earthquake in japan

Holly2003 wrote:

Can't beat a good nymph ;)
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No.  That's wouldn't be either legal or nice.  But maybe you could spank the naughty nymphs, just a little bit.

GratefulFan wrote: Holly2003 wrote:

Can't beat a good nymph ;)
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No.  That's wouldn't be either legal or nice.  But maybe you could spank the naughty nymphs, just a little bit. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm up for it if you are ;)

I did not drop out of this discussion although it looks like it has degenerated to the usual QZ quibbling i the mean time:) Bear with me to answer to some points I find important.

GFF wrote the following:

"It's almost certainly carelessly optimistic to conduct ourselves as though there is nothing but unicorns standing between April 15, 2011 and a glorious green tech future"
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That is exactly what annoyed me in this discussion from the start: you, GFF, discrediting my opinion with such sentences which do not even have anything to do with my opinion. Only because you are so ill-informed that you do not know anything about new technologies you do not need to dicredit the advocates of green technology - who happen to be linvestors and politicians and not just private ppeople like me.

GFF wrote the following:

"You don't have to 'return' to fossil energy, you just have to arbitrarily cripple your nuclear fleet and keep your coal plants firing for years longer than necessary. Like Germany. So you can import  electricity, at least in the short term, thereby ceding all control of the safety and conditions under which it is produced to somebody else entirely.  If that's not anti nuclear ideology, I don't know what is. You don't have to 'return' to fossil energy, you just have to arbitrarily cripple your nuclear fleet and keep your coal plants firing for years longer than necessary. Like Germany. So you can import  electricity, at least in the short term, thereby ceding all control of the safety and conditions under which it is produced to somebody else entirely.  If that's not anti nuclear ideology, I don't know what is."
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Germany has not imported any energy since WW II. Geramny is aa power exporting nation and in parts of the country we have so many electrical power that the nets are over loaded and power is even given to Poland for free only to relax the overloads : Coal plants and wind plants must be switched off because of net overloads - only nuclear plants are regularly not switched off because it is so difficult. It's the propaganda of the 4 big comapnies in my country to claim that we must import "unsafe" nuclear energy from France or the GR in case of changing to green technology and the other propaganda is the the "lights will go out" in the country if we stop nuclear technology. Funny how you repeat this propaganda without having any knowledge about the facts in my country.

GFF wrote:
"While the German plan might be right for Germany, it will be decades before the world sorts out it's future energy mix.  I don't want 50 and 60 year old nuke plants sitting around the planet while that's happening.  Respectfully, neither should you."
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I never said that I am talking for other coutries, I only ever talked about what my country should do (and probably will do). I am far away from teaching other nations - I do believe that the German industry will profit from all the innovation and energy technology will be an even bigger export asset that it already is today.

GFF wrote:
"On the very first day of the nuclear crisis when not one single thing was known about what would develop, you declared safe nuclear technology dead and cast the accident as the result of the inherent irresponsibility of supporting nuclear policy. You did that all virtually without a single specific fact at your disposal, or anybody else's disposal. That is an ideology. When you don't need to know what's going to happen in order to make up your mind,"
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How can you say we did not know anything about what happened? Are you closing your eyes on purpose? When I first posted in this thread 4 blocks in Fukushima had no cooling whatsoever  for a whole day. That is the possible worst case scenario for any nuclear plant. Nuclear fuel starts to melt within 10 minutes when the cooling stops. That is exactly the reason why cooling is so important. You chose to ignore and downplay the situation from day 1 and even when the buildings exploded live on TV you kept denying that there was a catastrophic situation. Even if the reactors had not exploded there would have been a very dangerous situation with melting fuel in unknown quantities - not to mention possible leaks and even leaking plutonium. It 's really ridiculous how you keep telling me that my opinion is ideology when you are not even capable of taking in the most simple facts.

