What is your area of expertise where you feel you can make a difference in such a massive and complex situation?

Just talking to people about it and communication about it.
1500 people reading this thread I think that makes a difference
4000 people viewing the petition i think that makes a difference
obviously i am not contemplating going over and trying to fix it my self.
you can see from my comments that I am clearly not a nuclear physicist.
Why would you not want me the bring some awareness to this situation?
why would you not want all the world leaders to come together and pool resources to try and fix this.
why would you not want some good will towards the planet.
whats your qualification that you would not want that.

 

What is your area of expertise where you feel you can make a difference in such a massive and complex situation?

sorry about my rant i am quite dyslexic and miss the intent of some written things.
I have no experience in this field what so ever, but also do not feel I need any.

just from the remarks on these last two threads let alone all the other information on it, I think this is a very dangerous and toxic thing happening at fukushima.

I don't feel like i need to be a scientist or politician to what to help in some way. In the same way the people signing the petition don,t have to be scientists. I am not making any exaggerated claims on the petition. here is the text. -

Ever since the earthquake of 11 March 2011 the stricken power station at Fukushima has been leaking radio active pollution into the sea and atmosphere. Japan has not been able to contain this disaster.
We consider this to affect the whole Earth and that it needs a global response. We are asking all world leaders to give scientists and funds to create a team of heroes to clean up the situation.
We also consider it of tremendous importance, not just for the Earth now, but for thousands of years to come.
This is a perfect opportunity for all nations to come together and do something substantial, that will benefit the Earth and its inhabitants.
PLEASE HELP, Campaigns like this start slowly, but everyone can help. Please sign this petition and share it with your friends and contacts. Thank you.

I am just wanting to help.
And this thread I had turned to allaboutcircuits. to try and get some kind of true perspective on the scientific view of the situation. which thus far I think I have.
I still have some more questions but so far so good.

 

There are two issues as I see it with your petition.

1) Halting and correcting the disaster unfolding at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi reactors is a monumental scientific and engineering task and I would have to guess that no one has a solution.

2) This is compounded and outweighed by the complexity of geopolitical issues.

As I pointed out before, your efforts should be focused on learning more about the situation and educating the public. You don't have to be a scientist but you ought to be informed with scientific facts and data before you start petitions. I do not see how a petition to world leaders will have an effect. Don't you suppose that they are already well aware of the global implications?

 

There are hundreds if not thousands of nuclear scientists, engineers, writers, institutions and websites that are already following this disaster very closely. But where is the news in regular public media outlets?

Here is one sample of hundreds of articles that I can bring to your attention.

Fukushima - A global threat that requires a global response

To find and list them all (not to mention read them all) would take me the remaining years of my life.

 

There are hundreds if not thousands of nuclear scientists, engineers, writers, institutions and websites that are already following this disaster very closely. But where is the news in regular public media outlets?

Here is one sample of hundreds of articles that I can bring to your attention.

Fukushima - A global threat that requires a global response

To find and list them all (not to mention read them all) would take me the remaining years of my life.

thank you for this interesting list of articles I will spend time reading them.
For me a petition is a good way of reaching people, as many people are viewing the petition every day. that is a better response than I could hope for else where and I could attached the articles to the petition as information to people.
I have also start a clean up fukushima club on face book for people to share articles and information there are many articles being put on this
I had guessed that there was a main media black out and in the face of that these web site, petitions and you tube is a way of getting the information to the pubic. I am surprise at how many people have not heard about it, I thought it was common knowledge. I find it interesting that we had used nearly the same phrase. and looking through these articles I was on the right track
Fukushima - A global threat that requires a global response
"We consider this to affect the whole Earth and that it needs a global response. "
Thank you so much for this I will spend some time on it.

From your previous message. for my self I believe the main problem is political will and putting aside all the politics and financial investment in for instance nuclear power and the nuclear weapons industry. If this could somehow be put aside then at least the scientists could have a go and try and fix it.

Any way I will spend time reading this info and going about helping in any that I can.

May be something could be done with in allaboutcircuits - a scientific information page about fukushima for instance?

 

I think what is being said (excuse me if I'm wrong) is that even if there will a billion signatures on the petition, it would not be enough to clear up Kukushima. A vast chunk of the problem is a scientific and engineering one, to which we have no easy solution.

