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raymundoko
reply to post by wishes
It seems you are the one lacking in understanding of the situation. Everyone needs to step back, review the facts of the situation and stop using their gut as a scientific calibration device.
The biggest thing people aren't realizing here is that the ocean is actually saving the planet as it is literally dilluting the contamination down to almost natural radiation levels....
If it goes on for decades we'll have a problem...but right now, and for the near future...no problem.
It is a rather appalling document that takes 140 pages to state the simple fact that, since we know virtually nothing about the dangers of low-intensity radiation, we might as well agree that the average population dose from manmade radiation should be no greater than that which the population already receives from natural causes; and that any individual in that population shouldn't be exposed to more than three times that amount, the latter figure being, of course, totally arbitrary. Later in the book, Kistiakowsky, who was a nuclear expert and veteran of the Manhattan Project, wrote: "… a linear relation between dose and effect… I still believe is entirely unnecessary for the definition of the current radiation guidelines, since they are pulled out of thin air without any knowledge on which to base them."
Sixty-three years of research on radiation effects have gone by, and Kistiakowsky's critique still holds. The linear no-threshold (LNT) radiation dose hypothesis, which surreally influences every regulation and public fear about nuclear power, is based on no knowledge whatever.
At stake are the hundreds of billions spent on meaningless levels of "safety" around nuclear power plants and waste storage, the projected costs of next-generation nuclear plant designs to reduce greenhouse gases worldwide, and the extremely harmful episodes of public panic that accompany rare radiation-release events such as Fukushima and Chernobyl. (No birth defects whatever were caused by Chernobyl, but fear of them led to 100,000 panic abortions in the Soviet Union and Europe. What people remember about Fukushima is that nuclear opponents predicted that hundreds or thousands would die or become ill from the radiation. In fact nobody died, nobody became ill, and nobody is expected to.)
The "linear" part of the LNT is true and well documented. Based on long-term studies of survivors of the atomic bombs in Japan and of nuclear industry workers, the incidence of eventual cancer increases with increasing exposure to radiation at levels above 100 millisieverts per year. The effect is linear. Below 100 millisieverts per year, however, no increased cancer incidence has been detected, either because it doesn't exist or because the numbers are so low that any signal gets lost in the epidemiological noise.
We all die. Nearly a half of us die of cancer (38% of females, 45% of males). If the "no-threshold" part of the LNT is taken seriously, and an exposed population experiences as much as a 0.5% increase in cancer risk, it simply cannot be detected. The LNT operates on the unprovable assumption that the cancer deaths exist, even if the increase is too small to detect, and that therefore "no level of radiation is safe" and every extra millisievert is a public health hazard.
Some evidence against the "no-threshold" hypothesis draws on studies of background radiation. In the US we are all exposed to 6.2 millisieverts a year on average, but it varies regionally. New England has lower background radiation, Colorado is much higher, yet cancer rates in New England are higher than in Colorado – an inverse effect. Some places in the world, such as Ramsar in Iran, have a tenfold higher background radiation, but no higher cancer rates have been discovered there. These results suggest that there is indeed a threshold below which radiation is not harmful.
Furthermore, recent research at the cell level shows a number of mechanisms for repair of damaged DNA and for ejection of damaged cells up to significant radiation levels. This is not surprising given that life evolved amid high radiation and other threats to DNA. The DNA repair mechanisms that have existed in yeast for 800m years are also present in humans.
The actual threat of low-dose radiation to humans is so low that the LNT hypothesis can neither be proven true nor proven false, yet it continues to dominate and misguide policies concerning radiation exposure, making them grotesquely conservative and expensive. Once the LNT is explicitly discarded, we can move on to regulations that reflect only discernible, measurable medical effects, and that respond mainly to the much larger considerations of whole-system benefits and harms.
The most crucial decisions about nuclear power are at the category level of world urban prosperity and climate change, not imaginary cancers per millisievert.
