As radiation continues to rise around the plant this statement caught my eye:

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"The figures are rising further. We need to find out as quickly as possible the causes and to stop them from rising any higher," said nuclear safety agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama.
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Don't panic people, that man is on the ball.

Yeah, I wonder exactly what is causing all this pesky radiation?

Aint it all just sooo depressing. We keep hearing how the Japanese are the most technically advanced country in the world. Is this really the best they can come up with? Omg, we're all doomed!!!
I cant believe they have only been giving those poor buggers rice crackers and a 1.5 litre bottle of water, then a can of chicken or fish for their evening meal. Plus making them sleep hallways( several different channels reporting the same thing Honestly, bet those Tepco b*****ds arent eating that every day. They should be the ones forced to go in there in sort this mess out, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts!!!!grrrrrrrr

An interesting comparison of relative danger this week.

The number of deaths per 10 Bn KWh over the whole life cycle show some surprising figures. Most of us know that coal is the most dangerous (2.8) but second is hydoelectricity (1.0) - a function of 230,000 deaths from Chinese dam failures in 1975.

Natural gas is 0.3, nuclear 0.2 (including actual and projected Chernobyl deaths of 9000)

These are the lowest estimates in each case: the highest estimates put hydro considerably above coal and some 40 times worse than nuclear.

I think that part of the problem is the long half lives of the radioactive materials involved. If another generation mechanism fracks up, then you can go straight in and start clearing up when the fires are out/waters receded etc.

With nuclear power, the danger zone around the reactor can remain actively dangerous for many generations after the accident - take a look at Pripyat in the Ukraine - which also means that clean up operations are slow and must be monitored painstakingly to ensure that workers involved aren't unduly affected etc.


S

If you listen to the global warming nutjobs, they'd say that the half life of the damage that coal has done would be fairly substantial and the clean up job is less than trivial or immediate.

People are scared of radiation because its all sciency, give 'em a good burning thing and its all cavemen together round a fire, show em an inanimate plutonium rod making an entire city run and that my friend, that there is voodoo

You'll have to wait until he's finished bombing the muslim world

Oh, I absolutely agree. Sadly most people give up with science at school - I know I used to try and teach it - so much of the 'fear' of radiation comes from ignorance because the subject is hard(er) to understand than setting light to things etc.

There was an interesting article on the BBC news website about it:

We should stop running away from radiation


S

But wasn't Pripyat only established as a town to support the Chernobyl plant? By which I mean if it wasn't for the plant then there wouldn't be a location that was unhabitable because it would have been uninhabited in the first place? So you can't really count that For humans anyway. The non-human population in the exclusion zone is flourishing as there have been less humans around interfering, but generally speaking a nuclear disaster is not recommended for promoting wildlife & its habitats!

Fukishima has caused the previously very outspoken anti-nuclear George Monbiot to do a 180 on his views
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/21/go...cal/#more-1568

Well I'm already on record in this thread as saying I would be happy to live in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant but would be less happy to live in the vicinity of a coal fired power plant and nothing that has occured in the last few weeks has caused me to change my mind. Quite the opposite in fact.

(That might be because whilst responding to an incident 20+ years ago I recieved an above legal limits exposure with no long term health effects, so the media's doom and gloom hysteria of radiation exposure is slightly comical to me. They are currently freaking out about lower levels than my event had LOL).

I agree! I manage two major hazard facilities here and would live on site at either - if there were houses!

My point was more along the lines of, your house price will plummet whenever something ugly is built in your back garden and no one wants that, just look at a mobile phone mast etc

otherwise known as PFM-Pure F**king Magic.

same as asking them the difference between ionising and non-ionising radiation - just watch the blank looks descend

Yes, this is very true. In the same way that nobody wants wind generators, solar furnaces or flooded valleys in their back yards either. But eventually you have to be pragmatic and over rule the NIMBYs - the physics of energy generation alone mean that the energy has to come from somewhere.

Things like wind turbines and HEP have to be built where they will be most effective. Coastlines are a very natural place to build wind turbines, yet nobody wants the view spoiled. You could of course build them out at sea, but then the cost of building and maintaining them also increases, so their payback time is much longer. It's also all very well saying that pumped water storage is the answer, but you would certainly struggle to get that working in East Anglia or the Netherlands. But the NIMBYs are all the same - it doesn't matter how clean the generation method, they still don't want their view ruined.

An awful lot of Sydneysiders seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that there's a nuclear reactor on their very doorstep at Lucas Heights - about 34 km from the CBD. Yet the number of people that keep saying "I'm so glad that we don't live near anything like that" when discussing Fukushima quite surprises me.


S

Yep, my parents live on the Kent Coast & they recently stuck a load of wind turbines in the sea - it totally ruins the horizon. At least if they had a power plant next door they could still look out to sea with an unblemished view.

A bit like our house... you can see Lucas Heights from the bathroom & toilet but the other rooms look out onto bush, valley & river. Sweet! (less sweet, however, is the stink from the landfill site nearby on some days where they are trying out some energy from methane type project - until they sort out the smell I don't want to be anywhere near that type of power generation technology, fart power indeed...).