Meantime Back at the site of that little Atomic mis-hap......

[c1ue]

Re: Meantime Back at the site of that little Atomic mis-hap......

Who conducted this study? If it was the Japanese, I wonder if they are the same Japanese that were telling their people that they were winning the war against the USA until shortly before a sole B-29 popped up & drop the bomb on them?

Just saying that all gov'ts lie, but Asian cultures in general & Japanese culture in particular are more focused on "saving face" than most...google "Hiroshima survivor embarrassment" - you should find a recent article highlighting how Hiroshima & Nagasaki survivors hide the fact that they are survivors in many instances, b/c they are discriminated against...

I think for you to say that Japan is pro-nuclear is a statement that needs evidence.

Before attacking the RERF, perhaps you should take 5 minutes to review the history and leadership of the organization. The site link is provided above.

You furthermore still haven't addressed the fundamentally odd nature of the claim presented: nearly 1 million extra deaths from Chernobyl radiation out of a population of 13 million, or 7 million in the study area.

This is a truly extraordinary number.

[Southernguy]

Re: Meantime Back at the site of that little Atomic mis-hap......

What i see is that you canīt make an informed opinion of the study without reading it. What we have is a briefing from a journalist.
I tend to believe in the death count presented. It was a terrible accident and a lot of radiation was released.
And of course, exclusion zone, read something about it recently is far from being "OK".
Governments as well as nuclear power companies seem to be able to go to far ways in order to hide de consequences of accidents.
The history of Fukushima is illustrative to that respect.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Meantime Back at the site of that little Atomic mis-hap......

Death toll from Fukushima and Chernobyl = 0 + 0 = 0.

And I see no point in having "exclusion zones" around atomic power plants. They are safe.

Would you put an exclusion zone around a dam? Around an airport? Around an intersection? Around a chemical plant? Around an oil refinery? Around a coal-fired power plant? Along an earthquake fault? Around a volcano? Along a natural-gas pipeline?
Around a liquified natural-gas port terminal? Around oil wells and oil tanks? Around gas wells and gas tanks? Along electrical lines? Around electrical power stations? Along the seashore where tsunamis might occur? Along oil pipelines? Along railroad tracks? Away from oil-tanker docks? Away from garbage dumps? Away from coal depots? Away from steel mills? Away from hospitals? Away from ammonium-nitrate storage facilities? Away from shipyards and ship repair facilities? Around gas stations? Away from mines? Away from rail-yards? Away from refineries?

Why do you pick-on atomic power plants, exclusively, and demand that they have an exclusion zone around them?

Would you care to recall that the Fukushima meltdowns were from the largest earthquake ever officially recorded in human history: a 9.0 magnitude quake on the Richter scale. And the meltdowns were from a 35 foot tsunami--- a tsunami so large and so powerful that it crossed the entire North Pacific Ocean and still did a bit of damage even in California? Would you also care to recall that the entire city of Fukushima was destroyed by the tsunami and the earthquake, and not by TEPCO's power plant at Fukushima? Would you care to recall that there were two or three meltdowns at the Fukushima power plant, and nothing much happened--- a bit of radiation leaked-out, and that was about it? And would you care to recall that no-one died at Fukushima? Would you care to recall that the only big problem at TEPCO's power plant at Fukushima was in keeping the reactor cores cool for a few days in order to shut-down the reactors?

I ask you to recall all of these facts because the anti-nuclear movement mis-informs the public with propaganda and outright lies. Then they build on their lies and create other mis-information, distortions, and propaganda. Then they call their original lies "facts". Then they launch law-suits against companies like TEPCO, etc. Then they try to put companies like TEPCO out of business...... I would call this racketeering, in every sense of that word.

[unlucky]

Re: Meantime Back at the site of that little Atomic mis-hap......

What i see is that you canīt make an informed opinion of the study without reading it. What we have is a briefing from a journalist.
I tend to believe in the death count presented. It was a terrible accident and a lot of radiation was released.
And of course, exclusion zone, read something about it recently is far from being "OK".
Governments as well as nuclear power companies seem to be able to go to far ways in order to hide de consequences of accidents.
The history of Fukushima is illustrative to that respect.

The death toll from Chernobyl is a matter of dispute, with estimates ranging from close to zero, to a few thousand, to several hundred thousand. Unfortunately the issue has clearly become politicized. The low estimates come from "official bodies" such as the WHO and the UN, while the high estimates come from organizations such as Greenpeace which have an idealogical agenda of their own.

Personally I find the agenda of the environmental movement deeply depressing, even though (in fact, because) I care deeply about the environment. Their "precautionary principle" approach to technologies such as nuclear power, GMOs, hydro-fracking, etc is leading them astray. Consider this: if humanity does not continue to develop and enhance new technologies such as these, as we have done in the past, then the great teeming mass of people on this earth will before long be plunged into desperate straits and will devastate the plant's environment in a futile effort to support itself by sequestering for its own consumption all of the "renewable" resources that the rest of nature depends upon.

[lektrode]

Re: Meantime Back at the site of that little Atomic mis-hap......

...Personally I find the agenda of the environmental movement deeply depressing, even though (in fact, because) I care deeply about the environment. Their "precautionary principle" approach to technologies such as nuclear power, GMOs, hydro-fracking, etc is leading them astray. Consider this: if humanity does not continue to develop and enhance new technologies such as these, as we have done in the past, then the great teeming mass of people on this earth will before long be plunged into desperate straits and will devastate the plant's environment in a futile effort to support itself by sequestering for its own consumption all of the "renewable" resources that the rest of nature depends upon.

it is my observation that one of the best features of forums such as the 'tulip?

is there are writers who can express ideas much better than can i, which then can be affirmed simply as:

+1

the biggest 'danger' in the world today, is the luddites and their protests against nearly all things 'technological' whether it be vaccinations, GMO foodcrops, nuclear energy or birth control

there is NO GOING BACK to the way things 'used to be'

[shiny!]