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Holly wrote:
"That can't be right. According to the "green-only" enthusiasts, green energy is free, the windmills and water turbines will be built by handsome eco-warriors and wood nymphs, and green energy's only by-products are smiles and rainbows :)"

==============================

Very funny, Holly - maybe that was true in the 1980s :-). Today green technologies are a markest and big investment. The old cliches do not work anymore - the only difference is that many small players will be in that market - much to the chagrin of the monopolists.

GFF wrote:

"  I also think that the nuclear industry should stop telling people that there is no chance of failure or disaster.  There clearly is, however remote, and the public should somehow have an opportunity to be actively engaged as safety watchdogs. Communities should practice regular evacuation drills and above all be educated about radiation so that people in Kansas aren't clearing local shelves of iodine over a nuclear accident in Japan.  If more open, calm and frank dialogue is the result of Fukushima, something will have been salvaged from this terrible event."
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Speaking of unicorns... where are the people supposed to be evacuated?  And who decides in which way they are "educated"?  Just yesterday the Japanese government rose the permitted radiation dose for children to 3,8 micro sievert per hour - much too high.  Do you really believe any government would do anything different in the same situation? If you have faith in evacuation drills  or in the responsibilty of governments and nuclear industry, then certainly you are "carelessly optimistic".

YourValentine wrote: That is exactly what annoyed me in this discussion from the start: you, GFF, discrediting my opinion with such sentences which do not even have anything to do with my opinion.  ======================= Pot. Kettle. Black.

Only because you are so ill-informed that you do not know anything about new technologies you do not need to dicredit the advocates of green technology - who happen to be linvestors and politicians and not just private ppeople like me. ============================ It's a mistake to think of yourself as an advocate of green technology and me as something different from that.  I am an advocate of green technology, though I believe a more realistic and less ideological one. 

Germany has not imported any energy since WW II. Geramny is aa power exporting nation and in parts of the country we have so many electrical power that the nets are over loaded and power is even given to Poland for free only to relax the overloads : Coal plants and wind plants must be switched off because of net overloads - only nuclear plants are regularly not switched off because it is so difficult. It's the propaganda of the 4 big comapnies in my country to claim that we must import "unsafe" nuclear energy from France or the GR in case of changing to green technology and the other propaganda is the the "lights will go out" in the country if we stop nuclear technology. Funny how you repeat this propaganda without having any knowledge about the facts in my country. ========================== Germany has imported energy for years, as does most anyone on an intra-nationally connected grid. However, Germany has been a traditional net exporter of power.   Until now. Germany falls back on coal The country has had to import electricity since the moratorium, according to the state utilities association. But wiping 7,000 megawatts from domestic production has not hurt Germany's industry, Mr Becker said."There's no problem at all, because we used to have an export of electricity," said Mr Becker. "All the lights are on in Germany." Germany net energy importer after nuclear closure An umbrella organization of Germany's utility companies says the government's decision to take some atomic power plants offline in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster means the country is now importing power from its nuclear-reliant neighbors.The German Association of Energy and Water Industries said Monday shutting down seven of the country's 17 reactors for safety checks has led to a daily import of about 50 gigawatts -- the capacity equivalent of about 1 1/2 reactors.It says the electricity is bought from France and the Czech Republic, both of which heavily rely on nuclear energy. Coal prices rise on German utility demand European coal futures prices were pushed up on Monday as strong demand from Germany's power sector drove the market, traders said.The API2 2012 coal futures contract rose around $1.60 per tonne from its opening to $134.85 per tonne at 0220 GMT, its highest level since the peak of the financial crisis in late 2008, although the contract retreated back towards $134 a tonne later in the afternoon.Since the German government ordered seven nuclear reactors to be switched off in March in a policy u-turn following the Japanese nuclear crisis, utilities have relied on increasing coal power generation to make up for the lost nuclear capacity.  There are plenty more like that where those came from.   Germany is of course free to chart it's own course, and as you noted, innovation and progress are some of the likely outcomes of that. But don't pretend making politically motivated choices on your nuclear fleet has nothing to do with burning coal, increasing emissions, or energy self sufficiency, for an as yet unknowable period into the future.  Really, we are well past the point that *you* should be calling *me* uninformed. Germany being a great exporter of cheap or free power is precisely the mark of any country that produces any significant amount of energy from intermittent sources like solar or wind.  Because energy generation increases and decreases with the elements and not with actual demand on the grid, a significant proportion of the energy created is excess capacity that must be offloaded at a revenue loss. It creates serious challenges for the economics, and is the reason that enthusiasm can dry up once the incentives and subsidies disappear.  It also creates serious challenges for grid stability, and unless the energy mix in a country is well penetrated by things like hydropower that can quicky ramp up and down in response to suddenly present and suddenly absent wind and solar generation, the net affect is fossil and nuclear plants forced into inefficient operation that in the worst cases continue to burn their fuel but throw it off as heat rather than feeding the grid as they need to be prepared at any moment to recommence generation.   The integration of intermittent generation sources on a grid designed for just the opposite means massive changes to grid operation and massive investments in new infrastructure to deal with the new paradigm.  My argument has never been that this is not a worthy or achievable goal, just that the time frame and eventual realities are as yet unknowable and thus running after nuclear with pitchforks is premature, and due to the inevitable inverse relationship with fossil fuels, irresponsible.

I never said that I am talking for other coutries, I only ever talked about what my country should do (and probably will do). I am far away from teaching other nations... ====================================== That's precisely the opposite of what I heard when you said that the suffering in Japan was the result once again of the inherent irresponsibility of nuclear policy.  That seems to me to be a clear condemnation of another country's policies, with an implicit argument about 'what they should do'.

How can you say we did not know anything about what happened? Are you closing your eyes on purpose? When I first posted in this thread 4 blocks in Fukushima had no cooling whatsoever  for a whole day. That is the possible worst case scenario for any nuclear plant. Nuclear fuel starts to melt within 10 minutes when the cooling stops. That is exactly the reason why cooling is so important. You chose to ignore and downplay the situation from day 1 and even when the buildings exploded live on TV you kept denying that there was a catastrophic situation. Even if the reactors had not exploded there would have been a very dangerous situation with melting fuel in unknown quantities - not to mention possible leaks and even leaking plutonium. It 's really ridiculous how you keep telling me that my opinion is ideology when you are not even capable of taking in the most simple facts. ======================== Three Mile Island was a situation characterized by meltdown and explosions as well, with an entirely different outcome.  Waiting for facts and actual leaks rather than "possible leaks", and insisting on information rather than railing at images on my television screen is not ignoring or downplaying a situation, and it never will be.  You have an anti-nuclear ideology, and I don't, and that is the reason we process information differently.  You are willing to make assumptions, which may or may not be correct, where I want hard information.  Hard information about this accident, hard information about the real performance of alternative energy, hard information about what we really need to progress effectively and hard information about the limitations we face at this time.

Speaking of unicorns... where are the people suppo

Speaking of unicorns... where are the people supposed to be evacuated?  And who decides in which way they are "educated"?  Just yesterday the Japanese government rose the permitted radiation dose for children to 3,8 micro sievert per hour - much too high.  Do you really believe any government would do anything different in the same situation? If you have faith in evacuation drills  or in the responsibilty of governments and nuclear industry, then certainly you are "carelessly optimistic".
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Of the 29 mass evacuations noted in Wikipedia for the 20th and 21st centuries, two of them have been related to nuclear accidents.  To my knowledge none of the millions affected throughout history rode off on unicorns.  Only a small handful of the total evacuations were smaller than the up to 200,000 that have been evacuated from around Fukushima.  Humanity must be capable of dealing with mass evacuations on a much larger scale than Fukushima because war and natural and man made disasters demand it.   Careful planning, awareness and practice where possible can only benefit our collective ability to manage any of these situations.

