3 ms·

Thanks for the clarification, I meant isotopes. My point was not "no analogy is perfect", my point was most analogies I have seen from the pro-nuclear crowd wer

by Tichy 16y ago

Thanks for the clarification, I meant isotopes. My point was not "no analogy is perfect", my point was most analogies I have seen from the pro-nuclear crowd were stupid and insulting. Sorry I can't find better words for it. What haven't we read - from eating bananas to the sun, you name it.

Natsu 16y ago
Bananas and the sun are both radiation sources which pose little health risk to humans on Earth. Just like the radioactive isotopes detected in California. (As opposed to humans in space, who would be in more serious danger of solar radiation.) The reason people are trying to point that out is to help people become familiar with radiation. Familiar and intentional risks are less scary. If you want more info on that, I suggest reading Bruce Schneier's books. That said, there are some people who have good reason to worry. For example, I'm very concerned about how long that plant worker was near the 1 Sv/hr water. I'm glad they're getting robots over there. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to be more widespread than that. They're aware of the risks of contaminated food and are on guard. We've learned quite a bit since Chernobyl. The engineers will learn a lot here, too. When you study engineering, the first thing they do is tell you horror stories about every major engineering disaster they can find. The Tacoma Narrows bridge video alone has probably been seen by almost every engineering student since 1941 or so. My point is that, even if they're fighting to keep adequate containment on this plant following a worst-case scenario, the engineers won't let the same things happen again, provided they're allowed to upgrade the existing plants. EDIT: Accidental italics.
- Tichy 16y ago
  And yet radioactivity from bananas does not seem to accumulate in the water supply of SF, or does it? Has there been a measurable increase in radioactivity in the SF water supply because of all the discarded banana peels? The real newsworthy aspect of the Fukushima isotopes in SF is that Fukushima can affect the whole world. And who knows, maybe those isotopes can accumulate? Not saying that I worry, just saying that there still seem to be fundamental differences between Fukushima isotopes (spreading and accumulating), bananas (seemingly not spreading so much, not sure about accumulating) and the sun (no isotopes?). As I said, I think those comparisons just seem dishonest to me and make the pro-nuclear people lose credibility. Also, the Tacoma bridge was built by engineers, too, and yet it broke down. Obviously engineers are not the infallible angels that you make them out to be.
  - PotatoEngineer 16y ago
    Quick crash course: there's two major kinds of radiation, actual particles (alpha and beta radiation, which are helium nuclei and electrons, respectively) and high-energy electromagnetic waves (gamma radiation: like x-rays on steroids). Radioactive isotopes (such as those coming from Fukushima) tend to emit both, as they decay into non-radioactive elements. So once an atom emits radiation, it's done radiating (unless it's decayed into another radioactive particle, but eventually it'll hit something stable and never radiate ever again). So the isotopes arrive at some rate, and they decay into non-radioactive elements over time. (That's what the "8-day half-life" in the article means: after 8 days, only half of it will be left.) At some point, the Japanese engineers will get everything cleaned up, no more isotopes will arrive, and all isotopes will eventually decay. Even if the Japanese take their sweet time getting things cleaned up, the isotopes are still decaying over time, so they won't accumulate unless the Japanese truly screw up and start releasing increasing amounts of isotopes.
    - Tichy 16y ago
      The "time" can be thousands of years, though - maybe you forgot to mention that? Anyway, I don't claim there is a danger to the US.
      - DarkShikari 16y ago
        Longer-lived isotopes produce proportionally less radiation. There are no fission isotopes with half-lives between ~1e2 and ~1e4 years.
        Tichy 16y ago
        Yeah well, they can still be dangerous. Otherwise, why don't they just wait it out in Fukushima? Atoms are very small, so even tiny amounts of matter contain a lot of them. So even if any single atom only emits radiation every couple of years, a tiny lump of matter can emit radiation more often than every couple of years, because there are so many atoms in it.
  - 16y ago

by Tichy 16y ago

Natsu 16y ago

Bananas and the sun are both radiation sources which pose little health risk to humans on Earth. Just like the radioactive isotopes detected in California. (As opposed to humans in space, who would be in more serious danger of solar radiation.) The reason people are trying to point that out is to help people become familiar with radiation. Familiar and intentional risks are less scary. If you want more info on that, I suggest reading Bruce Schneier's books. That said, there are some people who have good reason to worry. For example, I'm very concerned about how long that plant worker was near the 1 Sv/hr water. I'm glad they're getting robots over there. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to be more widespread than that. They're aware of the risks of contaminated food and are on guard. We've learned quite a bit since Chernobyl. The engineers will learn a lot here, too. When you study engineering, the first thing they do is tell you horror stories about every major engineering disaster they can find. The Tacoma Narrows bridge video alone has probably been seen by almost every engineering student since 1941 or so. My point is that, even if they're fighting to keep adequate containment on this plant following a worst-case scenario, the engineers won't let the same things happen again, provided they're allowed to upgrade the existing plants. EDIT: Accidental italics.

Tichy 16y ago
And yet radioactivity from bananas does not seem to accumulate in the water supply of SF, or does it? Has there been a measurable increase in radioactivity in the SF water supply because of all the discarded banana peels? The real newsworthy aspect of the Fukushima isotopes in SF is that Fukushima can affect the whole world. And who knows, maybe those isotopes can accumulate? Not saying that I worry, just saying that there still seem to be fundamental differences between Fukushima isotopes (spreading and accumulating), bananas (seemingly not spreading so much, not sure about accumulating) and the sun (no isotopes?). As I said, I think those comparisons just seem dishonest to me and make the pro-nuclear people lose credibility. Also, the Tacoma bridge was built by engineers, too, and yet it broke down. Obviously engineers are not the infallible angels that you make them out to be.
- PotatoEngineer 16y ago
  Quick crash course: there's two major kinds of radiation, actual particles (alpha and beta radiation, which are helium nuclei and electrons, respectively) and high-energy electromagnetic waves (gamma radiation: like x-rays on steroids). Radioactive isotopes (such as those coming from Fukushima) tend to emit both, as they decay into non-radioactive elements. So once an atom emits radiation, it's done radiating (unless it's decayed into another radioactive particle, but eventually it'll hit something stable and never radiate ever again). So the isotopes arrive at some rate, and they decay into non-radioactive elements over time. (That's what the "8-day half-life" in the article means: after 8 days, only half of it will be left.) At some point, the Japanese engineers will get everything cleaned up, no more isotopes will arrive, and all isotopes will eventually decay. Even if the Japanese take their sweet time getting things cleaned up, the isotopes are still decaying over time, so they won't accumulate unless the Japanese truly screw up and start releasing increasing amounts of isotopes.
  - Tichy 16y ago
    The "time" can be thousands of years, though - maybe you forgot to mention that? Anyway, I don't claim there is a danger to the US.
    - DarkShikari 16y ago
      Longer-lived isotopes produce proportionally less radiation. There are no fission isotopes with half-lives between ~1e2 and ~1e4 years.
      - Tichy 16y ago
        Yeah well, they can still be dangerous. Otherwise, why don't they just wait it out in Fukushima? Atoms are very small, so even tiny amounts of matter contain a lot of them. So even if any single atom only emits radiation every couple of years, a tiny lump of matter can emit radiation more often than every couple of years, because there are so many atoms in it.
- 16y ago