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03-17-2011, 06:41 AM | #1 |
daily driver
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why does the media do it?
seems to me that the news media loves to whip the american public into a frenzy....its ~630am and CNN is listing how many people live near some of the nuclear reactors in the US....
doesnt this whole thing (discussing shutting down reactors) seem like such a knee-jerk reaction to whats happening in japan? however, i bet you couldnt go wrong right now buying some stock in radiation detectors....lol
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03-17-2011, 07:19 AM | #2 |
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Yeah , It would be time better spent by going after the turds dumping toxic goo into our waterways even as we speak!
They do like to make a problem where it doesnt exist. |
03-17-2011, 07:33 AM | #3 |
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More people die from lightening strikes than from nuclear power plants. It's ridiculous to even suggest they are dangerous especially weighing its benefits.
In fact, much, much more people die building wind turbines than working at nuclear power plants. And wind power is a joke. |
03-17-2011, 11:22 AM | #4 |
ヤリスワールド
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Fear drives America...buy a gun
Or 10 just in Case, buy iodine cause japanese radiation is coming,killer bees,Muslims,Mexican cartels are overrunning the border,fear sells things ! |
03-17-2011, 12:11 PM | #5 |
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all the media do this...
at every country... they are the goverment |
03-17-2011, 01:11 PM | #6 | |
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But I agree the media shouldn't be whipping up fear over nuclear power plants here in the states just because of what's going on in japan. They should be doing it all the time. Sorry but you don't fuck around with radiation. Nothing bad has happened here in the states yet. But why wait until it does? Also when someone dies working at a wind farm it's most likely a worker. That is unfortunate and terrible, it really is, but that's the most it's ever going to affect. The only people put in any real danger are the people who are directly engaged in the maintenance of a wind farm. When we are talking nuclear it impacts everyone around the facility. Not just the workers at a plant. People who don't have shit to do with the plant can still become victim to it's malfunction. The fact that people are so cavalier about NUCLEAR energy really blows my mind. These plants are just going to get older and older. So talk your crap now but our kids may not have the luxury of being so brazen about it. Time just isn't on our side in this case. EDIT: also i'm really not trying to be a jerk about this. and though i quoted you Kal-El, i'm not directing all this entirely at you. just feel pretty strongly about the subject is all. so i apologize if i come off a little, uh, snippy.
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03-17-2011, 05:04 PM | #7 | |
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Totally understand your argument. I didn't mean to suggest there is no danger in nuclear energy. It would be foolish to suggest that. Still. the worst nuclear disaster in history, Chernobyl, killed 30 people. A shame, but not at all catastrophic. "The initial explosion resulted in the death of two workers. 28 of the firemen and emergency clean-up workers died in the first three months after the explosion from Acute Radiation Sickness and one of cardiac arrest." And Chernobyl didn't have nearly the safe guards that today's plants have. It didn't have a containment system and deaths were still minimal. Of course, lingering radiation created some health issues and cancers but wasn't considered extreme. In contrast, 115 people die each day in car accidents in the US alone (and we have the most stringent safety standards). The thing is, is that creating energy will always have some type of drawback. No matter how clean or safe they are considered to be. If we are not prepared to take those small risks, we may as well revert back to being cave men. Forget even just flipping that light switch. |
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03-17-2011, 07:07 PM | #8 |
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But isn't one of the biggest problems with nuclear power plants, is where to put the still-radioactive waste? I'm by no means a nuclear scientist, but through my less than stellar understanding of this stuff, is that it takes a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very (you get the point) long time for it to be inert.
A quick google search shows that most of Europe's radioactive waste is currently being stockpiled somewhere in the Ukraine. Everyone has the attitude of "not in my backyard", but if/when nuclear becomes in-vogue, then it will be in everyone's backyard. Eventually, there could be a lot of waste that has to be stored somewhere. Statistical numbers used for comparison just can't convey the higher risk associated with this type of energy. The media is the media, and they need something to make money with, but there's nothing wrong with re-evaluating something after a disaster occurs at one of the most technologically advanced places in the world. |
03-17-2011, 07:12 PM | #9 |
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sooo....this is actually a pretty serious deal. I'm in xray school and my teacher has been following this story (she is a radiographer and is married to a radiologist). She kinda caught our class up to speed yesterday on the severity of these reactors. A few things she said (paraphrased of course) were like: reactor number 3 contains elements more extreme than your normal radiation. Everyone knows that too much exposure to radiation can cause problems (that's how they use radiation to destroy your thyroid in case it has spreading cancer). Well apparently xrays deal with electron interactions which are relatively small compared to the neutron interactions that take place in reactor number three. I think she said the difference is like 18000x greater. Can't remember exactly. And constant exposure(which living so close they constantly receive) to the radiation starts by weaking your immune system, later causing nausea, and depending on how much radiation you get can lead to LD50/30 which means that of all the people who get this exposure, about 50% will die in 30 days.
