9 ms·

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably

by jbm 16y ago

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima #2 and raises his children there. Until then, you are handwaving for industry or for some vision of "environmentally friendly power". Put money on the table, or frankly, your opinion is worthless. We need nuclear power. Unfortunately, the culture of misinformation and understating danger around nuclear power means it is going to be impossible for it to supply the majority of our power. What this means in terms of loss of quality of life is not lost on me.

owls 16y ago
Nuclear power is cleaner than coal or oil. We just need to build stronger and safer reactors. Personally I'm glad OP posted this article. Fukushima was tragic, but it didn't give everyone the right to abandon rational thought. I used to work for a state pirg banging on doors to complain about nuclear power. Spreading fear by barking "3 mile island, chernobyl" etc. Then one day I knocked on the door of a nuclear physicist and he explained to me why I was wrong.
- jbm 16y ago
  Buy Fukushiman land. Raise your kids there. Feed them local produce. To thy own self be true. I am not defending coal or solar or whatever. I am referring to the closed attitude of the nuclear industry. There is a huge problem with nuclear defenders in Japan who don't eat their own dogfood. You'd think they would be happy to do so since the reward is huge (improved confidence) and the risk is only 20 or more years down the line (if ever)
  - michaelchisari 16y ago
    The problem with Fukushima was that it was an outdated design that should have been decommissioned. Nobody who points out the relative safety of nuclear power wants us to build more Mark I BWR's. My interest is in Travelling Wave Reactors and Thorium Molten Salt Reactors. But the problem is, when people freak out about Fukushima, they don't say "Hey! Mark I BWR's aren't safe! We should shut down those designs!" They go after Nuclear with a wide brush, and instead we're stuck with more gas and coal dependance.
    - btmorex 16y ago
      Seems sort of revisionist to say "of course Mark I BWR's aren't safe". You know what nuclear experts were saying 3 weeks ago? They were talking about all the safety features, and the multiple levels of basically impervious containment, and how radioactive material would never get out into the environment. And here we are with a pretty serious radioactive mess to clean up (and from the looks of it it's probably going to get worse before it gets better)
      - michaelchisari 16y ago
        If you're making the argument that we more closely scrutinize 40 year old designs, you'll find no resistance here. But the problem is that using Fukushima as an argument against nuclear, is like using a car crash as an argument against transportation.
        btmorex 16y ago
        My point is they were either wrong or lying. Both possibilities are pretty worrying.
        pdonis 16y ago
        They were wrong because they didn't take into account the possibility that backup power would be unavailable for so long. The backup generators and their switchgear were sited very poorly--behind a seawall that was overcome by the tsunami. Please note that I'm not saying the reactor designs themselves weren't old and out of date. They were. But that wasn't the root cause of the problems. The stresses that these reactors have withstood due to the lack of backup power are far beyond any safety specification they were built to.
    - justatdotin 16y ago
      The problem with Chernobyl was that it was an outdated design that should have been decommissioned. The problem with Fukushima was that it was an outdated design that should have been decommissioned. Does Mr Brown want to wait another 5 years to use the same excuse for Washington's Columbia Generating Station?
  - Daishiman 16y ago
    If you're living relatively close to a coal power plant you're already worse off. Statistically, you should be far more afraid of living next to one. I'm not saying it's something that should be dismissed, but I do think that we just have to take into account that anything that handles humongous amounts of energy in a concentrated space is dangerous, but nuclear energy is less so than most alternatives.
    - GFischer 16y ago
      Or an oil refinery, people in the area close to the La Teja oil refinery here in Uruguay have significantly increased cases of mercury poisoning and child underdevelopment. And here in Uruguay, the current way to supplement the already exhausted hydroelectric power is burning oil - I'm advocating a nuclear power plant to get us out of our current energy crisis (and I would have it in my backyard if needed)
  - asharp 16y ago
    Stating that air travel is safer then cars doesn't mean that I wish myself to be strapped upon an early glider and hurled off a cliff. The fact that one such glider still exists and is apparently in use has no bearing to the current state of the art of aeroplane design. Similarly that one old, outdated and utterly inferior reactor can fail when provoked says nothing of the current state of the art of reactor design.
  - Turing_Machine 16y ago
    I live in the state (Illinois) with the most nuclear power plants. By far. It suits me just fine. By your reasoning, you should be raising your kids on a coal ash dump. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/us/07sludge.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/us/07sludge.html
- dhughes 16y ago