They've raised the limit for children to a pre-existing international maximum, and they've done so in an emergency situation.  Really, how do you know it's 'much too high'? It translates to 20 millisieverts annually.  That is 30 to 50% lower than the natural radiation levels alone in some parts of the world.  You continue to show a lack of apprecation for basic facts about radiation, including the theoretical nature of LNT models as they pertain to low dose radiation and the natural and man made mechanisms through which we are all exposed all the time.   Finally, I'll wait to see how industry and government might move on educating  people, rather than making assumptions in support of an ideology I don't have.

GFF wrote:

"An umbrella organization of Germany's utility companies says the government's decision to take some atomic power plants offline in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster means the country is now importing power from its nuclear-reliant neighbors"
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Please note the beginning of the sentence: " a lobbyist organisation says..." No matter how many bloggers repeat that, it is still untrue to say that Germany is compensating the loss of 7 nuclear plants by importing nuclear power from the neighbour countries. The head of the federal net agency told the parliament and national television: the numbers and facts show that the production of electricity still exceeds the demand and the net balance shows that the export is still higher than the import. Germany is a transit net as much as a seller and buyer of electricity and  the physical flows are all monitored by the federal net agency. There have always been imports from France and other neighbours, the EU is a common electricity market and import/export is a part of this market. To claim that the import is now exceeding the export is a lie by the lobbyists and it was called a lie by the net agency in public.

GFF wrote:

"It creates serious challenges for the economics, and is the reason that enthusiasm can dry up once the incentives and subsidies disappear.  It also creates serious challenges for grid stability, and unless the energy mix in a country is well penetrated by things like hydropower that can quicky ramp up and down in response to suddenly present and suddenly absent wind and solar generation, the net affect is fossil and nuclear plants forced into inefficient operation that in the worst cases continue to burn their fuel but throw it off as heat rather than feeding the grid as they need to be prepared at any moment to recommence generation.   The integration of intermittent generation sources on a grid designed for just the opposite means massive changes to grid operation and massive investments in new infrastructure to deal with the new paradigm.  My argument has never been that this is not a worthy or achievable goal, just that the time frame and eventual realities are as yet unknowable and thus running after nuclear with pitchforks is premature, and due to the inevitable inverse relationship with fossil fuels, irresponsible"

====

If you wait for the nuclear and coal industry to make the necessary investments and to build the necessary storage plants, the energy change will never happen. I live in a highly populated country with an advanced industry and there are enough investors, enough prototypes and enough models that prove that the change can be achieved in 8-15 years. It's not my own naive belief - all major political parties and most communities believe the same. Communities are ready and willing to invest into the necessary nets and pump storage plants. There are interesting new ideas and patents to build other storage plants than just pumping water up a hill. Plants that need less space and won't hurt the environment that much.

GFF wrote:

"That's precisely the opposite of what I heard when you said that the suffering in Japan was the result once again of the inherent irresponsibility of nuclear policy.  That seems to me to be a clear condemnation of another country's policies, with an implicit argument about 'what they should do'."
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Definitely not. I can criticize the irresponsibility of an industry without telling a nation what their national energy policy can be. It is obvious that growing economies like China or India have very different energy needs than a highly industrialized country. I think I even mentioned that earlier in the discussion. As to Japan - I really never understood the faith of the Japanese people in the nuclear industry but there was an apparent consensus in the society. The biggest criticism I ever had was the fact that my own country has no plan about the nuclear waste management. There have been nuclear plants for over 40 years but there is no final storage for spent fuel and no plan how to  safely lock away all the dangerous waste for ten thousands of years. I believe that the lack of safe waste storage is the biggest problem and shows the worst lack of responsibility in nuclear industry .

