muso wrote on Apr 4^th, 2011 at 10:53am:


Ah Yes - the avoidance of the INTERNAL ALPHA EMITTER danger.

Its not about the EXTERNAL exposure to radiation (although that can be lethal if high enough). We know that a CT scan or repeated X-Rays can deliver reasonable radiation doses.

I ask again How many Plutonium atoms do you need to breathe in to be in danger of getting cancer?

(Everyone in here has a responsibility to make public the real dangers and health issues associated with the FUkushima disaster and radiological incidents in general - They dont have the right to be puppet PR managers for the IAEA, TEPCO or the Japanese authorities. To do so is to willingly take part in what amounts to an international scale crime - like the Chernobyl cover up is)

Foolosophy wrote on Apr 4^th, 2011 at 11:29am:


Well that's a nonsensical question unless you work for Greenpeace, and in the Greenpeace Universe, the answer is 1, and they love to talk about Plutonium, saying that it's the most toxic substance on Earth (it isn't). In fact they love to talk about anything that gets them new members. Baby fur seals and whales are pretty good for business too.  

Getting back to the question,  in the Universe we live in, it's all a question of total risk.  The risk for alpha emitters is about 20 times the risk of beta or gamma emitters.

What level of radiation do you consider normal? A level at which no medical anomalies can be detected? The sort of levels around Denver Colorado or La Paz Bolivia. Their background is  around 200 times the background dose in some areas, and considerably more than that in Fukushima prefecture at the moment.  

The monitoring at Fukushima is being differentiated into types of radiation, and so far, no level of alpha emitters has been detected, other than trace quantities of Uranium and Plutonium in the soil, some from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions.

What's the cancer rate like in the Japanese population compared to world cancer rates (have you checked?) , and how do you reconcile that with the fact that the Japanese are exposed to much more Plutonium that many countries in the world (outside the exclusion zone of Chernobyl).

OK, now you answer my ridiculous loaded question too: How many times do you have to drive on the road to be in danger of being killed in a motor vehicle accident?

Analysis: "Peak Everything" may mute Fukushima backlash

(Reuters) - Political support may be holding for nuclear power and offshore oil, despite the Fukushima and Macondo disasters, as decision-makers confront climate change and dwindling domestic energy reserves.

A theory of "Peak Everything" suggests we are running short of vital assets such as clean water, carbon-free air, some minerals, fish stocks or the cheap fossil fuels which have powered the world economy and helped curb the price of food.

If you want to secure domestic supplies and curb carbon emissions too, then energy options are limited. And that fact has clearly dawned on governments.

Take for example the deadly blowout last year at BP's mile-deep Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, which all but stalled U.S. deep-water drilling.

Licensing there has now resumed, while other countries dismissed a deep-water freeze from the start, including Britain whose output is dwindling in the shallower North Sea.

It is early days to tell how the world will respond to the nuclear crisis caused by Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11, but a bump in the road looks more plausible than a full stop.

President Barack Obama, for instance, last week laid out a plan to cut oil imports by a third -- diversifying toward renewable energies and also relying on nuclear.

Italy and China plan a one-year pause on new build for nuclear, and Japan plans a policy review. Underlying voter unease, German chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives lost power in a regional stronghold last week, partly because of her party's pro-nuclear stance.

PEAK EVERYTHING
Others say the driving force for offshore drilling, nuclear power and other resources is the simple need to provide for a population set to reach 9 billion by 2050 from 7 billion now.

"We could see some continuing support for nuclear, despite what is happening in Japan but it won't be fueled by climate change concerns," said Emmanuel Fages, head of analysis of European energy at Societe Generale in Paris.

"It will be because of economic and energy pragmatism," he said. By that argument, nuclear power may be hit most by rising safety and insurance costs after Fukushima.

The International Energy Agency, the energy watchdog to industrialised countries, says global crude oil output peaked in 2006, meaning the world is now forced to glean oil from unconventional sources like oil sands and natural gas liquids.

