Liar, liar, pants on fire. Karen Silkwood was killed as a result of nuclear power generation.
Are you kidding me?
I gather you live in a fantasy world where Karen Silkwood wasn’t poisoned with radiation. Like all your other fantasies of a perfectly engineered world. She worked in the nuclear power industry, she was poisoned with Plutonium. It may have been an assassination, it might not have been. She died in a car wreck having fallen asleep at the wheel with a double dose of quaaludes. Thing is, you guys have been wrong about everything you’ve posted in 24 pages of the thread. You believe that nobody gets killed in the process, that radiation isn’t released, that the radiation that isn’t released isn’t dangerous, etc., etc.
Okay, that’s fine for you, we have freedom of religion in this country, and if your religion is believing that nuclear power is safe and effective, that’s your business. You guys are no different than creationists attacking evolution. Fission releases massive amounts of energy and that is dangerous and always has been and always will be. There are much safer ways of generating electrical power that are not as profitable for the ultra rich and will not displace thousands from their homes in the event of a meltdown. But those power sources are not your cup of tea. I get that.
You must be very frustrated to know that Fukushima is an insurmountable barrier to the public ever agreeing to have a nuclear power plant built within a thousand miles. You must be very frustrated to regard the public at large as frightened retards for refusing to believe your false assurances.
What is really interesting is that you guys think you are really smart and know so much better than everybody else, yet you disregard all the facts, all the dangers, all the disasters (there have been dozens and dozens of nuclear power accidents) and are droolingly bewildered and angry as to why the public is frightened of your monster.
You guys don’t know better. You are just as ignorant as you claim your opponents are.
Cite or shutup. Really, where has anyone ever said that radiation isn’t harmful? When industries are compared based upon their safety records, just because one has a better record than another doesn’t mean that it is 100% ‘safe’. It just means that it is better than the alternative. Don’t be so fucking thick.
I suppose you have proof that she was poisoned…with radioactive material no less?
It’s the Pit so I guess you are allowed your crazy, nutter conspiracy theories. Has it occurred to you there are FAR simpler methods to kill someone without resorting to radioactive materials? (You can find plenty to do someone in at your local pharmacy).
Maybe you are right but without facts you are just another whacko I expect will be telling me no one went to the moon.
Facts…not supposition…not guesses…not gut feelings. We have a judicial system that demands more than that. Pony up your proof or keep your conspiracies to yourself.
(And how was she supposedly poisoned by nuclear power generation? Assassination via radioactive materials is not the same thing.)
This is akin to arguing that convertible cars killed Kennedy.
It was a cabriolet on the grassy knoll.
Down here in the deep south we use Pintos on the edge of the swamp.
[QUOTE=Whack-a-Mole]
I suppose you have proof that she was poisoned…with radioactive material no less?
[/QUOTE]
She might have been. There is a lot of controversy and a lot of mystery associated with what happened to her. She was the Union safety officer, IIRC…and she (and, afaik, ONLY she) received (somehow) a huge dose of plutonium. In her autopsy (again, IIRC) a lot of it was found in her gastro-intestinal tract (IOW…she ingested it somehow). No one else had similar problems that I’m aware of (it’s been a while since I looked at this though so grain of salt…certainly no one else died, or TSS would have mentioned it).
Here’s the thing. It could have been the company deliberately poisoning her to shut her up. It could have been an accident or a careless moment on her part, or on another employees part. Or, she could have done it deliberately…her and her (boyfriend? spouse? SO? Don’t remember) were against nuclear power and were organizing against it, so it’s not inconceivable that they or just she cooked this up to make the company look bad (perhaps they over did it, or perhaps they didn’t know how deadly ingesting large amounts of plutonium would be…or, perhaps she was crazy enough to WANT to be a martyr). No one knows…that’s why it’s still a mystery.
But for one thing the plant she worked in wasn’t a commercial nuclear power plant. For another thing she wasn’t part of the general public…she worked in the plant. For another this wasn’t a simple case of leaked radiation killing her, but a weird case of plutonium ingestion…something that, again afaik ONLY happened to HER. If it was murder then like I said, the instrument of the murder hardly matters…the company could have shot her in the head with a gun, or poisoned her with any number of other chemicals. Only a nutter is going to think that this case demonstrates that nuclear energy is unsafe to the public because someone died in such weird ass circumstances.
-XT
Everyone who says we get radiation for the sun, outer space, the ground, bananas, and potatoes and radiation cures cancer is saying “radiation is safe.” What else could they be claiming?
If saying “1,000 millisieverts, oh no!” is fear mongering than saying “you get radiation from bananas” is - what? What’s the opposite of fear-mongering that way? Spreading ignorance? Yeah, that’s probably a good term for it.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Everyone who says we get radiation for the sun, outer space, the ground, bananas, and potatoes and radiation cures cancer is saying “radiation is safe.” What else could they be claiming?
[/QUOTE]
Um…that the risks are minimal. Who says that being out in the sun has no risk? Or that radiation from space has no risk? Or that any of those other things have no risk? No one, afaik…it’s a strawman. What people are saying is that the probability of harm or the amount of risk is key to any discussion along these lines.