GFF wrote:
"They've raised the limit for children to a pre-existing international maximum, and they've done so in an emergency situation.  Really, how do you know it's 'much too high'? It translates to 20 millisieverts annually.  That is 30 to 50% lower than the natural radiation levels alone in some parts of the world."
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The natural radiation in Tokyo pre-Fukushima was 0,028 to 0,079 micro Sievert per hour, so the new permitted limit for children is up to 100 times as high as the natural radiation - please do not take some uranium mine as a comparison. The pure numbers are not the scandal imo - after all, they cannot really protect the children no matter how high or low the limits are. The scandal is that the government tries to get rid of the responsibility by increasing the values. I believe that they are responsible when they send their own children into the 80 km zone.

Please note the beginning of the sentence: " a lobbyist organisation says..." No matter how many bloggers repeat that, it is still untrue to say that Germany is compensating the loss of 7 nuclear plants by importing nuclear power from the neighbour countries. The head of the federal net agency told the parliament and national television: the numbers and facts show that the production of electricity still exceeds the demand and the net balance shows that the export is still higher than the import. Germany is a transit net as much as a seller and buyer of electricity and  the physical flows are all monitored by the federal net agency. There have always been imports from France and other neighbours, the EU is a common electricity market and import/export is a part of this market. To claim that the import is now exceeding the export is a lie by the lobbyists and it was called a lie by the net agency in public. ==================== As a small point, the information was reported by Reuters, Forbes and Business Week, not just bloggers.  Regardless, I think it's important to focus on the integrity of information and not assumptions about the integrity of those sharing it. I'm not sure what the 'federal net agency' refers to, but if it's a government department they would certainly also have a motivation to spin facts to suit political ends.  Saying the production of electricity still exceeds the demand doesn't say anything about whether the electricty is produced when the demand is there, or whether it's excess wind or solar production that can't be used domestically at that moment given the current transmission infrastructure, and thus must be offloaded.  Erasing 7000 MW of base load nuclear power can't be replaced by any amount of excess wind power if it's not there at the right time. One could also manipulate net balance facts by selecting time frames to suit the argument.   This is excerpted from a Business Week article published April 4: ENTSO-E, the Brussels-based group overseeing Europe's electricity grid and tracking cross-border flows, confirmed that Germany turned from exporting to importing electricity toward the end of March. "From our preliminary data, we can deduct an average net import of electricity between March 19 and April 3 of about 1.8 gigawatt during any one hour, which implies an average import per day of 43 gigawatt hours," said ENTO-E's secretary general, Konstantin Staschus. Environment Ministry spokeswoman Christiane Schwarte, however, said the country is still self-sufficient even without the seven nuclear power plants, and the imports only reflect normal fluctuation within the European grid system. The timing, duration and magnitude of the change from exporter to importer (the utilities association claims a normal March would see daily net exports of between 7 - 150 GWh) certainly strongly suggests a relationship with the shuttering of the reactors.  Though the information I have is limited to these articles, it seems to me that at the very least it may be too soon to tell.  Perhaps coal plants hadn't yet had a chance to ramp up generation enough to replace the nuclear power, or other adjustments have to be made, and things will normalize again shortly.  But I get the sense that perhaps the public impression is that you can just tap into what you used to export and use it 100% domestically instead.  That is not true because of the base load generation vs. intermittent generation issue given the current transmission realities. There is no shame in importing if that were the case, it just seems to me that the politics may be creating an atmosphere where the true impact of policy decisions are being blurred for political expediencey.  The public should have every opportunity to make informed choices and for that you need frankness and complete information.  It's likely to become even more challenging next month when additional reactors go offline for scheduled maintenance. 

