Adios Japan, and Waltzing Matilda for the rest of us..... by Jongsstraw

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Adios Japan, and Waltzing Matilda for the rest of us.....

POSTED BY: JONGSSTRAW
UPDATED: Friday, March 18, 2011 06:36
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 1848
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Thursday, March 17, 2011 2:10 AM

"Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,
Under the shade of a coolibah tree.
He sang and he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled,
"You'll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me."
Waltzing Matilda, Matilda, my darlin',
You'll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me.
He sang and he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled,
"You'll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me."

They sang that song in a somber and hopeless tone in the classic movie On The Beach, as Australians waited for the cloud of radioactive nuclear death to arrive at that last bastion of humanity.

There are many conflicting reports of the unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan, and no one seems to really know just how bad this thing is going to be. It seems to only be getting worse, and I suspect it's far worse than anyone is officially admitting to. If armageddon occurs in Japan, the entire nation will become a dead zone, and all the population will have to be re-located. Good luck with that. And if all the reactors blow, who really knows the extent of the fallout's effect on the world's populations as the deadly clouds roll easterly towards America and then Europe. I have really only one question. Who the fuck from the IAEC and Japanese govt. ever approved building these plants in an earthquake zone? How could people be so hopelessly naive?

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 2:35 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

"You're an upbeat person." It's bad but "Armegeddon?" My (limited) understanding is that even though they are nuclear reactors they cannot produce a nuclear bomb type explosion or a bomb's level of radiation.

Hard not to notice the potential for an Earth That Was scenario though...

Whatever, any excuse to bust out the Good Mudder's Milk.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 3:43 AM

PIRATENEWS

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

I'm betting on zombies.

Killer zombies from Japan.

Quarantine may, or may not, contain Them.

"Escape From Japan"
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/fashion/15miho.html

On a happy note, 1 bottle of potassium iodide pills are selling for $1,400 on ebay. I've got 4 bottles...

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 5:08 AM

JONGSSTRAW

Quote:
Originally posted by pizmobeach:
"You're an upbeat person." It's bad but "Armegeddon?" My (limited) understanding is that even though they are nuclear reactors they cannot produce a nuclear bomb type explosion or a bomb's level of radiation.

Hard not to notice the potential for an Earth That Was scenario though...

Whatever, any excuse to bust out the Good Mudder's Milk.

Armageddon was the buzz word yesterday being tossed around by several so-called experts on nuclear matters. I don't really think that it's a likely scenario, but then again there's never been a situation like this with so many reactors failing in such close proximity to another. The other ongoing humanitarian crisis in the northeast is as bad as bad can get. Up to half million people without anything, and having to endure sub-freezing temps. And by the way....a shout out to Glenn Beck & Rush Limbaugh. You are both completely insane and beyond despicable in your commentaries on this disaster.

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 5:18 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Quote:
Originally posted by pizmobeach:
"You're an upbeat person." It's bad but "Armegeddon?" My (limited) understanding is that even though they are nuclear reactors they cannot produce a nuclear bomb type explosion or a bomb's level of radiation.

Hard not to notice the potential for an Earth That Was scenario though...

Whatever, any excuse to bust out the Good Mudder's Milk.

Armageddon was the buzz word yesterday being tossed around by several so-called experts on nuclear matters. I don't really think that it's a likely scenario, but then again there's never been a situation like this with so many reactors failing in such close proximity to another. The other ongoing humanitarian crisis in the northeast is as bad as bad can get. Up to half million people without anything, and having to endure sub-freezing temps. And by the way....a huge fuck you to Glenn Beck & Rush Limbaugh. You are both beyond despicable.

What did those talking turds say/do this time?

Armegeddon = Buzz word? Lemme guess, Fox? Blonde and Alarmed reporting? Sorry, dude, you seem too level headed for those over sellers.
It's come to my attention since reading RWED that ALL news programs are just variations on PirateNews - cnn, npr, msnbc, all of them, with Fox being the closest.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 5:28 AM

JONGSSTRAW

I can't bring myself to tell you. You can find out pretty easily what their themes have been this week.

