Fukushima..

[xelasnave]

So whats the latest..the last I heard was the Japanese Government was planning to release the contaminated water into the ocean.

Is there someone here who understands what is going on ...
Is it time to panic?

Alex

[AndyG]

I'll ask my Wife Alex. She watches Japanese TV, news, etc daily. I'm guessing nobody would be more concerned about this than the locals who must eat the seafood caught from said patch of ocean.

Quick googling says that a meeting took place today, but no decision was reached. More later if she can dig it up.

Cheers, Andy.

[xelasnave]

Thank you Andy.
The situation I find worrying but I really dont know if there is anything to worry about.
Alex

[GrahamL]

I think it always has been leaking into the ocean on and off Alex

I remember reading after that large typhoon a while back lots of water and other stuff got washed away .

[xelasnave]

I just worry that it could be more serious than we are told but of course that is just silly... no one will hide anything or do anything that is not best practice.

I grew up in different times and remember things like DDT and how it was safe but as it turned out it was not safe at all.

I know there is natural radiation but I do wonder if we could be ignoring something...

The NPower mob are lining up to save the planet so I do wonder if in the interest of good press they may be hiding something.

I know its crazy to think anything could be wrong but that is just me.
Alex

[xelasnave]

And I remember asbestos. ... tobacco comes to mind...
Alex

[Wussell]

[QUOTE=xelasnave;1410621]I just worry that it could be more serious than we are told but of course that is just silly... no one will hide anything or do anything that is not best practice.

This is big business and the government that we are talking about, of course it is always more serious that what they are telling us :eyepop:

[AstralTraveller]

I don't know about Fukushima but I am sure some of the Pacific atolls used for nuclear testing are leaking. I was hoping today to catch up with someone who wrote a report on this years ago, but it appears he is away this week. Atolls are of course made of limestone derived from coral, which is porous. The underground explosion then cracks the limestone making it even more porous. Strangely enough, water then leaks through the limestone and releases radioactivity. It's a scenario that could never have been predicted :rolleyes:.

Of course this situation is different to Fukushima but folk might be interested to know of this on-going (and generally ignored) pollution.

[mental4astro]

Tic toc, tic toc, goes the clock with the cadmium used in the photovoltaic cells on peoples roofs... There's a nasty surprise sitting on top of our roofs, and no one seems to notice. Can't chuck the stuff into land fill. Think asbestos is tricky?

Tic toc, tic toc...

[xelasnave]

Of course old solar panels can go into land fill...land fill is where you put stuff so as not to effect the environment☺.
Anyways when we join the long list of extinct critters the planet will heal I bet.

Alex

[multiweb]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5607867/

Apparently extra precautions need to be taken with solar panel disposal.

[xelasnave]

Yes.

I suppose the bright side is there is some recognition these days.

But I shudder to think about the stuff dumped world wide ... I have visions of drunk sailors throwing 44 gal drums of whatever overboard where ever.

It has me so worried that I may move to anothet planet.

Alex

[mental4astro]

Alex, you've got it wrong - we dumped the stuff on another planet! We can't ever breath the air of another planet, so won't make any difference to us to dump crap there!! :thumbsup:

And who knows, our toxic waste may actually spawn new life on that lifeless planet - we'd be Gods!

[DarkArts]

Well, OK, they're out there, but that's a bit misleading.

Some PV cells (around 5%) contain Cadmium Telluride, more usually found in industrial scale installations and "thin film" applications. CdTe cells are allegedly recyclable to recover the CdTe ... though that may not be proven on an industrial scale. From what I've read, the CdTe proportion of PV cells is likely to go down, not up, though the population may increase overall.

Also, CdTe is a highly-stable crystalline structure that is orders of magnitude less dangerous than either Cadmium or Tellurium in their raw form.

Domestic rooftop PV cells in Australia are predominantly silicon (either mono- or poly(multi)-crystalline) - no Cadmium in those - but you can get CdTe cells in some systems as well as those based on Germanium or Gallium.

So, yes, CdTe is toxic, but it is less dangerous than the headline "Cadmium" might suggest, and most rooftop PV systems don't have Cadmium in them.

(PS: I used to work with Cadmium-coated metal parts, so I'm well aware of the dangers).

[AndyG]

I wonder (if/when it's do-able), we fling our trash into the Sun?
I'm thinking beyond rocketry (the pollution of which would undo any good removing trash).

Will we ever have a "space elevator"? Constantly bringing our most unwanted materials to geostationary orbit, then with a relatively minor punt sending it towards the Sun to be captured/recycled there?

Assuming we get that far... I'm assuming throwing the whole Earth into the Sun would not even register from the Sun's perspective. In this, there's no way we could "ruin" the Sun no matter what we put into it? Right/wrong?

The notion of "nanites" reprocessing objects into their elements frightens the bejeesus out of me. The idea of someone retasking them to eat their container, followed by rest of the world... yeah, nah... Thoughts on that anyone? (The Nanites... not my phobias :P)

I'm guessing once we harness greater energy (fusion?), recycling of anything will be cost effective enough to do. This leaves us with hopefully very few things that industrial chemistry/applied energy can't recycle.

[mental4astro]

Thanks DarkArts :thumbsup:. The disposal still remains though. You still don't want this stuff in landfill. You mention that the PV used on roof tops doesn't contain Cd. Do ALL not contain Cd? I'm not being alarmist, but a realist when it comes to commerce and greed. If PV that contain Cd are cheaper... well, you see where I'm going with this. And if just ONE PV set up has Cd in it, the gig is up. What about all those smaller units powering campers, recharging astro batteries, etc. There is a lot of misinformation, and ignorance.

