1,000 Tons Of Polluted Fukushima Water Dumped In Sea

[PamW]

30. Applause! I concur!

I applaud FBaggins post above in helping educate people to the issues, and concur with what he states.

Although many anti-nukes make the claim that they are in full possession of critical thinking skills; their statements show that they don't understand the science and physics; so how can they possibly be thinking about these issues properly.

The claim that FBaggins responded to above about bananas emitting cesium-137 is such a case. As FBaggins points out, bananas don't emit cesium, and in fact nothing emits cesium. What we are concerned about is the radiation; in this case beta radiation, which is nothing more than high-energy electrons. Both Cesium-137 and the Potassium-40 contained naturally in bananas emit these high energy electrons. ( Are you listening bananas? ) As I have always put it; "a 1 MeV electron is a 1 MeV electron is a 1 MeV electron". There's ZERO difference between electrons emitted from natural radioactivity or from man-made radioactivity. The electron is a fundamental particle in nature, and doesn't come in multiple "flavors". The only difference is the initial energy, and natural radioactivity can put out energies equal to or greater than man-made species. So this "natural radiation is different from man-made radiation" is a bunch of scientific NONSENSE. It's like saying that if I combust hydrogen and oxygen to form water, then that water is "different" than the water that Mother Nature makes.

FBaggins also responded to the confusion in units. The statement was made that there was no mention of "becquerels, curies, sieverts, or millisieverts". That's akin to saying there was no mention of "meters, inches, grams, or milligrams". The units in both sets are for different, incompatible quantities.

Becquerels and curies are both units for the same thing; radioactivity, which is the rate at which radioactive substances decay. Curies is the older unit, and Becquerels are the new SI unit. Sieverts and millisieverts are units of effective dose. That is something completely different from radioactivity, just as the grams and milligrams in my example are units of mass; which is not compatible with units of length of inches and meters.

Effective dose measured in Sieverts is a metric of the amount of biological damage due to deposited energy. If you have a given amount of Cesium-137; you know the radioactivity, but you can't even begin to talk about dose because you haven't specified what the high-energy electrons (betas) are going to be depositing their energy in, and what the geometry is which also affects the calculation of dose.

So when I see some anti-nuke claiming that they can "think critifcally" about nuclear energy when they demonstrate such a fuzzy, nee non-existent grasp on the pertinent science; it's a little like someone claiming that they can think critically and clearly about solving integro-diffential equations in the calculus; but their handle on mathematics shows that they don't even understand the arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. With such a manifest ignorance of elementary mathematics, how could they possibly begin to understand advanced mathematical theory in the calculus or beyond?

The single constant trait of the anti-nukes I've noted is their manifest sense of being self-righteous. They are like teenagers that "think" they know everything when they conclusively demonstrate that they understand very little.

But they have zero reservations about taking their demonstrated misunderstandings, absorbed bits of false propaganda, and a fuzzy and confused sense of logic and reasoning capability; and they claim to have used all that to come to an informed opinion on nuclear energy, and have no problem with disputing the facts that professionals in the field are attempting to teach them.

Frankly, there's a wide spectrum in the intellectual capabilities of humans. Some just don't have the mental horsepower to understand the scientific principles and facts that are clearly understood by other humans.

I would have a better chance of explaining quantum physics to my cat than to attempt to explain nuclear energy to some; they just don't have the mental capacity.

PamW