Childrens Japanese Nuclear Cartoon: It is safe to drink plutonium!

Was radioactivity "raining on tokyo"? No, did the media say it was? Yes. Did conspiracy theorists say that the government was lying about the levels beyond the exclusion zone which were way higher? Yes. Did hundreds of scientists and privte geiger counter owners on the spot actually detect this? No.

Of course the evacuation was nessecary (just as grounding aircraft when volcanic ash is passing over is nessescary even though ones that were caught up in it didn't crash). Also some areas of the supposedly "not so contaminated" evacuation zone have been tested and are, erm, not so contaminated.

And what exactly has Debito done to improve Japan? Sue an onsen 10 years ago? He's Japan's Fred Phelps... decided he's going to hate something and is damn well going to hate it and anybody who disagrees can go to hell.

Those TEPCO paychecks surely do help with paying the bills, eh?

Nuclear power is fine -- as long as you use Canadian-designed reactors instead of GE's unsafe trash. :p

Aliotroph? said:

Nuclear power is fine -- as long as you use Canadian-designed reactors instead of GE's unsafe trash. :p

Goddamn aboriginals won't let us ship out depleted uranium for "fear of contaminating their rivers", but we all know what they want to travel on their land.

Technician said:

Goddamn aboriginals won't let us ship out depleted uranium for "fear of contaminating their rivers", but we all know what they want to travel on their land.

Yeah, goddamn pinko tree-hugging, commie hippie beatnicks!

Why can't they just accept the US supremacy and progress and take it like a man, just like real red-blooded Americans do?! Freakin' commie terrorists. I hope they get "shaken and baked" in our next "shock and awe" operation!

deathbringer said:

Was radioactivity "raining on tokyo"? No, did the media say it was? Yes. Did conspiracy theorists say that the government was lying about the levels beyond the exclusion zone which were way higher? Yes. Did hundreds of scientists and privte geiger counter owners on the spot actually detect this? No.

Of course the evacuation was nessecary (just as grounding aircraft when volcanic ash is passing over is nessescary even though ones that were caught up in it didn't crash). Also some areas of the supposedly "not so contaminated" evacuation zone have been tested and are, erm, not so contaminated.

And what exactly has Debito done to improve Japan? Sue an onsen 10 years ago? He's Japan's Fred Phelps... decided he's going to hate something and is damn well going to hate it and anybody who disagrees can go to hell.

God damn, you really need to STFU about things you have no idea about.

Elevated levels of iodine were detected in Tokyo's tap water. Enough that the government (who are also trying to downplay this BTW) supplied bottled water to families with babies and told them to not let them drink out of the tap.

Both reactors 1 (on the morning of March 12th!) and 2 have melted down and are now defecating radioactive material into the environment. Sure the sensationalism of the media was wrong, but the facts weren't. TEPCO deliberately misled the public the whole time, and continues to lie.

You also know nothing about Debito, and from your attitude it seems that you don't want to. He is nothing like Fred Phelps, he just devotes his time to looking after the rights of people in a country where they don't have many. What an asshole (:rolleyes)

Mr. T said:

God damn, you really need to STFU about things you have no idea about.

Elevated levels of iodine were detected in Tokyo's tap water. Enough that the government (who are also trying to downplay this BTW) supplied bottled water to families with babies and told them to not let them drink out of the tap.

It's pointless arguing with shills acting on orders/paychecks. He'll probably bamboozle you with duckspeak about how even the danger of radioactive iodine has been greatly exaggerated and in reality it's even beneficial, and they should be GRATEFUL that they can include FREE radioactive iodine in their diet! After all, people used to pay for such beneficial treatments!

Mr. T said:

Elevated levels of iodine were detected in Tokyo's tap water. Enough that the government (who are also trying to downplay this BTW) supplied bottled water to families with babies and told them to not let them drink out of the tap.

This one doesn't mean a thing. "Elevated levels"? How elevated were they? Even 0.0001 % higher than usual would be, in practice, "elevated", so saying the tap water had "elevated levels of iodine" means nothing. Give me figures, and their effects on human health, before it'll mean a thing.

As for supplying bottled water to those families, it's a safety measure just like the case of not flying in ash clouds even if it's been tested safe. That bottled water was supplied does not mean that the tap water had such levels of iodine that it would definitely cause health issues. What it means is that they didn't want to take chances, and most importantly, they'd want to be prepared in case greater levels of iodine would appear.

Well, anyway, maybe it's time for you to move somewhere else if the only things you've got to say about Japan are always negative. :P

Let's turn this question around. How much radioactive iodine would YOU tolerate in your drinking water, relative to normal?

...

...

...

HA! it's ain't that easy now, is it?

However, since you want to play the "I don't have to prove I'm not an elephant, you do!" game, here's a source:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704050204576217811215894944.html

The "max tolerable limit" is 300 Bq/kg, and the maximum found was 210 with many being lower. If you assume that even 21 Bq is considered "higher than normal", then we're talking about percentages that can drift into the double or even triple integer percentile digits "higher than normal", quite a far cry from your 0.000001% sophistry.

Back to my question: what would YOU consider safe for YOURSELF? What about YOUR family?

Here, let me give the TL; DR version for everyone: in Japan, there has been a full-fledged nuclear accident and the shit pretty much hit the proverbial fan, and the consequences are going to be felt for the years to come. Yeah, we need to state the obvious here.

Maes said:

Back to my question: what would YOU consider safe for YOURSELF? What about YOUR family?

I don't know what health effects a particular dose of iodine in water might have, that's why I asked for such information. However, the article you linked to mentioned this:

None of the radioactive iodine levels in Tokyo tap water exceeded 300 becquerels per kilogram, the broader limit set by the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan. Japan's threshold, in turn, is stricter than the international level for intervention of 3,000 becquerels—a measure that represents one radioactive event per second—per kilogram.

So knowing that, I'd be fine with 2,999 becquerels per kilogram.

Either way, whatever the real numbers are doesn't change the fact that talking about things such as this using subjective vocabulary (like Mr. T and media do) doesn't mean shit. Only scientifically measurable numbers have any value.

Jodwin said:

Only scientifically measurable numbers have any value.

Yes, but what you are doing is just using them as an excuse to apply sly weasel wording, on whose buck I don't know. So unless those numbers translate to total disaster and certain death, you would remain as cool as a rock?

Also, quote me on this: I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that TEPCO and the Japanese government actively recruited japanophiles around the world to spread this kind of anti-FUD around (which is FUD in itself), as I saw many "Jodwins" in other countries as well, almost all of them of mixed ethnic-japanese origin or clearly japanophiles, or of japanese-tied interests.

I wouldn't feel safe at 2999 and unsafe at 3000. Even if they are cold hard scientifically measured numbers; the levels of safety are very arbitrary.


As for Debito, never heard of him before. Apparently he's some American guy who became Japanese, living the Wapanese dream to its fullest; and then discovered that the Japanese are actually horribly racist people. Well duh, anyone not blinded by weeabooness could have told you that.

Gez said:

...then discovered that the Japanese are actually horribly racist people. Well duh, anyone not blinded by weeabooness could have told you that.

Lol! Gez! QFT!!!!!

Anyway, obviously I like Japan, otherwise I wouldn't live here (duh).

Between TEPCO's ocean of lies and concealment and the (with the benefit of hindsight) "I'm a scientist, everything's OK" anti-FUD fools at best and shills at worst, then maybe you can see why people are a little pissed off, without dismissing it as misinformed or sensationalist.

Yes radioactivity was detected in Tokyo's tap water, but radioactivity was not raining on Tokyo, nor was the level in the air greatly elevated as some media sources claimed. But then when did I say that everything was fine and dandy? Fukushima is a fucked up situation but it's not as fucked up as the tens of thousands that were killed/hundreds of thousands swept into the stone age that the media virtually ignored once they got the chance to sensationalise an "OMG RADIATIONZ" story.
(soul-searched edit:)
Still it will be interesting to see how long it will be before the area starts to be repopulated and/or the evacuation zone is shrunk or reshaped. Clearly the area close to the reactor will be a no-go zone for a long time to come but I can't see a vast tract of countryside being left empty for decades. I did try to find the video I watched where some journalists went in and said that some areas they got very low radiation readings, or even zero in some areas, until they got close to the plant. However my search uncovered some other video on a left-wing site with people saying that the plant had exploded and that all of Japan would have to be evacuted, so whatever.

Still think Debbie is a pompous wazzock, mind you. Perhaps Fred Phelps was a bit strong, he's more like Peter Tatchell - to use somebody who I "ought" to support - has a chip on his shoulder and is ready to see discrimination and inequality in everything. In Debito's case somehow twisting an estate agent that said "Foreginer OK" on their literature into "Don't even ask because you won't get in".

Thanks deathbringer, Peter Techell is a better comparision. They are both activists who are passionate about their "one thing" to the point of even putting off some of their supporters.