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 6:20 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Do you have any examples of nuclear reactors that AREN'T built in either seismically active zones, tsunami zones, or flood zones?

In looking around, it seems they're always built on the water, because they need so damn much of it to keep things cool.

But not to worry - our lawmakers assure us that nothing like this could ever happen here...

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 6:29 AM

STORYMARK

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:

Armageddon was the buzz word yesterday being tossed around by several so-called experts on nuclear matters.

It's also a word that has been thrown out several times in the last couple years after heavy snowstorms.

Don't get too wound up in media hyperbole.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 7:19 AM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
My (limited) understanding is that even though they are nuclear reactors they cannot produce a nuclear bomb type explosion or a bomb's level of radiation.

You are, unfortunately, incorrect. The Chernobyl explosion released 400 times the radiation at Hiroshima. However, that's with a caveat: nuclear bombs tend to release more short term radiation that breaks down fast (relatively).

Chernobyl also went critical: that is, the fuel rods began a chain reaction with each other. It's the same mechanism how an atomic bomb works. The only difference is the question as to whether you have enough initial fissile mass to produce an exponentially growing nuclear chain reaction.

I'm going to have to redo my fallout calculations... Ability to predict initial contamination levels from the source area will be difficult, however. The reactors that have already released some of the radiation takes some out of the final result, but on the other hand, spent rod pools will add to it.

For now, it's almost certain that if the reactors are going critical, that the explosions will disrupt the other currently secured reactors. They've been shut down, so I hope that means that they won't meltdown like these have, but if containment in the secure reactors is breached there will be at least some contribution to contamination.

Worst case is six or more times chernobyl levels. I can't say even a six thousand km distance to the states will reduce the radiation enough for there to be no side effects. At those levels, side effects may be comparable to that seen in Germany nine months after Chernobyl... The contamination levels shouldn't be fatal for us here, but not insignificant, either.

Australia will probably be okay, atmospheric trade between the two hemispheres is somewhat limited, and delayed. Contamination should be relatively diffuse by then. The eastern United States should see about half the potential danger as the western United states (probably still four to five times above normal). Europe shouldn't be too affected.

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 8:17 AM

KWICKO

Apparently a couple of references from Beck and Limpdick have involved the words "payback" and "Pearl Harbor". Pure class, those two.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 8:28 AM

BYTEMITE

Either interpretation of that is pretty bad. If they're claiming it's the Japanese getting us back for the bombs, that's wince worthy. But if they're saying a (or several) nuclear reactor meltdowns seven decades after the war ended is our payback or some kind of karmic justice, on top of the two nukes and the firebombing they already got, then I think there may just be a special level of hell for those two. And I don't even believe in hell.

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 9:04 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Quote:
My (limited) understanding is that even though they are nuclear reactors they cannot produce a nuclear bomb type explosion or a bomb's level of radiation.

You are, unfortunately, incorrect. The Chernobyl explosion released 400 times the radiation at Hiroshima. However, that's with a caveat: nuclear bombs tend to release more short term radiation that breaks down fast (relatively).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_compared_to_other_radioactivity
_releases

Chernobyl compared with an atomic bomb

Far fewer people died as an immediate result of the Chernobyl event than died of radiation at Hiroshima, and the eventual total is also significantly less when including those predicted by the WHO to die in the future[citation needed]. Due to the differences in half-life the different radioactive fission products undergo exponential decay at different rates. Hence the isotopic signature of an event where more than one radioisotope is involved will change with time.
Some comments have been made in which the radioactive release of the Chernobyl event is claimed to be 300[3] or 400[4] times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The work of SCOPE[5] suggests that the two events can not be simply compared with a number suggesting that one was XX times larger than the other.
The radioactivity released at Chernobyl tended to be more long lived than that released by a bomb detonation hence it is not possible to draw a simple comparison between the two events. Also, a dose of radiation spread over many years (as is the case with Chernobyl) is much less harmful than the same dose received over a short period.

