Tohoku Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster!!!

[Samurai_Jerk]

Oh my gosh. SJ, I am so sorry, I didn't realize where you were coming from. No, I don't have OCD, so I probably cannot understand what you are going through now. I see your point. It's only natural that somebody who has to wash their hands every 10 minutes due to fear of bacteria would also be panicked about radioactive contamination that almost certainly doesn't exist in amounts that could harm us.

This must be a very tough time for you. Is there anything we can do to help? I know some people that might have access to medication, if you are having trouble getting your hands on it.

Nice try douche bag. I was talking about your obsessive compulsive need to get the last word in.

[Samurai_Jerk]

has anyone started a charity thread that i'm not aware of?

got an email today from a guy who used to study with the boyf, and he's starting some kind of fundraising and charity for 'Asahigaoka Gakuen-Orphanage in Kesenuma'. He doesn't specify though what the money will be used for, which makes me immediately skeptical, especially after reading last week about a german and swede who was arrested with a Haitian orphan in Frankfurt airport, who had been taking kids orphans from Haiti under the guise of finding adoptive families, but were really selling them as child prostitutes.

are there any existing organisations helping orphans that money can be given to?

I'm not generally a supporter of the death penalty but that might be one of those cases where I'd make an exception. Anyway, I don't know of any charities dealing with orphans specifically but I would stick with charities you know and trust like the Red Cross.

That reminds me, I went to Seiyu to do some grocery shopping last week and noticed they had these little plaques with barcodes you could put in your basket. When it's scanned it adds 100 yen to you bill which is donated to the Red Cross for the quake and tsunami victims. I thought that was a cool idea and a very easy smart way to collect money and thought about how much money could be raised if most people did that. Then I noticed I seemed to be the only one who put one of the plaques in my basket. Hopefully it was just a slow day.

[Yokohammer]

I went to Seiyu to do some grocery shopping last week and noticed they had these little plaques with barcodes you could put in your basket. When it's scanned it adds 100 yen to you bill which is donated to the Red Cross for the quake and tsunami victims.

That's really clever! It lets people casually contribute while they're shopping for groceries, without really having to go out of their way.

The wife and I popped into Tower Records in the Sendai Parco this afternoon, and bought an album called "Songs for Japan" for about JPY 1,500. It's a double-disc thing with 38 songs from 30 different artists: John Lennon, U2, Bob Dylan, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lady Gaga, Foo Fighters, John Mayer, The Black Eyed Peas, Norah Jones ... etc., I'll stop there. The proceeds from the album go to the Japan Red Cross Society for quake/tsunami relief. I thought that was a pretty good idea too ... at least for people like us who still actually buy CDs.

[Samurai_Jerk]

That's really clever! It lets people casually contribute while they're shopping for groceries, without really having to go out of their way.

Yeah, I've never seen anything quite like it and I thought it was a great idea. Better than those register-side piggy banks to because you can put it on your card and no one has to come collect so it cuts back on the cost of raising the money.

[Thanatos' embalmed botfly]

[CrankyBastard]

Anyway, I went. Not really much to report.

On the contrary, thanks for the hands, ears and eyes on informative report.
Welcome back.

[Yokohammer]

On the contrary, thanks for the hands, ears and eyes on informative report.

I'm glad you stopped there ... I wouldn't want to have any more body parts involved.

[tidbits]

has anyone started a charity thread that i'm not aware of?......
are there any existing organisations helping orphans that money can be given to?

(Sorry if this has been answered.) I have been seeing this organisation doing fund raising for Tohoku's orphans at Tachikawa station, and even at Ueno park yesterday as well. Their website http://www.ashinaga.org/e/main1.html

[Mulboyne]

SJ, I think a lot of us have got to know each other fairly well on the board and one of the reasons to come back is because there are some good people here. I've been lucky enough to meet Omae Mona in Tokyo and can confirm he is a very decent, funny bloke and a family man with an intelligent grasp of life in Tokyo.

I happen to agree with him about the nature of the risks in Japan but I also think his tone in this instance is a bit off. That doesn't make him a bad guy in my book. It just means he's doing the best he can for his family and obviously feels concerned at any implication that he might be falling short in that regard.

OM, despite the heated rhetoric, I really don't think anyone is really trying to suggest you are deluded. I think you've got that reaction because it sometimes seems, in what you write, as if you are trying to hold everyone's feet to the fire to agree that produce on sale in the shops is not a health risk.

Alarmist rants and fearmongering, some of which have crept into this thread as nikoneko pointed out, are completely unhelpful. In this instance, however, I don't anyone has been actively trying to claim that unsafe produce is on sale. There's a difference between people saying the sky is falling and those who are offering personal accounts of their own lives. I think we've been pretty good at giving short shrift to bullshit here on FG.

