# Rantings about stupid nuclear reporting, and I want to bitchslap somebody, also other crap **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 26, 2011, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077 "2011-03-26T19:11:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 44
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2011, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/861 "2011-07-31T13:23:52Z")
Just curious. You know. Just asking. Cause the deaths of straw men are serious bidniss Like opinions on internet, it’s a tragedy when one burns. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2011, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/862 "2011-07-31T13:26:55Z")
I gather you don’t know that there are any such deaths. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2011, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/863 "2011-07-31T13:28:11Z")
Your reluctance to talk about straw men is evident. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2011, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/864 "2011-07-31T16:16:12Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > How many straw men can an idiot create? Well, you have 354 posts in this thread, so that’s probably a good number to start with. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2011, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/865 "2011-07-31T18:44:18Z")
Does anybody other than FXM have a casualty cite? ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2011, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/866 "2011-07-31T20:13:30Z")
The astute observer of history may well know that according to the nuclear cheerleaders, almost nobody died from Chernobyl. And it really wasn’t even that bad. And facts won’t change their mind at all. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2011, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/867 "2011-07-31T23:15:57Z")
_Anybody?_ ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/868 "2011-08-01T01:43:42Z")
Pity, nobody wants to burn your strawman. Can’t say I blame them really. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/869 "2011-08-01T01:48:03Z")
How is it a strawman to ask for actual casualty numbers after a disaster? I’m not misrepresenting anyone’s claims, I’m just wondering if any radiation deaths have been reported. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/870 "2011-08-01T02:00:23Z")
[QUOTE=FXMastermind] Pity, nobody wants to burn your strawman. Can’t say I blame them really. [/QUOTE] It’s not a strawman, you idiot…it’s a fact. No one has died due to radiation in Japan. Some non-zero number of people MIGHT die due to radiation in the future, but as of right now no one has. I realize that you are too stupid to even keep your heart beating without assistance, but try and grasp this. And please, for the love you bear small furry animals, stop bumping this thread with your inane bullshit and links to web sites in Japanese. I have no idea why the mods are letting you get away with this horseshit, but please, PLEASE stop. Just stop. -XT ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/871 "2011-08-01T07:29:16Z")
Ah, when faced with facts, always attempt to discuss something else. You prefer American reporting? No problem. > [@](#): > > IWAKI, Japan — Kiyoko Okoshi had a simple goal when she spent about $625 for a dosimeter: she missed her daughter and grandsons and wanted them to come home. > > Chuhei Sakai, left, a farmer, and Shinzo Kimura, a specialist in radioactivity, testing soil at Mr. Sakai’s greenhouse in Iwaki. > Local officials kept telling her that their remote village was safe, even though it was less than 20 miles from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. But her daughter remained dubious, especially\*\* since no one from the government had taken radiation readings near their home\*\* Shocking. But not surprising. > [@](#): > > So starting in April, Mrs. Okoshi began using her dosimeter to check nearby forest roads and rice paddies. What she found was startling. Near one sewage ditch, the meter beeped wildly, and the screen read 67 microsieverts per hour, a potentially harmful level. Mrs. Okoshi and a cousin who lives nearby worked up the courage to confront elected officials, who did not respond, confirming their worry that the government was not doing its job.. That is 586.920 mSv/year, which is over twice the lifetime maximum dose for a radiation worker in an emergency. Potentially harmful is putting it mildly. > [@](#): > > With her simple yet bold act, Mrs. Okoshi joined the small but growing number of Japanese who have decided to step in as the government fumbles its reaction to the widespread contamination, which leaders acknowledge is much worse than originally announced. Unlike the Soviet Union, Japan has been unable to simply cover everything up. > [@](#): > > Even some bureaucrats have taken the initiative: officials in several towns in Fukushima Prefecture are cleaning the soil in schoolyards without help from the central government, and a radiation expert with the Health Ministry who quit his job over his bosses’ slow response to the nuclear accident is helping city leaders in Fukushima do their own monitoring. That would be the highest ranking official, who resigned after discovering the truth, and how the Government was full of shit. > [@](#): > > Such activism would barely merit comment in the United States, but it is exceptional in a country where people generally trust their leaders to watch out for them. That faith has been eroded by a sense that government officials have been, at best, overwhelmed by the enormousness of the disaster, and at worst, hiding how bad things are. > > “They don’t riot and they don’t even demonstrate very much, but they