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THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby dissident » Fri 26 Oct 2018, 13:31:24

pstarr wrote:
"Plutonium-239 emits alpha particles to become uranium-235. As an alpha emitter, plutonium-239 is not particularly dangerous as an external radiation source, but if it is ingested or breathed in as dust it is very dangerous and carcinogenic. It has been estimated that a pound (454 grams) of plutonium inhaled as plutonium oxide dust could give cancer to two million people.[6] However, ingested plutonium is by far less dangerous as only a tiny fraction is absorbed in gastrointestinal tract.[7][8] 800 mg would be unlikely to cause a major health risk as far as radiation is concerned.[6] As a heavy metal, plutonium is also toxic. See also Plutonium#Precautions."


I work with metal occasionally. I can't imagine inhaling metal dust, especially that of the heaviest metal there is. Metal dust falls down and stays down. Otherwise it is pretty harmless except as a heavy metal . . . along with many others such as chromium which is already everywhere.


Sedimentation of aerosols depends on the particle size. A metal lathe produces a coarse size spectrum of metal particles and so the lathe operator does not inhale chunks of metal. However, the lathe does produce nanoparticle aerosols which are basically immune to gravitational sedimentation and undergo Brownian diffusion and transport together with air. The depleted Uranium shells used in the Gulf War and Iraq produce a vast amount of nanoparticle aerosol consisting of raw and oxidized Uranium. So people on and near the battlefield are inhaling this invisible dust. They do not have to be at the shell impact point to be exposed.

Chernobyl and Fukushima released a wide size spectrum of Corium dust. Japan was lucky that most of this dust was transported over the Pacific Ocean. Chernobyl spewed Corium (during the initial explosion and subsequent graphite fire) over Belorus and substantial parts of Europe.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sat 27 Oct 2018, 13:35:36

Melting Glaciers at Novaya Zemlya Contain Radiation From Nuclear Bomb Tests

A science expedition to the area has discovered “large concentrations of radioactivity” in the ice – and concludes that the glaciers are melting into the sea at record speed.

The primary goals for the Russian researchers were to study whether hundreds of containers with dumped radioactive waste in the Kara Sea were leaking or not.

Sailing the Kara Sea and the bays along the east coast of Novaya Zemlya from August 17th to September 20th, the researchers on board “Akademik Keldysh” conclude there are good reasons to continue monitoring the dumped containers, but preliminary results gives no indications of leakages. However, especially one barge that was discovered at 400 meters depth, filled with radioactive waste containers, requires special attention for the future. Underwater footages show the barge is destroyed and some containers have fallen out and are spread on the seafloor, news agency TASS reports.

Image

More worrying is the radiation discovered in the glaciers stretching out in the waters.

From 1957 to 1962, a total of 86 nuclear bomb tests were carried out in the atmosphere at Novaya Zemlya. The tests include the largest nuclear devices ever exploded, like the so-called 58 megatons Tsar-bomb on October 30, 1961.

It is the fallout from these tests that now are about to melt out to the sea.

... Explaining how the glaciers in the area are retreating, the researchers tell how “Akademik Keldysh” sailed to the point in Blagopoluchiye Bay where the Vershinsky glacier in 2014 ended in the sea. Today, that spot was more than 2 kilometers out from where the terminus of the glacier is now.

Image


Norway Updates Its Nuclear Disaster Plans

... In the north, nuclear submarines from Russia, the U.S. and United Kingdom are again playing cat-and-mouse and sail more than anytime before since the end of the Cold War.

A new evaluation from the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority underscores the seriousness of situation.

"There is an increased likelihood for nuclear and radiological material being used in malicious acts," the report reads and continues by listing other serious trouble-factors that could have consequences for Norway: Terror attacks on nuclear facilities, increase in naval nuclear-powered vessels sailing in the high north, transport of nuclear cargo along the coast, startup of Russia’s floating nuclear power plant, handling of nuclear waste and accidents at an ageing numbers of nuclear power plants around the world.

Warheads represents the most scary reading in the new report from the Norwegian nuclear watchdog. «Norwegian authorities are again considering the use of nuclear weapons against Norway or close to Norway as a not unthinkable scenario

The Barents Observer has previously published a review of where Russia likely is storing nuclear warheads on the Kola Peninsula.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 27 Oct 2018, 14:05:36

For those of you who have never seen it, I reccomend that you watch this video. It is a time lapse map of every nuclear bomb exploded from 1945 to 1998, with a running total of the detonations by country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

There were over 2000, and over half of those were from one country, the USA. It is a sobering thing to view.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sat 27 Oct 2018, 14:11:45

John Baenen was Exposed to Massive Radiation at a Nuclear Bomb Test Site. 40 Years Later, a Medal

Image

You’d almost think at this stage John Baenen would just tell them to stick it.

Forty years of nobody listening, or people in high places pretending not to listen because they didn’t want to hear, and all the while, his friends were dying and Baenen felt his own health slipping away.

And so now they want to give him a medal, to pin a medal on the chest of a 60-year-old man with the fragile bones of a 96-year-old, a man who as a U.S. Army soldier risked his life not on the battlefield but on cleanup detail — cleaning up the largest nuclear bomb test site the world had ever seen.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Green Bay, will present the medal to Baenen on Saturday, in a ceremony at the Green Bay Yacht Club — the Humanitarian Medal, for soldiers, sailors and airmen who risked their lives not on the battlefield but through humanitarian efforts to help others.

Baenen spent six months in the Marshall Islands back in the late 1970s, part of a four-year mission the U.S. undertook as a humanitarian gesture after poisoning the islands with 10 years of nuclear weapons testing.