It's like having a petition to have hoverboards. The problem isn't getting people to want a hoverboard (hoverboards are cool), but it is not a simple task to engineer.

Likewise, there is no simple switch that anybody or any government can do to 'clean up' Fukushima. I'm sure everyone would like the cleaning to be done, but we are currently bounded more by technology than political will at the moment.

Apologies if I have my wires crossed.

 

sorry about my rant i am quite dyslexic and miss the intent of some written things.
I have no experience in this field what so ever, but also do not feel I need any.
...

No apology neccessary! I re-read my words and they do sound harsher than I intended. Sorry for that.

What I was really trying to say is that if the only thing you have to contribute is a desire to help (which is commendable!), but you have no real experience in starting a social movement, then maybe you should join someone else's social movement?

I'm sure there are probably things that you can join into instead of trying to create a thing yourself from scratch.

Have you seen what the environmental organisations are trying to do? I'm sure there are already things underway where they might need people like yourself who have a desire to help.

 

A vast chunk of the problem is a scientific and engineering one, to which we have no easy solution.

It's like having a petition to have hoverboards. The problem isn't getting people to want a hoverboard (hoverboards are cool), but it is not a simple task to engineer.

Likewise, there is no simple switch that anybody or any government can do to 'clean up' Fukushima. I'm sure everyone would like the cleaning to be done, but we are currently bounded more by technology than political will at the moment.

Well said, Sparky. My thoughts exactly.

 

I found this article from MrChips fantastic - http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima-a-global-threat-that-requires-a-global-response/5355480 -
They covered the technical side and they also covered the corruption that I had suspected, and they also ask for and international team of experts and funds. this is the same as what I had asked for -
I have just signed their petition -
Take action today to tell the United Nations and the Japanese Government that the crisis at Fukushima is a global threat that requires an international intervention.

"There is no excuse for deploying anything less than a coordinated team of the planet's best scientiests and engineers. We have two months or less to act" ~ Harvey Wasserman, Energy Secretary for the Green Shadow Cabinet.


"In an open letter to the United Nations, 16 top nuclear experts urged the government of Japan to transfer responsibility for the Fukushima reactor site to a worldwide engineering group overseen by a civil society panel and an international group of nuclear experts independent from TEPCO and the International Atomic Energy Administration , IAEA. They urge that the stabilization, clean-up and de-commissioning of the plant be well-funded. They make this request with “urgency” because the situation at the Fukushima plant is “progressively deteriorating, not stabilizing.”

read this article - http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima-a-global-threat-that-requires-a-global-response/5355480 .then decide whether there should or should not be a well funded global team of experts. Or weather you think TEPCO are capable of this clean up or basicely just corrupt and covering the truth of whats happening and the dangers of many of their nuclear plants.

I did not know at the time it was just a feeling i was going on, but I now more strongly stand behind my petition -
"We consider this to affect the whole Earth and that it needs a global response. We are asking all world leaders to give scientists and funds to create a team of heroes to clean up the situation."
This is also directed to Ban Kimoon at the UN.
rather than going on about how nothing can be done, try signing their petition! it's in the fourth paragraph of the article.
Thank you THE RB there I have promoted someone else's petition as well as my own.

 

lotusmoon, you're entirely missing the point. Re-read posts #23 and #26.

A PETITION WON'T SOLVE ANYTHING.

The issue requires a lot more than a piece of paper with a bunch of signatures can offer. There is no way around that point.

 

See how excited you have become once you start reading what others have written. Google is a click away.

Harvey Wasserman's petition has 127,677 signers as of Feb 1, 2014.

For more coverage you can read this from Fukushima Update.

Edit: btw, I agree with DerStrom8. I don't see that a petition is going change things. Public awareness could make a difference.

 

there seems to be a backlash again the nuclear industry as a whole here is two good links
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjU6JKkKQP4
Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Keb' Mo' and Ben Harper joined in this adaptation of the classic Buffalo Springfield song, "For What It's Worth,"to help stop a $50 billion loan guarantee package for building new nuclear power plants that was slipped into the 2007 Energy Bill

http://www.nukefree.org/

 

So what viable options do we have to produce energy?

