Thank God! Radiation's only 100,000 times normal...WHEW!

[PCIntern]

Boy that was close!!!

:sarcasm:

----------------------------------------
Breaking News Alert: Radiation levels at Japanese nuclear plant 100,000 times above normal
March 27, 2011 7:27:22 PM
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Leaked water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant showed the highest radiation readings yet, compounding the risks for the hundreds of workers trying to repair the facility’s cooling system. Seventeen workers have been exposed to high levels of radiation, and airborne radioactivity in the unit 2 building remained so high that a worker there would reach his yearly occupational exposure limit in 15 minutes.

http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/SFBD1U/IYS7KS/SPFVFY/JOBMPY/T5F5O/82/h

[flamingdem]

1. Just a little over a flight from LA to NY!

Or your granite countertops!

[VoteProgressive]

11. Your math is way off there buddy! Try again!

[flamingdem]

15. That was sarcasm, that's the old BS told to us so we think radiation is no biggie nt

[PCIntern]

17. I had hoped that it was from you...fd...

But you had best better use the :sarcasm: thingie...hair-trigger tempers around here lately...

[flamingdem]

19. got it, I should!

The sales people have come and said the same often enough!

Whatever happened to the nifty chart they like to post.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. I'm confused first they say it's really high then it was an error

I would be extremely worried if I was living in Japan. I would try to get out of there. For many this isn't an option. All I can do is donate

[Junkdrawer]

3. The industry (and the NRC) have always been on one side of the Low Level Radiation debate....

The industry claims there's a high threshold dose under which there's no (or positive) health effects.

The consensus of the scientific community agrees on the Linear No Threshold model.

...

Specifically, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows members of the public to get 100 millirems or mr (1 milliSievert or mSv) per year of radiation in addition to background. The BEIR VII report (page 500, Table 12-9) estimates that this level will result in approximately 1 (1.142) cancer in every 100 people exposed at 100 mr/yr which includes 1 fatal cancer in every 175 people so exposed (5.7 in 1000).<4>

The risk of getting cancer from radiation (in BEIR VII) is increased by about a third from current government risk figures (FGR13): BEIR VII estimates that 11.42 people will get cancer if 10,000 are each exposed to a rem (1,000 millirems or 10 mSv). The US Environmental Protection Agency Federal Guidance Report 13 estimates that 8.46 people will get cancer if 10,000 are each exposed to a rem.

...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x713927

The Corporate Media have been ignoring the consensus on the effects of ionizing radiation. It would be like ONLY publishing the climate deniers pseudoscience and ignoring the consensus on man made global warming.

[PCIntern]

6. Yes...and anyone else here old enough

to remember the "smoking 'debate'"? What a crock of crap that was...

"Who'd have believed that smoking could possibly be bad for your health?" :sarcasm:

[Junkdrawer]

10. More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZEEPNaoUG4

[caraher]

13. I don't think the Corporate Media know LNT from hormesis

Witness the bizarre Ann Coulter vs. Bill O'Reilly exchange in which Billo comes off as the voice of reason.

I think there's just a lot of honest ignorance out there. People want to know, am I safe (given some level of exposure)? The only way to say yes unequivocally would be if a threshold model were true (or possibly even one of the "a little radiation does you good" theories). 90% of the serious attempts I've seen to answer this question in the media do assume a linear no threshold model, but the concept of probability is a serious challenge to public understanding. So the true answer is twofold; on one hand, as an individual, given the exposures seen so far, unless you've been working to fight the disaster the odds are still overwhelmingly against this killing you. On the other hand, expose millions of people to a enough radiation and you can bet on a certain number of additional deaths thanks to the exposure.

So people are triangulating, because it can be genuinely harmful to cause people to overreact (and not just to the finances of the nuclear industry). You need to do some risk assessment (I'll be grabbing numbers from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort">Wikipedia article on the "micromort". According to a standard LNT dose model, exposure to 10 millirem of radiation increases your risk of a cancer death by one part in a million. Expose 10 million people to 10 mrem each and you'd expect that on average you'd get 10 additional cancer deaths - in practice, impossible to measure, but very real nonetheless.

So let's say you want to evacuate a huge area, and do so by car. Let's say you move your hypothetical 10 million people an average of 100 miles. It turns out traveling 230 miles by car carries a 1 in a million risk of death due to collision. This hypothetical evacuation results in an additional 1000 million passenger-miles of travel; you'd expect there to be an additional 4 deaths because of this extra travel vs. the 10 people you may have saved from fatal cancer. Of course, this further assumes that you've dropped the radiation exposure from 10 millirem to nil; that probably isn't going to be true, either. That's even more true if you're evacuating people by plane; you're automatically giving them a radiation exposure just by flying.

So whether a proposed action makes sense really depends on the numbers. Just how much exposure can you anticipate? What are the effects of reactions to the threat? And most of all, how much confidence can you place in your risk assessment (i.e. how bad can it get if things go worse than you'd expected)? I think it's on this last point that we've seen the biggest divergence between US and Japanese authorities' assessments of this incident. Unfortunately, TEPCO has a horifically bad track record with respect to honesty, and I'm more inclined to accept the more pessimistic view the US government seems to have.

[Junkdrawer]

14. Imagine the cost if today's Evacuation Zone is tomorrow's Permanent Relocation Zone.

I think this is a major reason the Japanese government has been reluctant to extend the evacuation:

Atomic Cleanup Cost Goes to Japan's Taxpayers, May Spur Liability Shift

Japan’s taxpayer, not the nuclear industry or insurers, will cover most of the cleanup cost from the worst accident since Chernobyl, a financial rescue that may spur moves by nations to make companies assume more liability.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., in its 13th day fighting to avert a meltdown at its Fukushima plant 220 kilometers (135 miles) north of Tokyo, at most is required to cover third-party damages of 120 billion yen ($2.1 billion) under Japanese law. Should the government declare the magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami that flooded its reactors an “exceptional” act of God, the utility may be off the hook in paying compensation that may be demanded by injured workers, farmers and shareholders.

...

The Japanese government may pay as much as 1 trillion yen to compensate businesses and individuals for damages from the nuclear accident, or eight times the maximum cost for Tokyo Electric, the Tokyo Shimbun reported on March 12, without saying where it got the information

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/nuclear-cleanup-cost-goes-to-japan-s-taxpayers-may-spur-liability-shift.html

[flamingdem]

16. Excellent information, the MSM, govt will want this information surpressed right now

Right when we'll be getting wave after wave of low level radiation from Japan

So they can keep their nukes and not rile the masses.

[BeHereNow]

4. Hate to tell you this but...

I just saw on Yahoo News headlines that they've just had another quake-
6.5 with tsunami warning. (41 minutes ago)
Holy shit.
BHN

Link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110327/ts_afp/japandisasternuclearaccidentquake

[PCIntern]

7. Yes eye no...

no sweat... what is this, the 400th aftershock? Presuming it's an aftershock that is...remains to be seen...

[truedelphi]

8. Last few weeks remind me of the sign posted in my favorite local diner

God to Earth - "Don't make me come down there!"

[flamingdem]

18. How long until the coast is clear? nt

[BeHereNow]

20. I don't know-

No report on when the next tsunami is due,
at least not that I've seen.

Not good- not good at all.

BHN

[Lint Head]

5. I'm just glowing with relief.

[dionysus]

9. *boom tiss* he's here all week, don't forget to try the veal...

[PCIntern]

12. "No veal at this meal"

An ex-gf used to carry around that card and leave it in restaurants...made us REAL popular!