If you wait for the nuclear and coal industry to make the necessary investments and to build the necessary storage plants, the energy change will never happen. I live in a highly populated country with an advanced industry and there are enough investors, enough prototypes and enough models that prove that the change can be achieved in 8-15 years. It's not my own naive belief - all major political parties and most communities believe the same. Communities are ready and willing to invest into the necessary nets and pump storage plants. There are interesting new ideas and patents to build other storage plants than just pumping water up a hill. Plants that need less space and won't hurt the environment that much. ============================== As I noted earlier there seem to be few if any societies more motivated than Germany to make the necessary investment and sacrifices, and that's a great thing.  But things on the ground can change so fast with the realities of economics, the realities of normal timeframes of R & D,  or the realities of giant wind turbines and giant power masts suddenly proposed not just for Germany in abstract but in one's own town specifically. I don't know the politics of Der Spiegel, if any, but I did read this article the other day: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,756836,00.html If it turns out that Germany's politically driven nuclear u-turn costs years of missing emissions targets and a ramping up of internal tensions and a growing backlash against the intrusiveness of some current day green tech, that will be unfortunate.  It remains one possible outcome, and only time will tell.  Again, nothing ever goes quite as smoothly as planned, and that really hasn't seemed to factor into any of your arguments in this discussion. 

The biggest criticism I ever had was the fact that my own country has no plan about the nuclear waste management. There have been nuclear plants for over 40 years but there is no final storage for spent fuel and no plan how to  safely lock away all the dangerous waste for ten thousands of years. I believe that the lack of safe waste storage is the biggest problem and shows the worst lack of responsibility in nuclear industry. ===================== I agree completely that maximally safe and truly practical solutions must be found and paid for by the industry. Unfortunately safe waste storage is one of those tricky ones where there have been good ideas but some arms of the environmental lobby and NIMBYism often stalls them (ironically leaving them in virtually everybody's back yard), sometimes after billions have already been spent.  It's really not always the industry at fault in this instance.   Compare this to the by-products of something like coal which include hugely toxic and carcinogenic elements like arsenic and so many others, which NEVER decay into something harmless even if given an eternity, literally tossed into unlined open pits under the unknowing noses of just about everyone.

The natural radiation in Tokyo pre-Fukushima was 0,028 to 0,079 micro Sievert per hour, so the new permitted limit for children is up to 100 times as high as the natural radiation - please do not take some uranium mine as a comparison. The pure numbers are not the scandal imo - after all, they cannot really protect the children no matter how high or low the limits are. The scandal is that the government tries to get rid of the responsibility by increasing the values. I believe that they are responsible when they send their own children into the 80 km zone.

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Not uranium mines at all - the natural radiation in several places on earth like parts of Brazil, India and Iran can reach 30 and 40 millisiverts a year.  Some studies have indicated the inhabitants of these areas actually have lower cancer rates (as have some studies of radiation workers) leading to theories of radiation hormesis that challenge LNT theories.  My point is that on the whole human beings have tolerance for a wide range of low dose radiation exposures and the data for low exposures over time below a cumulative dose of 100 or 200 millisieverts is very uncertain.

International cancer organizations and the WHO have cautioned that it will likely remain impossible to ever pull the Chernobyl cancer rates out of national cancer statistics saying "It is unlikely that the cancer burden from the largest radiological accident to date could be detected by monitoring national cancer statistics. Indeed, results of analyses of time trends in cancer incidence and mortality in Europe do not, at present, indicate any increase in cancer rates – other than of thyroid cancer in the most contaminated regions – that can be clearly attributed to radiation from the Chernobyl accident."  So they end up having to estimate based on LNT theories and previous studies of atomic bomb victims.   Those total numbers are significant, but they corellate to between 3 and 5% of all cancers.  In other words, if you get cancer there is a 95 to 97% chance it's not related to Chernobyl.  There is some indication that emergency workers at Chernobyl make have increased incidences of leukemia and some indication that women may be at a slightly greater risk for breast cancer in some of the most affected areas, but further studies need to be done.  And of course, at just 25 years out, a clearer picture may yet emerge in coming years.

