God, you really are a dumbass, arent you?
Keep up the soulstrut circle jerk, maybe all your whining will make your apparent lack of formal education seem less painful.
I swear - reading these posts is like being forced to listen to a bunch of smarmy fourteen year olds discussing the state of the world.
Good luck in your completely pathetic quest to make sense of it all, you utter nincumpoop.
If we compare sources of electricity, which we all need to play our records, there are few good choices. Especially, when scaled up.
The major source of electricity is fossil fuels.
All fossil fuels release green house gasses when burned.
All release toxic, cancer causing chemicals. (They talk about clean natural gas. I don't know for sure, but I assume they mean, cleaner, or not sooty.)
Nuclear power on the other hand, burns clean.
Does not emit any green house gases. (accept when the uranium is mined, which is energy intensive.)
Only emits toxins on rare occasions or when fuel is loaded or removed.
Given just these facts, I might give more support to nuclear power.
What about green energy ?
Windmills suck cause there isn't always wind, but water turbines can be constantly powered by the tide.
What about solar energy too ?
Aren't these safer and more sustainable than both fossil fuels and nuclear energy ?
I live in the Pacific NW. Most of our energy is from hydro. Not with out it's environmental drawbacks on the Columbia, Snake and other NW rivers. There are always wave energy programs in testing. Problem is waves and salt water are very destructive and none of the current or past attempts have produced usable amounts of energy. I think a wave energy breakthrough is possible, but until then...
We also get a good portion of our energy from wind. We will be getting more soon. We are an energy exporting state BTW.
I think major reductions in the use of fossil fuels can be accomplished now with small scale solar. When paid for with long term loans it is cost effective in areas where the utilities will allow you to spin your meter backwards. I think Germany is doing this. It has also started to be done on a small scale here.
As I mentioned earlier, the small fraction of energy we get from nukes can easily be reached through conservation and energy efficiencies. This is where the largest reductions can be gained in the shortest period of time for the least investment.
One of the problems though is that those forms of energy generation are restricted to certain areas of the world, and if you want to transmit it to regions that are further away, you're bound to lose a good portion of it through transmission and various other inefficiencies. Hydroelectric is a good solution for places like Manitoba or the Pacific Northwest, but it's not really feasible for a lot of other places.
The one big problem with these "alternative" sources of energy is that they are free and available to even the poorest of countries.
I disagree. Money is still required for research and development, purchasing materials, manufacturing (IIRC, it requires somewhere on the order of millions to billions of solar panels to match a single reactor), building the generating devices, upkeep, deploying the generated energy into the grid, etc.
They're not free sources of energy by any stretch of the imagination. Not to harp on solar power, but, IIRC, it costs ~4x as much as coal-generated energy per megawatt hour.
Note: I am not a fan of coal (which on average generates more radioactivity than nuclear reactors) or nuclear power. I'd consider myself a proponent of developing alternative energy ways of generating energy, but only if they actually work.
What if all the money that was spent for nuclear technology would have gone to the developement of plants for solar, wind, tidal etc?
The one big problem with these "alternative" sources of energy is that they are free and available to even the poorest of countries.
I have the basic idea for a movie plot where we go to wind power and erect millions of wind turbines around the world and during a hurricane the turbines put the earth into flight and on a path to crashing with the sun.
I support wind power and Texas may have more turbines than any other state....I just thought of how ironic it would be if THAT was how we finally destroyed this planet of ours.
What if all the money that was spent for nuclear technology would have gone to the developement of plants for solar, wind, tidal etc?
The one big problem with these "alternative" sources of energy is that they are free and available to even the poorest of countries.
I have the basic idea for a movie plot where we go to wind power and erect millions of wind turbines around the world and during a hurricane the turbines put the earth into flight and on a path to crashing with the sun.
I support wind power and Texas may have more turbines than any other state....I just thought of how ironic it would be if THAT was how we finally destroyed this planet of ours.
I'm still hoping for giant ants like in "Them." Even though that wasn't scientifically feasible, either.
God, you really are a dumbass, arent you?
Keep up the soulstrut circle jerk, maybe all your whining will make your apparent lack of formal education seem less painful.
I swear - reading these posts is like being forced to listen to a bunch of smarmy fourteen year olds discussing the state of the world.
Good luck in your completely pathetic quest to make sense of it all, you utter nincumpoop.
The one big problem with these "alternative" sources of energy is that they are free and available to even the poorest of countries.
I disagree. Money is still required for research and development, purchasing materials, manufacturing (IIRC, it requires somewhere on the order of millions to billions of solar panels to match a single reactor), building the generating devices, upkeep, deploying the generated energy into the grid, etc.
They're not free sources of energy by any stretch of the imagination. Not to harp on solar power, but, IIRC, it costs ~4x as much as coal-generated energy per megawatt hour.
Note: I am not a fan of coal (which on average generates more radioactivity than nuclear reactors) or nuclear power. I'd consider myself a proponent of developing alternative energy ways of generating energy, but only if they actually work.
Sure you have to develope the techology first and then you have to finance the set up but the energy be it wind, solar, tidal or geothermal etc is free. You'll have more or less significant costs for mainenance but you won't get a bill for hours of sunshine or kilowatts in wind delivered to your turbine or cubicfeet of water moved by the tides.
So what if electricity costs 4x more? Just use less of it then.
Maybe then stores would stop blasting their ACs onto sidewalks to lure customers in and other crazy shit that's all too common in our so called advanced societies.
The best approach would probably be to get your info from a guy who thinks Algeria isnt a part of Africa, can't spell to save his life, thinks spreading his personal business all over the internet is a smart move, and dismisses MIT publications as 'smart people re-editing nonsense'. If that wasn't enough, there's the inscrutable nuclear ramblings of Laserwolf, and Brians random idiotic link posting for further clarification (forming actual sentences is a little above his station).
The best approach would probably be to get your info from a guy who thinks Algeria isnt a part of Africa, can't spell to save his life, thinks spreading his personal business all over the internet is a smart move, and dismisses MIT publications as 'smart people re-editing nonsense'. If that wasn't enough, there's the inscrutable nuclear ramblings of Laserwolf, and Brians random idiotic link posting for further clarification (forming actual sentences is a little above his station).
how many languages are you fluent in you dumb fuck?
This place is so fucking lame sometimes. Like a schoolyard.
Can anyone maintain an exchange of ideas and opinions without it coming to this personal petty shit?
The best approach would probably be to get your info from a guy who thinks Algeria isnt a part of Africa, can't spell to save his life, thinks spreading his personal business all over the internet is a smart move, and dismisses MIT publications as 'smart people re-editing nonsense'. If that wasn't enough, there's the inscrutable nuclear ramblings of Laserwolf, and Brians random idiotic link posting for further clarification (forming actual sentences is a little above his station).
I'm sorry my opinions don't mirror yours.
Despite my ramblings you have managed to stick with this thread for a week and 6 pages.
What you have not managed to do is present a compelling fact or argument for your opinions.
Yeah - dont let any attempts to post less panic inducing takes get in the way of your gloating - why dont you throw a little nuclear disaster party and do a jig - you fucking dick
Lurker alert. This thread has annoyed me so much I had to look for my password.
Staxowax is coming off as a total dick but essentially he is correct to be questioning the media coverage of this.
Please carefully read this analysis and links it contains and stop being fooled into thinking this is some kind of Apocalypse situation.
More than 10,000 people have died in the Japanese tsunami and the survivors are cold and hungry. But the media concentrate on nuclear radiation from which no-one has died - and is unlikely to.
Wade Allison. Nuclear and medical physicist at the University of Oxford, the author of Radiation and Reason (2009) and Fundamental Physics for Probing and Imaging (2006).
Lurker alert. This thread has annoyed me so much I had to look for my password.
Staxowax is coming off as a total dick but essentially he is correct to be questioning the media coverage of this.
Please carefully read this analysis and links it contains and stop being fooled into thinking this is some kind of Apocalypse situation.
More than 10,000 people have died in the Japanese tsunami and the survivors are cold and hungry. But the media concentrate on nuclear radiation from which no-one has died - and is unlikely to.
Wade Allison. Nuclear and medical physicist at the University of Oxford, the author of Radiation and Reason (2009) and Fundamental Physics for Probing and Imaging (2006).
I read this BBC piece a few days ago. Very interesting. It basically tells us to re-adjust our attitude towards radioactivity, to stop running away from it and to embrace it instead. After all, radioactivity can cure cancer.
I quote from the BBC piece:
"And Chernobyl? The latest UN report published on 28 February confirms the known death toll - 28 fatalities among emergency workers, plus 15 fatal cases of child thyroid cancer - which would have been avoided if iodine tablets had been taken (as they have now in Japan). And in each case the numbers are minute compared with the 3,800 at Bhopal in 1984, who died as a result of a leak of chemicals from the Union Carbide pesticide plant."