Baenen didn’t volunteer for the job. He made the mistake of having expertise in mobile power generators, and the military needed that expertise to run a power plant for the 500 other men who were part of the cleanup detail.
... “The first thing they were supposed to do when we got on the main island was give us a safety briefing,” ... “I remember some kind of briefing, but the only thing I remember is ‘watch out for sharks.’

We were supposed to be in yellow suits, and they said so, but it was 132-degree daytime temperatures and guys were falling over,” Baenen said. “You don’t get the job done with people dropping over, so everybody wore jungle fatigues cut off into shorts, T-shirts, combat boots, sunglasses and maybe boonie hats — that was basically our safety equipment.

Crews spent days blasting channels, digging pits for nuclear deposits, stripping islands of topsoil and otherwise raising a poisonous dust that more than 4,000 people were exposed to in the four-year mission.

They had defective radiation-measuring equipment, they were washing their clothes in water that was estimated to be more than 30 times more contaminated than the crater in which they were dumping contaminated dredgings, Baenen said.
... Upon discharge, individual soldiers, sailors and airmen who worked on the project were given radiation testing showing them at relatively low levels.

Other documents that until recently were kept classified showed levels were in fact much higher, with one man showing levels more than 30,000 times the level recorded, Baenen said
.
“He should have been sent home immediately, but he’s dead now anyway,” Baenen said.

I have a friend in Maine that’s on his fifth bout of cancer — four different kinds, each due to radiation, but the VA denies it.”

... In the end, the islands are still contaminated, he said. ... “There are 47 countries that have done research there since we left, and all 47 of them want us to go back and clean it up and seal it off,” Baenen said.

... “This medal proves they sent me in harm’s way,” he said. “ … Getting this medal is just to prove to everybody, ‘yeah, I was in such a place, and you all thought I was crazy.’

Maybe they'll give a medal to the last Gulf War Vet from Fallujah. Shouldn't have to wait too long. Depleted Uranium is funny like that.

Toxic Legacy of US Assault on Fallujah 'Worse than Hiroshima'

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

In 2013, Al Jazeera quoted Sharif al-Alwachi of the Babil Cancer Centre in southern Iraq, who attributed escalating cancer rates since 2003 on the US military’s use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons. Al Jazeera also threw in the following uplifting note: "The remaining traces of DU in Iraq represent a formidable long-term environmental hazard, as they will remain radioactive for more than 4.5 billion years."

Indeed, DU constitutes a can of worms unto itself. A 2016 Washington Spectator essay titled "Irradiated Iraq," by Washington, DC-based investigative journalist Barbara Koeppel, remarks on the convenient US classification of its own uranium weapons as "conventional" when in fact "they are radioactive and chemically toxic".


US Fired Depleted Uranium at Civilian Areas in 2003 Iraq War, Report Finds

US forces fired depleted uranium (DU) weapons at civilian areas and troops in Iraq in breach of official advice meant to prevent unnecessary suffering in conflicts, a report has found.

According to PAX's report, which is due to be published this week, the military coordinate data shows that many of the DU rounds were fired in or near populated areas of Iraq, including As Samawah, Nasiriyah and Basrah.

This conflicts with legal advice from the US Air Force in 1975 suggesting that DU weapons should only be used against hard targets like tanks and armoured vehicles, the report says. This advice, designed to comply with international law by minimising deaths and injuries to urban populations and troops, was largely ignored by US forces, it argues.

A six-page memo by Major James Miles and Will Carroll from the international law division of USAF's Office of the Judge Advocate General concluded in March 1975 that DU weapons were legal. But it recommended imposing restrictions on how they were used.

"Use of this munition solely against personnel is prohibited if alternative weapons are available," the memo stated. This was for legal reasons "related to the prohibitions against unnecessary suffering and poison".

More than 300,000 DU rounds are estimated to have been fired during the 2003 Iraq war, the vast majority by US forces. A small fraction were from UK tanks, the coordinates for which were provided to the UN Environment Programme. A further 782,414 DU rounds are believed to have been fired during the earlier conflict in 1991, mostly by US forces.


The United States Used Depleted Uranium in Syria

The airstrikes on oil trucks in Islamic State-controlled areas employed the toxic material, which has been accused of causing cancer and birth defects.

U.S. Central Command (Centcom) spokesman Maj. Josh Jacques told Foreign Policy that 5,265 armor-piercing 30 mm rounds containing depleted uranium (DU) were shot from Air Force A-10 fixed-wing aircraft on Nov. 16 and Nov. 22, 2015, destroying about 350 vehicles* in the country’s eastern desert.

In March 2015, coalition spokesman John Moore said, “U.S. and coalition aircraft have not been and will not be using depleted uranium munitions in Iraq or Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve.” Later that month, a Pentagon representative reported that A-10s deployed in the region would not have access to armor-piercing ammunition containing DU because the Islamic State didn’t possess the tanks it is designed to penetrate.


How the World Health Organisation covered up Iraq's nuclear nightmare

Ex-UN, WHO officials reveal political interference to suppress scientific evidence of postwar environmental health catastrophe

Image


Just don't send it to Utah ...

Utah Denies EnergySolutions from Accepting Depleted Uranium

State regulators denied a Salt Lake City-based nuclear waste processing company an exemption to bury thousands of tons of depleted uranium munitions at its site.

The Utah Waste Management and Radiation Control Board on Thursday voted unanimously to reject the military ordnance after EnergySolutions had petitioned the Department of Environmental Quality for an exemption to Utah's provisional prohibition on burying the radioactive munitions.

Agency staff and outside consultants concluded metallic depleted uranium is more hazardous and unstable than the processing company had characterized in its presentations.

Stephen Marschke, a nuclear engineer with SC&A Consulting, told the board that the company has failed to demonstrate that the "exemption will not result in undue hazard to public health and safety or result in undue hazard to the environment." (... but nothing is too good for our troops)

EnergySolutions wanted regulatory approval to avoid a lengthy performance assessment so it could competitively bid on a U.S. Department of Defense contract for the munitions disposal.

The 5,000 cubic yards (about 3,800 cubic meters) of 30 mm bullets are at Tooele Army Depot and a military installation in Indiana.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Thu 01 Nov 2018, 13:14:20

Another type of radiation ...

High Exposure to Radio Frequency Radiation Associated With Cancer in Male Rats

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) concluded there is clear evidence that male rats exposed to high levels of radio frequency radiation (RFR) like that used in 2G and 3G cell phones developed cancerous heart tumors, according to final reports released today. There was also some evidence of tumors in the brain and adrenal gland of exposed male rats.
... "We believe that the link between radio frequency radiation and tumors in male rats is real, and the external experts agreed"

The $30 million NTP studies took more than 10 years to complete and are the most comprehensive assessment, to date, of health effects in animals exposed to RFR with modulations used in 2G and 3G cell phones. 2G and 3G networks were standard when the studies were designed and are still used for phone calls and texting.

Image

These studies did not investigate the types of RFR used for Wi-Fi or 5G networks.

ImageImage

Give them another 10 years and maybe they will know.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 01 Nov 2018, 16:25:26

I'm gonna take one more brief effort to explain what Tanada and myself have been attempting to explain for years. Then I will give what I believe is the reason we have pretty much failed.

1) 2000+ nuclear weapons - and two reactor accidents named Chernobyl and Fukushima Dai-Ichi - did in fact release radiation into the Earth's biosphere. The obsolete, entirely discredited and inaccurate model called the LNT model (Linear No Threshold) of radiation exposure predicts thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of both deaths and survivable cancers as a result. The LNT model was created following hundreds of deaths due to radiation exposure during early R&D, affecting everybody from Madame Curie and her husband to the Middle/Lower Class employees of the Radium Dial Company of Ottowa, Ill. This company supplied radium dials for the Westclox company in Peru, Illinois. This is currently a Superfund cleanup site, safe to visit, but don't go building a house there, any more than you would build in an A-bomb crater in Utah.

I used to sleep under such a clock face, it looked like this:
Image
...and after a couple of hours of moonless night, I could dimly see objects in my room illuminated by nothing but the clock dial.

Like I said, hundreds of deaths were caused by Radium paints and the like, all workers manufacturing such products. Then there was a brief period when (really really bright) watches were filled with radioactive Tritium (the radioactive isotope of hydrogen, of H-bomb fame) for similar reasons. To my knowledge, no increased cancer deaths were ever found in the consumers of such radioactive products.

2) Because of the total lack of supporting statistical evidence of the LNT radiation exposure model, that model has been replaced. The new model is called the "Radiation Hormesis" model, and the basic idea is that radiation exposure up to and including anything below a certain thresold is harmless, your tissues repair themselves with little or no additional cancer risk.

There ARE groups in which additional cancers can be measured when they are exposed to radiation. These people who have damaged immune systems due to sickness, radiation exposure above the threshold (i.e. cancer therapies involving radiation) and (by far the most common) exposure to carcinogenic chemicals are vulnerable to cancers induced by radiation.

There are also groups which routinely get exposed to radiation levels far in excess of the limits calculated via the LNT model, and do not experience excess cancer deaths as a result. Airline pilots and air crews are among these people - and represent a group far healthier on average than typical members of the public.

To be perfectly frank, most of us do not possess either the data nor math knowledge to assess such risks. Most of us are better off following the advice of a doctor we trust. Believe me, the medical profession understands risk and (generally speaking) is the best prepared to advise laymen on treatment alternatives. If you ALREADY have cancer, take their advice even if they want to radiate you. I know lots of people irradiated with focussed radiation and implanted beads, for example.

One last point. Even though the Radiation Hormesis model is generally accepted in this day and time, there exist plenty of laws and regulations based on the older LNT model. They are also still making Godzilla movies.

Enough said.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Wed 07 Nov 2018, 19:55:32

Drop Acid, Not Bombs: Security Troops Guarding U.S. Nuclear Missile Base Busted for Running LSD Ring

WASHINGTON — One airman said he felt paranoia. Another marveled at the vibrant colors. A third admitted, "I absolutely just loved altering my mind."

Meet service members entrusted with guarding nuclear missiles that are among the most powerful in America's arsenal. Air Force records obtained by The Associated Press show they bought, distributed and used the hallucinogen LSD and other mind-altering illegal drugs as part of a ring that operated undetected for months on a highly secure military base in Wyoming. After investigators closed in, one airman deserted to Mexico.


Documents obtained by the AP over the past two years through the Freedom of Information Act tell a sordid tale of off-duty use of LSD, cocaine and other drugs in 2015 and 2016 by airmen who were supposed to be held to strict behavioral standards because of their role in securing the weapons.
... Airman Basic Kyle S. Morrison acknowledged at his court martial that under the influence of LSD he could not have responded if recalled to duty in a nuclear security emergency.