Renewables such as wind, hydro, thermal, etc are way off from being efficient enough to quench our thirst for power. Even if they did improve dramatically, you'd have to cover vast amounts of land and sea with them to produce any noticeable amount, the effects this has to the environment not being fully understood, currently.

The worries people have about nuclear disasters are mainly based on nuclear technology from decades ago. I believe the US hasn't built a new reactor since Three Mile Island.

How can you judge the safety of anything from such a long time ago? It's like saying cars are very unsafe, because in the 50's they didn't have seatbelts in the back, have airbags, ABS, proper crumple zones, electric windows, bright headlights, etc etc.

You list a bunch of people who wrote a protest song against nuclear power. Well, folks will have to chose between who they want to listen to. Do you want to believe in the teachings of some random song writers, whose knowledge of the matter is probably limited to stuff off of wikipedia? Or how about the thousands of scientists who have dedicated their lifetimes to learning and finding out information for themselves, using an unbiased means of doing so? Let's not forget the generations of scientists who also spent their lives contributing to the field.

A song might be easy to understand, but nothing beats peer-reviewed papers published by appropriate institutions for real information.

Sparky

EDIT: As soon as I saw the image of a nuclear bomb on that website, I left. That is not at all how nuclear power stations work, furthermore, it would be impossible even during complete disaster for a nuclear power station to explode like that. Strongly suggests it is a scare-mongering website.

 

Some people think that sustainable energy is viable.

In Fukushima they are pledging to use 100% renewable energy by 2040.
http://ecowatch.com/2014/02/05/fukushima-renewable-energy-japan-nuclear-power/

Germany Have Been upping their sustainable energy
Last year China installed 12 GW of solar energy, the previous record by any country was 8GW
http://ecowatch.com/2014/02/06/china-solar-2013/


I think I found my answer to how long nuclear waste lasts - apparently the spent fuel rods are deemed safe after about 1,000,000 years.

I had trouble quantifying this so I put it as a distance 1mm per year
The fist power station was built in 1956
So that would be 58 years ago or in this case 58mm.

We have to safe guard the toxic waste for 1,000,000 years or 1,000,000mm
This is 1km or 2.5 times around a 400m running track.

I wonder what the rest of the 1km will think of the 58mm.
Whether they will think it’s safe and economic to look after our toxic waste.
I doubt it some how.

A notorious samurai found Buddha sitting in some woods and the samurai told him he was going to kill him.
Buddha said that fine I have achieved and life or death are ok for me. But could you grant me one wish before I go.
The samurai said sure what is it.
Buddha - Cut a branch off that tree with your sword.
The samurai said that easy and promptly sliced the limb from the tree.
Then Buddha said now stick it back on again.
In this the samurai understood that it is a greater skill to heal something than to destroy it and became a Buddhist.

 

Some people think that sustainable energy is viable.

In Fukushima they are pledging to use 100% renewable energy by 2040.
http://ecowatch.com/2014/02/05/fukushima-renewable-energy-japan-nuclear-power/

And do you actually believe this will happen? Political promises are cheap -- far less than a dime a dozen.

A notorious samurai found Buddha sitting in some woods and the samurai told him he was going to kill him.
Buddha said that fine I have achieved and life or death are ok for me. But could you grant me one wish before I go.
The samurai said sure what is it.
Buddha - Cut a branch off that tree with your sword.
The samurai said that easy and promptly sliced the limb from the tree.
Then Buddha said now stick it back on again.
In this the samurai understood that it is a greater skill to heal something than to destroy it and became a Buddhist.

Of course, what really would have happened is that the samurai would have said, "I have already granted you the one wish you asked for," and proceeded to chop off Buddha's head. That's assuming that the samurai would have even bothered to grant the one request in the first place.

 

Like I said, you can come up with all the wonderful analogies and produce all the political promises that exist, but that doesn't take away from the cold hard facts of science.

12GW sounds like a lot. It is. But it is also way less than 1% of the power demanded by the current world.

I believe current consumption is about 15 TW, so that would make China's total effort 0.08% of total demand. Hmmmmm.