If you say that something is contaminated at 1000 mSv/hour then that gives a good idea of the level of contamination…1000 mSv/hour, if you are exposed to it for 5 minutes is certainly not health food, but it’s not the end of the world either. 1000 mSv/hour for an hour would give you a high probability of radiation poisoning. You’d be very sick. 1000 mSv/hour for several hours and your potential for more serious health problems and possible death go up. It’s a sliding scale. Just saying ‘1,000 millisieverts, oh no!’ IS fear mongering, since it has no context and doesn’t really say anything except to try and put up a big scary number to spark a fear response…something that seems to be almost your trademark. I picture you sitting at your keyboard and whistling twice, clicking your fingers and then typing in something deceptive…then going ‘CHA!’.
-XT
:rolleyes:
No it is just reporting the perspective that is needed, like it was mentioned many times before: the theater is on fire and that is ugly and bad enough, it is very likely that heads will roll in Japan for the many mistakes made.
Still, you are moving the goalposts here, telling you to get perspective on the dangers of radiation is not the same as us claiming all radiation is safe. And the effort of letting others know about that perceptive is to report to all about the “exits” that exist in this mess, you are like FX still telling others that those exits are locked in the theater.
Dude…
Water is harmful in sufficient quantity (and no, I do not mean a tsunami rolled over you but drinking it). It’s called hyponatremia and is a real thing and quite possibly lethal.
Obviously water is necessary too so if you run around noting that people can die from hyponatremia that would be fear mongering. You need the context to note when such a thing is a possibility and a danger.
Drinking a glass of water is not dangerous.
What they could be saying is exactly what the Union of Concerned Scientists say, which is that:
The point, in this case, is simply to note that the large newspaper headlines about clouds of radiation arriving here from Japan misrepresent the threat, because the among that gets here is so diffuse and diluted by distance and time that the increase over our regular radiation exposure is so small as to constitute no immediate threat at all, and an almost-zero increase in long-term health risks.
For me, what it means is that i recognize that on any day of my life i could receive some radiation that, down the line, leads to the formation of cancer. All it takes is a single “hit” that sets in motion the series of unnatural replications that lead to cancer. But that i don’t feel any measurable increased risk of this happening simply as a result of the tiny amounts of fallout we are receiving from Japan.
A classic nitpick, kind of thing we usually expect from friend Bricker. Were you educated by Jesuits as well?
[QUOTE=elucidator]
A classic nitpick, kind of thing we usually expect from friend Bricker. Were you educated by Jesuits as well?
[/QUOTE]
Taught by nuns actually, and still have the scars on my knuckles to prove it…which is a large reason I’m an agnostic these days. 
The original point was the number of deaths amongst the public due to radiation poisoning, however…and she wasn’t a member of the general public, but a worker at the plant…a plant that made plutonium pellets, IIRC, not one that was a commercial nuclear power plant. And she didn’t die due to radiation poisoning (though she definitely had plutonium poisoning somehow), but in a car accident.
But ok…if it’s a nitpick and you feel that this death should be chalked up to the feet of an unsafe nuclear power industry (in the 50’s when they were still doing above ground nuclear bomb tests), that’s fine. That’s one then. How’s that stack up to deaths due to the coal industry? Hell, how does it stack up to deaths due to building wind farms? IIRC, workers are killed doing that every year as well.
-XT
We only have a couple people firing off short status updates like this is Facebook or Twitter, but I really don’t think anyone reading these threads is going to jump off the roof because one of our tweeters jumps in and says “radiation cloud racing towards US!”
Nancy Grace tried that and you’ll notice it didn’t have the effect she’d hoped.
No see, what you’ll do is deny anything happened at Fukushima until you simply can’t deny it anymore. Then you’ll deny there’s any radiation or damage to reactors or fuel pools until you simply can’t deny it anymore, then you’ll deny there is plutonium until you can’t deny it anymore, then you’ll deny radiation from the reactor buildings has escaped until you can’t deny it anymore then you’ll deny that plutonium has been found outside the buildings until you can’t deny it anymore then you’ll deny there is radioactive waste water in tunnels/trenches leading away from the reactors and towards the ocean and that water has been tested at 1000 millisieverts and the water in some areas can’t even be tested because it’s too dangerous to get that close and you’ll just keep right on denying everything until you can’t anymore.
Trying to pin you down to one point is like wrestling a greased octopus.
I’ve read a lot of articles about this over the last couple weeks and I can’t remember ever reading an article from a mainstream newsource that didn’t include, “authorities say this is not harmful,” or “no cause for alarm” or some such.
You try to make it all about fear mongering when what you’re obviously trying to do is avoid any discussion of nuclear power that could in any way cast it in a negative light, which is kinda silly when all people have to do is turn on the TV.
They crisis has reached the point where no I am hearing, “It’s a big ocean”, and “by the time it reaches the Alaskan waters”, which means the radioactive shit is in the ocean at levels that will be detected soon enough by other countries.
It’s good that the forces of nuclear energy jump into action so quick, to defend the very idea of nuclear energy being safe. Nice to know they are ready for something at least.
How many people have been killed in the US by nuclear power generation again?
Pot, meet kettle. :rolleyes: