At least no more so than any other rabbit. Yes, it is made up of atoms, which include a nucleus. Yes, it does get its energy indirectly from the sun, which is nuclear. Yes, the elements that compose it were created in nuclear reactions in ancient stars. Yes, it is radioactive, due to potassium-40 and carbon-14.

(Direct link for those who can’t view embedded videos)

But other than that, there’s nothing “nuclear” about this rabbit.

A media frenzy followed the posting of the above video which was accompanied with the following description (translated to English):

After the incident, while the government was reporting there were no immediate health effects and evacuation was unnecessary, those of us in Namie weren’t being given any information about what was going on.

I thought I was going to be silenced in some cover-up between the national and prefectural governments. I was working outside at home when the #3 reactor exploded and my face and throat were scalded. I thought I was going to die at any moment.

I continued to feed my rabbits the grass from outside of my house, and sometime after the rabbit with no ears was born. It was the first deformity I have ever seen with my rabbits. Rabbits reproduce faster than humans, and so perhaps this is a vision of the children that will be born after this incident.

Why this doesn’t actually mean anything:
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When it comes to “renewable energy” some ideas work better than others.   At least with wind and solar power energy can be generated – it’s expensive and you don’t get much of it, but working poorly is at least better than not working at all.  There are other ideas which just plain won’t work.   Some of these fall into the category of free energy or perpetual motion.   Others are somewhere between unworkable and impossible.

Here’s a new one (at least to me):  barometric pressure energy.   Point of fact you could gather a tiny amount of energy from changes in local barometric pressure, if you had a large enough piston to move every time the air pressure changes.  This idea, however, is based on the concept of using pipelines to connect distant areas.    (and I don’t mean wind power, which in a sense, does work in this manner)  When these areas have different barometric pressure, air will flow through the pipeline and spin a turbine.

Or at least that’s the idea…

Via “Cold Energy Technology”:

ACM is a system for the generation of energy based upon differences in the atmospheric pressure at geographically spaced sites, and comprises at least one long conduit – in the order of many miles long. In operation, the air flow in the conduit will accelerate to a high velocity wind without the consumption of any materials and without the use of any mechanical moving parts. A power converter, such as a wind turbine, in the conduit converts the high wind velocity generated by even small pressure differences into energy of any desired type.

The opposite open ends of the conduit are located at geographically spaced sites, selected on the basis of historical information indicating a useful difference in barometric pressure. A plurality of conduits, each having open ends in different geographically spaced sites, may be interconnected to maximize the existing pressure differences, and will produce higher and more consistent levels of energy production. The ACM conduit configuration of the invention can transform even barometric pressure differences in the order of one tenth pound per square inch into wind velocities in the sonic range.

Now who wants to explain why this absolutely will not work?

Recently a story has been making the rounds about how the elderly in Japan (or at least some of them) are now are volunteering to help clean up the Fukushima nuclear plant. It’s the kind of story which tugs at the heartstrings, implying self-sacrifice for the greater good.

Via the BBC:

Japan pensioners volunteer to tackle nuclear crisis
The Skilled Veterans Corps, as they call themselves, is made up of retired engineers and other professionals, all over the age of 60.

They say they should be facing the dangers of radiation, not the young.

It was while watching the television news that Yasuteru Yamada decided it was time for his generation to stand up.

No longer could he be just an observer of the struggle to stabilise the Fukushima nuclear plant.

The retired engineer is reporting back for duty at the age of 72, and he is organising a team of pensioners to go with him.

For weeks now Mr Yamada has been getting back in touch with old friends, sending out e-mails and even messages on Twitter.

Volunteering to take the place of younger workers at the power station is not brave, Mr Yamada says, but logical.

“I am 72 and on average I probably have 13 to 15 years left to live,” he says.

“Even if I were exposed to radiation, cancer could take 20 or 30 years or longer to develop. Therefore us older ones have less chance of getting cancer.”

Mr Yamada is lobbying the government hard for his volunteers to be allowed into the power station. The government has expressed gratitude for the offer but is cautious.

Certainly a couple of MPs are supporting Mr Yamada.

While there is some truth to the claim that older individuals are at less risk from ionizing radiation, due to the fact that there are fewer years left in their life for cancer to develop, I’m still going to say that this is a BAD idea. The danger to workers really is not radiation. Even the workers with the highest exposure have not gotten anywhere near the point of acute radiation poisoning and only increase their lifetime cancer risk by a trivial amount. At this point the reactors are stable and it’s highly unlikely that a major radiation-related accident will occur.