Human0815
THE LINEAR NO-THRESHOLD RADIATION DOSE HYPOTHESIS
It is a rather appalling document that takes 140 pages to state the simple fact that, since we know virtually nothing about the dangers of low-intensity radiation, we might as well agree that the average population dose from manmade radiation should be no greater than that which the population already receives from natural causes; and that any individual in that population shouldn't be exposed to more than three times that amount, the latter figure being, of course, totally arbitrary. Later in the book, Kistiakowsky, who was a nuclear expert and veteran of the Manhattan Project, wrote: "… a linear relation between dose and effect… I still believe is entirely unnecessary for the definition of the current radiation guidelines, since they are pulled out of thin air without any knowledge on which to base them."
Sixty-three years of research on radiation effects have gone by, and Kistiakowsky's critique still holds. The linear no-threshold (LNT) radiation dose hypothesis, which surreally influences every regulation and public fear about nuclear power, is based on no knowledge whatever.
At stake are the hundreds of billions spent on meaningless levels of "safety" around nuclear power plants and waste storage, the projected costs of next-generation nuclear plant designs to reduce greenhouse gases worldwide, and the extremely harmful episodes of public panic that accompany rare radiation-release events such as Fukushima and Chernobyl. (No birth defects whatever were caused by Chernobyl, but fear of them led to 100,000 panic abortions in the Soviet Union and Europe. What people remember about Fukushima is that nuclear opponents predicted that hundreds or thousands would die or become ill from the radiation. In fact nobody died, nobody became ill, and nobody is expected to.)
The "linear" part of the LNT is true and well documented. Based on long-term studies of survivors of the atomic bombs in Japan and of nuclear industry workers, the incidence of eventual cancer increases with increasing exposure to radiation at levels above 100 millisieverts per year. The effect is linear. Below 100 millisieverts per year, however, no increased cancer incidence has been detected, either because it doesn't exist or because the numbers are so low that any signal gets lost in the epidemiological noise.
We all die. Nearly a half of us die of cancer (38% of females, 45% of males). If the "no-threshold" part of the LNT is taken seriously, and an exposed population experiences as much as a 0.5% increase in cancer risk, it simply cannot be detected. The LNT operates on the unprovable assumption that the cancer deaths exist, even if the increase is too small to detect, and that therefore "no level of radiation is safe" and every extra millisievert is a public health hazard.
Some evidence against the "no-threshold" hypothesis draws on studies of background radiation. In the US we are all exposed to 6.2 millisieverts a year on average, but it varies regionally. New England has lower background radiation, Colorado is much higher, yet cancer rates in New England are higher than in Colorado – an inverse effect. Some places in the world, such as Ramsar in Iran, have a tenfold higher background radiation, but no higher cancer rates have been discovered there. These results suggest that there is indeed a threshold below which radiation is not harmful.
Furthermore, recent research at the cell level shows a number of mechanisms for repair of damaged DNA and for ejection of damaged cells up to significant radiation levels. This is not surprising given that life evolved amid high radiation and other threats to DNA. The DNA repair mechanisms that have existed in yeast for 800m years are also present in humans.
The actual threat of low-dose radiation to humans is so low that the LNT hypothesis can neither be proven true nor proven false, yet it continues to dominate and misguide policies concerning radiation exposure, making them grotesquely conservative and expensive. Once the LNT is explicitly discarded, we can move on to regulations that reflect only discernible, measurable medical effects, and that respond mainly to the much larger considerations of whole-system benefits and harms.
The most crucial decisions about nuclear power are at the category level of world urban prosperity and climate change, not imaginary cancers per millisievert.
The Guardian
There is no firm basis for setting a "safe" level of exposure above background for stochastic effects. Many sources emit radiation that is well below natural background levels. This makes it extremely difficult to isolate its stochastic effects. In setting limits, EPA makes the conservative (cautious) assumption that any increase in radiation exposure is accompanied by an increased risk of stochastic effects. Some scientists assert that low levels of radiation are beneficial to health (this idea is known as hormesis).
But consider this: Every day, all day long, we're bathed in low levels of radiation - cosmic rays from outer space, radon in our houses, uranium deposits in the soil, radio signals from every AM and FM station in range, airport full-body scanners, dental X-rays, cellphones, even tiny hints lingering from the A-bomb tests of the 1940s and '50s. And remember that radiation is cumulative. Most scientists agree there's no such thing as a harmless dose.
