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August 30, 2013 at 4:28 am #796669
JoBParticipantVBD..
radiation causes death and plenty of misery
it just doesn’t happen over night
and it casts a wide net.
those factors plus the invisibility of it all generate fear.
and to answer your question…
yes, i have noticed the deaths at oil refineries..
and yes, i am concerned.
August 30, 2013 at 4:34 am #796670
JoBParticipantJayDee
yes, i am aware that the discharges will be diluted.. but they are being carried on the currents and will settle at higher densities along those currents.
that wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the increase in marine life along those same currents.
i am not anti-nuclear..
but i am anti-turning the verification of safety measures over to for profit businesses whose bottom lines are enriched by cutting corners…
when it comes to engineering, i am into redundancy layered on redundancy wrapped in redundancy
call me old fashioned but i liked it when bridges were engineered to withstand at least 10 times the stress they were expected to encounter…
the current engineering practice of acceptable loss results in too many tragedies…
August 30, 2013 at 5:04 am #796671
HMC RichParticipantThe Federal and State Government need to deal with Hanford and they essentially are. I don’t really trust them to do it correctly but this article last June helps address what the plans for Hanford are in the future concerning waste.
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021243791_hanfordleakertankxml.html
I found this link regarding ageing reactors. Fortunately it seems some have take notice after Fukushima. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/15/tricastin-nuclear-plant_n_3597820.html
JoB, glad your action on the environment helped. Truly.
I support most forms of energy. There has to be a balance. I also want us to be energy independent. I am so tired of the Middle Eastern Oil Madness especially where radicals run the government. That means domestic fuel and energy from all sorts with governmental over-site that makes sense. Many of us will disagree on what that means. But if you want a ton of electric cars, you may have to get that juice from a coal, Nuclear, hydro etc, plant.
As I drove back on US 93 the other day from Nevada to here, I was struck at how beautiful the high desert is. And there is a lot of room for solar panels in that desert.
August 30, 2013 at 5:07 am #796672
VBDParticipantJoB, EXCESSIVE radiation can cause death and sickness. The amount of radiation any person in North America will receive from the Fukushima releases will be a small fraction of what you would receive from simply living on the earth. In fact, in Seattle we will receive significantly less radiation than someone living in Denver (due to altitude and geology).
We live in a radiation filled environment.
Take a look at this. It may be enlightening:
http://hps.org/documents/environmental_radiation_fact_sheet.pdf
I do understand why most people find radiation frighting. I happen to work with it every day, so it’s not so mysterious to me.
August 30, 2013 at 5:08 am #796673
JanSParticipantthank you for mentioning solar panels. We have this free source of energy coming out of the sky, yet other countries have it figured out and we don’t. Wind and sun, wind and sun, wind and sun !!!
August 30, 2013 at 5:29 am #796674
VBDParticipantYES!! Love solar power. But PLEEEEESE do not advocate covering our few remaining wild lands with solar panels!! There are thousands of rooftops that should have them.
In fact, that’s my big beef with alternative power; people want to use the same poor paradigm with wind and solar that we have with hydro and fossil. Make big power plants in the middle of the wilderness, then use giant power lines to send the power to cities.
The solar and wind should be generated IN THE CITIES!!!!
I just got back from a trip to the midwest, and drove from Indianapolis to Chicago. Lot’s of windmills out in the country. But when I got to the outskirts of Chicago, the windmills were gone. Miles and miles of strip malls, suburbs and roads, but no windmills. A lot of wind though, in fact the “windy city” was living up to it’s reputation. Why isn’t there a windmill on every tall building in town? Because they’re “ugly”?? Give me a break!!!
If you’ve ever taken a flight into Phoenix, the view of the sprawl is staggering. Lots of rooftops down there. Very few have solar panels. Yet,there’s projects going on to put solar farms out in the beautiful Saguaro desert areas. A crime.
When I see what is happening near Vantage and Walla Walla with the thousands of windmills, I fell depressed. Much the same way I might imagine the natives seeing the rapids of the Columbia sink beneath the lakes growing behind the dams.
We have to stop using our wild lands as our power plant locations. There is so much human occupied land already. The occupied areas should be the the first to be developed.
August 30, 2013 at 7:31 am #796675
JanSParticipantSolar power is a big, big thing in Europe and other places…
images…
August 30, 2013 at 2:18 pm #796676
seaopgalParticipantVBD: Totally agree with your #56. We keep falling into the same old trap, and it is the wildlife that suffers.
August 30, 2013 at 3:39 pm #796677
JoBParticipantVBD.
I am well aware that we live in a environment full of many kinds of radiation and that we face radiation from many sources every day.
But that doesn’t negate the very real evidence being compiled in two longitudinal studies of roughly 4 generations.. one of low level radiation exposure and the other of high level radiation exposure.
I am part of the statistics being compiled on the descendants of individuals exposed to low level radiation during the Hanford testing.. and those statistics indicate long lasting health effects from levels of radiation so low that they were considered harmless.
Part of the first generation can trace direct exposure to fallout… at least once.
The rest of the first generation can only trace exposure to food produced in and downwind and downstream from known fallout areas.