Now im starting to ramble and im sorry. And i know some of you won't credit my teacher and her husband as physicists or understanding the complexity, however, i do. She wanted us to understand the downplay of radiation dosages that the plant workers/owners are puting out there. They don't want panic. But the radiation will cause permanent damage and ruin the environment. But yeah, sucks.
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03-17-2011, 07:56 PM | #10 |
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I can see the need to downplay it though, in an administrative point of view.
Does anyone want to see mass panic and attempts at mass exodus? Contaminated people wearing contaminated clothing, with their contaminated stuff mixing in with the general non-contaminated population. What about a mix of contaminated/non-contaminated/partially-contaminated people flying out of Japan and seeking refuge in other locations in the world? Wouldn't that also lead to them contaminating others as they go from place to place? Who/how/when to test them for radiation? At each airport? Wouldn't that be too late? I just find it very grim when they first told people within a certain radius to evacuate, and now, they're being told to stay where they are, and that radius has increased. It's just a bad, bad situation that seems to be getting worse. In light of this disaster, I can understand the fear of living close to any nuclear power plant, and the need to question our so-called authority figures as to what the plans are in case something like this were to happen. Under a worse case scenario, what would happen here in the US (or anywhere else for that matter)? Japan is an island, so it's relatively easier to control entry and exit from the entire country. How will they do that when we're not on an island? Using the Military with guns? Knowing what I know... I believe that by the time it comes to that, I would be resigned and logical enough to know that it would probably be too late. But then again, I am armed to the teeth and have a very strong desire to protect my family... I just shudder to think about such things. |
03-17-2011, 10:52 PM | #11 | ||||
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The ongoing debate is the deaths that have occurred over the long term. Of course, many thousands, even 100's of thousands have eventually gotten cancer which may or may not be attributed to Chernobyl. Then again, cancer is the number one killer of Americans never even exposed to dangerous amounts of radiation (it just passed heart disease). I also referenced car accident deaths earlier for comparison purposes. 42,000 people die each year in car accidents in the US alone. Should we ban cars? My point is that if you or anyone else has a better idea than nuclear to produce the power we need, your idea is welcome to change the world. Wind and solar can only produce a minuscule percentage of what we need even if we drastically increase their use, so we'd end up burning a lot more coal if not for nuclear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster Quote:
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03-18-2011, 12:34 AM | #12 |
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Hey kal-el you're a nice internet person so I'll be nice, please don't quote wikipedia when trying to make a valid argument about ANYTHING.
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03-18-2011, 01:15 AM | #13 |
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i've found wikipedia to be right in many cases, but it's also far from 100% accurate so sometimes you run into trouble if that's your ONLY source. still just want to point out there is some value in wikipedia. just my small bit of defense on Kal-El's behalf.
anyway i didn't think nuclear provided all that large a percentage of our energy. i've been taking some electronics courses and one of my textbooks quotes it at 20%. i know that's a significant amount but i also know having worked at a natural gas facility that we don't use near what we probably could using natural gas. and i don't know, ask me if i'd rather we produce steam from fossil fuels or nuclear fission and i'm gonna say fossil fuels. also i think some of you are really selling wind energy short. it makes up only like 3% of our energy resources but at the same time we haven't been at it for that long. seems like wind energy is still in it's infancy to me. and how long have we been producing energy through nuclear power plants? 40 or 50 years? i think if we wanted to we could replace the 20% we get from nuclear with solar, wind, and water. are we seriously that obsessed with money that we aren't willing to pay a little more for something that doesn't have the possibility of causing cancer and serious birth defects?
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03-18-2011, 01:50 AM | #14 | |
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You sound like you completely underestimate the dangers of nuclear incidents. Next time you hear of cancer - think of this thread. It's that serious. |
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03-18-2011, 07:47 AM | #15 | ||
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I don't want to sound like I love nuclear at any cost. That's not the case. I just think it's a relatively safe and very effective energy source. There's been a few accidents throughout history which have been horrible, but overall nuclear has a very good track record. It just seems that people are against gas, against nuclear, against coal, against batteries, ect. I'm simply trying to figure out what people honestly think we are going to switch over to completely for our energy. We can't do it with just wind and solar. I do, however think we really need to ramp up natural gas use. It's hugely abundant in the US. |
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03-18-2011, 12:49 PM | #16 |
Joey
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This just in:
The radiation cloud is going to contain about half the amount of an x-ray! Run for your lives!
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03-18-2011, 01:10 PM | #17 |
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well that's good news except you are only exposed to radiation for a few seconds when you are getting xray. duration doesn't seem to factor into some you guys' theories on how radiation works.
nevertheless if you are talking about the amount of radiation wafting over to cali then no i wouldn't be too worried. but as i've said before, i don't think it'd be quite so easy to be as flippant if you live in japan near the plant.
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03-18-2011, 01:15 PM | #18 |
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Yeah I don't think anyone is suggesting we run vehicles off natural gas. Just for the production of electricity for energy grids. It really is an underused resource in that regard.
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