  CANDU reactors are safe, in fact they have a hard time getting anything to happen on a good day. If something went wrong the worst that would happen is the reactor would stop working.
  - rimantas 16y ago
    Stopping reactors is not the problem, those in Fukushima did stop properly as the earthquake struck. The problem is dealing with the decay heat aftewards.
    - dhughes 16y ago
      I think that's what's good about CANDU, we were so poor here in Canada it was designed using separate tubes which makes it possible to remove entire fuel bundle tubes without requiring the core to be de-pressurized, it's kind of a modular core from what I've read.
- asharp 16y ago
  We just need to build newer reactors. The problem isn't that we don't have designs that can deal with these sorts of problems. The problem is that we don't have the political strength of will to decommission the older, unsafe plants and replace them with newer, safer plants. Similarly we don't have the political strength of will to do what is required to ensure uncompromised safety, ie. moving spent fuel into secured areas away from power plants, breeding fuel to dramatically reduce the amount of radioactive waste created and burning that waste out to make it less radioactive before it ever needs to be stored, etc.
DarkShikari 16y ago
You've drank milk and eaten meat contaminated by poisonous chemicals from coal power plants for your whole life. Not a single person has died yet from the Fukushima disaster, yet millions of people have died from ailments caused by coal power plants. Why is that kind of contamination just fine? I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Perhaps we should first stop downplaying the damage from every single coal power plant in the world, particularly those in China and other developing nations with minimal pollution controls, where there are millions of people suffering from pollution-related illnesses?
- VladRussian 16y ago
  why to promote that false dichotomy - either nuclear or coal. There are other options, better nuclear designs, natural gas, wind [ which is baseline type of energy if towers are high enough ], solar - we have so much desert on Earth, and start seriously develop nuclear fusion [ as its development has been practically stopped for the fear of proliferation ]
  - burgerbrain 16y ago
    >better nuclear designs Nobody is advocating that we build more 4 decade old reactors. On the other hand there are plenty of people suggesting that we not build new reactors. We aren't seeing an attack on old reactor designs, we're seeing an attack on the "other option" you listed.
    - VladRussian 16y ago
      >Nobody is advocating that we build more 4 decade old reactors. the real political and economical power is with the current nuclear industry which doesn't have other designs. Any permit to build if given in the next 10 years would result in a new old nuclear plant. Like any powerful established industry they protect their position with heavy regulations and wouldn't let any innovative outsiders in.
      - 16y ago
VladRussian 16y ago
>I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. I don't think anybody wanted to offend. People just learning what mSv is, and there is a lot of propaganda and brainwashing happening here and around the world. Big money at stake.
KirinDave 16y ago
Couldn't you give the same challenge to the area near a coal powerplant? And oh, our entire climate has been significantly soured by that. Every power generation method we have significantly impacts the local environment, even geothermal and hydroelectric. There are a lot of accidents and environmental corruption stories every year, but one accident in a worst case scenario impacts you personally, and suddenly you're issuing edicts and saying hard facts are "handwaving" and "misinformation." Great.
- jbm 16y ago
  I have gone on record and said that I support Nuclear power. I think it is necessary. However, to simplify further, I think that Nuclear power supports hand wave deep issues of trust that develop because of the way these issues are treated. I don't imply that there are any easy answers to power. Solar, wind, etc.. are not mature enough (to the best of my understanding). Coal releases more radiation (but not in catastrophic all-at-once scenarious) Eat your dog food. Spend real money doing so. Otherwise, frankly, it's internet posing.
  - KirinDave 16y ago
    I think detractors "handwave" the importance of building new reactors. By refusing to allow existing reactors to be obsoleted, they force existing power stations to stay in operation without interruption, keeping outdated and inferior equipment online long past its prime.
danenania 16y ago
1,000 upvotes. Nuclear power is inherently UNSAFE. It takes a lot of hubris to claim otherwise. It harnesses intense fundamental forces of nature that we can never control without a small but inevitable risk of horrible damage and harm to unlucky populations. In controlling power of this magnitude, it is inevitable that there will be mistakes or freak events that allow this power to seep out of whatever is the latest in fundamental-forces-of-nature-containment technology. Coal plants may cause awful air pollution, but there is no chance of radioactively poisoning an entire city. There's a reason no coal power plant has ever been paid quite as much attention as Fukushima, isn't there?
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  What is that reason, exactly? When Banqauio kills 171,000, Bhopal kills 10,000, and 30,000 people die every year from coal pollution, why exactly don't we give energy production methods like that the kind of scrutiny we're giving Fukushima?
