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Comment by sambeau | Hacker News Reader

These news stories say more about the incredible sensitivity of radiation sensors than they do about nuclear safety (or personal danger). Here, in the UK, radiation from Fukushima has been picked up in Glasgow and this 'fact' has been reported widely in the media here.

Reporting this is interesting for scientists but unnecessary and possibly disingenuous (to the point of misleading) for the wider public. It can only lead to a heightened sense of panic.

Obligatory analogy that I've just thought of: Just because a telescope can see an exploding supernova does not mean we are in any danger from its blast.

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In related news: scientists have discovered that an uncontrolled nuclear reaction over one hundred trillion times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb is releasing radiation of all known varieties, including lethal gamma radiation, and will result in the inevitable exposure of all of the earth's surface within the next twenty-four hours. Fallout is expected to reach San Francisco within eight minutes, and no known technology is capable of outrunning it, to say nothing of evacuating the entire city in time.

Scientists claim we are safe - but can they be trusted? We go to you live in Japan, historically believed to be the origin of this dangerous phenomenon.

It's a reaction so powerful you can see it with the naked eye.

However it's so dangerous, it can burn your eyes if you look at it too much.

If we were exposed directly (without magnetic shield), it really might not be so healthy? I think staying in space for too long is not healthy, either? Haven't researched it, though.

In any case these useless comparisons only make me not trust the pro-nuclear-power crowd, because their arguments are dishonest (comparing apples with oranges).

I think staying in space for too long is not healthy, either?

Space is uniformly lethal to unshielded humans within minutes and you have about a ~2% chance of dying on any attempt to get there, but yeah, in principle, that radiation is some scary shit!

I don't see the point of such remarks. Once you have solved the pressure and air problem, radiation becomes a problem, no? So what exactly is the meaningful content of your remark?

I probably get downvoted just for criticizing patio11, but seriously. If you stick a knife in your heart you die, therefore there are no serious dangers in the world? Because nothing can be as dangerous as sticking a knife in your heart?

Jumping from the Empire State Building is not dangerous, because if I were to stick a dagger in my heart halfway down I would be dead before hitting the ground?

I don't understand the point of your remarks, Tichy. All this talk of sticking a knife in your heart and jumping off the Empire State Building seem odd and a bit melodramatic. What are you trying to say, and why are you saying it?

I mean, obviously, everything is a little bit dangerous. Living inevitably leads to dying. Is that what you're getting at?

So I have to spell it out for you? The typical pro-nuclear-power rant goes like this: everything else is more dangerous than radiation, therefore radiation is not dangerous.

This is not valid logic, which I hoped to demonstrate by stating an absurd variant of that kind of logic.

> The typical pro-nuclear-power rant goes like this: everything else is more dangerous than radiation, therefore radiation is not dangerous.

You're misrepresenting the argument. The argument is that radiation is less dangerous than the alternatives. We basically don't have a choice but to use some form of power generation. It even helps feed us by creating fertilizer.

Citation: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Haber_process

So the logic is that, if we have little choice but to take some risk, we ought to take the smallest risk.

Obviously, we should push forward to advance all types of power generation, including things like wind & solar. I don't seriously think those can provide base load, but I would be very happy if scientists were able to prove me wrong, especially if they could manage that without rare earths, which tend to pollute the environment with radioactive sludge during mining.

Citation: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mountain_Pass...

"We basically don't have a choice but to use some form of power generation"

Humans seem to have done well for thousands of years without electricity. Just saying. Don't bother to reply with death rates and so on - it is a complex subject, but your generalization is definitely too simple. The fact is, there are lots of alternatives. Maybe we need nuclear power to sustain three TVs per household, though. Is it worth the price?

As for fertilizer, I can produce you some fertilizer without any help of nuclear power, too. I do it every day.

> Humans seem to have done well for thousands of years without electricity.

The problem is one of scale. There's no way you can produce enough so that people won't starve without some form of power (coal, natural gas, etc. work too, nuclear isn't the only option, just one of the better ones, and costs fewer lives than the alternatives).

For those thousands of years, we had a much, MUCH smaller population. Notice the spike in the world population graph:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/World_populat...

Also look under the "Forecast" section, where it lists estimated world population back to 70k BC. Which people should we permit to starve in order to reduce world population to that which is more readily sustainable?

I mean, that's basically our only other option. We wouldn't have gotten even this far without the Green revolution:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Green_revolut...

If we suppose that the 1750s levels are considered sustainable, then they had 791 million people, while the 2008 estimate is 6,707 million. Thus, we have to get rid of just under 6 billion? That's, very roughly, 6 out of every 7 people.