"Minutes felt like hours, colors seemed more vibrant and clear," Morrison testified. "In general, I felt more alive." He said he had used LSD in high school, which could have disqualified him from Air Force service; he said that his recruiter told him he should lie about it and that lying about prior drug use was "normal" in the Air Force.

The service members accused of involvement in the LSD ring were from the 90th Missile Wing, which operates one-third of the 400 Minuteman 3 missiles that stand "on alert" 24/7 in underground silos scattered across the northern Great Plains.

Image
Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things don't seem the same
Actin' funny, but I don't know why
'Scuse me while I kiss the sky ...

Navy Sailors Who Operated Nuclear Reactor Busted for Allegedly Using and Selling LSD

A probe of U.S. Navy sailors accused of distributing and using LSD is expanding. At least two men who worked in the nuclear reactor department on the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier are reportedly facing a court-martial, and at least 12 others are said to be under investigation over the psychedelic drug.

... On Tuesday, the Navy Times reported that the probe is larger than previously understood. A Navy spokesman confirmed to the Times that 10 other sailors in the nuclear reactor department “were administratively disciplined on LSD-related charges.” The spokesperson also said the men’s previous work with nuclear fucking reactors has been reviewed and “no improper work was identified.

... Why is there a boom in psychonauts with such close proximity to total destruction? We do not know.

Image

Crank it up to 11 ...
All Along the Watchtower

There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief

Business men, they drink my wine
Plowman dig my earth
None were level on the mind
Nobody up at his word
Hey, hey

No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But, uh, but you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talkin' falsely now
The hour's getting late, hey

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too
Outside in the cold distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
And the wind began to howl

Tripping Through the Cold War: Drug Warfare in the Retrofuture

...Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), mescaline (peyote), and psilocybin (psychedelic mushrooms) were all seen as possible contenders for non-lethal weapons of the future; sprayed on an unsuspecting army or civilian population and making them vulnerable to invasion.

An Associated Press story from the September 6, 1959 Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa warned that the nuclear stalemate with the Soviet Union might prompt the Russians to develop chemicals that could be used against the United States. Americans scientists were said to have developed their own weapons to counter-attack:
Working in deep secrecy, U.S. scientists almost overnight have developed an arsenal of fantastic new weapons, variously known as psycho-chemicals and “madness” gases, which could virtually paralyze an enemy nation without firing a shot.

... New nerve drugs may be used to immobilize whole cities or battle areas in tomorrow’s warfare. The Chemical Corps knows about a complete arsenal of “nerve gases” that can make fighting men and embattled citizenry as happy and peaceable as kids playing tag.

Lt. Gen. Arthur Trudeau, chief of Army research and development, is worried about possible attacks with these drugs. He fears the United States might become a victim. “The Soviet has 15% of its munitions in chemicals,” he said. “I think psycho-chemicals are the coming weapon — we are missing out if we don’t capitalize on them.

The 1981 children’s book World of Tomorrow: War and Weapons by Neil Ardley also illustrated what a psycho-chemical attack might look like, with soldiers believing they’re being hunted by giant flying pterodactyl-like creatures:

Image
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 27 Dec 2018, 21:19:25

Japanes prosecutors want five years of jail time for Tepco officials:


"It was easy to safeguard the plant against tsunami, but they kept operating the plant heedlessly,"

"That led to the deaths of many people."

Officials are:

" ... former TEPCO chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata, 78, as well as former vice presidents Sakae Muto, 68, and Ichiro Takekuro, 72."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/ ... ma-nuclear
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Cog » Thu 27 Dec 2018, 22:06:51

I do not recall anyone being killed by radiation due to the Fukushima meltdown. As I recall the deaths that occurred were the result of drowning.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby yellowcanoe » Thu 27 Dec 2018, 22:38:11

Cog wrote:I do not recall anyone being killed by radiation due to the Fukushima meltdown. As I recall the deaths that occurred were the result of drowning.


The first radiation related death due to the Fukushima accident was reported a couple of months ago. http://time.com/5388178/japan-first-fuk ... ion-death/ Of course there is so much anti-nuclear hysteria that more people are concerned about what happened at Fukushima than the overall tsunami event that killed over 16,000 people!
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Tanada » Thu 27 Dec 2018, 23:59:29

yellowcanoe wrote:
Cog wrote:I do not recall anyone being killed by radiation due to the Fukushima meltdown. As I recall the deaths that occurred were the result of drowning.


The first radiation related death due to the Fukushima accident was reported a couple of months ago. http://time.com/5388178/japan-first-fuk ... ion-death/ Of course there is so much anti-nuclear hysteria that more people are concerned about what happened at Fukushima than the overall tsunami event that killed over 16,000 people!


As usual among the fear mongers there is not enough information in that 'news' article to determine the likelihood that the employee received a significant dose quickly enough to cause an increased risk of cancer. 100 mSv is the threshold for generation of cancer but that means a dose within a brief period of time. If you get 100 mSv of radiation over a period of 5 years your odds of contracting cancer from that cause are minuscule. If you get that dose over the period of a week you will be very very sick with acute radiation syndrome (loss of hair, nausea, possibly worse) and your risk of cancer is measurably high. This is what makes radiation treatment of cancer a double edged sword, you usually kill the existing cancer but sometimes you generate a secondary cancer as a side effect.