The second generation.. especially those already born before the testing occurred.. had exposure to food products that could have been affected by fallout.
the third and fourth generations however may or may not have been affected in any way by food that was affected or genetically altered by exposure…
because by the third and fourth generation the majority no longer lived in affected areas.
we don’t know about the fifth generation yet because for the most part they don’t have extensive enough medical histories to be statistically relevant.
the evidence points to long term genetic changes in families exposed to what were considered minimal amounts of fallout.
and you think i shouldn’t be concerned about the impact of minimal amounts of radiation on the food chain in the Pacific Ocean?
take a good look for what pops up on google if you try to find the results of the Hanford studies…
you can easily access a study on the psychosocial impact ;->
but a longitudinal medical outcome study? not so much.
i know those studies exist because i participated in them ..
and i know generally what the results were as of 10 years ago because smart people tend to hang out with other smart people who do some really interesting things
but i still couldn’t quickly google even the existence of that longitudinal study…
now THAT fact alone really should worry you.
that is if you believe me
i am not offended if you don’t, but i would be remiss if i didn’t remind you that belief … or disblieif in this case… alone is not a good indicator of truth
August 30, 2013 at 3:47 pm #796678
JoBParticipantand yes.. on every rooftop and in every downspout…
as to why that isn’t the case here…
utilities in areas where solar has become popular are now beginning to charge a substantial monthly fee to hook up to the grid… in some cases a fee large enough to negate the majority of savings from installing solar…
privatization of utilities is not such a good thing for the community as a whole
August 30, 2013 at 4:39 pm #796679
VBDParticipantI fully understand your position on Hanford,JoB. It was, and is, terrible for the people involved. The weapons manufacturing facilities at the site were built hastily during world war 2, and concerns over safety were no where near the level they should have been.
I would argue though, that the levels released were NOT minimal. They were EXCESSIVE. It’s like Japan in that respect. There was a real problem for the people living within a few hundred miles of the release site.
Now, it’s important to consider that they weren’t viewed as excessive by the standards of the 1940s. People hadn’t yet discovered the link between radiation and cancer. We hadn’t even discovered that sun exposure can give you skin cancer. Add that to the fact we were at war, and this was a top secret project. It was a combination begging for disaster.
We can sit and argue about how they “should have known”, or they “should have been more careful”, but we can’t undo what happened.
Although we can never know EVERY potential hazard out there, we should be willing to take the lessons we’ve gleaned from our mistakes and move on. We now have the ability to measure radiation within just a few atoms of material. There is no where near the level of mystery as there was 80 years ago.
I have taken samples of dust on shipping containers from Japan and found Cs-134 and Cs-137. It was an incredibly small amount, but it was absolutely there. That was within 3 months of the initial explosions at Fukushima. Since then, the radiation is gone – everything I’ve sampled is clean. I tried to find radiation in air and rain in the months that followed, but never did get anything. I know that some people along the west coast found some Iodine, but that has just an 8 day halflife, and it’s all gone now too.
There are LOTS of people looking for indications. If any radiation were to mysteriously drift very far from Japan, it will be found LONG before it gets to dangerous levels.
August 30, 2013 at 10:00 pm #796680
JoBParticipantVBD..
the testing you are talking about refers to airborne contaminants..
meanwhile what goes into the ocean is considered swept out to sea
“We can sit and argue about how they “should have known”, or they “should have been more careful”, but we can’t undo what happened.”
we can’t undo what happened.. but we sure as heck shouldn’t assume we understand the real impacts before they manifest themselves
August 30, 2013 at 10:09 pm #796681
VBDParticipantI actually mentioned 2 type of samples. Air samples and samples from things shipped here from Japan. We had suppliers within 50 km of the Fukushima plant, and we were concerned about contamination. I searched for it and found some, albeit a very small amount.
There are plenty of people sampling ocean water. I posted a lengthy article about one organization doing such testing several posts back.
August 30, 2013 at 10:39 pm #796682
shed22ParticipantVBD, you make sense to me.
August 31, 2013 at 12:51 am #796683
JKBParticipantBy a mile, JoB? I was commenting on wakeflood’s quote from Schneider: “The quantities of water [TEPCO is] dealing with are absolutely gigantic.”
So it’s no wonder that I missed any point you may have had.
August 31, 2013 at 1:26 am #796684
JoBParticipantJKB
i had to go back and check
and you are right
that mississippi mile was mine
my apologies
sometimes the swiss cheese that is my brain has holes in it that i miss… i have been doing that too much lately.
off to the medicine cabinet to take my anti-virals like a good girl before the dang think shuts all of the way down :(
August 31, 2013 at 6:35 am #796685
HMC RichParticipantVBD, I like the fact that more people could put solar panels on their roof tops. We have plenty of Federal Lands that have very little vegetation which could help also. Been on US 93 in Nevada? Some of the landscape is magnificent. And there is a lot of it. I prefer solar panels to the windmills myself.
I also like drilling for oil and natural gas to help the consumer, business, and our country become energy independent and allow us to sell our commodities abroad. Yes, I like capitalism. Yes, I like pristine lands, Yes we can have both. We just need people to work it out and have government have smart rules and regulations in place so that business can profit and the country as whole. Too little or too much regulation hurts all of us in some way.
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