  - waterlesscloud 16y ago
    Because Bhopal had nothing to do with energy production? And are you claiming Bhopal didn't get massive media coverage? Because it did.
    - michaelchisari 16y ago
      I know, Bhopal was a chemical processing plant. But it was a massive disaster, that killed thousands, and nobody came out of that saying we should never process chemicals.
      - danenania 16y ago
        Perhaps we shouldn't mass produce deadly environmentally destructive pesticides either? Would that be a bold statement? Why do you keep changing the subject? Quit talking about coal and pesticides and explain why it's okay to risk the lives of entire cities of people for the sake of extra electric output? Edit: I never disagreed with the article's title. I was agreeing with the parent post's sentiment that regardless of the numbers, downplaying the suffering of the people in Fukushima and the risks they still face is wrong. Nuclear power is dangerous and can have terrible costs. It's entirely reasonable not to view it as a praiseworthy technology.
jerf 16y ago
"20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable" [citation requested] I haven't seen any hint of that. Is that from actual scientific reports based on sensible standards of "unlivable" (i.e., based in sensible risk analysis), or is it just based on unscientific worries? And did you have a hard time finding "uncontaminated" meat because there was actually a shortage of meat that was scientifically unsafe to eat, or because there was a shortage of meat due to an overzealous safety organization that proactively condemned vast swathes of goods unnecessarily to look active and because people are just really scared? Because if the latter, this turns the argument circular; nuclear is dangerous because governments overreach and aggressively condemn things because nuclear is dangerous. If you got actual sources, I'd love to hear about them, in all seriousness, and then I'd like to know why I didn't hear about 20 kms being rendered uninhabitable yet. But I'd like to see the citation first.
- EScott11 16y ago
  This doesn't address what you want perfectly, but you might find it interesting. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/04/02/world/asia/assessing-the-radiation-danger.html?ref=science http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/04/02/world/asia/ass...
- veidr 16y ago
  He said 'is probably going to be' not 'has already been'. There is plenty of suggestive evidence, like the nytimes article EScott11 referenced, showing cesium 137 contamination 200% of Chernobyl levels 25 miles from the plant, or the recent Greenpeace video where they max out their Geiger handhelds 35km from the plant, that there are going to be some fairly widespread consequences to the contamination of soil by radioactive material.
  - CountHackulus 16y ago
    Maxing out a handheld geiger counter is misleading because they've got a sesitivity knob. A friend brought one to a party recently and showed everyone that their soda cans would max out the counter (at full sensitivity). Believe it or not, some people then refused to drink more soda because they thought it was contaminated. Better not bring them into a brick building!
burgerbrain 16y ago
Consider how many people die around the world mining coal, or breathing coal ash. I'm sure their families are just as unwilling to listen to people talk about coal being safe as you are unwilling to listen to people talking about nuclear being safe. The difference? There are MANY more of them.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
po 16y ago
Jawaad, as you know, I live in Tokyo too. I haven't had to stop drinking the water because it's never gotten higher than water I've already consumed elsewhere in my travels. Even when they said it wasn't safe for children, I was drinking it because the levels weren't very high at all. I filled some containers with tap water to have on hand if the situation got worse but so far it hasn't. If you're having trouble finding foods like milk or natto it's mostly due to disruptions in the supply chain and food processing or packaging plants up north that were taken out by the tsunami. I've been drinking the tap water and I would eat the spinach grown in fukushima as well. It makes me very sad that farmers who are struggling to get by and have perfectly fine food to sell are not able to sell it. I can understand people being afraid of the uncertainty of the situation. I think that is somewhat rational: the situation could get worse. You might not trust TEPCO or the government to properly handle the situation. Those are risks that need to be addressed and maybe the answer is that nuclear power isn't the way to go. That decision should be made based on hard data of real threats, costs and unknowns. I think though, that to date, nobody outside of a very small radius (mostly TEPCO workers) have ever been in danger of receiving dangerous levels of radiation. People confuse cautionary recommendations with actual threats. On the other hand, people are dying due to lack of supplies and medication from the tsunami. Farmers and fishermen are losing their livelihood because of fear of radiated food. BTW, Here's the link to the water supply/rain water radiation levels I use: http://atmc.jp/water/ http://atmc.jp/water/
anabis 16y ago
Unless you are under 1 year old, you _can_ drink milk and water. You are overreacting. If you are female and pregnant, that overreaction can be justified, but otherwise you only have your overreaction to blame.