In the USA and most other countries if a worker gets a substantial dose in any one year they are sent home with full pay and benefits under long term disability for 6-12 months so that they can recover and greatly lower their cancer risk by avoiding exposure for several months to a year. If this worker was actually exposed to nearly 200 mSv over a period of less than a year then that has a discernible risk of inducing cancer. However a plethora of other factors make a major impact in that stat, for example if the worker were a smoker, or had prior exposure to asbestos dust the odds of cancer are increased greatly with the addition of the radiation, but a healthy non-smoker with the same dose of radiation has a for lower cancer risk. Even with all the fear mongering only something like 25% of lifetime smokers actually develop ling cancer or other life threatening lung diseases like COPD if they only smoked tobacco and did not get exposure to other cancer inducing agents like high dose short burst radiation exposure. Heck about 90% of the WW II generation smoked at some period in their lives often starting as teens, but only 20% of them ever developed cancer of any kind. By the same token more than 10% of lung cancers are 'no known cause' because the victim was not a smoker and had no recognized exposure to cancer causing agents. Some people are just much more susceptible to cancer than others. Proving cause in a court of law is a grossly different thing than proving the same thing scientifically.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby asg70 » Fri 28 Dec 2018, 00:19:36

Well, if you believed the late Mike Ruppert we'd all be dead by now from Fukushima radiation.

I'm sure he'll be happy to know that some people are still trying to overstate the impact.

It's a tragedy, no doubt, but the body-count so far is mild.

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-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby dohboi » Fri 28 Dec 2018, 00:53:26

"...a plethora of other factors make a major impact..."

That's the grim beauty of it...they can always pin the blame on something else.

What's the line: "where the executioners knife is always well hidden..."

https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/hard-rains-gonna-fall/

(Ah, I see it's 'face' not 'knife'---but of course, my version's better...old Bobby Zimmerman couldn't write a freakin' lyric to save his life! :lol: :lol: :lol: )
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Cog » Fri 28 Dec 2018, 04:54:02

Some of the deaths the are trying to blame Tepco on involve the actual evacuation of the contaminated zone. This involves the elderly in nursing homes or hospitals. Hard to prove those people actually died due to relocation or if they would have died anyway due to age or medical condition.

If Tepco was in compliance with the regulating agency at the time of disaster , I would have a problem with assigning blame to them after the fact.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 28 Dec 2018, 16:09:38

The root cause of any one cancer is indeterminate. This man could have contracted lung cancer from tobacco if he or any family member ever smoked, for example. Or he could have contracted cancer from living in Tokyo, which is surrounded by an infamous "ring of soot", meaning dozens of coal power plants built since WW2.

The statistical certainty is that hundreds of cancers will eventually result from Fukushima. NONE from radiation exposure, hundreds or even thousands from replacing the clean and non-polluting power from Fukushima with FF's. That remains true even if they convert those "ring of soot" power plants to natural gas boilers or combined cycle units. The total casualties depend entirely upon how quickly they can replace Fukushima's reactors with other clean, non-polluting power sources.

Fukushima and Chernobyl have collectively proved the safety of nuclear energy. Chernobyl was certainly a worst-case accident for that type of power plant. Chernobyl caused approximately 40 radiation-induced deaths. Compare that to 12,000 deaths from coal every year in the USA alone, and 170,000 annual coal deaths world-wide. Even natural gas, although cleaner than coal, kills 1,000 annually in the USA.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#5069ef2b709b
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby jupiters_release » Tue 05 Feb 2019, 19:46:11

Both my uncles who lived in Iwate died few years ago from thyroid cancer caused by radiation.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Fri 08 Feb 2019, 04:18:14

jupiters_release wrote:Both my uncles who lived in Iwate died few years ago from thyroid cancer caused by radiation.

And you know those cancers were caused by radiation, how? (Assuming isn't knowing.)

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/thyroid-c ... auses.html

Thyroid cancer is linked with a number of inherited conditions (described in Thyroid cancer risk factors), but the exact cause of most thyroid cancers is not yet known.

For example, both of them being your uncles sounds suggestive of the inherited conditions issue.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 08 Feb 2019, 17:53:36

Not making light of the fate of your two uncles, I do know that the Japanese government distributed iodine pills in the area surrounding the Fukushima power plants after the tsunami, to prevent the absorption of radioactive iodine into the thyroid. They rightly suspected that some inhabitants of the area would cultivate vegetables in contaminated ground and/or eat contaminated seafood, and took steps to minimize harm.

This was a painful lesson learned from the Japanese fishing boats that entered the radioactive fallout clouds from A-Bomb and H-bomb tests in the 1960's in the Pacific. I hope your uncles were not among the casualties from this.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Tanada » Tue 19 Feb 2019, 00:33:33

Excellent article about current conditions in Chernobyl, lots of pictures and a couple maps at link below quote.

BBC wrote:Chernobyl: The end of a three-decade experiment

Since the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986, an area of more than 4,000 square kilometres has been abandoned. That could be about to change, as Victoria Gill discovered during a week-long trip to the exclusion zone.

"This place is more than half of my life," says Gennady Laptev. The broad-shouldered Ukrainian scientist is smiling wistfully as we stand on the now dry ground of what was Chernobyl nuclear power plant's cooling pond.

"I was only 25 when I started my work here as a liquidator. Now, I'm almost 60."

There were thousands of liquidators - workers who came here as part of the mammoth, dangerous clean-up operation following the 1986 explosion. The worst nuclear accident in history.

Gennady shows me a coffee table-sized platform, installed here to collect dust. This reservoir's bed dried out when the pumps taking water from the nearby river were finally switched off in 2014; 14 years after the remaining three reactors there were shut down.

Analysing dust for radioactive contamination is just a small part of the decades-long study of this vast, abandoned area. The accident turned this landscape into a giant, contaminated laboratory, where hundreds of scientists have worked to find out how an environment recovers from nuclear catastrophe.