Dealing with nuclear waste is incredibly safe, and the methods which are used have countless fail-safe mechanisms.

Furthermore, have you not considered the negative effects of renewable energy? Wind farms are coming under alot of pressure as they seem to be generating odd airflows which slightly affect the climate around them. What affects do wind farms have on animals such as birds? Solar panels seem great, but you are still blocking any sunlight from reaching the land below. Does that not strike as a negative impact?

Engineers and scientists, the people who really will solve this problem, look at facts. And all the facts. Even when they disagree with initial beliefs. I would love it if plasma didn't have a natural frequency, which limits the frequency I can couple to it, but sadly, I have to accept that it is there and work around it.

Much the same, we need energy. Nuclear is an option which would easily supply our demands and would allow us to cut back on CO2 emissions in one great swoop. Sounds great? Well, sadly there is the problem about nuclear waste. However, rather than follow some much harder route, engineers and scientists say "well, we have this problem, how can we solve it?". Through that acceptance of hard fact something is achieved. Such as how modern nuclear power stations are extremely safe, have a very small footprint, and produce the needed amounts of energy.

 

Hello,

The radio active radiation can damage the DNA of a human.
In very low concentration it is considered "safe".
When the concentration gets higher, DNA can get damaged and can expose as cancer.
You can read more on this page of the WIKI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation

The first two stages of decay are Alpha radiation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_decay

Bertus

This is not always correct.

Even a relatively low level radioactivity can give you cancer + radiation sickness and all the trouble, if it is distributed in some kind internally.

While on the other hand, even a detonation wave witnessed with some shielding will not neccessarily give you big trouble.

The first test site is now safe to visit, similar the islands where test have been done.

After a few years, the most of the radiation is gone.
But if you permanently live at the place there would be much more effect than just walking or driving there.

It is not just the microsievert reading. That's only a crude estimate.

How is it stored? How is it distributed? Are there dusts?

The towns in Japan are now OK to visit (for sure the sites have been decontaminated).

It is hard to say because there are many different chemical substances which can be radioactive, and they are all different for ability of dissolution/distribution, and bioaccumulation.

In general: Avoid exposure as much as possible.

Eating contaminated fish or vegetables won't neccessarily give you cancer or any trouble at all.

However, statistically, even a small ontamination will rise the amount of cancer cases. There are people living near Mayak and no problems, but a lot more than usual do have some sort of trouble from the contamination.

You would wonder how much dust there is in houses. If it remains staticially it won't do much, but cleaning or vacauuming will distribute it again all over the place. So cleaning must be done professionally, for instance with distributed water aerosols.

If the dust gets inside the body, even a small amount can cause cancer- beause the particles are only micrometers from the cell wall, and alpha radiation will have a bad effect on microscopic scale.

Alpha radiation is by no means harmless, even if it can be shielded by paper/cardboard etc.

Dont worry about Radon from uranium ore pieces. It really takes a lot of that stuff in a stagnant mine tunnel to have an effect.

But- don't wear radioactive ores as amulet! This has been done sometimes, and it can cause cancer easily, because the small distance/no shielding.

30cm, and you nearly don't get any effect anymore with a radiation counter. It does not mean the ore piece is safe as a toy, sleep with it as amulet etc.

 

I am getting much more than I bargained for on this particular thread. It all makes interesting reading.

 

Is there any evidence that fusion could be used to produce electricity. and is that a safe form of energy?

 

The evidence that fusion could be used to form energy is (simply) the act of pushing two nuclei together creates a heavier atom, but energy is given off in the process as heat. This heat is used to heat water to create steam, which then drives turbines, which turn generators.

However, a way has not been discovered to sustain fusion without using more energy than you get out.

Compared to fission and burning oil/gas, the only difference in the process is the means in which the water is heated.

In fission, it is heat given off when then nuclei are separated which heats water, and in oil/gas plants the heat is from the burning of the fuels.

Fusion would almost certainly be a very safe form of energy. If scientists and engineers can crack the major hold backs, we could have a source of energy which would sustain us for eons.

However, a greater understanding of the physics is needed. Part of this comes from the understanding of fission. Really, (this is very basic) fusion is the inverse of fission. Fission is much easier for us to do (hence why we are already capable of it).