Going bananas over radiation
With all the worries over radiation leaks from Japan, and hoarding of Potassium Iodide tablets, I thought it valuable to repost a link to this story from last month which was very popular.
Many people in the USA would be surprised to learn that they will get more radiation from eating a single banana than they would from Japan’s nuclear reactors.
A banana equivalent dose is a concept occasionally used by nuclear power proponents to place in scale the dangers of radiation by comparing exposures to the radiation generated by a common banana.
Full story:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/16/going-bananas-over-radiation/
UPDATE: My friend John Coleman of KUSI-TV in San Diego offers this explanatory video:
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:17 am
“beng
If it’s that easy why hasn’t it been done yet?”
Apparently, the workers hourly wages are not high enough.
An alternative explanation is that all the volunteers have bought into the unscientific and false hype about radiation being deadly. I would submit though that Crosspatch be sent in to get a water hose into the building and ponds, since he would apparently “lick the dew off the perimeter fence of the site.”
For all of those who stillinsist that things are not so bad over there are you going to go over and help them pour cement on the reactors? Because it looks like that’s what they’re going to do.
Are you all going to go?
This is a nightmare. It is not just a work accident.
Amino sez:
“Are you all going to go?”
Not me. The jet stream will deliver the radiation right to my house.☹
I heard a woman on the radio today saying radiation isn’t so bad. She said some scientists had gone into the area near Chernobyl where humans aren’t allowed and they found that the animals had only “small mutations”—but they had shiny coats.
She actually had the idea that she was defending nuclear power.
Animals getting shiny coats from radiation. She thought that was good.
I wished I could have called her to see if she would fly to Fukushima to either run hoses to the reactors and cooling ponds, or to maybe help pour the cement. Hey, she could have come home with shiny hair.
I am very glad it has been raining all day here in Northern California. I hope it rains everyday to take the contamination out of the air. I know it is in very small amounts right now. But I don’t even want that much.
Amino,
The problem is you apparently can’t comprehend the difference between the thousands of rem per hour fields at Chernobyl and the 40 R/hr max in this case. And you refuse to listen to people who know why that difference exists.
Smokey says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:17 pm
Amino sez:
“Are you all going to go?”
Not me. The jet stream will deliver the radiation right to my house.☹
Well Smokey, at least you won’t be living in the stone ages. I’ve been told twice this week that if the world doesn’t continue to build nuclear power plants we’ll go back to the stone ages.
So it’s either nuclear power or the stone ages, there is nothing in between.
sHx, Amino;
I’d happily participate in hosing down the pools if I was there. I grew up near a nuclear reactor, my entire town was employed there pretty much, and I have no freakazoid rad paranoia.
Moderate doses are healthful — see the “Hormesis” studies. There are zero documented cases of birth defects of children of exposed people. Etc., etc.
From The Register:
Doug Badgero
So you’ll be catching the next flight to help out over there?
Brian H
Maybe they’d welcome your help. If they do end up pouring cement you could help out.
You did see this story? :
“……nuclear plant chief WEPT as Japanese finally admit that radiation leak is serious enough to kill people”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367684/Nuclear-plant-chief-weeps-Japanese-finally-admit-radiation-leak-kill-people.html
I am a radiation worker and have been all of my adult life. I would be fine with helping them stabilize the condition of these plants. More likely I’ll be involved in addressing the lessons learned for the US industry………..just as essentially all nuclear workers will. I work for AEP but I speak for myself and the media’s attention to this non disaster is absurd considering the aggregate effects of the earthquake and tsunami on the rest of Japan’s infrastructure and people. Ignorance based scaremongering at its worst.
Amino, low doses of radiation are not harmful. The workers at the plant are monitored so that when they reach a level where the radiation may become harmful they are removed off site. So it would be perfectly safe to go over there and help with the fire hoses. The stuff drifting over California is harmless. The radiation network has not picked up any harmful levels near you,
http://www.radiationnetwork.com/
So you can stop taking the Potassium Iodide pills.
Brian H says:
March 18, 2011 at 7:33 pm
I grew up near a nuclear reactor……. and I have no freakazoid rad paranoia.
You did not grow up next to a nuclear power plant disaster. You would think the same if you had?
Amino, I suggest you get your information and news from a better informed site,
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/
Doug Badgero
So this story is wrong?
“……nuclear plant chief WEPT as Japanese finally admit that radiation leak is serious enough to kill people”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367684/Nuclear-plant-chief-weeps-Japanese-finally-admit-radiation-leak-kill-people.html
Poptech says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Amino, low doses of radiation are not harmful.
We are not talking about low doses here.
Poptech;
Indeed! The projection of the jetstream reaching CA is irrelevant, since it’s much higher than any material from the reactors. That is being picked up at lower levels by the massive low weather system which has just gone through, and routed north towards Siberia — except for the 99% which is being cleared from the air by rain the system produces.
The radiation fear-mongers should be airlifted to Fukushima and dropped into the spent fuel pools.
Doug Badgero says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:07 pm
I would be fine with helping them stabilize the condition of these plants.
I am sorry. I can’t believe you. If it really is that easy they would have taken care of the problem already.
If it really is that easy will you please find a group of other people that think this same way and please go over there and end this nightmare.
Amino Acids, “We are not talking about low doses here.”
We are in terms of negative health effects.
Brian H says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:39 pm
The radiation fear-mongers should be airlifted to Fukushima and dropped into the spent fuel pools.
These California radiation fear mongers does not include me, right?
And BTW, I thought you and a few others are saying the radiation on site is not that bad?
Poptech says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:28 pm
So you can stop taking the Potassium Iodide pills.
At this point I’m going to ask you to stop in this line. I have not taken them. You have me mixed up with someone else.
So stop.
Poptech says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:56 pm
Amino Acids, “We are not talking about low doses here.”
We are in terms of negative health effects.
Your conversation is in a tangent that started somewhere I am not aware of.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/science/19plume.html?_r=1
“What we can measure is almost a single atom, which has absolutely no danger” for human health, said Lars-Erik De Geer, research director of the Swedish Defense Research Agency, a part of the monitoring system. “It has to be very sensitive because we are looking for people who are trying to hide the testing of weapons.”
The Sacramento readings were made on Air Force equipment shared with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, an arm of the United Nations in Vienna. Its mandate is to monitor the global ban on the testing of nuclear arms.
The United Nations agency has more than 60 stations that sniff for radiation spikes and uses weather forecasts and powerful computers to model the transport of radiation on the winds.
Earlier this week, its scientists forecast the plume’s arrival in the continental United States around the end of this week.
European officials said that — outside of Japan — its global network of detectors first picked up the presence of the Japanese plume at a station on the Kamchatka Peninsula, in Russia. Then, on Friday, they said, the station in Sacramento began to register the faint radiation. The government declined to release further details.
Poptech says:
March 18, 2011 at 9:56 pm
Amino Acids, “We are not talking about low doses here.”
We are in terms of negative health effects.
If there was not enough to harm humans then it was a waste to use helicopters and police water cannons.
Poptech says:
March 18, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Amino, I suggest you get your information and news from a better informed site,
You do not know who or what my sources are.
Would point out what I have said that is wrong? Because I think you have imagined I said things I did not say. There is evidence for this in your comments directed toward me about potassium iodide pills and alluding to dangerous levels of radiation in California. I had not said anything about either. In fact I made it clear that, intentionally, “I know it is in very small amounts right now.” Was it my comment about cement? That did not come from the media or a blog report. That came from the Japanese government.
Will you tell me what I have said that is wrong that lead you to make sarcastic comments to me?