Ouch.

Or we can choose which types of power generation to use as best we can based on the risk:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so...

That said, I agree very much with the reply to this:

http://www.quora.com/Does-who-dies-matter-morally-when-asses...

Our goal should always be zero deaths. It's an impossible standard, but we still have to try. But please give the engineers some credit for trying.

So what do you reckon, what perecentage of current nuclear power output is used to feed people? Have you researched that, or are you just making broad statements?

I did not say that we should reduce population levels, just that there are always options (like reducing population levels). It is also an entirely differnent subject if whe should aim to maximize the amount of humans living on earth (not saying we shouldn't, but I don't think we can simply assume the answer is yes, there are pros and cons).

I haven't researched this, but aren't the majority of the current 6 Billion people in regions of the earth with bad infrastructure? If so, it seems likely that they are able to survive without nuclear power, just saying. In any case I am not yet convinced by your argument. I also don't think most power is directly used for saving people's lives. It is used to power factories for building SUVs and stuff like that.

In any case, population control is probably inevitable - no matter what cures or food sources or energy sources we'll find, humans will always outgrow them.

The nuclear power is used to take away demand from the power derived from oil & gas. You should be plenty aware of the problems, political and otherwise, with oil (Deepwater Horizon, that whole middle-east thing, etc.).

Most food is produced in places like the USA, which have good infrastructure. There are other issues there where Matthew's law comes into effect (specifically, the "poor get poorer" part of it) in undeveloped countries.

"The nuclear power is used to take away demand from the power derived from oil & gas."

That's not an answer as to what the power is used for. Your claim was that the nuclear power is necessary to sustain earth's population. Is that the case or not?

You appear to be confused. The argument is that power in general (rather than nuclear, specifically) is required to feed the world. I thought that obvious from the part I quoted (i.e. the statement that we could get by with no electricity), but it seems that you misunderstood.

Once "nothing" has been eliminated as an option for where we get power from, we move from there to the fact that nuclear is one of the safest options. Reducing our demand for the less safe power sources saves lives, but there are always tradeoffs.

Who dies, for example.

Probably one of the best things we could do would be to reduce coal usage with an increase in nuclear power. Several thousand people die each year in coal mine accidents alone. But they're mostly poor people in China, so the non-human costs (political, economic, etc.) have so far dominated.

The whole point is that we ought to do the best we can to make the most realistic tradeoffs possible and to avoid taking worthwhile options off of the table, especially when the largest risks are political.

No I am not confused - answer the question then, how much power is needed to feed the world, as it seems the most people live in places with bad infrastructure and therefore don't consume that much power after all. You could have answered simply by saying how much power per human is necessary, and give the fraction that is generated with nuclear power. Your claim was after all that we need all the power that is currently generated. It seems unlikely, because as I said, most people are not even in a position to use a lot of power atm.

Even if you claim that all their lives could be improved by access to electricity, by the time we could have built nuclear power plants everywhere, it might as well have been possible to reduce the population again. Remember, this is about options: your claim was that there are no other options than nuclear power plants. I am not saying we should reduce population numbers, just that there are certainly other options.

Except that, in order to be meaningful, "dangerous" must indeed be relative. Anything that happens to anyone at any time in their life is strongly correlated with death within the next 120 years, so your "absurd variant of that kind of logic" is also an absurd variant of the statement "drinking water is not dangerous."

At any rate. patio11 doesn't appear to be claiming that it would be safe if you went right up to the sun and sat there. The point he's making, AFAICT, is that the mere existence of a nuclear reaction or radiation somewhere is not cause for alarm, and can be quite beneficial. If you look at outer space and single out stellar radiation as the thing that will kill people, you must just be grinding an axe.

Somebody brought up the example of the sun to "prove" that radiation is not dangerous. I merely pointed out that we are protected by a magnetic field, so not all of the radiation reaches us. I don't see the relevance of pointing out that space kills you anyway, without radiation, hence my reaction.

For what it is worth, the article explicitly mentioned that the current levels of radiation is not dangerous. Yet the pro-nuclear crowd has to fall over themselves making up stupid examples of daily safe exposure to radiation.

For what it's worth, that kind of argumentation really is like saying "drinking water is safe, therefore we shouldn't worry about Tsunamis".

I wanted to believe the pro-nuclear-crowd for a while, but as I said, their useless comparisons make me lose faith. For starters they don't even seem to understand the difference between radiation and radioactive isotopes.