The comparison to Bhopal is not only out of place and cynic but in my opinion this is also an indicator to question the competence of the entire article. His numbers also seem to be off: "28 fatalities among emergency workers, plus 15 fatal cases of child thyroid cancer"?
Experts are arguing if the final death toll of the Chernobyl disaster is 4.000 or 1 million. All depending what agenda they have of course...
Now your "Wade Allison. Nuclear and medical physicist at the University of Oxford" declares that the actual death toll was only 28 emergency workers and 15 children who only died because they didn't take their iodine. I don't even now what to respond to that.
In September 2005, a draft summary report by the Chernobyl Forum, comprising a number of UN agencies including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), other UN bodies and the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, put the total predicted number of deaths due to the accident at 4000.[30] This death toll predicted by the WHO included the 47 workers who died of acute radiation syndrome as a direct result of radiation from the disaster and nine children who died from thyroid cancer, in the estimated 4000 excess cancer deaths expected among the 600,000 with the highest levels of exposure.[39] The full version of the WHO health effects report adopted by the UN, published in April 2006, included the prediction of 5000 additional fatalities from significantly contaminated areas in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine and predicted that, in total, 9000 will die from cancer among the 6.9 million most-exposed Soviet citizens.[31] This report is not free of controversy, and has been accused of trying to minimize the consequences of the accident.[40]
The BBC piece compares the measured leakage to Chernobyl and claims that at Fukushima we're at around 1% of that.
Other sources claim that what has leaked so far clocks in at around 10% of what was released in Chernobyl. With the total amount of nuclear fuel present at the Fukushima plant being 10 times more than what was at Chernobyl.
Nobody knows how much has leaked so far. TEPCO has a long history of falsifying reports. They don't even trust their own numbers: Two days ago, they reported having measured 10 million times the normal levels in water found underneath two of the reactors. The same water that caused radioactive burns on the feet of two workers. A day later they claimed to have made a mistake and it was 100.000 times of whatever they consider usual.
Meanwhile, Hapag Lloyd have stopped sending their ships to Tokyo. A Chinese vessel was reported as having been radioactively contaminated when passing Fukushima at a distance of around 100 miles. The Chinese never had a history of being afraid of a bit of radiation...
This mess is far from over. The "We should stop running away from radiation" article was published by the BBC 3 days ago.
Since then it was confirmed that there was an at least partial meltdown in at least one of the reactors, that at least one of the reactors has a ruptured inner containment vessel and the presence of highly toxic plutonium in the soil around the plant.
If the media has an agenda by blowing this out of proportion for political reasons they have apparently even convinced the Japanese people of the great danger they are facing. This morning I came into the office to find a work related email from my associate in Tokyo who ended his message with the following statement.
We are all fine so far though the spreading of radioactive pollution is very much scaring us. Please dispatch your experts to save Japan. We have lost the confidence on our experts. Cho
That being said, it does appear that the 10,000+ deaths due to other factors are not being reported with the same fervor that the Nuclear Plant accident is and I do think that is partially due to a political agenda.
I read this BBC piece a few days ago. Very interesting. It basically tells us to re-adjust our attitude towards radioactivity, to stop running away from it and to embrace it instead. After all, radioactivity can cure cancer.
I quote from the BBC piece:
"And Chernobyl? The latest UN report published on 28 February confirms the known death toll - 28 fatalities among emergency workers, plus 15 fatal cases of child thyroid cancer - which would have been avoided if iodine tablets had been taken (as they have now in Japan). "
On how long a timescale ?
People are still suffering the long term effects of Chernobyl.
Also.....If you are interested in the dangers that we face here in the U.S. from nuclear power plants I suggest you read the University of Pittsburgh study done 25 years after the Three Mile Island incident which is our country's worse nuclear accident to date.
If the media has an agenda by blowing this out of proportion for political reasons they have apparently even convinced the Japanese people of the great danger they are facing. This morning I came into the office to find a work related email from my associate in Tokyo who ended his message with the following statement.
We are all fine so far though the spreading of radioactive pollution is very much scaring us. Please dispatch your experts to save Japan. We have lost the confidence on our experts. Cho
That being said, it does appear that the 10,000+ deaths due to other factors are not being reported with the same fervor that the Nuclear Plant accident is and I do think that is partially due to a political agenda.
