2 Japanese take Mad Max drive to the Fukushima plant w/dosimeters UPDATE w/English subtitles

[flamingdem]

It's one way of finding out for oneself what's going on with the radiation risks.

They are measuring 1.5 kilometers to 30 kilometers away where they get 350 x normal readings.
This is quite a "road movie".

Just found one with English subtitles and dosimeter readings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp9iJ3pPuL8&feature=relmfu

original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHWvbisFg0I&feature=player_embedded

[Poll_Blind]

1. This amazing footage was posted on the DU Video forums yesterday:

HERE

Absolutely...well, it's a toss-up between jaw-dropping, frightening, enthralling, heart-breaking- take your pick.

PB

[flamingdem]

2. The footage of abandoned animals and comments about bringing back radiation

on the car and on the body point out one of the less discussed aspects of this catastrophe.

People will be shunned, animals will be shunned who have been exposed. Like lepers. Ouch

I'm glad they went there because I think many Japanese just want it to go away. Understandably,
but sweeping it under the rug won't help next time. And it won't help this time when the
cancers start to show up.

There are still many unknowns, and the amount of damage is left to be seen in terms of cancer
and that is so much more devastating than the damage caused by an earthquake or tsunami in
psychological terms.

[Poll_Blind]

3. There are....I think...a lot of...really disconcerting realities about the...

...impact that this will have in the long haul. This is going to play out very hard on the Japanese. Honestly, I think this is going to play out pretty hard on just about everyone on the Pacific rim. I have children and I live in the most beautiful place in the world, IMO, Eugene, Oregon. Throughout the Bush years I dallied with the possibility of moving to Canada, for instance, because of the state that America was getting into.

I have been surprised lately by having similar thoughts cross my mind- maybe not about leaving the U.S. entirely, but about moving to some other portion of the U.S. There is so much contamination in play, especially in the Pacific right now that I'm just kind of thinking..."Ok, what's the scene going to be like a year or so from now when debris which has been exposed to this radiation starts washing up on the West Coast?" And it's not even like this is over yet.

Everything from imported goods to migratory birds have been on my mind lately and I'm getting really concerned- not necessarily for what my "tomorrow" looks like, but what my "year from now" looks like, here in Oregon.

PB

[flamingdem]

6. I completely understand

and the sense that we don't have all the information is disconcerting. If for instance we start getting high readings due to accumulations that will reduce quality of life considerably because of impacted food supply.

Let's face it, to some extent the agricultural business will hide information and from what I can tell they use simplistic measurements and don't test for more than iodine.

[Raschel]

9. It will affect all of us. I'm in Minnesota and we've had fallout from it here.

Nature and humans are all connected and it will go around in the circle.

[flamingdem]

12. It's already gone to the Southern Hemisphere

... if this gets much worse it's funny but the Southern hemisphere might be the beneficiary in terms of edible agriculture.

[AtheistCrusader]

21. Most of the releases of radiation started days after the debris was washed out to sea.

Nothing much at all was released outside the steam, until what, evening of day three? Day four? When the first hydrogen explosion occurred.

The Homes and other wreckage making its way across the ocean was largely on it's way already. Some will be, but most won't be radioactive at all.

[CountAllVotes]

23. K&R

:kick:

[CanonRay]

4. Wow, are they nuts or what!

[abqmufc]

18. Heroic. (n/t)

[cliffordu]

5. Like some sort of science fiction film....

Pretty soon there'll be radiated dogs hunting in packs.....becoming cannibalistic...

[Raschel]

11. There is similar video out there where people go through Chernobyl.

[Raschel]

7. Extremely sad. I had to shut it off when I saw the dog who wanted human contact so badly and they

didn't touch him.

Another Chernobyl. What are we doing to our earth?

[FirstLight]

8. I was thinking about the animals

those dogs and cows will be dead in a couple weeks, no? with the levels they were recording, i am thinking that those animals are severely exposed... wonder what the exposure level was for those reporters and how long they were there?

wow, just wow...chernobyl was nothing compared to the continuing saga of awfulness that this is...
I'm on the west coast too, and i am wondering if my vegetable garden is at risk this summer. How do I know the rain and snow falling aren;t going to start glowing by fall...?
:scared:
By now you'd think containment would be their primary goal...oh yeah, they can;t get near it, can they?

[flamingdem]

10. About your vegetables

If you can do it why not cover them with plastic? There is fallout being recorded in the rainwater. It will accumulate in the soil, even if it's small amounts why not be careful. It's a reality we're stuck with and some planning might be necessary :-( even as we send our hearts out to the Japanese who are truly living a bad dream.

[wtmusic]

13. Probably more than a couple of weeks

If the animals were getting 10μSv/hr it would take a couple of years before they would get the dose which is fatal for half of humans (500 rem). But that's instantaneous dose, so spread out the effect may be less harmful.

After a year or so or eating the grass and drinking the water (if there is any) they would probably be feeling the effects.

They will probably starve or be euthanized before that happens. Very sad.

[jwirr]

14. As a farmers daughter I have seen dogs form packs to attack animals.

When the dogs get hungry the cattle will not last long.

[flamingdem]

15. Or humans. There are a few hiding out not wanting to go to shelters

Those are the stories really getting to me. They'd rather risk exposure, but maybe they are not fully aware of the dangers.

[jwirr]

16. Yes, dogs will attack humans also.

[flamingdem]

17. All of this is so out of a horror movie

in a country where things are so orderly and comfortable for the most part.

Japan is so beautiful, even the plants are in the most lovely area.

[AtheistCrusader]

22. Oddly enough, most of those dogs still looked pretty well fed.

Curious what they are eating.