by jbm 16y ago

owls 16y ago

Nuclear power is cleaner than coal or oil. We just need to build stronger and safer reactors. Personally I'm glad OP posted this article. Fukushima was tragic, but it didn't give everyone the right to abandon rational thought. I used to work for a state pirg banging on doors to complain about nuclear power. Spreading fear by barking "3 mile island, chernobyl" etc. Then one day I knocked on the door of a nuclear physicist and he explained to me why I was wrong.

jbm 16y ago
Buy Fukushiman land. Raise your kids there. Feed them local produce. To thy own self be true. I am not defending coal or solar or whatever. I am referring to the closed attitude of the nuclear industry. There is a huge problem with nuclear defenders in Japan who don't eat their own dogfood. You'd think they would be happy to do so since the reward is huge (improved confidence) and the risk is only 20 or more years down the line (if ever)
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  The problem with Fukushima was that it was an outdated design that should have been decommissioned. Nobody who points out the relative safety of nuclear power wants us to build more Mark I BWR's. My interest is in Travelling Wave Reactors and Thorium Molten Salt Reactors. But the problem is, when people freak out about Fukushima, they don't say "Hey! Mark I BWR's aren't safe! We should shut down those designs!" They go after Nuclear with a wide brush, and instead we're stuck with more gas and coal dependance.
  - btmorex 16y ago
    Seems sort of revisionist to say "of course Mark I BWR's aren't safe". You know what nuclear experts were saying 3 weeks ago? They were talking about all the safety features, and the multiple levels of basically impervious containment, and how radioactive material would never get out into the environment. And here we are with a pretty serious radioactive mess to clean up (and from the looks of it it's probably going to get worse before it gets better)
    - michaelchisari 16y ago
      If you're making the argument that we more closely scrutinize 40 year old designs, you'll find no resistance here. But the problem is that using Fukushima as an argument against nuclear, is like using a car crash as an argument against transportation.
      - btmorex 16y ago
        My point is they were either wrong or lying. Both possibilities are pretty worrying.
        pdonis 16y ago
        They were wrong because they didn't take into account the possibility that backup power would be unavailable for so long. The backup generators and their switchgear were sited very poorly--behind a seawall that was overcome by the tsunami. Please note that I'm not saying the reactor designs themselves weren't old and out of date. They were. But that wasn't the root cause of the problems. The stresses that these reactors have withstood due to the lack of backup power are far beyond any safety specification they were built to.
  - justatdotin 16y ago
    The problem with Chernobyl was that it was an outdated design that should have been decommissioned. The problem with Fukushima was that it was an outdated design that should have been decommissioned. Does Mr Brown want to wait another 5 years to use the same excuse for Washington's Columbia Generating Station?
- Daishiman 16y ago
  If you're living relatively close to a coal power plant you're already worse off. Statistically, you should be far more afraid of living next to one. I'm not saying it's something that should be dismissed, but I do think that we just have to take into account that anything that handles humongous amounts of energy in a concentrated space is dangerous, but nuclear energy is less so than most alternatives.
  - GFischer 16y ago
    Or an oil refinery, people in the area close to the La Teja oil refinery here in Uruguay have significantly increased cases of mercury poisoning and child underdevelopment. And here in Uruguay, the current way to supplement the already exhausted hydroelectric power is burning oil - I'm advocating a nuclear power plant to get us out of our current energy crisis (and I would have it in my backyard if needed)
- asharp 16y ago
  Stating that air travel is safer then cars doesn't mean that I wish myself to be strapped upon an early glider and hurled off a cliff. The fact that one such glider still exists and is apparently in use has no bearing to the current state of the art of aeroplane design. Similarly that one old, outdated and utterly inferior reactor can fail when provoked says nothing of the current state of the art of reactor design.
- Turing_Machine 16y ago
  I live in the state (Illinois) with the most nuclear power plants. By far. It suits me just fine. By your reasoning, you should be raising your kids on a coal ash dump. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/us/07sludge.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/us/07sludge.html
dhughes 16y ago
CANDU reactors are safe, in fact they have a hard time getting anything to happen on a good day. If something went wrong the worst that would happen is the reactor would stop working.
- rimantas 16y ago
  Stopping reactors is not the problem, those in Fukushima did stop properly as the earthquake struck. The problem is dealing with the decay heat aftewards.
  - dhughes 16y ago
    I think that's what's good about CANDU, we were so poor here in Canada it was designed using separate tubes which makes it possible to remove entire fuel bundle tubes without requiring the core to be de-pressurized, it's kind of a modular core from what I've read.
asharp 16y ago
We just need to build newer reactors. The problem isn't that we don't have designs that can deal with these sorts of problems. The problem is that we don't have the political strength of will to decommission the older, unsafe plants and replace them with newer, safer plants. Similarly we don't have the political strength of will to do what is required to ensure uncompromised safety, ie. moving spent fuel into secured areas away from power plants, breeding fuel to dramatically reduce the amount of radioactive waste created and burning that waste out to make it less radioactive before it ever needs to be stored, etc.