It is indeed unfortunate that a shadow was cast on the Tsunami situation.
Political Agenda has been the catalyst of mad anxiety and concern among many, even within Japan, unfortunately.
While the amount of nuclear material does indeed seem to dwarf that of Chernobyl, people still fail to see the differences, which have been greatly documented.
The reality is that we ARE looking at a long term issue in the general vicinity of Fukushima.....as would be expected... but not Tokyo. Caesium levels are not beyond safe levels (in Tokyo), and iodine risks are minimal, especially with it having a half life of around 8 days.
Anyway, if you DO wish to pay attention to the REAL disaster here, do what you can to give to charity for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
If the media has an agenda by blowing this out of proportion for political reasons they have apparently even convinced the Japanese people of the great danger they are facing. This morning I came into the office to find a work related email from my associate in Tokyo who ended his message with the following statement.
We are all fine so far though the spreading of radioactive pollution is very much scaring us. Please dispatch your experts to save Japan. We have lost the confidence on our experts. Cho
That being said, it does appear that the 10,000+ deaths due to other factors are not being reported with the same fervor that the Nuclear Plant accident is and I do think that is partially due to a political agenda.
Sometimes it's more, sometimes less easy to tell the agenda of a report. Of course there are a lot of sensationalistic news outlets but I think you're making a mistake when crediting the anti-nuclerar movement to have more influence on the media and a more powerful lobby than the nuclear industry has. The global economic and political consequences of this disaster are huge and all the players are struggling to if not come out on top than at least not on the very bottom.
This BBC published specialist claiming the death toll of Chernobyl to be 43 is a shining example how everybody just say whatever craziness they can come up with.
The presence of radioactivity in Tokyo tab water should be very alarming. Even if what they say is true and it's "only" radioactive iodine which has a very short half-life, how did it get in there? Is the plant leaking into the ground water?
The Japanese government now confirms that they have continued plutonium leakage. Plutonium is highly toxic and has a half-life of 24.000 years.
International shipping vessels are now avoiding the area around Fukushima, what's going to happen in Tokyo once the wind changes?
What a rabid cow... I don't watch US "news" television because the constant hyperbole is just nauseating to me.
I agree, this is some crazed, fear-mongering bullshit. Do they give her some especially dramatic eye make-up to make her look even more panic-inducing?
Anyway, if you DO wish to pay attention to the REAL disaster here, do what you can to give to charity for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
This^^
For the last 2 weeks the company I work for has been donating/shipping containers of disinfectants, potable water, safety equipment, and cleaning materials and we can't get them there fast enough nor nearly the quantities they will ultimately need. We flew people over to organize things at that end and their reports back are nothing less than total chaos.
On the charity front I recommend Doctors w/o Borders who have gotten ALL of my charitable donations in the last few years.
Comments
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/22/chernobyl-cleanup-survivors-message-for-japan-run-away-as-qui/
God, you really are a dumbass, arent you?
Keep up the soulstrut circle jerk, maybe all your whining will make your apparent lack of formal education seem less painful.
I swear - reading these posts is like being forced to listen to a bunch of smarmy fourteen year olds discussing the state of the world.
Good luck in your completely pathetic quest to make sense of it all, you utter nincumpoop.
b/w
thx 4 the lulz. love ya.
Yes, taking a break from the Board does sound like a good idea.
I live in the Pacific NW. Most of our energy is from hydro. Not with out it's environmental drawbacks on the Columbia, Snake and other NW rivers. There are always wave energy programs in testing. Problem is waves and salt water are very destructive and none of the current or past attempts have produced usable amounts of energy. I think a wave energy breakthrough is possible, but until then...
We also get a good portion of our energy from wind. We will be getting more soon. We are an energy exporting state BTW.
I think major reductions in the use of fossil fuels can be accomplished now with small scale solar. When paid for with long term loans it is cost effective in areas where the utilities will allow you to spin your meter backwards. I think Germany is doing this. It has also started to be done on a small scale here.
As I mentioned earlier, the small fraction of energy we get from nukes can easily be reached through conservation and energy efficiencies. This is where the largest reductions can be gained in the shortest period of time for the least investment.
One of the problems though is that those forms of energy generation are restricted to certain areas of the world, and if you want to transmit it to regions that are further away, you're bound to lose a good portion of it through transmission and various other inefficiencies. Hydroelectric is a good solution for places like Manitoba or the Pacific Northwest, but it's not really feasible for a lot of other places.
The one big problem with these "alternative" sources of energy is that they are free and available to even the poorest of countries.
I disagree. Money is still required for research and development, purchasing materials, manufacturing (IIRC, it requires somewhere on the order of millions to billions of solar panels to match a single reactor), building the generating devices, upkeep, deploying the generated energy into the grid, etc.
They're not free sources of energy by any stretch of the imagination. Not to harp on solar power, but, IIRC, it costs ~4x as much as coal-generated energy per megawatt hour.
Note: I am not a fan of coal (which on average generates more radioactivity than nuclear reactors) or nuclear power. I'd consider myself a proponent of developing alternative energy ways of generating energy, but only if they actually work.
Anyway...
I have the basic idea for a movie plot where we go to wind power and erect millions of wind turbines around the world and during a hurricane the turbines put the earth into flight and on a path to crashing with the sun.
I support wind power and Texas may have more turbines than any other state....I just thought of how ironic it would be if THAT was how we finally destroyed this planet of ours.
I'm still hoping for giant ants like in "Them." Even though that wasn't scientifically feasible, either.
Sure you have to develope the techology first and then you have to finance the set up but the energy be it wind, solar, tidal or geothermal etc is free. You'll have more or less significant costs for mainenance but you won't get a bill for hours of sunshine or kilowatts in wind delivered to your turbine or cubicfeet of water moved by the tides.
So what if electricity costs 4x more? Just use less of it then.
Maybe then stores would stop blasting their ACs onto sidewalks to lure customers in and other crazy shit that's all too common in our so called advanced societies.
how many languages are you fluent in you dumb fuck?
This place is so fucking lame sometimes. Like a schoolyard.
Can anyone maintain an exchange of ideas and opinions without it coming to this personal petty shit?
I'm sorry my opinions don't mirror yours.
Despite my ramblings you have managed to stick with this thread for a week and 6 pages.
What you have not managed to do is present a compelling fact or argument for your opinions.
Japan on 'maximum nuclear alert'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12889541
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/vanishing-act-by-japanese-executive-during-nuclear-crisis-raises-questions/2011/03/28/AFDnHNpB_story.html?wpisrc=emailtoafriend
Yeah - dont let any attempts to post less panic inducing takes get in the way of your gloating - why dont you throw a little nuclear disaster party and do a jig - you fucking dick
Staxowax is coming off as a total dick but essentially he is correct to be questioning the media coverage of this.
Please carefully read this analysis and links it contains and stop being fooled into thinking this is some kind of Apocalypse situation.
Wade Allison. Nuclear and medical physicist at the University of Oxford, the author of Radiation and Reason (2009) and Fundamental Physics for Probing and Imaging (2006).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12860842
More about similar themes here:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/what-the-green-movement-got-wrong/articles/mark-lynas-feature
I read this BBC piece a few days ago. Very interesting. It basically tells us to re-adjust our attitude towards radioactivity, to stop running away from it and to embrace it instead. After all, radioactivity can cure cancer.
I quote from the BBC piece:
"And Chernobyl? The latest UN report published on 28 February confirms the known death toll - 28 fatalities among emergency workers, plus 15 fatal cases of child thyroid cancer - which would have been avoided if iodine tablets had been taken (as they have now in Japan). And in each case the numbers are minute compared with the 3,800 at Bhopal in 1984, who died as a result of a leak of chemicals from the Union Carbide pesticide plant."
The comparison to Bhopal is not only out of place and cynic but in my opinion this is also an indicator to question the competence of the entire article. His numbers also seem to be off: "28 fatalities among emergency workers, plus 15 fatal cases of child thyroid cancer"?
Experts are arguing if the final death toll of the Chernobyl disaster is 4.000 or 1 million. All depending what agenda they have of course...
Now your "Wade Allison. Nuclear and medical physicist at the University of Oxford" declares that the actual death toll was only 28 emergency workers and 15 children who only died because they didn't take their iodine. I don't even now what to respond to that.
Not sure if it's better to trust the BBC or Wikipedia but check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects#Controversy_over_human_health_effects and verify yourself the links to the original documentation by IAEA/WHO/UNDP.
