LazyNomad Wrote:No, I don`t mean that government is lying to public. It`s just the public that doesn`t understand the meaning of what they hear.
As one such example, there is continuing white smoke from the pool with spent fuel. This fuel is not inside containment. And it is spent fuel, which means it is highly radioactive, uranium inside partly transmutated to plutonium, and there are oxides of iodine and cesium, deadly mix. But my wife was not worried at all when she heard the news. She thought that spent nuclear fuel is not dangerous anymore, because it is "spent". And smokes from fuel goes straightly into the atmosphere through the hole in the wall and in the roof.

Quote:Now they don`t know what to do with it. To fly over it is to dangerous. So they decided to take a long hose, to insert it in the hole in the wall, and to pump water from the distance. Needless to say, that there are no robots to do this dirty job. Volunteers are all over 60, as far as I understood. What a tradegy
how is this so much different from Chernobyl I don`t understand
And actually I remember when Chernobyl happened, Soviet government was telling it`s citizens something along the line "Don`t panic! It`s not a nuclear explosion. It is a thermal explosion. It is like explosion of boiler at thermal plant." Nobody was aware how bad it is for a long time.

Jarvik7 Wrote:More like America nuked Japan twice to scare the Russians, but that thread has already been done >

Quote:For a start, even if this was equivalent to Chernobyl in the amount of radioactive products released into the atmosphere, the actual damaging effects would be tiny. After chernobyl the only real discernible health effect (apart from the deaths of the reactor staff in the explosion) was a slight increase in thyroid cancer occurrence related to iodine-131 exposure, and this only happened to some people who were young at the time. Other unconfirmed effects like birth defects were tiny in number. If the Soviet authorities had given people iodine tablets, as the Japanese have, there would have been no negative health effects.

Quote:I have just returned from a conference call held at the British Embassy in Tokyo. The call was concerning the nuclear issue in Japan. The chief spokesman was Sir. John Beddington, Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, and he was joined by a number of qualified nuclear experts based in the UK. Their assessment of the current situation in Japan is as follows:

* In case of a ‘reasonable worst case scenario’ (defined as total meltdown of one reactor with subsequent radioactive explosion) an exclusion zone of 30 miles (50km) would be the maximum required to avoid affecting peoples’ health. Even in a worse situation (loss of two or more reactors) it is unlikely that the damage would be significantly more than that caused by the loss of a single reactor.

* The current 20km exclusion zone is appropriate for the levels of radiation/risk currently experienced, and if the pouring of sea water can be maintained to cool the reactors, the likelihood of a major incident should be avoided. A further large quake with tsunami could lead to the suspension of the current cooling operations, leading to the above scenario.

* The bottom line is that these experts do not see there being a possibility of a health problem for residents in Tokyo. The radiation levels would need to be hundreds of times higher than current to cause the possibility for health issues, and that, in their opinion, is not going to happen (they were talking minimum levels affecting pregnant women and children – for normal adults the levels would need to be much higher still).

* The experts do not consider the wind direction to be material. They say Tokyo is too far away to be materially affected.

* If the pouring of water can be maintained the situation should be much improved after ten days, as the reactors’ cores cool down.

* Information being provided by Japanese authorities is being independently monitored by a number of organizations and is deemed to be accurate, as far as measures of radioactivity levels are concerned.

* This is a very different situation from Chernobyl, where the reactor went into meltdown and the encasement, which exploded, was left to burn for weeks without any control. Even with Chernobyl, an exclusion zone of 30 miles would have been adequate to protect human health. The problem was that most people became sick from eating contaminated food, crops, milk and water in the region for years afterward, as no attempt was made to measure radioactivity levels in the food supply at that time or warn people of the dangers. The secrecy over the Chernobyl explosion is in contrast to the very public coverage of the Fukushima crisis.

Quote:* Regarding Iodine supplementation, the experts said this was only necessary for those who had inhaled quantities of radiation (those in the exclusion zone or workers on the site) or through consumption of contaminated food/water supplies. Long term consumption of iodine is, in any case, not healthy.

The discussion was surprisingly frank and to the point. The conclusion of the experts is that the damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami, as well as the subsequent aftershocks, was much more of an issue than the fear of radiation sickness from the nuclear plants.

Eikyu Wrote:The most ridiculous headline so far:

Mass Exodus from Tokyo

http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/16/no-mass-exodus-from-tokyo/#respond

thurd Wrote:Also I don't know if anyone posted this or seen this live:

Its just incredible how well organized this is: first automatic message system, then live announcement still from the parliament but once they notice its going on for too long they cut to the studio to follow events that occur live. It actually gets scary when you notice even the studio has problems and is shaking really bad, shouts of the off screen guy also add to the tension. Then its instant information about arriving tsunamis with a timetable (apparently in Japan even tsunami is always on time).

And it all happens in around 4 minutes!!!

nest0r Wrote:Japan Prime Minister’s Office Begins English Twitter, To Inform Disaster Information

dizmox Wrote:In other news, lol...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3473142/My-nightmare-trapped-in-post-tsunami-Tokyo-City-of-Ghosts.html?OTC-RSS&ATTR=News

rich_f Wrote:Wait... is that a real newspaper, or just another version of the Onion? o_O