Please don't think I am anti solar. On the contrary, I love the stuff. I'm miffed that Australia isn't investing in solar furnaces - a lot more efficient than PV. Damn if we don't have land a plenty for these too.

But we digress from the OP... Sorry Alex.:rolleyes:

[xelasnave]

Alex there is no need to appologise as your contributions are always appreciated and welcome.

It is a priveledge to receive your input as it is for all the wonderful folk who have taken their time to address these not unimportant matters.

Going off topic is not a bad thing if it raises more issues that we need to know about...I certainly have learnt something about solar panels and isnt part of what we do here consistent with passing on knowledge and awareness.

Alex

[AnakChan]

As an Aussie living in Japan for almost 19 yrs, we get very little official information from public news or from the govt naturally. I live in Tokyo with my wife and 2 boys. She thrives on rumours and unofficial news that she picks up on Japanese blogs, etc. I don’t read Japanese so I depend on her (which I do take with a grain of salt).

Years back after the earthquake (I went up to help with volunteer work to help clean up Ishinomaki 6 weeks after the big event - boy, what a mess!!), there was less concern of air than there is about water & top soil. It was stated (Rumoured?? Confirmed??) that the top layer of contaminated soil was spread all around Japan.

There’s less concern for us adults as the contamination isn’t massive enough (in Tokyo), to worry about short term effects....long term effects, well....if we live till we’re 80s, we’re happy. But for our 2 boys, that’s a little more concerning. We buy our food/water sourced from down south (Kyushu area) just to be safe. But everyone else does that therefore sellers capitalise by charging higher prices. It’s hard for me to do grocery shopping too since I can’t read enough Kanji to determine which prefecture the food/vege are from - will Google Translate helps but it takes me ages to shop, so my wife does the most of it.

We don’t take holidays in Fukushima naturally, nor nearby prefectures. The last time I did volunteer work in 2011 was the last time I went up north in Honshu. I’m barred from doing astronomy with my friends in Ibaraki, so we have to do this in Chiba (or west in Fuji). Mind you this isn’t even stay trip - I’m talking about just going overnight with my friends. My wife is concerned about the dust/soil stuck on my astronomy gear that I bring home (yes, again for the kids).

I agree that she is being overly cautious and if I were single, I’d probably wouldn’t give a damn and continue snowboarding/astronomy up north - but, as the saying goes....happy wife, happy life.

[AndyG]

My Wife, her Mum, and their Girl's club have a saying, "gossip is faster than fibre optic". I believe them.


We saw this on news too, about the unwillingness (naturally) of other prefectures taking on megatonnes of top soil from the contaminated area. Strings were pulled, and it happened anyway. Some City Wards issued children with little medallions to wear with photographic film, to measure radiation exposure. Some kids recieved 1 yr's worth within 3 months. Many also didn't, etc.


You can actually see stars in Chiba? I couldn't see anything in Nara when I brought my 102Mak recently. What's your secret?

[AnakChan]

My kids’ school haven’t gotten them to wear that yet. But luckily the parks near my area have been relatively ok.

South of Chiba is not too bad. Strong glows north west thx to Kawasaki factories but south & east are good. Also Tateshina in Nagano is also good as long as you don’t encounter any mountain bears.

[Camelopardalis]

Respect :eyepop:

Just goes to show the peril in our seemingly harmless hobby :lol: is nowhere safe?!?

[Wavytone]

Unlikely. While it seems a nice idea, from an engineers standpoint everything fails, sooner or later. When that happens the consequences of this stuff crashing back to earth are ... problematic, to put it mildly.

By way of example where a spacecraft carries a nuclear reactor for power (some do, particularly those that will venture far from the sun) the effort that goes into making sure it doesn't pose a safety hazard is phenomenal.

Doing that for launching waste... doesn't make any sense.

[kalon]

That's not how orbital mechanics works... You need an incredible amount of speed to get to the sun - effectively orbits of planets and other objects are just sideways speed so fast that the gravity of the sun makes the object fall in a circle (approximately).

To 'fall in to the Sun' you'd have to effectively reach "escape velocity" - and for the mass of the Sun that's a gigantic 617km/s!

Recently, the Parker Solar Probe was launched on a large Delta IV Heavy rocket to try to get as close as feasible to the Sun and even at a puny 550kg, and using planets for gravity assists, it will only manage to get a velocity of ~190km/s and will be the fastest moving man-made object at that time - and it will still end up in an orbit, at it's closest of 6,900,000km from the Sun with elongated other side of the orbit (aphelion) of 109,000,000km!

Basically, cartoon physics have ruined our perception of just how mind-bogglingly huge space actually is - you can't "throw" an object in to the Sun, the same way as you can't "throw" an object from the International Space station back to earth, it requires thrust back to drop the orbit to the point where the atmosphere can provide aerodynamic drag to bleed the rest of the speed off so that the Earth's gravity 9.8m/s[^2^] can do the rest...

[multiweb]

That's nuts! :eyepop: I had no idea the contamination was that widespread. I saw photos of northern Japan and the country side looks beautiful. The tags on the kids to check exposure is down right scary too.

When you mention mountain bears, is that like cute Panda type bears or Kung-Fu ravenous type? ;)

[xelasnave]

I have stopped worrying about contamination because although in a worst case senerio millions of humans and animals may eventually die presumably from cancer we can probably safely say that some will not be effected and go on to reproduce and be the beneficiaries of the survival of the fittest rule.

If we are to travel in space we really need to toughen up and out grow susceptibility to radiation.

Alex