are not just sitting on their hands, either,” said Gerald Curtis, Burgess Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and a longtime Japan expert. “What the dosimeter issue reveals is that people are getting more nervous rather than less about radiation dangers.” Yeah, well smart people will do that you know. Especially when the Government can’t simply move them to somewhere else. > [@](#): > > The corrosion of trust, at first aimed at faceless bureaucrats and lawmakers in distant Tokyo, now includes governors, mayors and city councils as well, a potentially unsettling trend because it pits neighbors against neighbors. That trust may also be hard to restore: under pressure from concerned citizens, bureaucrats in Tokyo have expanded their monitoring, but many people doubt that the government’s standards are safe or that officials are doing a thorough enough job of testing. > > It did not help that the government recently had to backtrack on the acceptable exposure levels for schoolchildren after a senior government adviser quit in a tearful news conference, saying he did not want children to be exposed to such levels, and parents protested. The recent discovery that radioactive beef made it into stores raised fresh alarms. [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/world/asia/01radiation.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/world/asia/01radiation.html) Oh that is just the tip of the nuclear iceberg there. The western media has been pretty quiet, but that is getting ready to change. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/872 "2011-08-01T07:40:38Z")
Can 67 microsievers/hour be casually scaled up to 586.920 mSv/year (i.e. by multiplying 67 \* 24 \* 365)? Doesn’t that suggest a sustained steady radiation exposure rather than a contamination, which I thought would be subject to half-life decay? I’d kind of like to see Okoshi’s readings of the site over a 24-hour period rather than one-time sampling. In any case, the problem at hand is starting to sound more like one with Japan’s hierarchical culture, rather than with nuclear engineering as such. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/873 "2011-08-01T07:58:50Z")
> [@](#): > > **Utility unable to unload damaged Hamaoka fuel rod for 17 years** > > SHIZUOKA — Chubu Electric Power Co. revealed Thursday it has been unable to remove a spent fuel rod that was damaged in an accident 17 years ago from its Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture. > > Spent fuel is normally sent to the reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, or elsewhere, but the damaged rod remains in a special container inside the fuel pool of the plant’s decommissioned No. 1 reactor, it said. > > The utility said it had asked domestic research organizations and foreign nuclear fuel firms to take it but to no avail. It is still pondering how to get rid of the rod in the absence of clear government rules on how to dispose of damaged fuel that requires more delicate handling. [http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110729a3.html](http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110729a3.html) My my, the secrets that are now coming out. So one damaged fuel rod, in a working undamaged nuclear plant, has been quietly secretly a problem for 17 years now. Almost sounds like a damaged fuel rod is a real problem. So what does a pool with 40 years of fuel rods mean? When they are all damaged? In a building blown to shit? With a damaged reactor with a full meltdown of the core still steaming away? Oh my. Timeline for solving that problem? Never. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/874 "2011-08-01T08:00:51Z")
Just so it’s clear, the problem is a damaged fuel rod. That means a bunch of radioactive material is not inside metal cladding, and can’t be moved out of water with out bursting into flame, and it is too hot to put inside a dry storage cask. If you could somehow figure out how to move it in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/875 "2011-08-01T08:32:10Z")
Well, problems that can never be solved aren’t worth worrying about. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/876 "2011-08-01T15:17:36Z")
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/31/bloomberg1376-LP8WWK6JTSEJ01-5PIJEFGJ36KM50OK194CMKAJ22.DTL](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/31/bloomberg1376-LP8WWK6JTSEJ01-5PIJEFGJ36KM50OK194CMKAJ22.DTL) The highest radiation levels to date were recorded this weekend. The meters were buries at 10, which is the highest they can record. All is well. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/877 "2011-08-01T16:03:03Z")
Shocking. But it isn’t really news. This has been known for a while. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/878 "2011-08-01T16:04:37Z")
The reason they are building giant tents over the buildings is to try and stop the continuous release of radioactivity from the steaming molten cores under the reactors. Radiation is also leaking out through cracks in the containment vessels. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/879 "2011-08-01T17:26:21Z")
So, it’s still a big ZILCH in the dead-by-radiation department. ---
**Author:** ![kidchameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2011, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077/880 "2011-08-01T17:26:29Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > I understand the reluctance. to find out you have radioactive poisoning which will kill you or put your health in jeopardy is pretty terrifying. Not really. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077.md?page=43) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rantings-about-stupid-nuclear-reporting-and-i-want-to-bitchslap-somebody-also-other-crap/576077.md?page=45)