DarkShikari 16y ago

You've drank milk and eaten meat contaminated by poisonous chemicals from coal power plants for your whole life. Not a single person has died yet from the Fukushima disaster, yet millions of people have died from ailments caused by coal power plants. Why is that kind of contamination just fine? I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Perhaps we should first stop downplaying the damage from every single coal power plant in the world, particularly those in China and other developing nations with minimal pollution controls, where there are millions of people suffering from pollution-related illnesses?

VladRussian 16y ago
why to promote that false dichotomy - either nuclear or coal. There are other options, better nuclear designs, natural gas, wind [ which is baseline type of energy if towers are high enough ], solar - we have so much desert on Earth, and start seriously develop nuclear fusion [ as its development has been practically stopped for the fear of proliferation ]
- burgerbrain 16y ago
  >better nuclear designs Nobody is advocating that we build more 4 decade old reactors. On the other hand there are plenty of people suggesting that we not build new reactors. We aren't seeing an attack on old reactor designs, we're seeing an attack on the "other option" you listed.
  - VladRussian 16y ago
    >Nobody is advocating that we build more 4 decade old reactors. the real political and economical power is with the current nuclear industry which doesn't have other designs. Any permit to build if given in the next 10 years would result in a new old nuclear plant. Like any powerful established industry they protect their position with heavy regulations and wouldn't let any innovative outsiders in.
    - 16y ago

VladRussian 16y ago

>I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. I don't think anybody wanted to offend. People just learning what mSv is, and there is a lot of propaganda and brainwashing happening here and around the world. Big money at stake.

KirinDave 16y ago

Couldn't you give the same challenge to the area near a coal powerplant? And oh, our entire climate has been significantly soured by that. Every power generation method we have significantly impacts the local environment, even geothermal and hydroelectric. There are a lot of accidents and environmental corruption stories every year, but one accident in a worst case scenario impacts you personally, and suddenly you're issuing edicts and saying hard facts are "handwaving" and "misinformation." Great.

jbm 16y ago
I have gone on record and said that I support Nuclear power. I think it is necessary. However, to simplify further, I think that Nuclear power supports hand wave deep issues of trust that develop because of the way these issues are treated. I don't imply that there are any easy answers to power. Solar, wind, etc.. are not mature enough (to the best of my understanding). Coal releases more radiation (but not in catastrophic all-at-once scenarious) Eat your dog food. Spend real money doing so. Otherwise, frankly, it's internet posing.
- KirinDave 16y ago
  I think detractors "handwave" the importance of building new reactors. By refusing to allow existing reactors to be obsoleted, they force existing power stations to stay in operation without interruption, keeping outdated and inferior equipment online long past its prime.

danenania 16y ago

1,000 upvotes. Nuclear power is inherently UNSAFE. It takes a lot of hubris to claim otherwise. It harnesses intense fundamental forces of nature that we can never control without a small but inevitable risk of horrible damage and harm to unlucky populations. In controlling power of this magnitude, it is inevitable that there will be mistakes or freak events that allow this power to seep out of whatever is the latest in fundamental-forces-of-nature-containment technology. Coal plants may cause awful air pollution, but there is no chance of radioactively poisoning an entire city. There's a reason no coal power plant has ever been paid quite as much attention as Fukushima, isn't there?

