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Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

english.aljazeera.net

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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#61

Post by webXL »

natural219 wrote: post #6

I love AJE, but I'm regularly surprised over the amount of balls AJE reporters have in making value judgements on the fly. For instance: Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US? Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his polit…

Love is a little strong don't you think?

I'm tired of people looking at one dataset in order to attribute sinister motives to a group of people. I bet I can find $269K worth of campaign donations to Obama's campaigns from groups opposed to Exelon's interests. Would Exelon donate money to Obama independent of that fact? I don't know, you don't know, and AJE doesn't know. So why make that judgement other than to sensationalize the story? And they're not the only ones!

BTW, GE's Immelt is on another important commission. So, these appointments are for sale, in effect. Apparently, that's how you win elections these days.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#62

Post by shareme »

marshray wrote: post #57
PaulHoule wrote: post #27

There's a lot of nonsense in that article. First of all, they keep repeating the words Plutonium and Uranium (particularly "enriched Uranium") and try to suggest that these are the major threats from the accident. They're not. Uranium isotopes have a half-life of billions of years, so whatever radioactivity they emit is spread out over a very long time. Overall, uranium is toxic in the same way that lead is toxic, an…

Overall, uranium is toxic in the same way that lead is toxic, and the chemical toxicity is probably worse than the radiotoxicity. You know darn well we're not talking about "overall uranium". We're talking about very hot uranium and plutonium directly from the cores of active nuclear reactors and the entire spectrum of elements and isotopes that get produced when you take that core, rods, and support structure and me…

put another way most USA houses have a percentage of soil containing uranium..yet only less than 0.1% require any meaningful radon gas decontamination work..

the fuel rods when not used only give off so many isotopes per hour. the problem here is the rods in melted state are not cooled off to non active yet, hence the use of water and other materials to bring their activity down.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#64

Post by lutorm »

Spyro7 wrote: post #59
lutorm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the idea that Fukushima would be responsible for a 35% increase in infant mortality anywhere in the U.S. strains ones credulity, her being anti-nuclear is not proof of her being wrong. It's not like MIT nuclear scientists are "disinterested parties", either. Pretty much everyone who's knowledgeable about nuclear power has a stake either way. There are two competing effects at work here, and it's hard to say whi…

"While the idea that Fukushima would be responsible for a 35% increase in infant mortality anywhere in the U.S. strains ones credulity" Credulity doesn't factor into it. I found their "article" to be insulting in its lack of statistical rigor. If you have not read it, then you should read it. They compare two averages - each taken over a completely different length of time . They do not even make the smallest attempt…

Just to be clear, I think we have the same opinion about the study in question (though I just read the posted article). I just think you did yourself a disservice by stating "... is an anti-nuclear activist." Just pointing out that the article was "insulting in its lack of statistical rigor" would have been enough. At that point, arguing about the opinions of the writers is superfluous.

But regarding "facts": It is entirely possible to only know things that are true but still have an extremely biased view of the world, if those facts are a biased subsample of all possible facts. I work in astrophysics, and it happens all the time. We have such scant information that it's easy to draw all kinds of erroneous conclusions if you don't constantly keep in mind the potential facts we do not have because even if they were true we would have failed to acquire them.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#65

Post by jokermatt999 »

dexen wrote: post #39
jdp23 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the kind of argument that Paul Graham charcterizes as "ad hominem" and usually gets voted down on Hacker News? Don't get me wrong, personally I think it's very valid to bring up and important to keep in mind while reading their article. But it seems like a double standard to me.

Zed Shaw (yes, that Zed) has a good text on `ad hominem' and similar in this blog post: http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1293530004.html and the relevant HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2045120

Basically, I only consider something "ad hominem" if the flaws pointed out are irrelevant to what is being said. I think background is relevant when someone is presenting something as a fact that may not be (like the statistics in this post). When background is irrelevant is when it's used as an attack on someone's logic.

Even if it's Stalin saying "Murder is wrong, because kills someone", it doesn't matter that he himself was a mass murderer. It would make him a hypocrite, and a terrible person, but his logic still stands by himself.