Karl Morgan was an American physicist who was a founder of the field of radiation health physics. After a long career in the Manhattan Project and at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, he became a critic of nuclear power and weapons. Morgan, who died in 1999, began to offer court testimony for people who said they had been harmed by the nuclear power industry. “Nobody is talking about the fact that there is no safe dose of radiation,” Cabasso added, “One of the reasons Morgan said this is because doses are cumulative in the body.”
Increasing evidence suggests that there may be a threshold between 100 and 1000 mSv below which no harmful effects of radiation occur. However, this is not yet accepted by national or international radiation protection bodies as sufficiently well-proven to be taken into official standards. However, at low levels of exposure, the body's natural mechanisms do repair radiation and other damage to cells soon after it occurs, and some adaptive response is stimulated which protects cells and tissues, as with exposure to other external agents at low levels.
Hazards from low level radiation are long-term, not acute effects… Every exposure increases risk of cancer. (Military briefings for commanders often contain less propaganda than literature aimed at civilians, as the commanders have to know the basic facts to be able to assess risk to their soldiers.) The briefing states that doses are cumulative, citing the following military studies and reports:
ACE Directive 80-63, ACE Policy for Defensive Measures against Low Level Radiological Hazards during Military Operations,
2 AUG 96
AR 11-9, The Army Radiation Program, 28 MAY 99 FM 4-02.283, Treatment of Nuclear and Radiological Casualties, 20 DEC 01
JP 3-11, Joint Doctrine for Operations in NBC Environments, 11 JUL 00 NATO STANAG 2473, Command Guidance on Low Level Radiation Exposure in Military Operations, 3 MAY 00 USACHPPM TG 244, The NBC Battle Book, AUG 02
Although low-level radiation can cause any number of unpredictable DNA changes, damaged DNA often leads to cancer
Many scientists believe there is no safe threshold for radiation. Mainstream scientists blame higher levels of radon for about 20,000 cases of lung cancer in the United States each year. But less is known about the effects of radiation at low levels
jrod
reply to post by Human0815
Do you think enenews.com... has useful information or is it just another doom porn site?
The fact that all big tuna caught in the North Pacific test positve for Cs-137 should be a big enough indicator of the magnitude of this disaster.
RickinVa
And now I am going to take a self imposed ban from posting on this thread for a couple of days.
Have fun and keep the discussion alive!!!!
The edict issued to all Ministries of the Russian Government ordered that all “past, present and future” information relating to Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster now be rated at the highest classification level “Of Special Importance”, stressing that this condition is “immediately and urgently needed” due to a series of underground nuclear explosions occurring at this crippled atomic plant on 31 December as confirmed by the Ministry of Defense (MoD).
“Of Special Importance” is Russia’s highest classification level and refers to information which, if released, would cause damage to the entire Russian Federation, Whatdoesitmean.com reported.
game over man
reply to post by RickinVa
Goodness gracious RickinVa take a chill pill. Are you on crusade to put Fukushima in all caps followed by hundreds of exclamation points?
Based upon your description of the scenario I need a little education on contact with radiation. Anybody can answer my questions too.
I presum employess at nuclear plants wear protective gear. If we are not being honestly told (ahem conspiracy) how much radiation is leaking out then there wound be a cover up of all the scientist getting extremely sick because they are in fishing gear and not hazmat suits?
Can boats still operate correctly in radioactive water?
Can extremely high levels of radioactivity disrupt communication devices?
Are the elements from the leakef radiation tasteless and odorless? Can the radiation physically alter fish? With these questions can radiated fish pass QC tests and GRADING by fisherman, fish auctions, exporters, packers, importers, distributors, processers, wholesalers, and retailers?
That's a lot of hands touching highly radioactive fish, not to mention airlines, freight forwarders, truckers, and warehouse staff.
Tell me how it can end up on your plate, because that seems HIGHLY UNLIKELY in your scenario of Fukushima.
Also not one mention of butterflies in this thread...I'll leave you to look that up.