michaelchisari 16y ago
What is that reason, exactly? When Banqauio kills 171,000, Bhopal kills 10,000, and 30,000 people die every year from coal pollution, why exactly don't we give energy production methods like that the kind of scrutiny we're giving Fukushima?
- waterlesscloud 16y ago
  Because Bhopal had nothing to do with energy production? And are you claiming Bhopal didn't get massive media coverage? Because it did.
  - michaelchisari 16y ago
    I know, Bhopal was a chemical processing plant. But it was a massive disaster, that killed thousands, and nobody came out of that saying we should never process chemicals.
    - danenania 16y ago
      Perhaps we shouldn't mass produce deadly environmentally destructive pesticides either? Would that be a bold statement? Why do you keep changing the subject? Quit talking about coal and pesticides and explain why it's okay to risk the lives of entire cities of people for the sake of extra electric output? Edit: I never disagreed with the article's title. I was agreeing with the parent post's sentiment that regardless of the numbers, downplaying the suffering of the people in Fukushima and the risks they still face is wrong. Nuclear power is dangerous and can have terrible costs. It's entirely reasonable not to view it as a praiseworthy technology.

jerf 16y ago

"20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable" [citation requested] I haven't seen any hint of that. Is that from actual scientific reports based on sensible standards of "unlivable" (i.e., based in sensible risk analysis), or is it just based on unscientific worries? And did you have a hard time finding "uncontaminated" meat because there was actually a shortage of meat that was scientifically unsafe to eat, or because there was a shortage of meat due to an overzealous safety organization that proactively condemned vast swathes of goods unnecessarily to look active and because people are just really scared? Because if the latter, this turns the argument circular; nuclear is dangerous because governments overreach and aggressively condemn things because nuclear is dangerous. If you got actual sources, I'd love to hear about them, in all seriousness, and then I'd like to know why I didn't hear about 20 kms being rendered uninhabitable yet. But I'd like to see the citation first.

EScott11 16y ago
This doesn't address what you want perfectly, but you might find it interesting. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/04/02/world/asia/assessing-the-radiation-danger.html?ref=science http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/04/02/world/asia/ass...
veidr 16y ago
He said 'is probably going to be' not 'has already been'. There is plenty of suggestive evidence, like the nytimes article EScott11 referenced, showing cesium 137 contamination 200% of Chernobyl levels 25 miles from the plant, or the recent Greenpeace video where they max out their Geiger handhelds 35km from the plant, that there are going to be some fairly widespread consequences to the contamination of soil by radioactive material.
- CountHackulus 16y ago
  Maxing out a handheld geiger counter is misleading because they've got a sesitivity knob. A friend brought one to a party recently and showed everyone that their soda cans would max out the counter (at full sensitivity). Believe it or not, some people then refused to drink more soda because they thought it was contaminated. Better not bring them into a brick building!

burgerbrain 16y ago

Consider how many people die around the world mining coal, or breathing coal ash. I'm sure their families are just as unwilling to listen to people talk about coal being safe as you are unwilling to listen to people talking about nuclear being safe. The difference? There are MANY more of them.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

po 16y ago

Jawaad, as you know, I live in Tokyo too. I haven't had to stop drinking the water because it's never gotten higher than water I've already consumed elsewhere in my travels. Even when they said it wasn't safe for children, I was drinking it because the levels weren't very high at all. I filled some containers with tap water to have on hand if the situation got worse but so far it hasn't. If you're having trouble finding foods like milk or natto it's mostly due to disruptions in the supply chain and food processing or packaging plants up north that were taken out by the tsunami. I've been drinking the tap water and I would eat the spinach grown in fukushima as well. It makes me very sad that farmers who are struggling to get by and have perfectly fine food to sell are not able to sell it. I can understand people being afraid of the uncertainty of the situation. I think that is somewhat rational: the situation could get worse. You might not trust TEPCO or the government to properly handle the situation. Those are risks that need to be addressed and maybe the answer is that nuclear power isn't the way to go. That decision should be made based on hard data of real threats, costs and unknowns. I think though, that to date, nobody outside of a very small radius (mostly TEPCO workers) have ever been in danger of receiving dangerous levels of radiation. People confuse cautionary recommendations with actual threats. On the other hand, people are dying due to lack of supplies and medication from the tsunami. Farmers and fishermen are losing their livelihood because of fear of radiated food. BTW, Here's the link to the water supply/rain water radiation levels I use: http://atmc.jp/water/ http://atmc.jp/water/

anabis 16y ago

Unless you are under 1 year old, you _can_ drink milk and water. You are overreacting. If you are female and pregnant, that overreaction can be justified, but otherwise you only have your overreaction to blame.