This is one tiny piece of a lot of troubling fukushima news http://www.okcfox.co...

cbennett · on Oct 20, 2013

And the bad news gets worse, this is from yesterday:

"Officials of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said on Friday they detected 400,000 becquerels per liter of beta ray-emitting radioactive substances - including strontium - at the site, a level 6,500 times higher than readings taken on Wednesday, NHK World reported."

"On Wednesday TEPCO said it had detected high levels of radiation in a ditch leading to the Pacific Ocean, and that it suspected heavy rains had lifted contaminated soil."

We are talking about some non-zero (lets just say integer) chance of global catastrophe if the oxgenation of the Pacific ocean is disrupted by mass radioactive spoiling of biomass. I don't understand why a concerted organisation of nuclear engineers and assistants are not stepping in to avert what could be game over for Japan in general, to say nothing of cascading affects across the oceans and N. Hemisphere in general.

http://rt.com/news/fukushima-high-radioactivity-well-335/

Pitarou · on Oct 20, 2013

> We are talking about some non-zero (lets just say integer) chance of global catastrophe if the oxgenation of the Pacific ocean is disrupted by mass radioactive spoiling of biomass.

Well, the trees on-site are still green.

I'm not trying to minimise the problem. I know there's a lot of uranium in there. But not enough to sterilise an ocean.

skore · on Oct 20, 2013

> I know there's a lot of uranium in there. But not enough to sterilise an ocean.

Well, that's certainly reassuring.

Pitarou · on Oct 20, 2013

Glad you think so.

;-)

andor · on Oct 20, 2013

Fukushima is very troubling, but at least it was only an accident. The overfishing mentioned in the article is systemic.

functional_test · on Oct 20, 2013

The article also mentioned the other effects of the tsunami: telephone poles, styrofoam, pieces of buildings, etc. were all still floating. Again, an accident, but it's hard to deny that it's preventable; at least one town was saved by a sea wall that was relatively inexpensive to build [1].

That said, overfishing is probably the worse problem since it's not tractable to enforce regulations (since police aren't on site to ensure that there isn't too much "extra" catch thrown back, etc.). At least it would be possible to mandate the construction of seawalls.

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386978/The-Japanese...

iterationx · on Oct 21, 2013

The radiation is ongoing and cumulative. You speak about it as if its something that has happened and is over.