Re: Meantime Back at the site of that little Atomic mis-hap......

Personally I find the agenda of the environmental movement deeply depressing, even though (in fact, because) I care deeply about the environment. Their "precautionary principle" approach to technologies such as nuclear power, GMOs, hydro-fracking, etc is leading them astray. Consider this: if humanity does not continue to develop and enhance new technologies such as these, as we have done in the past, then the great teeming mass of people on this earth will before long be plunged into desperate straits and will devastate the plant's environment in a futile effort to support itself by sequestering for its own consumption all of the "renewable" resources that the rest of nature depends upon.

the biggest 'danger' in the world today, is the luddites and their protests against nearly all things 'technological' whether it be vaccinations, GMO foodcrops, nuclear energy or birth control

there is NO GOING BACK to the way things 'used to be'

IMHO we need to find an honest, ethically motivated middle ground between the "precautionary principle" and the "full steam ahead, damn the consequences" approach to new technology. With the loss of cheap oil, new energy and food technologies can do a great deal to alleviate suffering and create prosperity around the world. On the other hand, there are often very real potential dangers to some of these technologies. The road to hell is paved with unintended consequences. When new technology is being controlled by people motivated by nothing more than shortsighted greed, you need people to stand up and say, "Hey buddy, not so fast!"

GMO is one example. Many people mistakenly think that GMO foods are simply hybridized foods that are being opposed for no good reason. They are wrong. Gentically-Modified Organisms are not Hybrids and they carry some very serious, very real risks.

When you hybridize a plant, you are mixing genes from the same genus. I will use roses for an example, because that is something I know about, and you can extrapolate from there. Roses have been in existence for some 35 million years, and began to be cultivated by humans approximately 5,000 years ago. The genus Rosa contains over 150 species found from the arctic circle to the equator.

A species rose is a wild rose that reproduces itself true from seed. In other words, if you plant a seed from a species rose it will grow into the same plant as the mother plant, with the same genes. If you cross pollinate a rose with a rose from a different species you get a hybrid rose. Planting the seeds from that hybrid rose will give you a variety of roses with different colors and forms, but each one is still a rose from the genus Rosa. It's a lot like people. People have different skin, hair and eye colors, different heights, metabolic types, etc. When we breed, our children express infinite combinations of our genes, but they are still human.

For thousands of years people have hybridized roses, selecting for color, form, fragrance, size, repeat-blooming characteristics, and disease-resistance. One color that does not exist naturally in roses is the color blue because roses lack the gene for the color delphinidin. The closest that hybridizers have come to blue in a rose are the deep purples found in the old Gallica roses, and a sort of pale, washed out grey in some of the modern Hybrid Tea roses. Because there is a desire in the marketplace for a blue rose, companies have been experimenting with gene splicing to create one. Genes from petunias have been spliced into roses. The offspring is not a rose, but a new entity entirely. It may look like a rose, it may be marketed as a rose, but it is no more a rose than a mule is a horse or a donkey. It shouldn't be legal to market this plant as a rose, anymore than it's right to try to convince someone that a mule you're selling is really a horse.

Cross-genus gene splicing is *not* hybridization. Cross-genus gene splicing is not a precise science. It's impossible to get just the one gene they want, so they take what is essentially a "black box" of genetic material from some plant or animal and splice it into the host plant, hoping that the gene they want will be in the black box. In so doing, they introduce many genes whose potential effect is unknown. Once introduced, the risk is compounded by the fact that these new genetic combinations cannot be contained in the lab. They escape into the wild and cross with other plants, contaminating the original genus. Once contaminated it can never be undone! This is the danger of Gentically Modified Organisms.

The rose has had millions of years of evolution to develop disease resistance, to develop characteristics that allow it to survive a wide range of climactic and envronmental stressors. What happens if, while introducing a black box of genes from petunias or delphiniums or god-knows-what, a new disease susceptibility is also introduced? And this spreads throughout the genus because you can't stop the birds and the bees from being birds and bees?

Why take the risk of destroying an entire genus? Because some greedy corporations* see millions of dollars to be made selling blue roses at Home Depot to ignorant people who have no idea of what was lost just to give them their new little novelty. This is the same short-sighted, sociopathic greed that brought us Credit Derivative Swaps and 100x leverage at the banks, the consequences of which the world is now suffering.

Tomatoes have been spliced with genes from fish to give them better cold tolerance. Carrots have been spliced with genes from pigs. Corn has been genetically modified to be resistant to the glyphosate in the herbicide Roundup. Roundup was never intended to be sprayed on food plants or ingested. No studies were done to evaluate the effects of ingestion of Roundup, yet its now being sprayed on food crops. An unintended consequence of Roundup-Ready corn is that there are now Superweeds that have developed a resistance to Roundup and other herbicides. Spraying Roundup on crop fields also reduces trace mineral uptake in the crop plants and damages the soil chemistry, causing fungal infections rarely seen before and sudden death of crops.

See: www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/5023-2009-999689996-1482152

and in plain English:

www.grazeonline.com/articles/problemroundup.html

What's worse, pollen from GMO corn carries in the wind and contaminates organic corn. Corn that creates its own pesticide in every kernel, that was never intended for human consumption, has ended up on supermarket shelves:

www.commondreams.org/views01/0822-01.htm


As a result, organic corn growers have been charged with growing patent-protected Roundup-Ready corn without paying for it and been ordered to stop their operations!

www.growswitch.com/blog/2011/06/monsanto-trying-to-take-over-world-seed-supply-nation-by-nation/

* Having been a small business owner I am not anti-corporation, just anti- sociopathic corporate greed.