There are dangers, however. The one fatality to occur at Fukushima since the earthquake was a man in his 50’s who died of an apparent heart attack. That risk, along with the risk of general workplace accidents is much greater than the risk of radiation. The elderly are not suited for the kind of work that is needed. Long days, no air conditioning or creature comforts and heavy lifting are the kind of things that quickly will leave an elderly person fatigued or worse, cause a heart attack, stroke or other health problem. Worrying about these health issues and potentially having to treat those who succumb to the stresses or simply reach the point of exhaustion is likely to cause enough of a problem to outweigh any contribution by older workers.

It’s also not clear whether these retirees are actually up to the task of doing the work when it comes to skill and ability. Some may be engineers or former nuclear workers, but they are long out of practice and may not be familiar with newer instruments and procedures. In the years since retirement, vision, reflexes and hearing may have degraded. At this point it would be a burden to do all the retesting and retraining that might be necessary to bring retirees back to work in this kind of setting, even if they had worked there in years past.

To be perfectly frank, someone who is not necessarily in the best of health or may have impaired vision, hearing, balance or reflexes can be downright dangerous in this kind of work environment.

So, therefore, to demonstrate that I don’t actually think there is any radiation danger to worry about, and I stress NOT because I feel brave or want to make any kind of self-sacrifice, I offer to go help with the cleanup.   Really, if they need people that bad, I’ll do it.   Granted, I don’t speak Japanese and don’t have any direct experience, but if they need someone to power wash pavement, lug around equipment, dig through debris or that kind of thing, fine, I’ll do it.  I’m not afraid – not even slightly.

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Lets get something straight:  No matter how much I disagree with a group or person I’ll support their right to protest.  By protest I mean hold rallies, demonstrate, wave banners, hand out leaflets, run advertisements, arrange boycotts and run petition drives.   Even groups I completely hate have the right to do these things.

Going onto property that does not belong to you and blatantly destroying it is not protest.   It’s vandalism, trespassing and theft.  Except in rare circumstances where a group is denied the right to express themselves otherwise and is actively oppressed, such measures are simply not justified and intolerable.

It is even more intolerable when the action comes as a result of the fact that the group is sore about the fact that they tried to stop something legitimate from happening and failed.

This is what happened in England, Belgium and elsewhere by groups which still thinks they are persecuted and can’t seem to wrap their mind around the fact that it’s the job of the police to stop them from doing this.   Perhaps I should show them how this works if the tables are turned.  Since I disagree with these people maybe I should assert my right to burn down their houses in “protest” of their view?

It’s amazing how tolerant society is of these bastards. They actually stand there and hold a press conference after breaking the law. I wonder if a bank robber could get away with setting up a podium after an armed robbery and then taking questions from the press on what he intends to spend the loot on.

This is also a classic example of fear and ignorance driven action. These people can’t understand what these crops are even all about and only know that their leaders told them to be afraid of them and destroy them before it’s too late. The developers of these crops must be evil and the crops themselves are horrible entities which must be destroyed. It’s sad but even as religion fades in much of Europe, the exact same kind of demonic thinking seems to have been applied elsewhere.

The potatoes in question are a variety that is now being tested after years of research and development. They are modified to make them resistant to damage by fungus, commonly known as blight. This is the fungus that decimated potato crops in the 1800s and lead to the Great Irish Potato Famine. Today blight no longer threatens populations with starvation but is still a major problem for potatoes, especially in Europe. Selective breeding has given potatoes some resistance to the fungus and every year huge amounts of fungicide are used to keep it in check. Still many tens of millions of Euros are lost annually.

Via Biofortified:

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It has been widely claimed that coal mining in industrial countries like the United States is reasonably safe.   That may be true, at least relatively speaking, when it is compared to decades past or to mining in countries like India and China, where deaths due to mining accidents are almost routine.   In the United States, mining accidents that kill more than a couple of miners are relatively rare.  On average about thirty miners die in the US each year.   That’s quite a few, but still pales in comparison to the early 20th century when hundreds died annually.

Yet there is another danger to miners that is less obvious.  It does not kill in one fowl swoop, but rather results in chronic deterioration of respiratory health and years of suffering that often leads to death. Coalworker’s pneumoconiosis, commonly known as “black lung” is the condition caused by the inhalation of coal dust. The dust builds up in the lungs and accumulates to a degree that the body cannot remove it. The damage caused by the coal dust can result in inflammation, chronic bronchitis, progressive massive fibrosis and eventually respiratory failure.

One might expect that in the modern era of coal mining, a condition like black lung would have been conquered by improved workplace safety practices. After all, we now have a good idea of what the hazards are and techniques like dust control, proper ventilation and the use of respirators are now widely available.