The experiment that turned into a global catastrophe

On 26 April, 1986, at 1:23AM, engineers cut power to some systems at Chernobyl nuclear power plant's number 4 reactor. It was a critical point in a test to understand what would happen during a blackout. What engineers did not know was that the reactor was already unstable.

The cut-off slowed turbines that drove cooling water to the reactor. As less water turned to more steam, the pressure inside built. By the time operators realised what was happening and tried to shut down the reactor, it was too late.

A steam explosion blew the lid off the reactor, exposing the core to the atmosphere. Two people in the plant were killed and, as air fuelled a fire that burned for 10 days, a cloud of radioactive smoke and dust was carried on the wind around Europe.

The first emergency workers rushed in as lethal smoke billowed out. Of 134 who were diagnosed with acute radiation sickness, 28 died within months. At least 19 have died since.

Gennady, an environmental scientist with the Ukrainian HydroMeteorological Institute, started work in the zone just three months after the evacuation. "We used to fly in by helicopter every day from Kiev," he explains, "to collect water and soil samples.

"The important thing then was to understand the extent of the contamination - to draw the first maps of the exclusion zone."

Today, that zone spans Ukraine and Belarus. Covering more than 4,000 sq km - more than twice the size of London. Every community within a 30km radius of the plant was evacuated and abandoned; no-one was allowed to return here to live.

In a forgotten, outer portion of the exclusion zone, people were quietly allowed to return home a few months after the disaster.

Unlike the "30km zone", no checkpoints prevent entry to this semi-abandoned area. Narodichi, a town of more than 2,500 people, is within that more-distant zone. Strict rules govern this officially contaminated district; exclusion zone land must not be cultivated to produce food and it cannot be developed.

Today, though, this part of Ukraine is not easily delineated into two categories - contaminated or clean. Research has shown that Chernobyl's aftermath is more complicated, and the landscape here much stranger - and more interesting - than the stringent "do not touch" rules in Narodichi would imply.

Fear of radiation could actually be hurting the people of Narodichi far more than the radiation itself.

'We're getting less radiation here than on the plane'

Over Gennady's shoulder, I can see the nuclear power plant - less than a kilometre away from the reservoir bed we're standing on. Gleaming in the sunshine is the huge protective steel "New Safe Confinement" that now entombs unit 4. It was slid over the top of the accident's epicentre in 2016. Beneath it, robotic cranes are dismantling 33-year-old, radioactive wreckage.

Prof Jim Smith from the UK's University of Portsmouth, a colleague of Gennady's, is a scientist who has studied the aftermath of the disaster since 1990. Here on one of his numerous research trips to the zone, he shows me a dosimeter - a black plastic phone-sized gadget he carries throughout the visit.

It measures the external dose of radiation he is getting from the environment. Atoms of the nuclear fuel dust that were scattered here by the 1986 explosion are spontaneously breaking down. They are giving out high-energy rays as they do so, and Jim's dosimeter is detecting the dose of those that we are receiving every hour.

The readings are in units (called microsieverts) that only make sense to me in the context of other relatively "radioactive activities". At one point in the middle of the flight to Kiev - for example - his dosimeter read 1.8 microsieverts per hour.

"It's currently 0.6," Jim says. "So that's about [a third] of what we were getting on the flight." With the infamous power plant visible in the background, I'm incredulous. But, Jim explains, we live on a radioactive planet - natural radioactivity is all around us. "It comes from the Sun's rays, from the food we eat, from the Earth," he says. That is why, up at 12,000m on an airliner, with less shielding from Earth's atmosphere, we receive a higher dose.

"Yes, the exclusion zone is contaminated," he tells me, "but if we would put it on a map of radiation dose worldwide - only the small 'hotspots' would stand out.

"Natural radioactivity is all around us - it varies from country to country, from place to place. Most of the area of the exclusion zone gives rise to lower radiation dose rates than many areas of natural radioactivity worldwide."

While the boundary of the exclusion zone has not changed, the landscape has - almost beyond recognition. Where people were forced out, nature has moved in. Wilderness combined with abandoned buildings, farms and villages gives a sense of the post-apocalyptic.

Jim and his colleagues spend their days here collecting samples and planting cameras and audio recorders, which silently gather information about what wildlife inhabits this post-human place, and how the radiation affects it.

On the second day of our trip to the zone, I follow the team into the Red Forest. This is an exclusion zone hotspot that, because of the direction of the winds in 1986, took the brunt of the shower of radioactive material.

In the abandoned village of Burayakovka - just over 10km from the power plant - it is a very different approach. Jim and the team take their time exploring the area. The dosimeter reads 1.0 - still less than on the flight.

Inside one small, crumbling but still colourful wooden house, the sad truth of what people so suddenly lost here is apparent. A coat still slung over the arm of a chair is now covered in three decades of dust.

But what people left behind - through farming and gardening - has turned into a strangely rich habitat and provisions for wild animals. Long-term studies have shown that there is more wildlife in the abandoned villages than anywhere else in the zone. Brown bears, lynx and wild boar are seen roaming here.

Dr Maryna Shkvyria, a researcher based at Kiev Zoo, has spent years tracking and studying the larger mammals that moved in when people moved out.

There are studies suggesting that birds in the most contaminated areas show signs of damage to their DNA, but Maryna's work is adding to a catalogue of research that suggests wildlife is thriving throughout much of the exclusion zone.

Chernobyl's wolves, she says, are a particularly striking example.