I'm not in Tokyo right now so the question for me is moot. Nevertheless, even armed with everything I know, I might pause before picking up some Fukushima produce. Not because I think it's unsafe but because I don't actively have to buy it. There are alternatives. For me, they usually include not shopping at all and dining out all the time. I'd probably end up eating more Fukushima produce that way because I suspect restaurants will use it extensively if it's cheaper.

Just to show how inconsistent I am, if I was in one of my favourite bars, and an attractive girl asked me to share some freshly-made Fukushima sake with her, I'd have few qualms. In this instance, there might be considerable costs to avoiding it and some potential external benefits to drinking it.

[Samurai_Jerk]

SJ, I think a lot of us have got to know each other fairly well on the board and one of the reasons to come back is because there are some good people here. I've been lucky enough to meet Omae Mona in Tokyo and can confirm he is a very decent, funny bloke and a family man with an intelligent grasp of life in Tokyo.

I happen to agree with him about the nature of the risks in Japan but I also think his tone in this instance is a bit off. That doesn't make him a bad guy in my book. It just means he's doing the best he can for his family and obviously feels concerned at any implication that he might be falling short in that regard.

OM, despite the heated rhetoric, I really don't think anyone is really trying to suggest you are deluded. I think you've got that reaction because it sometimes seems, in what you write, as if you are trying to hold everyone's feet to the fire to agree that produce on sale in the shops is not a health risk.

Alarmist rants and fearmongering, some of which have crept into this thread as nikoneko pointed out, are completely unhelpful. In this instance, however, I don't anyone has been actively trying to claim that unsafe produce is on sale. There's a difference between people saying the sky is falling and those who are offering personal accounts of their own lives. I think we've been pretty good at giving short shrift to bullshit here on FG.

I'm not in Tokyo right now so the question for me is moot. Nevertheless, even armed with everything I know, I might pause before picking up some Fukushima produce. Not because I think it's unsafe but because I don't actively have to buy it. There are alternatives. For me, they usually include not shopping at all and dining out all the time. I'd probably end up eating more Fukushima produce that way because I suspect restaurants will use it extensively if it's cheaper.

Just to show how inconsistent I am, if I was in one of my favourite bars, and an attractive girl asked me to share some freshly-made Fukushima sake with her, I'd have few qualms. In this instance, there might be considerable costs to avoiding it and some potential external benefits to drinking it.

I actually agree with OM about the level of risk too and I haven't paused once to check where my veggies or sake come from since this whole incident started. As I stated earlier if I were really worried about my health I'd lose weight and stop being a booze-bag. I just don't know why it seems to bother him so much that other people worry about these things more than we do or that people are a bit more sceptical about the official line.

[tidbits]

http://takedanet.com/2011/04/56_5f8e.html This is a Japanese blog by Profesor Takeda from Chubu Daigaku. I believe quite many Japanese is following his writing now. ( I was also introduced by other Japanese mothers to read this) According to his blog 57 ( above link) written on the 19 April, he gave advice to avoid a few states' produce like Miyagi, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and off course Fukushima. I think one of the reason is he does not agree the way the government do the radiation measurement on the vegetables (after washed). My Japanese language ability is limited so please correct me if I misinterpret his writing.

Frankly speaking, I did not see any Fukushima produce so far in my shopping but it will be hard to avoid vegetables from Ibaraki in Chiba here. I am buying Ibaraki's vege, but I am sure others who had read the above blog would try their best to take this person's advice.

[Mike Oxlong]

[SIZE="4"]Continued radiation leaks from crippled nuke plant pose serious threat[/SIZE]

Continued radiation leaks from the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, which was damaged by an earthquake-triggered massive tsunami, pose a serious threat to the areas around the crippled power station.

The crisis level of the accident has been raised to the maximum of 7 -- the same level as the Chernobyl crisis that occurred a quarter of a century earlier.

However, some experts have pointed out that the Fukushima crisis is more serious than Chernobyl. "It's graver than Chernobyl in that no one can predict how the situation will develop," said Atsushi Kasai, a former senior researcher with the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute...

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110425p2a00m0na014000c.html

[Thug4Life]

Japanese Government Will Censor Fukushima "Illegal Information"

Via Slashdot.org

Sunday April 24

"The Japanese government says that the damage caused by earthquakes and by the nuclear accident are being magnified by irresponsible rumors, and the government must take action for the sake of the public good. The project team has begun to send letters of request to such organizations as telephone companies, internet providers, cable television stations, and others, demanding that they take adequate measures based on the guidelines in response to illegal information. The measures include erasing any information from internet sites that the authorities deem harmful to public order and morality."

