Fukushima

[Scooter]

Thoughts about radiation from Fukushima? Is it a realistic danger? Or more conspiracy theory? How could it affect planters, especially coastal planters (who tend to get rained on constantly at certain times of the year)? Every day, it is starting to seem more prevalent in mainstream news.

Here are a couple articles:

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com ... you-think/

http://www.globalresearch.ca/west-coast ... on/5346470

http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima- ... rs/5344590

[retrovertigo]

I'm hoping to grow a few extra arms this fall, really beef up the productivity.

[newforest]

It seems like the worst culture to have a nuclear accident, where failure is so shameful that such a horrible reality is swept under the rug as much as possible. Does the outside world really have much idea of true conditions there? It has been this steady refrain of a Japanese official saying "it's not so bad" and then an outside observer saying "it's worse than we thought." Sensationalistic internet media aren't much help figuring it out either.

[SwampDonkey]

There have been at least two 'Frontline' documentaries by PBS television with outside and inside officials/experts reporting on that mess. It is far worse that was reported in mainstream media. And this is from the mouths of folks on the front line. It's actually a worst mess than Chernobyl and now they are in the midst of a typhoon category 3. That place is really rickety and leaking radioactive waste into the sea and I believe in the ground water nearby (not sure there). Even the US navy stationed there had the sense to get out.

[The_Bearslayer]

The PBS documentaries Swampdonkey mentions, which are available on Youtube, are probably the best source of information for most of us on how the disaster happened, what condition the reactor was in when it happened and what condition it is in now. I tried to read some of the longer, more technical articles but didn't get very far. And I can't even remember what I learned by watching the documentaries. And there's the real problem, I guess.

[Scooter]

I find it amazing that a group of tree planters, who are arguably the most conspiracy-theory-oriented bunch of environmentalist alarmist hippies (I include myself in that group, and proudly), have not had a collective hive-mind aneurysm about this whole situation.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/11/04 ... 13061.html

"I have seen a paper which says that if in fact the fourth plant goes under in an earthquake and those rods are exposed, it's bye bye Japan and everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate," he said. If that isn't terrifying, I don't know what is."
- David Suzuki

[SwampDonkey]

Firstly, I wouldn't doubt that what he read was other than something he wrote himself. And secondly, I stopped following his diatribe style science decades ago. Ask him where his mini ice age is he was first beating the drum about in the 70's. Not all of us feel "he speaks for the environment in Canada".

[Greg]

Personally, thinking about the effects of Fuki is so scary that it does me no good to read any more about it. Enough information out there to know that it is beyond anything we can do. Living on the coast has me a worried, but I don't think radiation has any boundaries. I am passionate about politics and my local environment, but the scope of the impact of this is simply beyond me. Too much energy into it will only depress me....I'd rather be depressed about the public bids we are seeing this fall!

[Scooter]

It's obvious that there is a lot of contradictory or inaccurate information out there. Take this article, for example:

http://rt.com/usa/fukushima-debris-island-texas-266/

The obvious mistake in that one is that they don't understand the metric system.

Also, for anyone familiar with the North Pacific Gyre, it's curious to wonder why this garbage would make it to the North American coast, when so much other garbage gets caught in the Gyre. Perhaps some of the Fukushima garbage went one way, and some went the other?

[Scooter]

I'm a bit puzzled as to why nobody in North America seems to be paying attention to Fukushima these days. There's nothing in the American news lately, but it may be developing into a big problem.
Could shape up to be a challenging coastal season, between snow, Trump, and global radiation poisoning.

[newforest]

A view from Australia:

https://independentaustralia.net/politi ... ated,10019

[Scooter]

"There are over 4,000 workers on site each day, many recruited by the Yakuza (the Japanese Mafia) and include men who are homeless, drug addicts and those who are mentally unstable."

Seems that there's a parallel here.

[mwainwright]

Spent fuel rod highballers

[newforest]

Re: why little coverage now, I think it is information fatigue. When the accident happened, it was one of the earlier examples of "Fake News". Another forum I read was trolled regularly with it and it was all over Facebook - The entire Pacific Ocean poisoned! Humanity's food supply permanently imperiled! Western half of USA already dosed by killer Radiation!

When that hyperbole proved to be ... hyperbole, people lost interest.

[Scooter]

From what I understand, and I've tried to dig into the facts and the science of it rather than 99% of the garbage reporting, is that:
- The leakage into the Pacific IS a problem in terms of toxic content, on a theoretical level.
- That leakage is NOT a problem on a practical level, because 300 tons per day is such a small amount. Yes, it's a problem locally, but in terms of poisoning the entire Pacific, my closest approximation to a good analogy would be that it's like throwing a jerry can into the sun. Sure, it'll explode, but the sun is so big that it isn't noticeable in the big picture.

From what I can guess (and there is no good reporting that I can find right now), the current high readings sound terrifying, but I don't think they're anything new. I think those readings have probably been that high all along (and I suspect they'll find much higher readings if they go deeper) but this is the first time that they've been able to penetrate to that location.

Does this mean that the info should be disregarded as scare-mongering? Yes and no. I think it's a good reminder that there's a major problem there that people forget about. Tepco is wholly incompetent, from what I can tell, and has absolutely no idea how to deal with it. To be fair, I don't know if anyone would.

My thought would be the best option would be to several million tons of concrete around everything and seal it up for a century or so, while doing research on how to best deal with it eventually. The groundwater leaching certainly isn't good, but that's not going to kill the planet. The only real problem with the "encase it in concrete and let their grandchildren deal with it" is that they're on an earthquake zone, so someday, it could come back to haunt ... everyone.

I guess the world can deal with that when it happens. I feel that I'm about a hundred times more likely to die due to natural causes than due to global Fukushima radiation poisoning. But there's always the chance that things could go terribly wrong there at some point.

[prof]

First off, totally agree with what newforest has said above... the culture of silence, shame and deference is definitely a hindrance to investigating how bad the reactor leak actually is. Having said that, the IAEA is a pretty robust regulatory agency that seems to have this shit pretty dialed. It is worse than we thought, but not nearly as bad as some think. The world desperately needs more nuclear energy to save the planet (literally) so hippy fearmongering a la Greenpeace is bad news bears.

Here's what I don't get about people who freak the fuck out about the Fukushima leak:
Over the last 70 years, the various nuclear powers around the world have detonated approximately 2,060 nuclear bombs, often below ground or sea, propelling irradiated debris into the stratosphere. This happened in nearly every corner of the world. Very few people realize this, yet lose their minds when there is a relatively negligible amount of radiation leaking from that Japanese facility.

My 2c.
Prof.

[mwainwright]

Here's a video to put prof's comment in perspective
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

[Scooter]

Speaking of Japan, it has a forestry industry, which I wasn't really aware of:

http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/ ... ers-survey

[_I3^RELATIVISM]

Planting in japan that would e interesting. Probably most planters would be rejected because of cultural shock back there.