On the real estate thing? It's true. Even places that advertise to gaijin will either charge you some ridiculous surcharge or suddenly not have any apartments available if you go by yourself, which is why people usually get a Japanese friend or girlfriend to do it for them.

Why advertise to foreigners if that is the case? I dunno, but the first thing you learn in Japan is never ask "why", because you will just drive yourself nuts.

Maes said:

Yeah, goddamn pinko tree-hugging, commie hippie beatnicks!

Why can't they just accept the US supremacy and progress and take it like a man, just like real red-blooded Americans do?! Freakin' commie terrorists. I hope they get "shaken and baked" in our next "shock and awe" operation!

They don't care about their environment, they proved that with their excessive foresting. They want to be imbursed by the Canadian government to pass through their rivers. We need to get that uranium to Switzerland to be recycled, they are jeopardizing the environment themselves.

I guess I shouldn't be talking so vaguely when conversing with Greek who probably sees aboriginal and Caucasian relations as black and white as the films he relates it to.

Why would we want to ship it to Switzerland? We're the country with millions of square kilometres of uninhabitable wasteland we could use to to store/process nuclear fuel.

Aliotroph? said:

Why would we want to ship it to Switzerland? We're the country with millions of square kilometres of uninhabitable wasteland we could use to to store/process nuclear fuel.

None of our land is uninhabitable, just unsavory for modern-day domestic people. The North is abundant with natural resources, such as wild-life, forest, and most important: fresh water. Why pollute our land when a country has facilities designed for processing toxic material?

EDIT: I think I'm wrong about Switzerland. I believe it's actually Sweden.

Technician said:

EDIT: I think I'm wrong about Switzerland. I believe it's actually Sweden.

If that's true, I find it amazing considering that Sweden was supposed to phase out their whole nuclear power production by 2010 (even though that was effectively canceled in 2009). You'd think the last the thing they wanted was an other country's nuclear waste.

However, I'll gladly accept any nuclear waste to Finland. If no one else is going to do anything about the waste, then we should turn the whole thing into a business opportunity of some kind.

Isn't volcanic ash really dense when it's piled up? As in dense enough to stop gamma rays? Just leave it sitting in Iceland until it's buried.

deathbringer said:

Isn't volcanic ash really dense when it's piled up? As in dense enough to stop gamma rays? Just leave it sitting in Iceland until it's buried.

The gamma rays are really a minor part of the problem. Even the most radioactive materials will deplete themselves very quickly when unstable enough to emit gamma rays, due to their high energy, but then follows a potentially millenary period of alpha and beta radiation, and yet that's not the major problem, still.

The problem is that waste in liquid form will eventually leak out from its containers and into the water horizon, and all kinds of waste generate enough residual heat to require cooling in their unprocessed form, before being able to vitrificate them or otherwise turn them into an inert form.

In any case, what most radioactivity apologists seem to sneakily do is hook on to the fact that no immediate and acute side effects were attributed to the Fukushima accident, except to some of the workers (whose fate is uncertain). Well, hello, pretty much ALL nuclear disasters so far only had acute consequences (aka immediate and serious/deadly radiation poisoning) for the relatively few workers directly involved with the accident (or with the "liquidation" in the case of Chernobyl, although in that case we're talking about several thousands).

The general populace's exposure was in a "grey zone" however, which will result in long term cancers, leukemias etc. but it doesn't make good sensationalist news, "unfortunately". Since radiation damage IS cumulative, ANY increase in the dose you take can't be good. If an increase of 10x in background radiation is still lower than what is accepted for e.g. nuclear workers, it's still 10x as much radiation as you would get normally, and 10x faster cumulative damage. It's not good, no matter how you look at it.

If we went by the logic that only acute radiation poisoning should be taken into account, then there has been no nuclear accident worthy of note in the whole of humanity's history. But christening meat as fish does not actually make it so.

Technician said:

They don't care about their environment, they proved that with their excessive foresting. They want to be imbursed by the Canadian government to pass through their rivers. We need to get that uranium to Switzerland to be recycled, they are jeopardizing the environment themselves.

They could be like the German environmentalists. Always blissfully ignoring trains of spent uranium being sent to La Hague for recycling; but systematically blocking the trains on their return trips.

That sounds like most environmentalists. It's like the ones who scream for nothing but wind and solar power, but won't consent to putting it anywhere.

Maes said:

But christening meat as fish does not actually make it so.

Not even with the Pope's blessing?