[Coligny]

Japanese Government Will Censor Fukushima "Illegal Information"

Via Slashdot.org

Sunday April 24

Yeah... I saw a surrealistic tv doc from French TV last week...

At first, the french team was interviewing the chief fireman from a Tokyo unit who was sent to Daiichi. The press relation guy of the TFD was totally insane. Don't film this, don't ask these question, you don't have the right to speak about this... The journalist had the audacity to ask the fireman if he though Tepco prepared enough for such crisis or if their response was adequate, the old guy starting to answer then cutting mid sentence with an embarrassed face with the PR guy going all YOU DON'T ASK THIS QUESTION OR INTERVIEW IS FINISH...

Then they interviewed the chief doctor from the Tokyo hospital radiological unit in charge of treating returning Tepco's cleaning workers. When entering the hospital the PR girl start the same bullshit, "you film this, you don't film that building, it's forbidden (in a public hospital WTF ?)" "You can't speak to patient directly, for privacy reason, it's forbidden" Then they were left alone with the Doctor who opened the flood gates... Tepco asked him for advice, the journalists ask him if he think they are managing the situation properly, the guy respond with a straight up "no", they ask why, "they are not doing what I told them to do, the workers are too exposed, they don't have the proper equipment, they work for too long time". They ask how he knows that, "radiation level on the workers and they tell me the working condition"
This guy have brass balls but I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up jobless...

You know those documentary aboot journalist going to North Korea...

It was the same, but much more aggressive. Seems the governement don't really understand that they can't censor anything anymore like in the old days. They don't have much credibility to start with... And neither this nor their response is helping...

[Thug4Life]

Thanks Coligny. Yes I agree that the doctor has alot of courage and I'm glad to see that he spoke the truth. And, well, he may lose his current job, but because of the huge demand for doctors throughout the nation, for sure he'll get a new position real soon.

[nikoneko]

I saw the slashdot article too. Does anybody have an original source stating that the headline is true, other than a blog? I glanced the summary over when reading it this morning thinking probably the (omg!) censorship was just some kind of statement by the gov't on the chain mails going around and it had been misinterpreted by the slashdot editors (who are well known for this as much as I love the site) as that was the only possible coherent meaning I could see to it. But now actually reading it, it looks like this article is not saying that there is real censorship and just going the whole media cover-up conspiracy route, more of the same that we all know does happen here to an extent.. Only bloggers seem to think they found it first and sensationalize it.

And to put things on both sides I absolutely would love to see something like you describe Coligny. Wish we had more direct interviews of boots on the ground like that doctor. I suppose in real life things are somewhere in the middle ground between some PR guy who is scared and has a boss to report to and the people who think TEPCO is paying all media to shut up and jesus christ I'm just an intern I'm doing my best trying to save these guys lives.

[Thug4Life]

[nikoneko]

What I meant was, is there an actual statement out there from the gov't here that says they are beginning a true program to censor misinformation? This does happen in countries throughout the world and many times I at least first see it on slashdot. This one however I scanned as a blog post that was misinterpreted as real info (as they are also want to do). So far that seems to be the case.

[Thug4Life]

[omae mona]

[Not Invented Here]

Just checked in, noticed the article Thug posted. Can't resist touching on this, I'll try to avoid sparking any flames.

Keep in mind Thug, that the original estimate was 1 TBq/hr, not 1/day, so it wouldn't even be the 15000% increase you had posted, which is an awful number to post in any case because it doesn't tell you anything other than "Oh shit, a big number!" Still, I'm glad you guys worked out your differences, and I don't think you had any ill intentions. (It would actually be about 640% increase, but percentage is a poor figure to use here, which is my point.)

But, to the real beef I have with this article(s):

On April 5, the estimated amount of radioactive materials released from Fukushima I Nuke Plant was 0.69 terabecquerels/hour for iodine-131 and 0.14 terabecquerels/hour for cesium-137. When the numbers were recalculated according to the INES method (converting cesium amount into iodine equivalent), the amount released turned out to be 6.4 terabecquerels/hour (which was 154 terabecquerels per day. Previously, the Nuclear Safety Commission had simply added the numbers for iodine-131 and cesium-137, and announced it was less than 1 terrabecquerel per hour.

Looking at this, it amazes me how they think people are going to be keeping track and making sense of the numbers when even the NSC can't keep their shit together. The media has no fucking clue, and apparently neither does the NSC. Bad news bears all around, and I suspect that was Thug's point in posting this.

Combining these numbers in the first place is a bad idea if you want to furnish a concerned public with useful data. The combined number is purely a "wow" factor, vague as hell as to specific implications. For all involved, Cesium and Iodine are completely different, as is Strontium, etc.