As far as not exploding like a bomb:

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2011/03/why-a-nuclear-reactor-will-never-bec
ome-a-bomb/

"A meltdown obviously can have horrific short-term and long-term environmental effects, but what about an actual explosion? Could a nuclear reactor explode with the sort of force unleashed in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? After all, Chernobyl exploded, didn’t it? Thankfully, the answer to all this is no, a nuclear explosion is impossible, and the destructive blast at Chernobyl was actually just a steam explosion – and a good thing too, because a nuclear blast of the same magnitude could have turned Chernobyl from a horrific disaster to a full-on cataclysm. But again, such an explosion is totally impossible, and to understand why we have to look at the difference between nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons."

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 9:15 AM

BYTEMITE

I too used wikipedia for my sources. Did you read:

Quote:
Some comments have been made in which the radioactive release of the Chernobyl event is claimed to be 300[3] or 400[4] times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The work of SCOPE[5] suggests that the two events can not be simply compared with a number suggesting that one was XX times larger than the other.
The radioactivity released at Chernobyl tended to be more long lived than that released by a bomb detonation hence it is not possible to draw a simple comparison between the two events. Also, a dose of radiation spread over many years (as is the case with Chernobyl) is much less harmful than the same dose received over a short period.

The 400 times is accurate, but like I said, the caveat is that the contamination released is not as radioactive, the reactore stuff breaks down slower, therefore less immediate radiation, the atomic bomb stuff breaks down faster, therefore more immediate radiation. SCOPE says that the two are like comparing apples and oranges because of the different types of radiation involved, NOT because the quantity difference I quoted was wrong.

In the long term, the reactor is probably technically more radioactive, and more damaging to the environment. People are living in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. People will not be able to live around Chernobyl for a very long time. Chernobyl also killed an entire forest that has not grown back (it eventually had to be bulldozed and buried to reduce the surface radiation), whereas Nagasaki and Hiroshima are revegetated.

Quote:
and the destructive blast at Chernobyl was actually just a steam explosion – and a good thing too, because a nuclear blast of the same magnitude could have turned Chernobyl from a horrific disaster to a full-on cataclysm. But again, such an explosion is totally impossible, and to understand why we have to look at the difference between nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons."

Erhmmm... Article... Is not quite accurate, it implies the wrong thing and is not clear enough. Yes, it was a steam explosion, I never said it wasn't. But the Chernobyl reactor DID go critical. It just didn't have enough fissile mass to produce an exponential chain reaction. And to say it's not possible... Of COURSE it's possible. You just have to have enough fissile mass.

People saying that catastrophe is not possible is precisely the reason we have nuclear reactors being built in earthquake zones. Forgive me if I reject the human arrogance to say that some disaster is impossible. Multiple reactors failing, already undergoing chain reaction, which may expose the naked cores to radiation from the other reactors, even to the level of radioactive dust thrown from the other reactors settling on fuel rods. Increasing the fissile mass.

It is not likely, I admit, and I hope it remains so. But I think we are past the point where impossible becomes possible when a 9.0 earthquake and 4 meter high tsunami cause runaway failures in six nuclear reactors in Japan.

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 9:46 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Yeah, Byte, that's why I included it - it was directly related to what you posted. It went beyond the raw numbers "more or less" amounts of radiation to say which event was the most lethal.

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 10:31 AM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
it was directly related to what you posted. It went beyond the raw numbers "more or less" amounts of radiation to say which event was the most lethal.

The radiation around Chernobyl is plenty lethal. They weren't talking about lethality at all as far as I can tell. They WERE talking about acute versus chronic exposure. But whether you spread it out or take it right away, eventually you will reach lethal doseage either way.

This in particular:

Quote:
Also, a dose of radiation spread over many years (as is the case with Chernobyl) is much less harmful than the same dose received over a short period.

Is pretty subjective. Is it more harmful to have your intestines deteriorate to the point of septic shock and internal bleeding (acute exposure), or is cancer more harmful (chronic exposure)? You get both cases in the event of an atomic bomb or a nuclear reactor release, with longer term exposure for the nuclear reactor release. Either way we're talking about two not-good and not overly survivable alternatives here.

