy's toxic waste dump in his own back yard. Worse than worthless as a talking point here.
I knew radiation was immunosuppressive. It is, or at least used to be, used medically that way to treat some diseases. It takes a fair dosage to do so significantly. We doctors suppress immunity in a lot of folks intentionally. Relatively few get into significant trouble from it. For that matter ultraviolet light is immunosuppressive. It takes about 1/4 as much UV to produce measurable immunosuppression as it does to burn you. It can make for some odd patterns of poison ivy rashes. I'm not saying it's desirable, just putting it into perspective.
The big question is can the Japanese keep things mostly under control, remove the stored spent fuel, dismantle the buildings and recover the escaped fuel. They claim they'll start recovering the stored spent fuel in the next year. If they do it will reduce the potential for future problems and give hope that their announced future stages are possible. Failure there would be BAD. Success still leaves those future stages requiring new engineering be developed. Raising that sea wall higher is also important; I don't want another tsunami there! Assuming the damaged buildings, and the 1000 water storage tanks, can survive typhoon winds the most the extra rain could do is rinse out to sea those radioactives that were already leaking out. It won't wash the escaped cores out to sea. The PR stink would be larger than the long term actual incremental damage.
Fairly soon after the accident it was clear there were plenty of Freepers in both the "problem is too big to solve" and the "problem is less bad than advertised camps." Some of that was probably based on prior attitudes to nuclear power, some on how cynical they were regarding behavior of governments and large companies, some on whether they were optimists generally or pessimists. I've long known, as much as my curiosity hates it, that I am neither able nor have the time to understand everything about everything. When I want to know more, but can't do so directly I try to do so indirectly. I look for less controversial indicators that over time may point me in the right direction. I look at who and what others are saying on the matter. Sometimes someone I've otherwise found reliable will have useful opinions. E.g. Michael Crichton wrote highly of the UN's report on Chernobyl and how it showed the worst damage from Chernobyl was psychological, damage from bad information scaring folks. Sometimes people I've found to be reliably wrong will have useful opinions. I've long liked what I call the "Klink Test." In one episode Col. Hogan was defusing a bomb and didn't know which wire to cut. So he asked Klink which one, then cut the other one because he didn't know which one was right but was confident Klink would chose the wrong one. History has proven the environmental movement to be full of reliable Klinks, wrong about everything and crying "Wolf!" at every loose hair seen. When I can't decide positively, I like my odds betting against the green Klinks every time.
Still I want your side to keep pressure on TEPCO and the Japanese government. Absent pressure they'll default to trying to sweep the problems under the rug which is the worst option. Just be careful not to push in ways that make them hazard the forest to save one tree. Aiming for perfect zero risk is unwise as inaction carries significant risk here. Structures will weaken and fail with too much delay, and will do so faster than normal in high radiation areas. Releasing some radiation to remove larger potential sources of radiation from harm may be a good trade. Releasing some radiation to speed up other steps may be a good trade. Bargain for better trades, but bargain quickly. You can't completely stop ground water flowing through this site anymore than Colorado could have completely prevented its recent flooding. Site and build future plants better. Some radiation is going to get out. Do what's practical to minimize it, but don't let it distract from working the bigger problems. And if you can't solve the big problem than don't complain about the — relatively — little ones. So enough of this subject, I'm back to working Obama problems.
I stopped reading after you downplayed thyroid cancer. You say things like thyroid cancer is common and throw out a number in the thousands. Do you realize that thyroid cancer is rare in children and being treated for cancer as a child is not as dismissable and breezily “curable” as you claim? Perhaps not, eh? I sense a commitment to downplaying the impact on human populations. I get enough of that by reading the web elsewhere, I am not searching for it here.
Have you read much about impact on livelihood? Nah? Me neither. There’s a great vid on Ex-Skf featuring people trying to cope with the loss of land, homes, businesses and a way of life. Just overnight, their horse breeding business is gone and they have no place to live. The mass migration of lives, needless excisions through cancer treatment even while being exposed to radiation in food, water, and air. Trying to overcome hospital stays or leukemia while your immune system is depressed from environmental irradiation - all while some government flack assures you it’s really not that bad. Read up on the Ukraine, ask yourself if you’d think it was “nothing” to treat every member of your family for a series of illnesses and be treated as well. It’s not just thyroid cancer, its a host of other illnesses, some of which have no name. It’s people dying of diseases they would normally recover from if their immune systems weren’t suppressed. No - let’s not read each other’s posts anymore. Ok?
I'm not downplaying the suffering that came after Chernobyl, I'm downplaying some of the predicted problems which didn't turn out to be so. We should learn from hindsight. What turned out to be the real risks of something like Chernobyl and how can we best minimize them? What predicted risks turned out not to be real or at least to be much less than expected? Let's not spend resources or mental angst unnecessarily; there is plenty of real need. The UN report suggests that much suffering and harm resulted from false (in hindsight) information and decisions based on it. We should learn from it and do better the next time, especially since that next time arrived in Fukashima two years ago. We shouldn't proceed based only on 30 year old guesses as to what might happen. To not learn from the past is to be cruel to the present. And don't forget worse things than nuclear accidents can happen. Ukrainians should know that better than nearly anyone. I would far rather try to live through what the Soviets did to them in 86-87 than what they did in 32-33. Stalin killed literally millions of Ukrainians through forced famine and the NYT won a Pulitzer for lying about it. And Stalin's mentality produced the fools that destroyed Chernobyl.
“It’s not just thyroid cancer, its a host of other illnesses, some of which have no name. It’s people dying of diseases they would normally recover from if their immune systems weren’t suppressed. No - let’s not read each other’s posts anymore. Ok?”
I find your dismissal of human suffering so annoying I actually came back to write more. It won’t change your mind so you may just want to skip reading it. My comments below are for others who are investigating this issue.
“I didn’t “downplay” thyroid cancer, I reported it honestly. It is a significantly better than generic ‘cancer’ and doesn’t deserve the same reaction as breast or lung cancer in most cases”
My response: Ah but exposure to ionizing radiation causes generic cancer and rare cancers, solid lump cancers and leukemia, countless syndromes, early dementia, cardiac arrest, suppression of immune system that may cause you to die from simple illnesses from which you would otherwise recover - or maybe you’ll “only” struggle with those illnesses for years. Let’s hope those in Fukushima with thyroid and other cancers are evacuated from contaminated areas permanently - they don’t need their immune systems suppressed while undergoing cancer treatments. Beware of people who minimize the suffering of those exposed to nuclear disasters by stressing repeatedly that “thyroid cancer is treatable.” Does any government or industry have the right to give your family cancer of any kind and then tell you to buck up, it’s not that bad?
“I’m not downplaying the suffering that came after Chernobyl, I’m downplaying some of the predicted problems which didn’t turn out to be so. We should learn from hindsight.”
My response: We’ll have to agree to disagree on the amount of text you spent a) “destigmatizing” thyroid cancer based on your experience treating patients not living in contaminated zones, b) focusing on predicted problems when the Ukraine is filled with literal medical problems, entire generations of children growing up in contaminated zones and c) noting that we should learn from hindsight while refusing to do so. I’ve never seen a nuke apologist acknowledge the continuing damage caused by Chernobyl. If anyone cares to study the issue, watch some videos on Youtube starting with The Battle For Chernobyl and then watch a few about the cover they are trying to build over the corium and then some one the radioactive contamination destroying lives today just as effectively as it did 25 years ago and as it will 25 years from now. Or just watch the news and read of radioactive mushrooms halted at the border of England for being well above accepted limits for radiation.
“The UN report suggests that much suffering and harm resulted from false (in hindsight) information and decisions based on it. “
My response: Hans Blix listened to the report from the USSR about the amount of radiation released by Chernobyl and then elected to accept 10% of the radiation reported into the “official record.” He’s on videotape doing that. The IAEA has subjugated WHO so now WHO cannot report on the medical rammifactions of any nuclear issue without the IAEA signing off on that. And the UN is quite content with this arrangement and so the distortion of the official record occurs from the top down. You’ll note that soon after Chernobyl, the international apologists were insisting, and still insist, that the populations made ill were actually a result of unfounded fears of radiation. ALl that leukemia and thyroid cancer was really the result of an ignorant fearful populace. No, I reject the UN and the IAEA as Machiavellian and I look to actual medical research like the BEIR VII for proof that x amount of radiation causes x amount of risk etc.