The Chernobyl Forum report
In September 2005, a draft summary report by the Chernobyl Forum, comprising a number of UN agencies including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), other UN bodies and the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, put the total predicted number of deaths due to the accident at 4000.[30] This death toll predicted by the WHO included the 47 workers who died of acute radiation syndrome as a direct result of radiation from the disaster and nine children who died from thyroid cancer, in the estimated 4000 excess cancer deaths expected among the 600,000 with the highest levels of exposure.[39] The full version of the WHO health effects report adopted by the UN, published in April 2006, included the prediction of 5000 additional fatalities from significantly contaminated areas in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine and predicted that, in total, 9000 will die from cancer among the 6.9 million most-exposed Soviet citizens.[31] This report is not free of controversy, and has been accused of trying to minimize the consequences of the accident.[40]
The BBC piece compares the measured leakage to Chernobyl and claims that at Fukushima we're at around 1% of that.
Other sources claim that what has leaked so far clocks in at around 10% of what was released in Chernobyl. With the total amount of nuclear fuel present at the Fukushima plant being 10 times more than what was at Chernobyl.
Nobody knows how much has leaked so far. TEPCO has a long history of falsifying reports. They don't even trust their own numbers: Two days ago, they reported having measured 10 million times the normal levels in water found underneath two of the reactors. The same water that caused radioactive burns on the feet of two workers. A day later they claimed to have made a mistake and it was 100.000 times of whatever they consider usual.
Meanwhile, Hapag Lloyd have stopped sending their ships to Tokyo. A Chinese vessel was reported as having been radioactively contaminated when passing Fukushima at a distance of around 100 miles. The Chinese never had a history of being afraid of a bit of radiation...
This mess is far from over. The "We should stop running away from radiation" article was published by the BBC 3 days ago.
Since then it was confirmed that there was an at least partial meltdown in at least one of the reactors, that at least one of the reactors has a ruptured inner containment vessel and the presence of highly toxic plutonium in the soil around the plant.
We are all fine so far though the spreading of radioactive pollution is very much scaring us. Please dispatch your experts to save Japan. We have lost the confidence on our experts. Cho
That being said, it does appear that the 10,000+ deaths due to other factors are not being reported with the same fervor that the Nuclear Plant accident is and I do think that is partially due to a political agenda.
On how long a timescale ?
People are still suffering the long term effects of Chernobyl.
It is indeed unfortunate that a shadow was cast on the Tsunami situation.
Political Agenda has been the catalyst of mad anxiety and concern among many, even within Japan, unfortunately.
While the amount of nuclear material does indeed seem to dwarf that of Chernobyl, people still fail to see the differences, which have been greatly documented.
The reality is that we ARE looking at a long term issue in the general vicinity of Fukushima.....as would be expected... but not Tokyo. Caesium levels are not beyond safe levels (in Tokyo), and iodine risks are minimal, especially with it having a half life of around 8 days.
Anyway, if you DO wish to pay attention to the REAL disaster here, do what you can to give to charity for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Sometimes it's more, sometimes less easy to tell the agenda of a report. Of course there are a lot of sensationalistic news outlets but I think you're making a mistake when crediting the anti-nuclerar movement to have more influence on the media and a more powerful lobby than the nuclear industry has. The global economic and political consequences of this disaster are huge and all the players are struggling to if not come out on top than at least not on the very bottom.
This BBC published specialist claiming the death toll of Chernobyl to be 43 is a shining example how everybody just say whatever craziness they can come up with.
The presence of radioactivity in Tokyo tab water should be very alarming. Even if what they say is true and it's "only" radioactive iodine which has a very short half-life, how did it get in there? Is the plant leaking into the ground water?
The Japanese government now confirms that they have continued plutonium leakage. Plutonium is highly toxic and has a half-life of 24.000 years.
International shipping vessels are now avoiding the area around Fukushima, what's going to happen in Tokyo once the wind changes?
What a rabid cow... I don't watch US "news" television because the constant hyperbole is just nauseating to me.
I agree, this is some crazed, fear-mongering bullshit. Do they give her some especially dramatic eye make-up to make her look even more panic-inducing?
I was wondering about rainfall. I am sure it has rained since the earthquake/tsunami, have they tested that?
This^^
For the last 2 weeks the company I work for has been donating/shipping containers of disinfectants, potable water, safety equipment, and cleaning materials and we can't get them there fast enough nor nearly the quantities they will ultimately need. We flew people over to organize things at that end and their reports back are nothing less than total chaos.
On the charity front I recommend Doctors w/o Borders who have gotten ALL of my charitable donations in the last few years.