But for lethality, you have to look at the long term. You can do that for Nagasaki (around 70,000 initially, and some hundred thousand subsequent illness or cancer deaths) and Hiroshima, enough time has passed that we have a clear idea of what was cancer and illness caused by the atomic bomb blast. But there's a lot of dispute for the casualties numbers for Chernobyl because compared to the other two it was relatively recent. There's some say that cancer rates haven't increased, but that there might be around 60,000 cancer deaths from Chernobyl anyway, in addition to the 60,000 workers who died after they were sent in to liquidate the reactor. There's a report by WHO that Greenpeace was running around with saying that casualties for the Chernobyl incident amount to about 200,000, but there's scientists who think that number may be exaggerated.

If you want to talk lethality, it really looks like there's similar lethality - atomic bombs are just more immediate. But nuclear reactor explosions seem to do more damage to the environment, and considering there were 300,000 who were removed from the vicinity of the Chernobyl reactor, it can be imagined that the death count could have been much higher.

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 10:46 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

As the the relative radioactivity, there's something I didn't see mentioned here, unless I missed it in reading through. Chernobyl was roughly 180 tons of material. Statistics from the Japanese government are that each reactor at "Fuckyoushima" has nuclear fuel amounting to 560 tons of nuclear fuel:

Reactor 1 – 70 tons
Reactor 2 – 90 tons
Reactor 3 – 90 tons
Reactor 4 – 90 tons
Reactor 5 – 90 tons
Reactor 6 – 130 tons

Added to that is the amount in the spent fuel pools:

Reactor 1 –50tons
Reactor 2 – 100 tons
Reactor 3 – 90 tons
Reactor 4 – 130 tons
Reactor 5 – 160 tons
Reactor 6 – 150 tons

That’s another 680 tons of radioactive material. Given Chernobyl was roughly 180 tons, and if everything at Fuckyoushima would equate to 1,200 tons, how do we calculate the effect on not just Japan but the whole world?

What are all the repercussions? Right now I’m hearing that iodine pills are useless, they say instead just to not drink milk from cows in the area. What happens in a REAL meltdown, does the ground, groundwater, etc. become dangerously radioactive? And for how far? If so, what’s the result of that potential amount of radiation traveling around the world? I saw flashed on the screen that the U.N. says the radioactivity may well make it to California (hooo, boy, would we REALLY be the Crazy Californians if so!)...if it can make it here, and it turned out to be anything like those quantities, how can we even GUESS at how it will affect us, Australia, HAWAII (?), or the rest of the world?

It could be less if not all six reactors "went", but given they've pulled people out and last I heard were rotating them because of radiation levels, if ONE goes, can anyone get in there to stop the others, or are we looking at a domino effect? There are so many possibilities...

I dunno if one of our smarties (meant as a compliment, Byte, DT, Sig, etc.) can figure some of this out for us, but I'd love it if they would. Think I'm gonna go look at some wind current statistics...

I actually don't think "armageddon" would be that far off, as a worst-case scenario...

When it comes to

Quote:
there may just be a special level of hell for those two

Yes, and I don't believe in hell, either. Maybe, according to buddhism, they'll come back as bugs or something. If so, I want to know where--I wouldn't squash them, because then they'd get another chance; I'd stick 'em in a jar and make 'em as miserable as humanly (bugly?) possible. After all, they'd only be BUGS! But yes, I heard about it to, and from what I heard, the "payback" is Japan's karma for WWII. You don't really think the FauxNews people would be talking about US getting payback from THEM, do you? After all, we're America, we can do no wrong... And of course, these are the same types who said Haiti's disaster was payback, as well as other things...

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 11:02 AM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
I saw flashed on the screen that the U.N. says the radioactivity may well make it to California

Of course it will. I've been saying this for a while now. In fact it's more likely to hit California and the western United states than it is to affect the rest of Japan. Good for them I guess... Thanks for the tonnage estimates though, that'll help me with a more accurate determination of the amount of radiation and the potential effects.