“We should learn from it and do better the next time, especially since that next time arrived in Fukashima two years ago. We shouldn’t proceed based only on 30 year old guesses as to what might happen. To not learn from the past is to be cruel to the present. And don’t forget worse things than nuclear accidents can happen.”
My responses: This, people, is disgusting but I will try to comment anyway. Yes they should learn from what happened and do it better next time but the nuclear industry decided not to and in fact, refuses to do so. “We” shouldn’t have a special interest (nuke power) industry protected by the federal government.
The incompetent management of nuclear power in the US and other countries is sadly entrenched and 100% defended by the resources of government and so the “little people” will always be lectured that they “worry to much” about radioactive waste.
“We shouldn’t proceed based only on 30 year old guesses as to what might happen” is laughable because you can ask any nuclear power apologist for a reasonably accurate account of the impact of Chernobyl and not one will even come close. It is not part of the professional development of nuke “professionals” to have even a passing understanding of the impact their industry has - but it is ever so easy to get one to sneer at you while offering pathetic, false comparisons to bananas and air travel.
I’ve had many debates with nuke professionals wherein they demand that I perform the mathematical calculations of dosimetry (the equations they use to determine exposure) and not one of them realizes that the industry standard dosimetry calculations are by design, worthless and do not reflect reality. A two-for is when they use that worthless dosimetry to try to “prove” to me that bananas are more harmful to me than nuclear fuel.
“To not learn from the past is to be cruel to the present.” Yes - and the nuclear industry is cruel to the point of sociopathy. Note how apologists may lift exhortations used by those worried about the incompetence on display in the nuclear industry to lecture the populace. It gets old.
Here’s some pointless strawmen:
“And don’t forget worse things than nuclear accidents can happen.”
Obviously I’m more concerned about this than you are. It’s why you are telling me I am over reacting and focusing on the wrong things.
“Ukrainians should know that better than nearly anyone. I would far rather try to live through what the Soviets did to them in 86-87 than what they did in 32-33. Stalin killed literally millions of Ukrainians through forced famine and the NYT won a Pulitzer for lying about it. And Stalin’s mentality produced the fools that destroyed Chernobyl. “
I always find it ghastly the way that nuke apologists purport to know the best interests of the Ukrainians.
Yes, we all know Stalin killed literally millions of people but we were supposedly not socialist and ruled over by a dictator yet our government and it’s nuclear power industry are abusing the public, lying to them, and making decisions damaging to them and the public is given no legal recourse. We are stripped of our rights to participate in decisions, which will effect us for many generations, by our government and routinely told that we wouldn’t be able to participate in decision making regarding nuclear power because we aren’t nuclear engineers!
Lethal famine or needless nuclear disasters with horrible legacies. Talk about a false dichotomy! Extermination level famine or nuclear disaster - take your pick! We shouldn’t have to choose between the two. The incompetence and greed entrenched in the nuclear power industry is killing people is the result of choices made and the sole response of the nuclear power industry is comprised of denial and obfuscation. Nuke apologists frequently resort to false dichotomy arguments to reinforce their straw men.
Rolling over the will of the people was both Stalin’s approach and that of nuclear power. If anyone chooses to watch the youtube video “The Battle For Chernobyl” you’ll note that the problem was one of incompetent management common to the nuclear power industry. Too much control given to too few people with too much incentive for their hubris and greed to resist.
Note that the man most responsible for Chernobyl’s decision to take safety precautions offline and test the reactor was chosen for his senior post even after he was thought to be responsible for the nuclear disaster on a Soviet submarine. The nuclear power industry will remain a festering swamp of back scratching arrogance and incompetence as long as there are no checks and balances and it continues to claim to regulate itself.
Agreed. Must be internationalized. I can make an exception. BUT we don’t want North Koreans or Pakistanis or Iranians or Red Chinese or Venezuelans wandering around there onsite (if it is under some kind of UN agency). That would be suicidal. They could easily sabotage the place, and/or get hints on nuke production by gaining access. If I were the Japanese I would be hesitant to let these enemies in there.
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