Science
Related: About this forumFukushima Related Radiation Risks to Olympians at the 2021 Tokyo Games.
(Note: This post, and many of my earlier posts in this space, contains some graphics which may not be accessible to Chrome users because of a recent upgrade to that browser, but should work in Firefox and Microsoft Edge. When my son has time, he will adjust the file system for a website he's building for me to make these graphics usable in Chrome, but he seldom has that much time on his hands. Interested parties, should they exist, can still read my posts including the graphics, but regrettably must use a browser other than Chrome. Apologies - NNadir)
The paper I'll discuss in this post is this one: Radioactive Games? Radiation Hazard Assessment of the Tokyo Olympic Summer Games (Rebecca Querfeld, Mayumi Hori, Anica Weller, Detlev Degering, Katsumi Shozugawa,*and Georg Steinhauser,* Environ. Sci. Technol. 2020, 54, 18, 1141411423). I've been meaning to get around posting some commentary on this paper for several months, but never did so until now.
The authors of this paper are from German and Japanese Institutions.
Germany has, um, "interesting" energy policies, widely applauded in some circles, none of which I am personally a member. Perish the thought. Here's the German Energy Policy: Nuclear Energy is "dangerous." Nuclear Energy is more dangerous than forms of energy which kill 7 million people per year in the form of air pollution. It is more dangerous than loading the atmosphere with so much of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide that the coasts of major continents burn huge stretches of their ecosystems in vast uncontrollable fires. It is more dangerous, than tens of thousands people dying annually because the ambient temperatures exceed 42°C, the approximate temperature at which sweating stops and body temperature can skyrocket, sometimes even rising above 44°C so that "the brain falters; confusion, agitation, slurred speech, even coma can result." (Pennisi, Living with heat (Science, Vol. 370, Issue 6518, pp. 778-781 (2020)). Nuclear power, according to German Energy policy is more dangerous than most of the world's coral reefs dying from heat stress and acidification, more dangerous than the outgassing of methane and carbon dioxide ice clathrates in melting permafrost, more dangerous than seawater intruding into the ground water of coastal cities, more dangerous than more frequent and more intense hurricanes.
Go figure.
As is well known in many circles, the worst energy disaster of all time includes none of the stuff just listed above as being less dangerous than nuclear energy above. It was, if you believe in the importance of attention paid, Fukushima. Fukushima was an event where 20,000 people died from living in a coastal city inundated by seawater after a 9.0 Richter scale earthquake induced a tsunami, from things like drowning, buildings collapsing and related phenomenon, such as being smashed against walls by massive water flows. Much worse than all these deaths however, according to popular opinion - since those 20,000 deaths don't actually matter in the minds of our media - was that some people were exposed to (gasp) radiation, when three nuclear reactors melted down after their diesel emergency cooling pumps were inundated by, um, seawater.
People drowning in seawater, tens of thousands of them, are not as interesting as people being exposed to radiation.
Now, apparently, our media is very concerned that there may be a radiation risk to athletes traveling to Japan for the 2020 Olympics which will not take place in 2020, apparently, but will take place in 2021, maybe.
The authors of this paper decided to do something called "measurements" to evaluate risk to athletes who might travel to Japan for the Olympics that have been delayed because of the risk of a disease, Covid-19.
From the text of the paper:
References 3 to 6 are not to scientific papers but rather are from public "news" sources written by journalists, furthering my long held suspicion that one cannot get a degree in journalism if one has passed a college level science course.
The authors continue:
Despite overwhelming evidence indicating moderate (at worst) direct health effects of the nuclear releases from FDNPP,(27?29) nine years after the accident, many people still doubt the radiological safety of staying in Japan. The reasons for this largely unsubstantiated fear may be rooted in the fact that scientific evidence is often only presented in Japanese and is often addressed to professionals in the field. In some instances, the credibility of the data (or the organization presenting the data) is called into question, especially when the data are used to support, e.g., a particular view of nuclear energy. Since environmental radioactivity is a highly emotional issue, this topic is occasionally prone to become the subject of conspiracy theories, with the result that the accuracy of governmental data as a whole is called into question. In any case, no comprehensive and scientifically substantiated summary of the various radiological aspects of the radiation hazard are available for Tokyo 2020 yet.
The added bold is mine.
Conspiracy theories? The authors are claiming that people embrace conspiracy theories?
Who knew?
The public is entirely rational which is why national governments agree with the notion that nuclear power is more dangerous than 7 million deaths per year from air pollution, and the destruction of continental coastal forests and communities by fire.
The paper contains all kinds of silly scientific stuff about how to detect radiation, for example:
For the low-level analysis of 137Cs, gamma spectrometry using high-purity germanium (HPGe) detectors at the underground laboratory Felsenkeller (Dresden, Germany)(30) was applied. In this location, 45 m of rock overburden results in a suppression of the muonic component of cosmic radiation by a factor of about 30.(31) Relative efficiencies of the used detectors ranged from 20 to 90%, the integral blank count rates for the energy range 402700 keV varied between 2.4 and 4.4 min1. The lowest background values were achieved with the spectrometer described in Köhler et al.(32) The water samples (500 and 1500 mL) were measured in Marinelli beaker geometry.
In other words, to distinguish the cesium radioactivity from the samples collected in Japan from the background radiation associated with our very dangerous galaxy, the authors needed to take the samples to Germany and measure the radioactivity under layers or rock to exclude cosmic radiation.
I got 'dem old kozmik blues again Mama!
Anyway, the following figures describe what the authors found out about "dangerous" radioactivity at the upcoming (maybe) Tokyo Olympics in comparison to the radiation risk to athletes at previous Olympic events.
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Watch out for 'dem ole Kozmik Blues, while flying!
The caption:
Excerpts from the authors conclusions:
Of course, none of this science can compare with our appetite for conspiracy theories, with our media now in a paroxysm of joy at making sure we are aware of every single one of them. They're, um, considered "news."
I wish you a healthy, safe and secure weekend and holiday season.
RussellCattle
(1,535 posts)....why it needs to be used to save the planet. This convert also liked the Janis Joplin reference.