Hugely elevated risk of thyroid cancer is the one clearly statistically supportable result of Chernobyl.  The most affected group were females in the most contaminated areas of Belarus where iodine deficiency is theorized and where contaminated milk was consumed over time.  This vulnerable group were determined in 2004 in a peer reviewed study to have a 3286% increase in risk for thyroid cancer as compared to 1970.  Most of those were children.  A staggering increase to be sure, but when translated to cases per year per 100,000 population the number of new cases annually was just 27.   So every year, as of the time those statistics were complied, 999,973 people of 100,000 didn't get thyroid cancer.   So the prevalence, which now numbers in the thousands and is expected to continue to rise, is high but the incidence (which is a measure of individual risk) remains much lower than I think people perceive from anecdotal data.

The inescapable conclusion from all the peer reviewed facts and figures is that people who have been affected by man made nuclear accidents or detonations have an overwhelming likelihood to have their lives unfold almost exactly as they would have otherwise from a physiological standpoint.

Unfortunately that's not true from a psychological standpoint.  I hope I find the right words for this last part because if I could take back everything I've written on this thread and make just one point stick, it would be this: The psychological suffering of people who see themselves as contaminated, damaged and doomed individuals and the uncertainly it casts over their lives does incalculably more harm than the radiation.  Radiation unqualified and unquantified is a neutral word, but it's not treated as such in our society.  There are so many heartbreaking and sobering accounts of the ramifications of treating radiation like something out of a horror movie rather than an industrial contaminant that within a broad range almost always exposes people to biological processes we survive everyday without significant consequence. In modern day Japan children have already been turned away from clinics, and cars with Fukushima license plates turned away from gas stations due to irrational fear.

In Chernobly it's been linked with psychosomatic illness and reckless behaviours like overuse of alcohol and tobacco and eating local berries and such that they've been warned against.   As Queen fans we've seen this psychology before when Freddie and countless others in the 1980's acted entirely against their own best interests in the face of feeling marked by something ominous, deadly and invisible stalking their community.That's why I am so upset by groups like Greenpeace and others who whatever their intentions actually are are unwittingly ramping up this fear and anxiety in a culture that is enormously sensitive to it to the clear detriment of the people they are intending to advocate for.  The government has set a preexisting exposure limit guided by the ICRP for precisely the scenario  of a nuclear accident.  The guidelines are precisely about safety. They are there to define the upper safe limits in suboptimal situations, not allow governments to evade responsibility for anything. That is an accusation that only hurts the well being of people who are anxious enough without being fed questionably motivated propaganda about how they are being abused and sacrificed and poisoned by their governments.  It's terribly short sighted and terribly cruel, however unintentional.

I'd encourage anybody who has been interested in any of the subjects touched on on this thread so far to do a lot of open minded reading of all available perspectives because there is a lot that is just not intuitive.  Anyway, I think we've both left this on a better note than it's been in previous posts YV, so I'm intending to bow out for now and leave you to the last word if you'd like.  I really have appreciated your many thoughts on all this, even if it hasn't seemed that way at times.

GF

GratefulFan:

Either you are mistaken, or you are deliberately trying to mislead, because the background radiation in MiliSievert you mention is not the *average*, but the *peak* radiation in those areas. The highest average natural radiation on earth is found  in Ramsar, Iran, where it is 10.2 MiliSievert per year, with the added comment that it is suspected that this number is not wholly accounted for by natural radiation. The second place, which *is* undisputedly natural, is Guarapari in Brazil, where the natural radiation averages 5.5 MiliSievert per year, and even there it is suspected that the cause can be found in mineral deposits.