On an unrelated note, I liked your (unintentional?) subtle humor of pointing out who wrote the article on ad hominem.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#66

Post by ahoyhere »

jdp23 wrote: post #33
Spyro7 wrote: post #7

"In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant." Somehow, I'm not surprised by this. Janette Sherman is an anti-nuclear activist: http://janettesherman.com/ Joseph Mangano is the di…

Isn't this the kind of argument that Paul Graham charcterizes as "ad hominem" and usually gets voted down on Hacker News? Don't get me wrong, personally I think it's very valid to bring up and important to keep in mind while reading their article. But it seems like a double standard to me.

Motive is incredibly important. Saying someone has a reason to be biased is not ad hominem. Saying they're a fucking hippie is.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#67

Post by Duff »

burgerbrain wrote: post #13
Duff wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was shocked at the immediate "this is not a problem" reaction by many people -- particularly here at Hacker News.

Just think of it as a natural counterweight to all the people who equate meltdown with a nuclear explosion.

Perhaps, but just as ignorant.

I would expect a scientist or engineer to react in the absence of good information to say something like: "Is this the worst disaster ever? I don't know, it depends."

At least the person assuming that the sky is falling is reacting out of fear. The technical person assuming that all is well is reacting out of hubris.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#68

Post by ahoyhere »

Duff wrote: post #8
nobody_nowhere wrote: post #3

The quick onslaught of the "it couldn't possibly be a meltdown" message in the mainstream media and the "MIT professor says" emails/webpages, etc all smacked of a propaganda campaign to me. All the while the fuel rods were sitting in a puddle at the bottom of the reactor... and probably leaking through into the ground. Of course, it's more likely that it was a lot of people not willing to believe the scope of the cat…

I was shocked at the immediate "this is not a problem" reaction by many people -- particularly here at Hacker News.

Denial is a totally natural and incredibly powerful human reaction to uncontrollable tragedy. People who are "more logical than others" are actually no less prone to this than anyone else, they just use a different mechanism to fuel their denial.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#69

Post by PaulHoule »

gojomo wrote: post #58
PaulHoule wrote: post #27

There's a lot of nonsense in that article. First of all, they keep repeating the words Plutonium and Uranium (particularly "enriched Uranium") and try to suggest that these are the major threats from the accident. They're not. Uranium isotopes have a half-life of billions of years, so whatever radioactivity they emit is spread out over a very long time. Overall, uranium is toxic in the same way that lead is toxic, an…

Radioiodine from the accident has almost completely decayed Given that the accident isn't over – fission is continuing without the normal containment – isn't more radioiodine being created, and at risk of further wide release, every day?

There is no more criticality and no more fission than natural spontaneous decay.

Other kinds of radioactive decay continue to release heat in the fuel, which could drive material transfer, but the production of radioiodine is long over.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#70

Post by Confusion »

marshray wrote: post #57
PaulHoule wrote: post #27

There's a lot of nonsense in that article. First of all, they keep repeating the words Plutonium and Uranium (particularly "enriched Uranium") and try to suggest that these are the major threats from the accident. They're not. Uranium isotopes have a half-life of billions of years, so whatever radioactivity they emit is spread out over a very long time. Overall, uranium is toxic in the same way that lead is toxic, an…

Overall, uranium is toxic in the same way that lead is toxic, and the chemical toxicity is probably worse than the radiotoxicity. You know darn well we're not talking about "overall uranium". We're talking about very hot uranium and plutonium directly from the cores of active nuclear reactors and the entire spectrum of elements and isotopes that get produced when you take that core, rods, and support structure and me…

The uranium in that reactor isn't different from overall uranium, except that it's concentrated and its composition differs from what naturally occurs. However, that's over there. Uranium would be dangerous to US citizens if the uranium was in the US. It isn't. And so far, not even the worst doomsayers that actually know their stuff have worried about uranium or plutonium. That's just not the stuff you care about after a nuclear meltdown. You care about the other isotopes that were produced and that are much more easily carried outside and are easily used to compose other molecules that can spread further.

Secondly, what on earth is 'hot uranium'? If you are speaking about the temperature: it certainly isn't hot anymore by the time it reaches the US. If you are speaking about it's radioactivity, you're wrong: individual uranium atoms from that reactor, once escaped, do not behave differently than naturally occurring uranium atoms.

As for your other fears: it's perfectly well known what radioactive isotopes controlled and uncontrolled fission processes can produce. That's why they've been monitoring for things like cesium, iodine and basically every radioactive isotopes that exists: the number is rather limited). No significant levels of the stuff have been seen in the US.

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