The contamination would probably arrive here in about 8 days after the event, based on the Diffusivity for this type of contamination that I calculated from the Chernobyl event. I mentioned in a previous post that the eastern US will see about half the levels and danger that the western US will. Europe might not see much effect at all. Australia will also do okay, as the contamination will have to go around the entire world and cross the hemispheres to reach there.

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 11:08 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Even given the potential volume? It seems to me that even if only ONE reactor goes completely, that would make it too radioactive to do anything about the others...so what do they do to stop the others from going?

And yeah, it occurred to me in the beginning of all this, too, given what little I DO know about wind currents already. I dismissed it, but that was days ago; now that I know the figures, I'm getting a mite bit more nervous...

C'mon, Byte, you're one of our best "smarties"...I was looking to you to extrapolate the results of THAT volume of radioactivity let loose on the world, given we only have Chernobyl to compare to.

Something I found interesting, too. The 180 being rotated in to deal with it are all, of course, volunteers. Apparently they want OLDER volunteers, because they'd have a better chance of living out their lives before cancer hit. What a way to think of it, even tho' it's logical!

I also heard this morning that they're detecting radiation levels off passengers and luggage arriving from Japan. I don't think I buy their government's assessment of the situation any more...

AND that the Japanese government has RAISED the legal level of safe radioactivity one can take, supposedly just so people can continue working there "legally". Wow.

ETA: JS, by the way, I've LOVED Waltzing Mathilda since I was a child.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 11:18 AM

BYTEMITE

Well, you see, I've been mostly calculating in Becquerels, as then I could directly compare it to readings after the Chernobyl event in neighboring countries and the associated side effects. At first I calculated Fukushima as if it were the same as Chernobyl, not knowing more about the quantity in play, and I was getting measurable (twice natural levels) but negligible radiation (about 0.04 rem/hour considering Iodine 131) reaching the US. When I thought we were looking at 6x Chernobyl for Fukushima, I was coming up with about 48,400 Beqcuerels per meters cubed air concentrations for California, which is comparable to what they saw in Germany, and which translates to about ten to twelve times the natural levels.

I'll see if I can't get you some rem/hour for the upward estimates of the scale, since we're getting outside of the Chernobyl reference model and I'll have to use rem to give you an accurate assessment of the side effects. Just remember, though, not all of the contamination from the fuel rods and spent pools will be released. Even Chernobyl, which had NO containment structures, had 10% retention of material and fuel even after the steam explosion.

EDIT: Hmm. Gonna be tough to get the rem for a release from the spent fuel. For the reactors, I could just simplify to Iodine 131 as that will be the big concern early on and be the source of most of the early radiation. but the spent ponds have a whole bunch of chemical components I'll have to fractionate, and we have the additional issue of criticality in the spent fuel ponds. Let me think about this.

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 11:47 AM

BYTEMITE

Haken just posted this in the other thread.

While we can't exactly trust the news coming out of the region, this is the first potentially good news I've heard in a while.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/world-asia-pacific-12779512

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 12:58 PM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Oh good oh good oh good...I'm off to watch the news. The ONE thing I'd been holding my breath on was re-establishment of power. If they've managed to get power to one, maybe they'll get it to all of them and this can finally be OVER (anyone remember going through the same feelings about the gulf spill? I sure do!).

I'd love to hear anything you figure out, Byte...hopefully it will all be moot if they can salvage this mess (or at least stop it from getting MUCH worse...I'll settle for that!), but I'd like to hear what you have to say anyway. Yeah, I caught that the spent rods have a more complex makeup to figure out, but I have faith in you. I heard gamma and some long name I didn't catch as being a couple of the more worrisome ones. I'll check tomorrow to see what you work out, and THANX!

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 3:22 PM

HARDWARE

Chernobyl was an early 50's design, basically the Chicago power pile with damping and cooling. In an ill conceived test the coolant was allowed to go too low and they had a meltdown, which prevented them from scramming the nuclear reaction.