Sadly, despite some improvements, black lung remains common in coal miners even in the United States today. This disturbing fact was reenforced by the disaster that occurred at the Upper Big Branch mine last year. An explosion at the mine resulted in the death of 29 miners. Of those killed, twenty five of the bodies received full autopsies, with seventeen of them found to have been suffering from some degree of black lung at the time of death.

This is a huge proportion, approximately 75%, and while it is only a small sample from one facility, the implications are extremely disturbing. Most unsettling is that some of the miners with the condition were relatively young and had only been working in the mine a few years, indicating that even the most recent safety practices are inadequate and underscoring the severity of the exposure even in a short period of time.

Via Reuters:

Black lung disease seen rising in U.S. miners
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Via Bridgeport News:

Greenpeace to continue to campaign for a coal free future for Bridgeport
The seven protesters who hung a 40 x 20 foot banner off the Bridgeport Harbor Generating Station in February, urging its owner, PSEG, to make the switch from polluting power to clean energy have had their case heard in a Bridgeport court this morning.

“We are pleased the case has been resolved, so we can continue with the crucial work the community in Bridgeport has underway to shut down this 50 year old plant. It’s past time for PSEG to close the coal plant and move to renewables, just as it has in other states,” said Greenpeace Coal Campaigner Robert Gardner.

The Bridgeport plant currently emits 1.4 million tons of carbon dioxide, 951 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 1,273 tons of sulfur dioxide.

“Continuing to operate Bridgeport Harbor Generating Station is a serious problem for public health that is harming the community and the economy of Bridgeport,” Gardner said. “Nationwide, smokestack pollution from coal-fired power plants kills more than 13,000 people per year according to the Clean Air Task Force — that’s one person every forty minutes.

“What’s more, in the past five years alone PSEG has paid $298,000 in enforcement actions to the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act for the Bridgeport Plant. PSEG is neither a good neighbor nor a responsible member of the community,” Gardner said.

Each of the activists had their charges reduced to an infraction — Creating a Public Disturbance — and contributed $500 to the Connecticut Victim Compensation Fund, as well as paying a minimal fine and court fees.

Well I can’t really argue with the target here. I myself am very familiar with the Bridgeport Harbor Generating Station. I’ve written about it before. I live downwind from it, though thankfully not right next to it. The generating station runs on a combination of coal and heavy oil, though since oil prices have gone up it has burned nearly exclusively coal. It lacks any scrubbers or major pollution control systems and can be seen blowing out filthy smoke almost every day.

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We know the approximate dosage that workers at Fukushima have been exposed to is not extremely high.  All but 28 workers have been exposed to less than 100 mSv, while only two workers have been exposed to levels as high as 170 mSv.  Thus far, nobody has been exposed to more than 250 mSv.

This is really not much radiation at all.  It’s more than the average person is exposed to and is more than nuclear plant workers are normally exposed to under normal operating conditions.   Still, 100 mSv is only about 10% of the minimum dose required to cause even minor, temporary radiation sickness.

Despite hazardous conditions, there have been no life-threatening injuries at the Fukushima plant since the quake and tsunami hit on March 11.  The worst case that workers might face is a slightly elevated risk of cancer in the years to come, although even that is not a certainty, and as it stands, even those exposed to the highest doses would have only a tiny increase in total risk.

So why on earth would anyone make a fuss about a worker being exposed to 17.55 mSv?   That level may be bellow the (extremely conservative) standards for exposure under normal operations, but it’s not high at all.  It’s not high enough to cause any detectable health problems.   It’s about the same exposure someone might get from a few CT scan examinations.

The reason everyone is all bothered is that the person in question had two X chromosomes.

Via Fox Business:

TOKYO -(Dow Jones)- Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501.TO) said Wednesday that one of its female employees at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was exposed to radiation exceeding three times the legal limit of 5 millisieverts in a three-month period, Kyodo News reported.

The woman, who is in her 50s, has no health problems, but the government’s nuclear safety agency said that two more female workers may also have been exposed to radiation in excess of the limit. The agency called on the utility to investigate the reason and take measures to prevent a recurrence.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told a press conference the situation was “extremely deplorable,” but added that all female employees had left the radiation-leaking plant on March 23.

According to the plant operator and the agency, a total of 19 female Tokyo Electric employees were working at the six-reactor complex following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami hit the plant, and one of them was exposed to a total of 17.55 millisieverts of radiation.

The woman was found to have suffered more internal than external radiation exposure, with the internal exposure reaching 13.6 millisieverts.

Another agency official said that TEPCO needs to explain why the worker suffered so much internal exposure.

TEPCO and the agency said that the woman had been refueling fire trucks and working inside a building on site. She had been wearing a mask, but may have inhaled radioactive material when putting it on or taking it off.