What's more, things look a lot less freaky when you start looking at these activities in terms of an equivalent mass. Still not good, but at least more specific in terms of "how much". And you can correspond activity to a mass!

Each radioisotope has it's own rate of decay, and consequently a specific activity which corresponds to how much activity is going to occur for a certain mass of that isotope. The shorter the half-life, the faster the decay, and the more activity you get per mass. For instance:

Cesium-137, the baddie that gets all up in your muscles and elsewhere, has a half life of around 30 years, and a specific activity of about 3.2 TBq/g.

Iodine-131, the nasty one which buggers your thyroid relentlessly, has a half life of about 8 days even, and a specific activity of about 4600 TBq/g.

So, the figures from the article above would amount to approximately 150 micrograms (µg) of I-131 per hour, and about 43 milligrams (mg) of Cs-137 per hour. Still not anything you'd want to ingest/breathe/huff out of a paper bag, but at least now you can wrap your head around it (or wrap the bag around your head).

But, if you got bummed out that you now aren't feeling scared enough:

:glow2:HOLY SHIT 154 TRILLION DECAYS PER SECOND PER DAY:glow2:

Addendum:

Keep in mind that this stuff is decaying at the same time as it is being released. The overall amount of this shit in the atmosphere is not merely a function of how much is being released. Clearly this is a bigger problem with stuff like the relevant Cesium and Strontium isotopes, which have half-lives around 30 years. Iodine levels will drop off faster, and everything is dispersing. The modeling to predict long term impacts is a drawn out affair which depends on a lot of physical and biological factors! Given the level of analysis presented by this sort of article, the sort of extrapolation available to the common Joe or Taro is on the level of speculation at best. Even amongst experts, the difference between doomsday and what amounts to a statistic increase in cancer is something of a matter of opinion, rather than a definite answer at this point. Similar to global warming, and the impact of excessive antibiotic use and fertilizers, the answers get vague as you widen the scope of your prediction, but in general it can be qualified as "bad". Still, that doesn't mean we can't mitigate our problems if everyone starts to look at things with a critical eye, and assess what can be done on a personal level. Raising awareness is an important first step in that, but it must be done in a way which leads to questions, and not just conclusions which preclude any course of action other than freaking the fuck out.

[omae mona]

[cstaylor]

I am disappointed that I am still missing some key information, though. Is the above scenario actually happening? Are they actually shipping vegetables that were over safety limits until they were washed? And if so, are they shipping washed or unwashed product? If anybody has this information, I would appreciate it.

As I said when I posted earlier... "A responsible party with an interest in downplaying the information (JA)"

I think they're betting on two things:

[1] Cancer probabilities from DNA damage won't appear for at least 15~30 years, so most of the grandpa farmers that have much to gain from selling their produce will be long dead before any lawsuits or investigations begin in earnest.

[2] A very liberal reading of the Linear Threshold Model for the effects of radiation exposure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_model

The Japanese government is fumbling this big time. They should be collecting all of the produce from affected areas and destroying it regardless of the results from scanning it for radiation. Reimburse the farmers for their lost crop from public taxes.

The efficiencies from handling this in a systematic manner far outweigh any spot profits to be made from selling questionable produce at discounted prices. Do the farmers really care if they get paid, one way or the other?

[Coligny]

SJ, I think a lot of us have got to know each other fairly well on the board and one of the reasons to come back is because there are some good people here. I've been lucky enough to meet Omae Mona in Tokyo and can confirm he is a very decent, funny bloke and a family man with an intelligent grasp of life in Tokyo.

Don't go reverse ad hominem on us, the problem is not OM, it's the anal retentiveness level of questionning and linked rethoric on questions for which he should have considered himself lucky to get anything more than "fuck you, I buy my vegetables from where I want" as an answer after the 2nd time asked.

[Coligny]

The Japanese government is fumbling this big time. They should be collecting all of the produce from affected areas and destroying it regardless of the results from scanning it for radiation. Reimburse the farmers for their lost crop from public taxes.

That would have been the correct way to handle the situation: "we don't know, so let's kill it with fire"... now... TIJ...

[cstaylor]

That would have been the correct way to handle the situation: "we don't know, so let's kill it with fire"... now... TIJ...

"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. "

[Typhoon]

. . .

[2] A very liberal reading of the Linear Threshold Model for the effects of radiation exposure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_model

. . .

Aside from other considerations, the Linear Threshold Model continues to persist despite being wrong.

The phenomena of radiation hormesis - the [surprising] beneficial effects of low level radiation - is now experimentally and empirically well documented.

http://goo.gl/3LgOE

http://goo.gl/dTXMO

http://goo.gl/X5wuc

http://goo.gl/3zrRm

[MaxPower]

"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. "

NICE!

[Mulboyne]

[nikoneko]