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I don't think chiding and mocking the OP for three pages are doing a lot for the people of Japan or making for very intelligent discussion about the situation, but hey what do I know?

v8r wrote:I have tritium sights on my handgun do you think I will be alright.......I guess if the radiation gets to me bad enough I could always just shoot myself with it.

All kidding aside, Japan and it's people have more important things to worry about than a stupid consumer product for the United States.

Exactly.

The really sad part is that people here in the US are trying to make this about them though the sensationalism and people rushing out buying Duct Tape and Plastic. :rolleyes:

It's not about us, it's about Japan.

A few years ago I stopped at my brother in law's work site. A scrap yard, I noticed a meter on the wall by the scales that every truck had to check in at. It checked for radiation. I don't think there will be any problems.

DMgangl wrote:Wow, it took 28 replies to get a comic book joke out of this thread. And while we are on the topic. Its been 25 years since Chernobyl, am I the only one disappointed that no one has any super powers yet?
DM

My family fled three mile island - I've been waiting for my super powers ever since.

DMgangl wrote:Wow, it took 28 replies to get a comic book joke out of this thread. And while we are on the topic. Its been 25 years since Chernobyl, am I the only one disappointed that no one has any super powers yet?



DM

They have secret identities and they don't like the limelight.

SWEET! I dont need a moon glow manix now, Im just going to buy irriadiated knives from Japan.

npueppke wrote:I don't think chiding and mocking the OP for three pages are doing a lot for the people of Japan or making for very intelligent discussion about the situation, but hey what do I know?

Guilty as charged. My footprints are not as shiny as they ought to be.

Apologies to the OP.

Now I know what happened...Radioactive meltdown.....
[img][IMG]http://i991.photobucket.com/albums/af33 ... Dipper.jpg[/img][/IMG]....Doc :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvyxc5Dw ... re=related
I think everybody on the west coast of USA should be worried ! Even wiseacres talking about bananas ,body radiation ,normal enviromental radiation ,sun radiation .I really think they don't understand what is going on ! If they think it is that safe then they should go to Japan to pour water in the reactors and then talk about bananas ! Now 2 or 3 of the reactor cores (rods) are melting and the containment is breached .They pour sea water directly, which sea water then evaporates with the fusion products which are highly radioactive . Cesium and strontium have half -lives more than you can imagine ,And if there is complete melt down there will be fire ,which will channel the fusion products in the atmosphere . Please watch the video and the info below .

While I understand that the word 'radiation' strikes fear into a lot of people, and acknowledge that high levels of gamma radiation are a bad thing. I think the point people here are making is that we have to put everything in proportion. Half-life is just one factor that you have to consider when assessing nuclear risk - others are distance from the source and the size of the source ... then you can start to work out your risk. For instance, if you double your distance from the source you don't just halve your dose - you square-root it - so the dose you receive reduces *massively*. Considering the vast distance between Japan and the US I'd say that there is no risk to America - even those in Hawaii.

As has been said, those people working on the reactor are at greatest risk. When Chernobyl blew (and remember that this is not a good comparison on scale because Chernobyl was so much worse) the deaths were all of people who were actually sent to work on the open reactor core. There were issues later to do with an increased risk to children within a certain radius of the plant contracting illnesses but I believe this could have been better mitigated had the Russian authorities given out drugs immediately or evacuated them. A little further out from the plant there has been little or no effect to the people or wildlife.

There were actually a few reports that suggested that people outside the immediate fall-out zone were healthier than the national average. If you draw a graph of radiation dose against a scale of likelihood of contracting radiation-linked diseases you find that it is basically a straight line - the more you get, the more likely you are of getting a radiation-linked disease. But at lower levels the line does not cross the 0,0 point ... it deviates to show that tiny doses of radiation actually decreases your risk of contracting some illnesses.

navajasound wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvyxc5Dw ... re=related Please watch the video and the info below .

Yup, the lunatic fringe is alive and well and as batty as ever.

navajasound wrote:If they think it is that safe then they should go to Japan to pour water in the reactors and then talk about bananas ! Now 2 or 3 of the reactor cores (rods) are melting and the containment is breached .They pour sea water directly, which sea water then evaporates with the fusion products which are highly radioactive . Cesium and strontium have half -lives more than you can imagine ,And if there is complete melt down there will be fire ,which will channel the fusion products in the atmosphere . Please watch the video and the info below .

AFAIK, the reactor cores are closed, the reactors are shut down(scrammed), and the fuel rods themselves are not getting any hotter (control rods have been removed), so the issue here is basically playing "hot potato" with the heat escaping from the core while the exothermicity winds down. Now, some radioactive air has been vented from the cores to keep the overall pressure down, but we are talking about nothing officially greater than trace amounts once off the plant premises. Also, I haven't heard much about the Strontium-90, but Iodine-131 and Cesium-137 have been detected in small amounts outside the plant and trace amounts further away. As long as

Also, FYI, these are fission products, not fusion products.

My primary concern for the plant is if they don't manage to get a handle on the spent fuel pools. I hear that at least one of the pools is dangerously low and if they don't find a way to handle it, the cesium levels at the plant will become too dangerous to work around. That said, the old fuel rods have not completely melted down yet, though they are leaking some Cesium-137.

Oh, BTW, I would happily carry an irradiated knife as long as it wasn't irradiated enough to make me sick. I know, I'm a sick puppy, but that's how I feel.

Now regarding the people of Japan, hope prayer and well-wishing are about all I have to offer. I wish I could do more.

Buy one of these and you can check them to make sure!

Did he somehow miss the part about this not even being possible to be as bad as Chernobyl, which didn't irradiate the US either?

Evil D wrote:Did he somehow miss the part about this not even being possible to be as bad as Chernobyl, which didn't irradiate the US either?

Didn't even irradiate most of Europe either - even the bits right under the cloud. Sure it was detectable but so is the background radiation of the Universe and nobody is worried about that either

Yeah and to this day Chernobyl is literally soaked with radiation, just a few inches under the soil, but it isn't effecting anyone else. Like everyone has said, the big concern here is for Japan and their people, not how this is going to effect us. If you really want to be concerned about how this will effect the US, you need to think more along the lines of how it will impact our (and the world's) economy.

Evil D wrote:If you really want to be concerned about how this will effect the US, you need to think more along the lines of how it will impact our (and the world's) economy.

Exactly ... the world's third largest economy has virtually ground to a half while they have rolling blackouts. Key workers will have been lost too. I heard most of the major Japanese manufacturers we all depend on in some way (Toyota, Nikon, Canon ... you name it) they are all on hold Their stocks will be falling and this will impact investments ... none of it is good.

Did anyone suffer any here in the states from radiation from the atomic bombs we dropped on Japan during WWII......just saying. Not making light of the situation, but the American people don't need to worry. They need to pray for there fellow humans in Japan. Those men are brave over there doing their absolute best to try and keep the situation under control. They have more guts than most people I know not to mention a sense of honor. They go in with full knowledge that they will most definitely give the ultimate price or suffer greatly.

is this thread still happening? yeesh.

i thought i'd be eating horse meat by now. :p :D