An TEPCO official acknowledged during a press conference that its radiation-dose management should have been more stringent.

Under Japanese law, radiation workers are not permitted to be exposed to more than 100 millisieverts over five years, or more than 50 millisieverts in one year.

For female workers, the limit is 5 millisieverts in a three-month period, considering they may become pregnant. For the general public, the limit is 1 millisievert per year, excluding exposure from medical procedures.

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You have probably seen photos from Japan that show people walking around wearing surgical masks  The implication of these photographs would seem to be that there’s a need for residents of Japan to protect themselves from fallout from the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant incident.

Some of these individuals may indeed be wearing such masks because of a belief that the masks will provide protection from fallout, but that does not tell the whole story.   The Japanese like to put on masks of this type pretty much any time anything in the enviornment is supposed to be harmful.   If there are reports of high pollen levels, the Japanese put on their masks.  If it’s cold season, they put on their masks.  When the air quality might be a little off, they put on their masks.    In many cases, they don’t even need a reason to put on a mask.

Just as in the West, yuppies will down bottles of expensive designer water, eat “organic” certified produce or down huge numbers of vitamin-C tablets, the surgical mask in much of Asia is supposed to promote good health in general and do all kinds of other things that it probably does not.

Asian Surgical Mask Culture:

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Only on rare occasions do I ever take down a post that I have made on this site. This is one of them.

While I continue to stand by the conclusion of the post, that workers at Fukushima face a small risk of increased cancer and that there is a low likelihood that any will die as a result, I had to reconsider the quality of the post.

Simply put: There was at least one basic mathmatical error in it, and many of the estimates and numbers given were just too hazy.  Too many of the “best guesses” were not good enough and the avaliable data was too sparse to go very far with.  

Upon giving the issue more thought, I simply decided that the post was too speculative, too vague and not of a high enough quality to put out there, especially with the potential that it could be cited by others and spread information which may ultimatey be proven false.

I apologize to readers for publishing something that, upon better consideraton, probably should never have been published.  I have been quick to critisize the media for over-speculation in areas where there is not enough data avaliable.

That said, I hipe to have a similar post on the risks to Fukushima workers in the near future.  It will require substansially more research and consideration than the previous one.

Fear of nuclear energy is common in most of the Western world, but nowhere are more people more terrified of nuclear energy than in Germany.   Following the German reunification, anti-nuclear groups mounted a campaign of fear that has been more successful than anywhere else in the world.  The message was aided by the recent memory of both Chernobyl and of the decades of fear during the Cold War, when Germany was seen as the most likely battleground in a nuclear war.

In 2000, the coalition government of the German Green Party and Social Democratic Party announced that nuclear power would be completely phased out in Germany by 2020.   In the following years, several nuclear power plants were closed as part of the mandatory termination of nuclear power generation.   While the official party line was that the phase-out of nuclear energy would result in its replacement with renewable energy sources, the reality is that Germany instead increased both coal and natural gas generation capacity and electrical imports.   Huge wind and solar power projects were built, but resulted in only insignificant base load power capacity.

As a result, by 2010, Germany was facing the potential for a catastrophic shortage of electricity.   New coal burners and international transmission lines were not being built fast enough to replace the nuclear power stations that were slated for mandatory closure.   It is therefore no surprise that the government announced changes to the planned phase-out which would allow for nuclear power plants to continue to operate past the initial limits.

Not surprisingly this resulted in a very strong backlash from both radiophobic Germans and anti-nuclear energy special interests.   Still, despite the terror that so many Germans have been conditioned to respond to nuclear energy with, the extension seemed preferable to sitting in the dark or huffing down even more coal fumes.

Then came Fukushima.  As public support for nuclear energy was already hanging by a thread, the panic and fear that came as a result of Fukushima seems to have pushed things back over the edge.  Having now seen major losses in regional elections, the German government now seems to be ready to concede to a national phobia of nuclear energy.

Yet this time something is different.   The pervasive lie that “green” sources like wind and solar can power a major industrial nation is no longer as easily believed as it once, and with the potential for nuclear plants being retired in the near future, there it’s no longer possible to claim that wind and solar energy will be available by the time the plants are finally decommissioned.  In light of this, politicians are now starting to admit the truth:  phasing out nuclear energy will mean its replacement with fossil fuel – coal and gas.

To some extent, lip service is still being paid to the “renewable” sources.  That is both a political necessity and gives some measure of sugar-coating to the fact that this means more dirt burners. Even in a country terrified of nuclear energy, building more coal and gas capacity rubs enough people the wrong way that the claim that they are just “until renewable capacity is available” makes it a bit easier to swallow.

Via Reuters:
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