Those alternatives, as well as renewable energy and nuclear power, are more expensive and would force the world into a more frugal future, according to Richard Heinberg, who coined the notion of "Peak Everything" in his 2007 book of the same title.

Fukushima could stall nuclear power, he added.

"The real upshot is the strong likelihood is we'll have less energy in the future and it will be more expensive energy. We're really looking at a different kind of society," at least for the next 20 or 30 years before new breakthroughs emerged, he said.

Of course, theories of impending shortages have often turned out wrong, like the 1798 prediction by British scholar Thomas Malthus that population growth would outstrip food production. At the time, the world population was just one billion.[/b

"Energy policy is about balancing risks - all forms of energy carry risks," said James Acton of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

And the tsunami was beyond the design of the Fukushima plant. "The real challenge is to improve our ability to predict natural and manmade disasters," he said.

Some green groups say there is no trade-off, and renewable energy coupled with energy efficiency can solve the problems.

Sven Teske, director of renewable energy at environmental group Greenpeace, said big shifts were under way with developed nations closing more coal-fired plants than they open.

"There is a phase-out of coal already. The reality is that everybody is moving toward renewables and gas. But some of the government rhetoric will remain in favor of nuclear," he said.

Link -
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/03/us-energy-peak-idUSTRE7322W320110403?p...
==================================
It is correct that Energy mirrors life and that it is all one big balancing act.

However, to glance over that the "tsunami was beyond the design of the Fukushima plant", does no one justice, as there have been other "examples" that the sea walls at Fukushima & elsewhere in Japan were too small, but no action was taken at Fukushima or elsewhere, Hamaoka comes to mind.

The Malthus analogy is often raised, but it is erroneous, as the situations are completely different, because now, it is no longer a theory, we are living it and we can see the outcomes!

In fact, Peak everything is demonstrably on its way to reality, as can be seen in Energy, Food & Climate Change, all of which are driven in small or large part, by the growth of human Population from 1 Billion in 1800, to 7 billion today.

I doubt that the global Population will make earlier estimates of 9-10 Billion, in fact it may struggle to make 8 Billion, before starting the long decline, back to around 3-4 Billion, by sometime next century!

muso wrote on Apr 4^th, 2011 at 9:08am:


And Natalia Mironova is NOT a Nuclear Expert.....She's an Anti-Nuclear Activist....

perceptions_now wrote on Apr 4^th, 2011 at 1:33pm:


Most importantly, the NY Academy of Sciences Report was not just a one off analytical article. It translated about 6000 articles and studies (most were in Russian) and got a long term picture of the REAL health effects and mortality POST Chernobyl.

In 25 years it was estimated that a tleast 985,000 people died as direct result of the CHernobyl disaster. What will this figue rise to in the next 25 year?

muso wrote on Apr 4^th, 2011 at 11:52am:


muso must have a new analytical device that can determine the origin of a atom. You shoudl patent this device.

Let me give you an estimate of how much Plutonium is needed to give EVERYONE on the planet cancer if breathed in - approx. 0.5 kg.

So do the math muso - I am sure you are aware of Avagadros number and the number of moles 0.5kg of Plutonium is????

Foolosophy wrote on Apr 4^th, 2011 at 1:47pm:


Haven't you heard of High resolution Mass Spectrometry? The Isotope ratio tells all. If the concentration is high enough, it's fairly easy to see if the source of the Plutonium came from 1945 or 2011. Let me remind you - decay chains, half-life all that jazz - sound familiar?

MS instruments are relatively inexpensive these days. You can buy them off the shelf, and the shelf is quite often in Japan. 

Even in non nuclear energy Queensland we have access to this technology.

Foolosophy wrote on Apr 4^th, 2011 at 2:22pm:


How does it compare with Coal fired power stations?

If anything good comes of this incident, I'd hope that people would start to think about the issues. I just hope that they don't fall back to the coal-fired option, because quite clearly that is much more deadly in the long run. If the world ends up with more renewable energy as a result of this, then something will have been achieved.

Somehow, I am skeptical of that outcome.