"After 15 years of studying them, we have a lot of information about their behaviour," Maryna explains. "And the Chernobyl wolf is one of the most natural wolves in Ukraine."

By "natural", she means there is very little "human food" in the wolves' diet. "Usually, wolves are around settlements," Maryna explains. "They can eat livestock, crops and waste food - even pets." But not here where wolves hunt wild prey.

Chernobyl's wolves feed on deer and even catch fish. Some images - caught by camera traps - reveal gentler dietary habits. Wolves have been snapped eating fruit from around trees that used to be in people's orchards.

There is one group of animals that has made the zone its home and that - strictly speaking- should not really be here.

In 1998, Ukrainian zoologists released a herd of 30 endangered Przewalski's horses in the zone. The apparent aim was for the horses to graze overgrowth and reduce the risk of wildfire. There are now about 60 of them - in herds dispersed across Ukraine and Belarus.

They are native to the open plains of Mongolia, so forests peppered with abandoned buildings should not be ideal habitat. "But they're really using the forests," explains Maryna. "We even put camera traps in old barns and buildings and they're using them to [shelter] from mosquitoes and heat.

"They even lay down and sleep inside - they're adapting to the zone."

'You can have the cherry vodka; I made it'

Wildlife might be making the most of what's gradually become a post-human nature reserve, but not every village was left for animals to claim. Some people still live here - deep in the 30km zone.

On my fourth day here, we visit Maria's house. She is outside in her garden when we arrive at the gate, and - as I try to introduce myself in a few stumbling words of Ukrainian - she interrupts me by wrapping me in a warm hug and kissing me on the cheek.

Today is her 78th birthday. She is expecting us and has prepared a celebratory breakfast.

Maria ushers me, Jim, his colleague Mike, and our interpreter Denis to a wooden table under a fruit tree.

It is a gloriously sunny day and pleasantly warm even at 9am. Maria starts to bring food - fatty salted bacon, a whole fish, sliced sausage and steaming hot, home-grown potatoes. There are two bottles of what appear to be spirits - one colourless, one dark red.

"If you don't like this vodka, you can have the cherry one - I made it," she says.

Maria and her neighbours make up a tiny community of just 15. Each of these self-settlers, as they are known, travelled back across a patchily enforced exclusion zone boundary and reclaimed their homes in 1986.

Almost every family forced to leave here was given an apartment in a nearby town or city. For Maria and her mother, though, this cottage, with the garden wrapped around it, was home. They refused to abandon it.

"We weren't allowed to come back, but I followed my mum," Maria recalls. "She was 88 back then. She kept saying: 'I will go, I will go'. I just followed her."

There are about 200 self-settlers in total living in the zone and, for an ageing population cut off from the rest of the country, Maria says life is not easy.

"We're all very old," she tells me. "And we take each day as it comes.

"I feel full of life when my children come to visit me from Kiev. Otherwise, it's not so interesting to live here. But you know this is our land - our motherland. It's irreplaceable."

Maria's mobile phone rings and I am struck by the incongruity of our diminutive babushka hostess, standing in her exclusion zone garden, apparently trying to wrap up swiftly a call from her daughter. She is busy with her visitors from the BBC!

Remote as it is, this is a close community. As we sit in the garden (knocking back cherry vodka at our Maria's repeated insistence) her neighbour arrives with a birthday gift. She sits on the bench near the garden gate; she can't walk too far.

The self-settlers are a tiny minority, though. Most people who so suddenly lost their homes here have no hope of coming back.

Most of them lived in Pripyat - a true Soviet dream town, purpose-built for the power plant workers. Just a few kilometres from the plant itself, this town of 50,000 people was emptied overnight. No-one was allowed to return; it is now the archetype of a 20th Century ghost city.

Pripyat was, however, recently deemed safe to visit for short periods and has now become one of Ukraine's most talked about tourist attractions. An estimated 60,000 people visited the exclusion zone last year, keen to witness the dramatic decay.

Its bleak notoriety has made it the subject of some dark, social media-based showing-off. Search #chernobyl on Instagram and you will find - among the interesting landscapes and tourist snaps - images of anonymous, costumed characters, sometimes wearing gas masks or holding up creepy-looking dolls for the camera.

'Tell people Chernobyl is not such a horrible place'

The town of Chernobyl itself - somewhat confusingly much further from the power plant than Pripyat - is in a less contaminated area. It has become a relatively populous hub. Power plant decommissioning staff, scientists and tourists stay here.

Gennady, Jim, me and the rest of the research team are staying in one of its small hotels - a Soviet-style building with an incongruously pretty, well-tended garden around it. This greenery is looked after by Irina, who manages the hotel. She stays here for three months at a time before a colleague takes over. People are only permitted to live in the town for limited periods.

Over a cup of tea on our second evening at the hotel, Gennady translates as Irina tells us about her memories of the accident. She lived in Pripyat at the time with her grandmother.

On 27 April - a day after the explosion - the town was evacuated. People were ordered to leave immediately. They lined up for buses that would take them away from the town and the plant. Irina was on her way back to her grandmother's apartment at the time.

"A friend of my grandmother's was driving a cattle wagon - taking his livestock out," she recalled. "My grandmother asked if he would take me with him, so I climbed on to the cattle wagon.

"I didn't know what was happening."

But Irina, not unlike Maria, felt a need to return to the zone. She has never been back to Pripyat, though; it would upset her too much to see it now. But she takes pride in tending the flowers around her Chernobyl hotel.

"I like to make it as pretty as possible for the visitors," she tells me. "So maybe you can tell people back home that Chernobyl is not such a horrible place."

