Slog

News & Arts

Line Out

Music & the City
at Night

« X-Ray Proves Kardashian's Butt Is f… | Warning You About The Tree of Life »

Friday, June 24, 2011

Panic / Enviro Japan's New Normal

Posted by Goldy on Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 8:52 AM

Maybe the next hot tech accessory will be building dosimeters into cell phones?

Fukushima Prefecture has decided to distribute dosimeters to about 280 thousand children to monitor their radiation exposure caused by the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

[...] The prefecture will also subsidize cities and villages to replace top soil in the school yards or set up air conditioners in schools.

Nuclear apologists are doing their cause a disservice by attempting to minimize the size and impact of the Fukushima disaster... by, say, arguing that the dosimeters are unnecessary, or that their distribution is not such a big deal. The problem with nuclear is that when things go wrong, they go very, very wrong, and Fukushima will be a testament to this for decades to come.

There is still a reasonable argument to make that given the paucity of serious nuclear accidents, nuclear is still a better alternative to ultra-dirty coal. So go ahead and make that argument. But to dismiss posts like this as mere fear mongering is to dismiss reality.

Comments (20) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

It's entirely possible to be a fearmonger and right at the same time. It helps if you're a smug ass, but I don't need to tell you how to do that.

Posted by MacCrocodile on June 24, 2011 at 9:11 AM

I believe that coal burning is not so 'ultra dirty' in the 21st century.

Posted by Phoebe on NE 79th on June 24, 2011 at 9:11 AM

LOL,I'm going to assume something got lost in translation.

Want your radioactive soil replaced, huh? Well.... howabouts an AIR CONDITIONER instead, eh kids?

Posted by Cui Bono on June 24, 2011 at 9:18 AM

Goldy, how did you miss this VERY Related article: Japan starts Fukushima Radiation Tracking Fund http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/n…

Also, Goldy, can you possibly write stories with current information about the reactors being flooded?

For instance http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/n…

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/06…

Posted by ScandalMgr on June 24, 2011 at 9:33 AM

Right now, near Poulsbo, the radiation count: 12.35 counts per minute, averaged over 20 hours. This is 8 counts per minute lower than as reported on radiationnetwork.com

Posted by ScandalMgr on June 24, 2011 at 9:33 AM

High frequency electromagnetic fields emitted from digital cellular telephones (cell phones) occasionally cause abnormally high and erroneous indicated dose readings on electronic pocket dosimeters (EPDs).

Source: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16096498
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15843727

Posted by Bright Sunshiny Day on June 24, 2011 at 9:49 AM

Oh wow! There's radiation in Japan and they have to check up on it regularly! Thanks for the update.

Be sure to tell us if there is still radiation in Japan and if they still need to check up on it regularly in a few days. This 'Japan's New Normal' thing is going places.

Posted by Zebes

on June 24, 2011 at 9:52 AM

The New Normal for conspiracy theorists over here is that THE GUBMINT and TH' CORPRIT MEDIA isn't reporting on how our cabin air filters are radioactive and the infant death rate in California in March and all kinds of crap.

I know, I have to listen to annoying idiots while people living around the source of these conspiracies could actually get diseases or whatever, I have a horrible life.

Posted by The CHZA on June 24, 2011 at 10:09 AM

So how many people died from the meltdown?

Posted by Rotten666 on June 24, 2011 at 10:18 AM

You said "Japan!"

Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate! Hate!

Posted by HADarryl on June 24, 2011 at 11:31 AM

Frankly, if the technology becomes cheap enough, why *not* build dosimeters into phones or other frequently-carried objects? As long as people understand the results (e.g., that a certain amount of radiation exposure from the natural background is NORMAL, and that this varies with location) it really can't hurt, and might catch things like homes with radon problems and radioactive cheese graters* more quickly.

* http://michiganmessenger.com/20340/radio…

Posted by Orv on June 24, 2011 at 11:35 AM

@9: A few deaths so far, and more certainly on the way with time.

Posted by Captain Wiggette on June 24, 2011 at 11:38 AM

@2: I think it's still true that more radioactivity is released into the air by a coal plant than by a nuclear plant; trace amounts of radioactive isotopes tend to be embedded in coal. (Fun fact: cinder blocks, which are made partly from fly ash from coal-burning power plants, are also slightly radioactive.) On the other hand, the total radiation exposure per unit of power is higher for the nuke plant -- but it's mostly concentrated in uranium miners and plant workers, not spread out over the general population.

Posted by Orv on June 24, 2011 at 11:45 AM

"...estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants."
(http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl…)

Posted by Orv on June 24, 2011 at 11:50 AM

Nuclear is not a problem.....

The problem with coal is that when things go RIGHT, it is still MORE destructive than Fukushima. When things go bad, well... all bets are off.

Posted by nos

on June 24, 2011 at 12:04 PM

We should have some working idea of how to deal with nuclear's worst-case scenarios before going forward with it. Fuck, we should have ?maybe? tried to figure that out a long time ago. They literally have NO IDEA what to do in Fukushima right now, and it will probably be at least a decade before they develop the technology to clean the mess up.

Posted by blip on June 24, 2011 at 12:45 PM

@12 And how many died in the tsunami/earthquake?

Posted by Rotten666 on June 24, 2011 at 1:20 PM

There's also the off possibility that a plant built in the 70's, 30 years after the discovery of nuclear energy isn't quite as safe as one designed and built today. But good lord did they fuck up Fukushima. Even given how old that place was, it never should have gotten to where it did.

Posted by prompt on June 24, 2011 at 1:46 PM

@17: About 25,000 it seems like.

I think it's pretty likely that the toll from Fukushima may approach that in the next 50 years, given the population density of Japan, the radioactive releases so far, the water contamination, and comparing to the significantly larger death toll from Chernobyl.

Posted by Captain Wiggette on June 24, 2011 at 4:34 PM

I'm currently sitting in a Starbucks in downtown Sendai. People in here are chit-chatting or reading as they sip their frappucinos, while the usual Saturday crowds throng the shopping arcade outside. It looks pretty much the same as it did when I was here four months ago. In Fukushima prefecture they may be implementing some new safety measures, but elsewhere in the country, even the prefecture next door, Japan's new normal looks a lot like the old normal.

Posted by ridia on her keitai on June 25, 2011 at 12:04 AM