Fukushima is a early 60's design, much safer, but still requiring power to circulate the coolant. 3 separate safety systems failed. Even still, the pile scrammed and it is producing somewhere between 4 and 7 percent of it's max heat. Unfortunately that still is enough to boil off all the coolant.

Modern reactors use a pellet bed design from the late 70's. France has most of them. How many incidents have you heard of happening in France?

The reported radiation releases are on the order of your normal exposure from background radiation for a month. A single coal fired plant releases more radiation (since coal has traces or radium and iridium in it.) in a single day that Fukushima has released.

Pull your panties out of your buttcrack and deal with it. The amount of radiation that is going to reach foreign countries is barely going to be detectable. Your cells will heal the damage faster than the radiation can inflict it.

The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.

...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 3:34 PM

BYTEMITE

Sure, but that could change quite a bit if we have a containment breech. My initial assessment of a Chernobyl-level event wouldn't bring dangerous levels of radiation over to the states, and we're really not going to see much of anything of the releases so far.

But I'm going to continue to try to assess the worst case scenario.

It looks like, maybe, with the power back online it won't come to that. Few people already been reported with radiation sickness over there. Also there's guys still working inside the plant with the radiation at unhealthy. So the rem in some places is at least above 120, but so far, that's it.

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 4:22 PM

BYTEMITE

Okay, so after some more research, it sounds as though spent fuel rods also have as their big concern Iodine 131, so I'm going to use the same simplification. I wasn't sure if I reasonably could, so I had to check it.

The amount of fuel involved here is 6.6 times the amount at Chernobyl, so it's going to be pretty close to the scenario I calculated for 6 times Chernobyl, especially considering if not all of it is released, like happened at Chernobyl.

So I'm just going to go ahead and point at my 48,400 Bq per meters cubed in California that I estimated before. Overall it's pretty negligible, only about 0.24 rem/hr, which is ten to twelve times background levels, but still not near the levels where you'd start getting radiation sickness (120 rem).

Just keep in mind in Germany they were having some birth defects and an increase in down syndrome nine months later, but other than that, we'll probably be fairly okay on the west coast.

Things will be pretty borked for 60 to 100 km around the reactor though.

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 5:00 PM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Either interpretation of that is pretty bad. If they're claiming it's the Japanese getting us back for the bombs, that's wince worthy. But if they're saying a (or several) nuclear reactor meltdowns seven decades after the war ended is our payback or some kind of karmic justice, on top of the two nukes and the firebombing they already got, then I think there may just be a special level of hell for those two. And I don't even believe in hell.

Agreed. I always kinda thought that Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the firebombing of Tokyo, were "payback" enough for Pearl Harbor. They killed 2700 of our guys, so we killed a million and a half of theirs.

Odd that some feel we're still due a pound of flesh. Or a few kilotons of it.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Thursday, March 17, 2011 5:21 PM

DREAMTROVE

I'm going to buck the trend here. I'm not expecting disaster.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Friday, March 18, 2011 1:49 AM

HARDWARE

I think they're ahead of the curve on this. There's going to be some localize fallout, no doubt. But the really hot stuff has a short half life and that's what you have to be concerned about. Things will be back to "normal" for the surrounding region in a couple of months. The bureaucrat's panties will be in a wad for years. I'm sure they'll have to form oversight committees, set up monitoring stations and really impress the hoi poloi with how seriously they are taking the situation.

The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.

...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36

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Friday, March 18, 2011 6:36 AM

HARDWARE

Since I was taught to measure radiation exposure in rads or rems and the scale is now called the sievert, here's the scale you can use to convert what the news media is giving you for measurements;

1 microsievert = 0.0001 rem
1 millisievert = 0.1 rem
120 rems = onset of radiation sickness
500 - 550 rems = lethal dosage

Of course the scale they are using in sieverts shows lethality at 600 rem equivalents and up to 800 rem may be survivable.

The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.

...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36

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