[abqmufc]

26. Garbage, flora, and whatever else they can find I am guessing.

I noticed it too. But I also noticed gardens with produce and vacant/damaged homes. I figured the dogs were going in and out of vacant homes to find food. I also suspect trash bins and dumpsters have not been picked up, lots of rotting food inside them for a dog to eat.

Breaks my heart.

:cry:

[CJvR]

19. Worse than that.

They will have accumulated lots of iodine and other isotopes easily absorbed by living creatures.

[abqmufc]

20. It is spring, what about soon to be born infants?

Would baby cows, dogs, migratory birds, fish in rivers (etc) soon to be born (or recently born) be at greater risk to an ecosystem that is contaminated by radionuclides?

Even if these animals don't die in the next year, they will develop tumors and live more than likely a shorter lifespan and certainly their quality of life is now a lot worse off.

All these animals may be deemed needed to be killed in order to stop them from breeding. Then what? Would not all these animals, dead or alive, have to be considered hazardous waste? Leaving them to rot only creates the risk of them being eaten by another animal and further the contaminated chain of life.

[flamingdem]

24. I understand that they can pass on genetic abnormalities if their DNA is damaged

but I haven't researched this, I'm afraid to know!

[FBaggins]

27. More than 50 years at that rate to get to 500 Rem.

Assuming the exposure persisted and the activity measure actually translated to an absorbed dose (both big ifs).

[flamingdem]

30. You need to read up on Low Level Radiation and Ingesting vs. Exposure imo nt

[FBaggins]

32. Because one of those will help with simple division?

Um... ok.

As for LLR? No thanks. I'm not interested in reading up on creation science or the science that proves that global warming is a farce.

Both have larger portions of the scientific community behind them than the low-level radiation nuts.

[TheMadMonk]

31. Of starvation perhaps. @350 x normal the odds of direct adverse...

...health effects are still quite remote and long term. Perhaps a slightly increased incidence of cancers a few years down the track depending on the total length of exposure and amount of long term contamination. For dogs this would be towards the ends of their natural lives regardless. And whilst cows MAY live 30-40 years, it's rare that they are permitted to in commercial animal husbandry. In all cases, animals in our care have one option not available to us, euthenasia.


And while it may seem a bit ghoulish, I hope as many of these animals as possible are saved for experimental breeding and genetics. Because of ethics issues we don't deliberately do these things to the environment. However, since the damage has been done it behooves us to glean as much positive benefit as we possible can from the situation.

Chernobyl has given us a lot of data on what happens when the land is abandoned to nature and overall it is rather positive I think. A slightly elevated rate of non-viable births and sub-optimal mutation, but absent day to human influence, nature overall is doing very, very well thankyou very much. Rare creatures are now common, and threatened species in neighbouring areas found a safe haven in which to recover as well and then repopulate their original ranges now that environventalism has made its way to Eastern Europe.

This time around, retain contaminated farmland as farmland, breed already affected animals on it, and once and for all absolutely quantify the effects of low to mid range multigenerational chronic exposure. Experiment with plants and microbes to extract contaminants from the soil.

Retain some of the urban landscape for city scale earthquake experimentation.

Pave over the worst of the rest and use it for robotic warehousing. Build a massive port there. Turn over existing container yards and warehouses to ballance whatever was lost. There could quite possibly be a net gain.

[caraher]

25. Interesting, but not incredibly dangerous for radiation to those guys

The real hazards to the guys with the camera are the condition of roads, etc. rather than the day's radiation exposure. The main radiation hazard won't be measured by their monitoring devices, but would come from inhalation or ingestion of radioactive particles (which would result in an ongoing internal radiation dose). The highest reading was a bit more than 100 microSievert/hour, which is 10 mrem/hour. When I worked on a cyclotron for producing radioactive isotopes for PET imaging, that peak level was similar to that in our cyclotron "vault" where we did maintenance work. At those levels you certainly didn't want to stand around making idle chit-chat if you could do so elsewhere, but working there from time to time was just part of the job. Even if those guys drove around for 10 hours or so their total dose was probably around 10 mrem (given that most of the time they were well under 5 microsievert/hr), or roughly what they'd get on a long-ish airline flight; if they stood around for 5 hours where they hit their peak reading (not smart!) they'd get a dose roughly equal to an annual background dose.

A 10 mrem exposure carries no risk of acute radiation sickness, and a roughly one-in-a-million chance of death from cancer. Their drive probably exposed them to comparable hazards: see, for instance, the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort">Wikipedia page on "micromorts" (things that carry one-in-a-million risk of death):

smoking 1.4 cigarettes
drinking 0.5 liters of wine
drinking Miami water for one year
eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter
eating 1000 bananas
traveling 230 miles by car

So in short: radiation exposure visiting is no big deal provided they took basic precautions against contamination; trying to live there 24/7, of course, is a huge problem (hence the evacuation). It's a shame to think of that beautiful area as off limits, potentially for decades.

[caraher]

28. math fail in my last post

it would be more like 50 hours to hit a year's dose, not 5, at 10 mrem/hour

[flamingdem]

29. What's in the Miami water?

I didn't know that it is "caliente"!

[FBaggins]

34. Not much of anything.

That's the point of the "micromort".

[caraher]

35. It's not radioactive

The Miami water cancer risk is apparently from trace amounts of chloroform that result from water treatment with chlorine. It's probably not unique to Miami

[kristopher]

33. The main radiation hazard ...would come from inhalation or ingestion of radioactive particles

Thank you for acknowledging the issue properly.

[caraher]

36. No problem

All the beeping, etc. is showy, but long-term radiation effects really come down to particulates that they may take back with them. The basics of radiation safety are watching distance, time and shielding from a source, and all three are out the window once something's in your body.