Every once in a while you read something that is not just wrong, but wronger than wrong, in fact, it’s not even wrong.�� Sometimes it’s so much worse than wrong it either makes you laugh at the ridiculousness of it or cry at the knowledge that people actually can believe it.

This is one of those cases.

From the Site “Hawaii Health Guide”:

Big Island Dairy Farmers fight radiation with Boron
An open letter from dairy farmers on the Big Island of Hawaii shares some solutions for working with radiation problems in milk.

Dear Milk Share Members,
Our goal to offer high quality safe food to our community has recently been challenged in the reality of the radioactivity being released into our environment. In the past weeks radioactive levels have increased in Hawaii, with high spikes and a more current leveling off of radiation levels. Milk from the large dairies in Hamakua and Hawi has shown elevated levels of radiation, from 400 to 2400 times the recognized safe levels.

Why is milk contamination significant in the world of agriculture? Because milk represents the overall condition of the entire food chain, since cows consume grass and are exposed to the same elements as crops. So, when milk tests positive for radiation, it indicates the entire food chain is contaminated since cows eat grass. When grass is contaminated everything grown in the same soil is contaminated. This has proposed a serious concern to us farmers, with us asking what can we do? After much consideration, research, and conversations with much appreciated experts in the field of biological farming and human & animal health, we have found some things which we are able to do to protect our soil, animals, and bodies.

But wait. It gets better. Here comes the best (or worst) part…

Aside from the much recognized supplement potassium iodine as a protection against radioactive iodine, there are a number of ways we can help. We have remembered our friend, elemental boron and the position it plays on the earth. Boron is the only mineral capable of accepting and ionizing radiation that never changes the innards or the nucleus of the cell. Spoken simply, boron can take radiation and release it without upsetting its own very delicate balance.

WTF? Accepting ionizing radiation that never changes the innards or the nucleus of the cell?

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Via the Associated Press (From Germany – Surprise Surprise!) (Presumably the dollar figure was translated from Euros for reprinting in the US)

Insurance cost vs. nuclear power risk
BERLIN — From the United States to Japan, it’s illegal to drive a car without sufficient insurance, yet governments around the world choose to run more than 440 nuclear power plants with hardly any coverage whatsoever.

In the United States, every nuclear power plant is required to maintain a minimum of $300 million in privately paid liability insurance. This is about the maximum that anyone can really hope to effectively get from private insurers, since much more would risk the insurance company itself would be unable to pay out. In addition to this, every plant operator pays into a shared risk insurance pool, which now totals over twenty billion dollars. Anything above that is government underwritten, since no private entity ever could guarantee such massive insurance burdens. Obviously these amounts are significantly higher than one could ever hope for most plant operators to ever be able to come up with on their own.

I don’t know the specifics of other countries, but most have some kind of insurance requirements.

Japan’s Fukushima disaster, which will leave taxpayers there with a massive bill, brings to the fore one of the industry’s key weaknesses — that nuclear power is a viable source for cheap energy only if it goes uninsured.

Governments that use nuclear energy are torn between the benefit of low-cost electricity and the risk of a nuclear catastrophe, which could total trillions of dollars and even bankrupt a country.

The bottom line is that it’s a gamble: Governments are hoping to dodge a one-off disaster while they accumulate small gains over the long-term.

It is a cheap source of energy even when heavily insured, which it generally is.

The Japanese have a huge bill from a Tsunami and earthquake. This may have been made worse by the fact that the government is continuing to enforce an unnecessary evacuation area, even after nearly all the iodine-131 in the reactors is gone, decay heat has been reduced and cooling is stabilized. But that’s the Japanese government’s fault if they want to continue to support the evacuation.

The cost of a worst-case nuclear accident at a plant in Germany, for example, has been estimated to total as much as $11 trillion, while the mandatory reactor insurance is only 3.7 billion.

11 trillion? Now you’ve gone from wrong to complete absurdity. You could completely destroy much of Germany and rebuild it all for less than that. We know. We’ve actually done it. Even if you adjust for inflation it comes nowhere close to $11 trillion. Even if you consider the increased costs of labor, infrastructure construction and the fact that there were costs that were locally-paid, it does not even come close.