Edit: yes, isotopes, not particles, I was too lazy to look it up in the dictionary.

The "pro-nuclear crowd" has to fall over themselves showing examples of daily safe exposure because there is so much fear-mongering and disingenuous reporting occurring.

For example, A day or two ago, I saw a picture of a UK newspaper with a three inch headline blaring something along the lines of "JAPAN NUCLEAR FALLOUT REACHES UK". This headline easily took up half the page. Now, I'm sure this paper was a tabloid or rag and was just doing it to sell copies, but that doesn't make it okay. I mean, the paper is essentially exploiting the fact that lay people don't understand radiation very well. Even if the story contained within was accurate, the damage would already be done.

So you are worried that too many people on HN read tabloid newspapers? That doesn't seem very likely to me.

In any case the article here does not seem to fall into that category, yet the silly comparisons had to come out.

> For starters they don't even seem to understand the difference between radiation and radioactive particles.

Do you mean "radioactive isotopes" when you say "radioactive particles"? We usually refer to things like electrons and protons are particles (and beta particles, AKA electrons, are one type of radiation).

Unless you were trying to draw some distinction between high energy photons (gamma rays) and alpha/beta particles? I'm guessing not, because that would hurt your argument. After all, the sun emits tons of electrons via solar wind, which get caught up in the Earth's magnetic field.

Anyhow, I don't think you'll find many people here who don't know this stuff. If you're just trying to say that no analogy is perfect, well, I have to agree. I've never seen a perfect analogy either, though some are better than others.

Thanks for the clarification, I meant isotopes. My point was not "no analogy is perfect", my point was most analogies I have seen from the pro-nuclear crowd were stupid and insulting. Sorry I can't find better words for it. What haven't we read - from eating bananas to the sun, you name it.

Bananas and the sun are both radiation sources which pose little health risk to humans on Earth. Just like the radioactive isotopes detected in California.

(As opposed to humans in space, who would be in more serious danger of solar radiation.)

The reason people are trying to point that out is to help people become familiar with radiation. Familiar and intentional risks are less scary. If you want more info on that, I suggest reading Bruce Schneier's books.

That said, there are some people who have good reason to worry. For example, I'm very concerned about how long that plant worker was near the 1 Sv/hr water. I'm glad they're getting robots over there.

Thankfully, it doesn't seem to be more widespread than that. They're aware of the risks of contaminated food and are on guard. We've learned quite a bit since Chernobyl. The engineers will learn a lot here, too.

When you study engineering, the first thing they do is tell you horror stories about every major engineering disaster they can find. The Tacoma Narrows bridge video alone has probably been seen by almost every engineering student since 1941 or so.

My point is that, even if they're fighting to keep adequate containment on this plant following a worst-case scenario, the engineers won't let the same things happen again, provided they're allowed to upgrade the existing plants.

EDIT: Accidental italics.

And yet radioactivity from bananas does not seem to accumulate in the water supply of SF, or does it? Has there been a measurable increase in radioactivity in the SF water supply because of all the discarded banana peels?

The real newsworthy aspect of the Fukushima isotopes in SF is that Fukushima can affect the whole world. And who knows, maybe those isotopes can accumulate?

Not saying that I worry, just saying that there still seem to be fundamental differences between Fukushima isotopes (spreading and accumulating), bananas (seemingly not spreading so much, not sure about accumulating) and the sun (no isotopes?).

As I said, I think those comparisons just seem dishonest to me and make the pro-nuclear people lose credibility.

Also, the Tacoma bridge was built by engineers, too, and yet it broke down. Obviously engineers are not the infallible angels that you make them out to be.

>Has there been a measurable increase in radioactivity in the SF water >supply because of all the discarded banana peels?

Two things: I don't put banana peels down the drain; and, more importantly, there hasn't been a measurable increase in the radioactivity of the SF water supply... Rain water has radioactive isotopes in it. We've had a bit of rain, so our water supply has a drop in the bucket of basically-not-contaminated water. Given the short half-lives of most of the isotopes, our water supply will not be contaminated (in any meaningful sense of the word).

>And who knows, maybe those isotopes can accumulate?

Who knows? Hella people know. Like anyone who's taken basic science classes. They obviously will accumulate and then will radiate and change. Some may concentrate in tissues (e.g. the thyroid), but the starting concentrations are too low to make a difference.

>just saying

I noticed that you're German, so I hope you don't mind me pointing out that the "just saying" idiom is seen as signaling either ignorance (by asserting something while simultaneously disallowing rebuttal) or humor. As in, "I'm just saying that humans don't much seem like apes".