ThomasQuinn wrote: GratefulFan: Either you are mistaken, or you are deliberately trying to mislead ...
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^ knobend

ThomasQuinn wrote: GratefulFan: Either you are mistaken, or you are deliberately trying to mislead, because the background radiation in MiliSievert you mention is not the *average*, but the *peak* radiation in those areas. The highest average natural radiation on earth is found  in Ramsar, Iran, where it is 10.2 MiliSievert per year, with the added comment that it is suspected that this number is not wholly accounted for by natural radiation. The second place, which *is* undisputedly natural, is Guarapari in Brazil, where the natural radiation averages 5.5 MiliSievert per year, and even there it is suspected that the cause can be found in mineral deposits. ==================== Jeez.  Knobend is right. The radiation measurements around Ramsar are not evenly distributed and the area as a whole is is a blend of ELNRA.(Eleveated Level Natural Radiation Areas) and LLRNA (Low Level Natural Radiation Areas) more typical for most parts of the globe. Since you can't live everywhere at once in a region, an average covering the entire area is meaningless. Ramak, Sefee Khak and Talesh Mahelldh are considered ELNRA (Eleveated Natural Radiation Areas) in the Ramsar region and 25% of that popluation receives between 5 and 130 mSv annually EXCLUDING the indoor exposure to accumulated radon which can double figures.  You will typically see 260 mSv per year quoted as the peak exposure for residents of the applicable areas. 40 mSv per year is the population/exposure adjusted average of these areas for the quarter of the population previously noted, and I selected that statistic to meaningfully convey the principle that there is a large natural range of radiation in which humans survive and indeed thrive without quoting the completly relevant but less broadly representative figures upwards of 130 (or 260) mSv/a. If you wish to consider 100% of the population in ELNRA, the researchers' summarizing statement was "...in ELNRA, the majority of the public has potential to receive annual doses either within the dose limit of 20 mSv per year for occupationally exposed workers, or significantly higher than the dose limit.  In particular, some persons even have the potential to receive doses over 10 times higher than that of the dose limit for workers." At any rate, you are absolutely correct that accuracy and precision is important, so allow me to retract my last statement "the natural radiation in several places on earth like parts of Brazil, India and Iran can reach 30 and 40 millisiverts a year" and say instead that "the effective dose of radiation from naturally occuring cosmic and terrestrial sources in parts of Ramsar, Iran can reach 260 mSv per year".  Hope that helps. P.S.  Mineral deposits and such are not sufficiently 'natural'?  Natural radiation includes both cosmic and terrestrial sources. You're truly flipping retarded. P.P.S.  Don't know if it's peer reviewed, but here is a document that indicates that residents may be eating about 20 microSieverts/a in rice .  (misread the magnitude initially, but still interesting to see how it affects food supply) http://www.sid.ir/en/VEWSSID/J_pdf/92620050108.pdf

It's not about having the last word in this debate - at least not for me. Actually, the whole discussion is very frustrating for me  seeing that someome from Canada repeats the whole arguments I hear at home from the nuclear lobby. Of course people will fight against power masts in their back yards - we have the rule of law and the government cannot walk over the rights of the citizens only because they wasted years and years doing nothing to improve the power nets. Now they make it sound like the common citizen is holding up progress when it was in fact the Christian democrats and liberals who held up progress in favour of the nuclear lobby for the last years.. After all, they did built each and every nuclear power plant against the wishes of the citizens living in the affected areas. Now they will have to work with the citizens instead of against them for a change.

As to the dangers and risks of radiation, please, please look up "The children of Chernobyl" on Google or YouTube and take a look for yourself about the effects radiation has on children and children borne from mothers and fathers who had been exposed to radiation. If you were right with your opinion that radiation is only a neglectable statistical risk and  a psycholigal problem rather than an actual medical issue - we would not have all these international organisations who try to help these poor children. Children born with horrible genetic deformations, no legs, blind, holes in their  hearts and the horror list goes on. To say that these are just statistically neglectable risks a population has to take for the benefit of cheap energy is so cynical I do not even know how to answer to that. If I were a Japanese mother I would be afraid, as well - and for very good reasons.

You said a lot about coal plants and I fully agree about the detrimental effects of coal plant emissions. Please take a look at the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHW7KR33IQ&feature=related

maybe you understand how I feel about the "natural radiation" issue - it is the same. The guy in the video says that CO2 is a natural compound of our atmosphere and not a pollutant - which is correct - it's the dose that matters.