I’d love to hear where this $11 trillion figure comes from. It’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.

From there on, the article pretty much says the same thing, claiming all nuclear plants should carry insurance for amounts of money that don’t even exist and adding in a few dramatic statements from “experts” on the matter.�� There is also the high and mighty claim that it’s unethical for a society to have to be burdened by the risk that a nuclear plant will suffer a cooling system failure and thus bankrupt superpowers.

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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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What would happen if you removed all herd immunity by intentionally creating a population of children who are not vaccinated, because their parents don’t believe in vaccination? What would happen if at a young age, when especially vulnerable to a disease like pertussis? What would happen if this highly contagious disease were then introduced to said population?

Pretty much what you’d expect to happen.

Via sethmnookin.com

This week, there is an example in Virginia of the ways in which a concentrated number of deliberately unvaccinated children can effect (or infect, depending on your perspective) the health of an entire region: Earlier today, The Roanoke Times reported that the Blue Mountain School, an “alternative� private school in Floyd County, had to shut down for a full week after twenty-three of its forty-five students came down with pertussis. According to the Times, every single one of those children was unvaccinated. The school’s administrator, Shelly Emmett, was quoted as saying, “Many of the families and staff at our school understand that some people choose not to vaccinate their children. We’re not requiring that they do.�

Emmett seems to be saying that the school’s administrators have decided they are exempt from Virginia law, which requires schools and day care centers to have documented proof that children have been vaccinated. (There are religious exemptions available in Virginia, as there are in 48 out of 50 states; Emmett’s quote implies that some, but not all, of the school’s unvaccinated students obtained such an exemption.)

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What country is going to win the award for being the stupidest in their response to the events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant?�� Could it be Australia, where ignoramuses who were more than 75 miles from the plant are whining about possible radiation poisoning?�� Could it be the United States, where idiots are frantically calling government officials to ask if its safe to go outdoors?�� How about China, where morons are buying salt thinking it will protect them from radioactive iodine?

Excuse my name calling, but the sheer stupidity of this is starting to really get to me.�� It seems that South Korea is now vying for the title of being the most radiophobic nation of complete and utter idiots by closing schools out of fear of radiation.

Via CTV:

SEOUL, South Korea — More than 100 South Korean schools have cancelled or shortened classes over fears that rain falling across the country may include radiation from Japan’s stricken nuclear plant.

The Education Office of Gyeonggi province said it allowed schools to decide whether to open Thursday.

The prime minister’s office said radiation levels in the rain were low and posed no health threat.

Still, officials said that 126 schools in Gyeonggi province, near the capital, Seoul, shut down and 43 others shortened class hours as a precaution.

The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said only a few schools outside Gyeonggi cancelled classes Thursday.

Radiation levels fall quickly as you move away from the source, and officials have cleared the 12-mile (20-kilometre) radius around Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex.

Recent progress at the plant — which was damaged by a March 11 tsunami — appears to have slowed the release of radiation into the ocean. This week, technicians there plugged a crack that had been gushing contaminated water into the Pacific. Contamination in waters off the coast has fallen dramatically since then.

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This is where the Linear Non-Threshold hypothysis has gotten us:

Via Al Jazeer (English):

‘No safe levels’ of radiation in Japan
Experts warn that any detectable level of radiation is “too much”.

Well that’s it. You can read the rest of the article if you like, but really you only need to read that far to get the point.

It’s pretty amazing who qualifies as an “expert” these days.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I just turned on a Geiger counter and it’s been making a few intermittent clicks due to detectable radiation. Apparently there are a lot of gamma ray photons whizzing by. I had better to panic.

There have been a number of downright shameful reports on the health consequences of the events at Fukushima-Daiichi, including this one, the worst I have seen yet from the Huffington Post:

Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant are rightfully being hailed as heroes. A glimpse into their lives shows the high price they are paying to stave off a nuclear catastrophe — 12 hour shifts, very little food, deplorable sleeping conditions and an expectation that some of or all of them will soon die. It’s heartbreaking and telling that industry insiders refer to them as glow boys despite their immense sacrifice.