>fundamental differences between Fukushima isotopes (spreading and accumulating), >bananas (seemingly not spreading so much, not sure about accumulating) and the >sun (no isotopes?)

I agree. Bananas and the sun will be responsible for loads of deaths; Fukushima will not. The isotopes in bananas are also much worse because you ingest them: radioactive isotopes on the skin can be showered off; ones in your intestines ... not so much...

Also, paraphrasing the great Andre the Giant: you keep on using that word "accumulate", but I do not think you know what it means.

>Also, the Tacoma bridge was built by engineers, too, and yet it broke down. >Obviously engineers are not the infallible angels that you make them out to be.

I'm apparently an "infallible angel" and one of the best aspects of an engineering education is the notion of "tolerances". Nothing is perfect; everything is fallible. If you meet an engineer who thinks they're infallible, you can tell 'em that I said they were doing it wrong.

"The isotopes in bananas are also much worse because you ingest them: radioactive isotopes on the skin can be showered off; ones in your intestines ... not so much..."

Well you can ingest isotopes from nuclear power plants, too. For example the cesium from Chernobyl "accumulates" in mushrooms (I hope you can figure out what Imean by accumulate, don't know a better word for it), even today. In Germany they still shoot wild pigs and mark them unfit for human consumption because because they eat those mushrooms and hence become radioactive.

Anyway, nobody has claimed that the isotopes from Fukushima are endangering SF - yet. I apologize for misreading about water supply vs rain.

"one of the best aspects of an engineering education is the notion of "tolerances"."

People just seem to have different comfort zones. And there is always Murphy's law, as Fukushima demonstrated again (earthquake+Tsunami at the same time).

Quick crash course: there's two major kinds of radiation, actual particles (alpha and beta radiation, which are helium nuclei and electrons, respectively) and high-energy electromagnetic waves (gamma radiation: like x-rays on steroids). Radioactive isotopes (such as those coming from Fukushima) tend to emit both, as they decay into non-radioactive elements. So once an atom emits radiation, it's done radiating (unless it's decayed into another radioactive particle, but eventually it'll hit something stable and never radiate ever again).

So the isotopes arrive at some rate, and they decay into non-radioactive elements over time. (That's what the "8-day half-life" in the article means: after 8 days, only half of it will be left.) At some point, the Japanese engineers will get everything cleaned up, no more isotopes will arrive, and all isotopes will eventually decay.

Even if the Japanese take their sweet time getting things cleaned up, the isotopes are still decaying over time, so they won't accumulate unless the Japanese truly screw up and start releasing increasing amounts of isotopes.

The "time" can be thousands of years, though - maybe you forgot to mention that? Anyway, I don't claim there is a danger to the US.

Longer-lived isotopes produce proportionally less radiation. There are no fission isotopes with half-lives between ~1e2 and ~1e4 years.

Yeah well, they can still be dangerous. Otherwise, why don't they just wait it out in Fukushima? Atoms are very small, so even tiny amounts of matter contain a lot of them. So even if any single atom only emits radiation every couple of years, a tiny lump of matter can emit radiation more often than every couple of years, because there are so many atoms in it.

I accept the absolutely gigantic upside of this object. Good thing, too, since I never had a choice.

Btw there is a difference between radiation and radioactive isotopes. This article is about radioactive isotopes.

It's ironic that our ability to measure radiation with precision instruments is so very sensitive and precise.

The fear that radiation inspires comes directly from the way it can make you sick invisibly. Many people in the early atomic age without any instruments to detect radiation were poisoned invisibly and without warning by testing fallout and allowing worker and miner exposure to save money.

So we can measure this more closely than other kinds of danger but mistrust and invisibility still drive widespread panic.

Exactly. The magic of radioisotopes is that they decay at characteristic energies. With high resolution detectors, it's easy to identify the presence of the element even if the total background is much, much higher.

How is it known the radiation is from Fukushima?

That is a good point. We assume the radiation is from Fukushima because it's the simplest explanation for the recent increase in observed radiation.

...But if someone wanted to conduct secret nuclear testing that leaks a little fallout, this would be an ideal time.

Heck, based on the data shown, the increase in isotopes may even be random. It would need to be sustained longer over time before we can even begin to pinpoint a source, welcome to a small part of the scientific process: you need more data before you can even find a coloration! then you need to control something before you can even find causation.

Probably the specific isotopes detected. Iodine-131 in particular has a half-life of only eight days, so if you detect it you can be pretty sure it recently came out of a nuclear plant somewhere.

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