I share the worry of the protesters. Maybe I'm just a scaredy cat. You judge:
*
Government Responds to Nuclear Accident by Trying to Raise Acceptable Radiation Levels and Pretending that Radiation is Good For Us (ZeroHedge). Does this reassure you?
* The dangers of radioactivity are
being downplayed these days, by referring to background radiation, CT scans, etc. But the wind can carry radioactive particles very far and when we ingest them, they can cause damage constantly.
Hirose Takashi in an interview, broadcasted by Asahi NewStar on 17 March:
"
They compare it to a CT scan, which is over in an instant; that has nothing to do with it. The reason radioactivity can be measured is that radioactive material is escaping. What is dangerous is when that material enters your body and irradiates it from inside. These industry-mouthpiece scholars come on TV and what to they say? They say as you move away the radiation is reduced in inverse ratio to the square of the distance. I want to say the reverse. Internal irradiation happens when radioactive material is ingested into the body. What happens? Say there is a nuclear particle one meter away from you. You breathe it in, it sticks inside your body; the distance between you and it is now at the micron level. One meter is 1000 millimeters, one micron is one thousandth of a millimeter. That’s a thousand times a thousand: a thousand squared. That’s the real meaning of “inverse ratio of the square of the distance.” Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion. Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that’s the danger.
Yoh: So making comparisons with X-rays and CT scans has no meaning. Because you can breathe in radioactive material.
Hirose: That’s right. When it enters your body, there’s no telling where it will go. The biggest danger is women, especially pregnant women, and little children. Now they’re talking about iodine and cesium, but that’s only part of it, they’re not using the proper detection instruments. What they call monitoring means only measuring the amount of radiation in the air. Their instruments don’t eat."
More about this subjec, unsure what to think of this: "
The internal external radiation protection Switcheroo"
* In Chernobyl approximately 800,000 "liquidators" (people) are said to have been used to limit the consequences of the 1986 disaster. According to Georgy Lepnin, a Belarusian physician who worked on reactor #4, "approximately 100,000 liquidators are now dead", of a total number of one million workers.
Wikipedia, no reference)
According to Vyacheslav Grishin of the Chernobyl Union, the main organization of liquidators, "25,000 of the Russian liquidators are dead and 70,000 disabled, about the same in Ukraine, and 10,000 dead in Belarus and 25,000 disabled", which makes a total of 60,000 dead (10% of the 600 000, liquidators) and 165,000 disabled.
* Vassili Nesterenko - Nuclear Physicist, interviewed about Chernobyl (
video, from around 1:31:00): "
I pray God the sarcofagus never collapses. That woul be the worst thing that could happen.
Because inside there are 100 kg of plutonium. One microgram is a lethal dose for a human being. That means, there is enough plutonium to poison a 100 million people. The half life of plutonium - in other words the time it takes for of half the plutonium to disappear - is 245,000 years. This is something that we could thus consider eternal. There are areas where there will never be life again."
(it's a translation, possibly erroneous; I ignore which type of plutonium he's talking about, but there may be an extraneous zero, but even 24K years is pretty scary)
The sarcofagus is in bad shape, but they're said to be working on a new one that should be ready in 2013.
* So... how much plutonium is there in Fukushima?
Associated Press: "There are 3,400 tons of fuel in seven spent fuel pools within the six-reactor plant, including one joint pool storing very old fuel from units 3 and 4. There are 877 tons in five of the reactor cores."
How much plutonium is in this? Probably a lot more than there ever was in Chernobyl.
If radiation around the reactors keeps going up, what are they going to do to "contain" the situation?
*
"Betrayed" Japanese communities might never go home (Reuters)
Etc.
Sounds like pretty dangerous stuff to me. I agree with the protesters and fear they may be in the process of getting vindicated... no telling how bad this can get. How do you compare the price of "cheap" nuclear energy (cheap as in subsidized) for 50 years with the cost of increased cancer risk and contamination of land and water for a much larger number of years?
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be outside protesting...
...