'We have forgotten that we are Chernobyl people'

Gennady's 33 years working in the exclusion zone might have been leading up to one meeting at the end of this week. It is being held in a school in Narodichi, the town in the outer zone.

Here, scientists, community members, medical experts and officials from the state agency that manages the exclusion zone are gathering to discuss a change that could transform this district's future.

For the first time since the boundary was drawn, the zone is set to change. Three decades of research have concluded that much of it is safe - for food to be grown and for the land to be developed. Narodichi is one of its least contaminated places.

Jim and Gennady are presenting their conclusions at the meeting. Before it is under way, I have arranged to visit the town's kindergarten, where the children are playing outside in the sunshine.

A rainbow-painted picket fence at the edge of their playground contrasts almost ludicrously with grey, half-built tower blocks next door.

There were 360 children here before the accident. Tatiana Kravchenko, a woman with a perpetual kind smile and who is wearing a thick, bright pink coat, is the kindergarten manager. She remembers the evacuation.

"The children were evacuated together with teachers to 'clean zones'," she recalls. "In three months we were sent back, and we had only 25 children. Eventually, people have come back, new children have been born and gradually the kindergarten started filling up again. Now we have 130 children here."

Most of the time, Tatiana says, she does not think of her community as being within the exclusion zone. "We forget that we are Chernobyl people; we have other issues to deal with," she tells me. "It's no secret that half of the parents [of these kids] are unemployed, because there is nowhere to work. I wish that we could build something here - that our community could start to bloom."

'Maybe it's time to redraw the map'

Back in the meeting, Gennady peers over red-rimmed glasses, attentively listening to what is being said. Discussions are taking longer than expected. Much of the community input seems to reflect Tatiana's thoughts - that it is time for restrictions to be lifted here.

But there is a lot at stake.

People affected by the accident receive financial compensation from the government. Here, in a town of high unemployment, in a country where the average wage is less than 400USD per month, that income is important.

And many still fear Chernobyl radiation - and the effect that it might still have on their health, and the health of their children. After many years of research, understanding and explaining the long-term health legacy of the accident has been infuriatingly complicated.

It is conclusive that around 5,000 cases of thyroid cancer - most of which were treated and cured - were caused by the contamination. Authorities failed to prevent contaminated milk from being sold in the region; many who were children at the time drank it receiving large doses of radioactive iodine. That was one of the contaminants blasted out of the reactor.

Many suspect that the radiation has or will cause other cancers, but the evidence is patchy.

Prof Richard Wakeford, from the University of Manchester's Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, points out that health studies look for a "signal" of a specific health effect linked to Chernobyl.

They aim to pick out that signal above the "background noise" from other causes. That has been incredibly difficult, primarily because of the huge background noise that was the almost simultaneous upheaval of the Soviet Union's collapse.

"It's assumed that there will be some cancers linked to the accident in addition to the thyroid cancers, but detecting them amid that socioeconomic chaos - that had its own impacts on people's health - has proven almost impossible," says Prof Wakeford. Cancer also affects between a third and a half of people in Europe, so any Chernobyl signal is likely to be small.

Amid reports of other health problems - including birth defects - it still is not clear if any can be attributed to radiation.

Prof Geraldine Thomas from Imperial College London explains: "Another confounding factor in this part of the world relates, confusingly, to iodine deficiency."

In its non-radioactive form, iodine is found in milk, green leafy vegetables and seaweed. A lack of it in the diet is a known cause of problems in the early development of the brain and spinal cord. "So one possible cause of birth defects is actually a lack of iodine in the environment," the prof says.

All of this means that estimates of cancer cases remain highly contentious.

In its seminal 2006 report on the the long-term consequences of the accident, the World Health Organization did conclude that many people's mental health has been damaged - by fear of radiation and severe disruption to their lives.

As a scientist who has spent years scrutinising the truth about the contamination in the zone, Gennady admits that he did not expect the people of Narodichi to be afraid of radiation.

"It's a very big factor affecting their lives, even more than 30 years after the accident. This is really something that surprised me," he says.

That fear can be physically as well as mentally damaging.

A sense of fatalism and hopelessness associated with assumptions of being doomed by radiation is thought to contribute to higher rates of of smoking and alcoholism in this region - both of which are definitively bad for people's health.

"It was a terrible thing that happened here," says Jim. "But that tends to dominate people's lives.

"Somehow - and it's very, very difficult - we've got to move towards a situation where people can go back to living their lives without this fear, this radiation blight."

We're not going anywhere

Gennady emerges from the meeting looking a little jaded, but he says he is cautiously optimistic. The map was not officially redrawn today, but, crucially, most people in the room agreed there was a need for change.

"The community wants to bring more life here," Gennady says. "And we, as scientists, know that a lot of places here can be easily excluded from this ban, so I think this was a very positive moment."

At the kindergarten, Tatiana has ushered the younger children inside for an afternoon nap.

There are rows of adorably tiny beds inside a new wing of the kindergarten that was built with money from a Japanese charity.

The close relationship between Japan and Ukraine has been forged by the former being in the early stages of understanding the impact of its own nuclear disaster - at the Fukushima power plant.

Looking from the pristine new kindergarten building to the neighbouring derelict block, she says she would support the town's removal from the zone.

"These houses could be reconstructed and filled with people. We dream about that.

"We live here. We are not going to leave for anywhere else. Our children live here."

BBC
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To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Tanada » Fri 28 Feb 2020, 22:31:55

Watch this as many times as necessary for you to understand what it means.

https://youtu.be/HB22cREdBqw
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