The Daily Mail has reported:

Nuclear workers accept their fate ‘like a death sentence’
Fears for their health as one expert says it is ‘perhaps a suicide mission’

…

The radiation levels at the plant entrance are at a level which will either kill the workers soon or cause them appalling illnesses in the years to come.
Experts have said that the airtight suits they are wearing would do little to stop the contamination.

The group remained behind after 700 of their colleagues fled when radiation levels became too dangerous.

Their identities have not been revealed, but experts said they are likely to be working class front-line technicians and firemen who know the plant the best.

It is thought that mostly older men have volunteered because they have already had children – younger workers might be rendered infertile by the high radiation doses.

Whilst the men are called the Fukushima Fifty, the group is thought to actually be 200-strong. They are doing four shifts in rotation, working on restarting the cooling systems.

Their heart-rending messages home were made public yesterday by Japanese national television, which has interviewed their relatives.

One relative said: ‘My father is still working at the plant. He says he’s accepted his fate, much like a death sentence.’

While the Mirror Reports:

And as the group of 180 prepare to pay the ultimate price for their heroic “suicide mission�, the brave workers have been rushing out heartfelt messages to their distraught families.

One, his body being bombarded with soaring doses of radiation but refusing to give up the fight, wrote to his wife: “Please continue to live well, I cannot be home for a while.�

And the Daily Record States:

The 180 plant workers – dubbed the Fukushima 50 because they work in teams of 50 – know their lives could end in terrible agony from exposure to radiation levels.

Radiology expert Keiichi Nakagawa, at University of Tokyo Hospital, said: “I don’t know any other way to say it, but this is like suicide fighters in a war.”

And Dr Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist, said: “It’s got worse. We’re talking about workers coming into the reactor perhaps as a suicide mission and we may have to abandon ship.”

These are only a few of the reports in major media outlets of this nature. Even the normally respectable National Geographic has been throwing around terms like “suicide mission.”

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To get this out of the way, let me start off by stating my opinion on the military intervention by the US and NATO in Libya.� I think it’s a bad idea.� While it is certainly a concern that Muammar Gaddafi has been using tactics that include targeting civilian areas in an attempt to suppress rebellion, it does no mean that bombing the Libyan military ultimately helps the situation. The US should have learned by now that using military force to intervene and effect regime change in the Middle East is very expensive, in terms of money, lives and in the commitment of national assets.

The US and our NATO allies really don’t have any direct interest in what goes on in Libya. The country is not an eminent threat to us, although it is possible instability could result in higher oil prices if it begins to affect the rest of the region. We certainly do not want to commit to any kind of ground campaign. We’ve only recently managed to start getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan has become a conflict which lacks leadership or direction. Becoming involved in the conflict in Libya is a can of worms we don’t need to open, and the prospect of ground troops, even in the roll of “peace keeping” is not a situation we want to get into.

Not only that, but much as we dislike Muammar Gaddafi, supporting the overthrow of the government of Libya is not sure to work to the advantage of the US or other NATO countries. It’s anyone’s guess what might take hold in the power vacuum and whatever regime may come to replace him could be peaceful and democratic or even worse than Gaddafi.

So I will come down on the side of this is a bad idea. You may disagree, which is fine. This is a political issue that is sure to have a number of sides and arguments.

However, there is another issue that has been raised, which is scientific, not subjective: Depleted Uranium.

Has depleted uranium been used in the airstrikes against Libya?� I’d say probably not, because, at least in the US military, the use of depleted uranium munitions is normally confined to anti-armor kinetic energy rounds. However, depleted uranium has been used in the past to adjust the center of gravity or add weight and other munitions, and since the airstrikes have included the French, British and other forces, I can’t really say for certain whether depleted uranium was used in any of the bombs dropped. It’s remotely possible that it was, although it seems unlikely.

However, what I can say is this: It doesn’t matter. Because regardless of whether a bomb is ballasted with lead, tungsten or depleted uranium, it blows up just the same and kills in exactly the same way, by shrapnel, over pressure and heat. And regardless of what metal it might contain, the toxicity and environmental effect is roughly the same.

Apparently some don’t get this.
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This has got to be the stupidest thing I have read in a long long long time.�� I don’t mean to be the type who is constantly defending atheism or going after nutball Christians.�� However, I find this so ridiculously stupid I couldn’t leave it.

It’s from “Living Waters:”

It’s a frustrating time for atheists—they can’t blame God for tragedies, because they think there’s no evidence for God. Blaming Him would make as much sense as blaming Snow White for a snow storm.

I’m sorry I don’t see how that is frustrating. Earthquakes and snow storms just happen. I don’t feel the need to blame someone. Would it somehow be more satisfying to believe an all powerful God who we are supposed to love somehow got so pissed off at us that he decided to start causing pain for humanity?

But atheism would suggest that there is a good reason for Japan’s massive killer quake and the horrific tsunami that followed: it was nature making improvements. Everything is gradually getting better. People being crushed to death or drowned in a tsunami is just part of the work of nature.

No. Nature does not make things “better.” Nature just changes. It simply is. It has no intent or plan.

On the other hand, human civilization does often get better. It is because of this that less people died in this tragic event than would have had structures been built the way they were 50 years ago. Of course we can continue to get better, with better construction, better emergency medicine and better infrastructure. Hopefully the next time a major quake hits an industrial nation even fewer people will die.

Also, cancer, suffering, pain, and death are part of nature improving things through evolutionary change. It was evolution that improved nature when it gave the leap to the frog and the bark to the dog. It gave oxygen-enriched air to the lungs, wings to the bird, and brains to the nerd. It also gifted us with the four seasons, myriad colorful flowers, snow-capped mountains, cool running streams, music, love, and laughter. It all started with nothing, and over millions of years, here we are in this wonder called “life.â€� That’s evolution for you…making things better.

No. Evolution only acts on organisms, idiot.

Also, cancer and other diseases are just proof that evolution is not perfect. Evolution simply values a biological entity that usually lives long enough to pass on its genes. It does not require all aspects of that organism to function perfectly all the time. That’s why we have cancer.

Or did god just screw up while he was laying out cell biology?

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There’s no doubt that the situation at the Fukushima Nuclear plant is serious, although efforts to stabilize the situation are continuing to progress. As time goes on, the level of decay heat produced by the reactor cores diminishes and active cooling becomes less critical. At the same time, short-lived radioisotopes continue to decay away, reducing the severity of potential core discharges. Local radiation continues to spike due to venting of the cores and problems with keeping water in the spent fuel pools.

Still, the worst case scenario for the plant would be limited to a relatively localized event. Even if all of the reactors at the plant experienced a complete failure of all levels of containment and all spent fuels experienced fires, there would still be zero danger of acute radiation sickness to anyone who was not in the immediate area of the plant.

For those who live miles away, the worst danger would be the possibility of exposure to iodine-131. Although levels would not be enough to cause any acute symptoms, it can increase the probability of developing thyroid cancer. This danger too is reduced with time. With a half-life of about eight days, iodine 131 does not persist in the enviornment. As of this posting we are already coming up on one half-life since the reactor shutdown. In about two weeks the levels of iodine-131 in the reactor cores will be less than 15% what they were when the reactors shut down. Most of the iodine-131 has already decayed away from the spent fuel in storage.

Even in the worst case, where all material is discharged, there is zero danger of any dangerous radiation levels to areas beyond Northern Japan. The United States, Europe, Australia and elsewhere simply cannot be effected to any substantial level by any breach at any Japanese reactor, or even if every singe Japanese reactor simultaneously experienced a complete meltdown and core breach. It’s impossible.

Despite these undeniable facts, there remains a persistent myth, largely encouraged by the media and politicians, that a nuclear accident can constitute a truly global crisis. Nuclear accidents are portrayed as being some kind of doomsday event which can undermine human civilization and leave whole regions of the earth uninhabitable, causing the deaths of millions or billions and endangering every man, woman and child in every location on earth.

This ridiculous belief has lead to panic and madness gripping the world, with individuals from China to the United States responding to reports of radiation with a kind of fear normally reserved for the demons and curses of religion.

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