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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Mar 19, 2011 - 10:35pm PT
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If you read the body of the article the levels in the spinach are still really low.
Spinach doesn't grow fast enough that it could take up that much cesium this quickly, particularly given the really cold weather in Japan over the last week where growth would have stopped.
There's more likely an other preexisting source or it got contaminated on the way to market.
There are going to be a lot of radiation detections around the world now that have nothing to do with Japan just because its being looked for with an intensity that it hasn't before and old unused instruments drug out of storage, used by people that are unpracticed in their use.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Mar 19, 2011 - 10:41pm PT
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people seem to be looking at the radioactive material blowing out to sea as if it is now safely gone somewhere else
when required to travel on airliners, i tend to keep my nose glued to the window
flying from the US to Japan, it is easy to see where the islands are, long before they are visible over the horizon, by the white wakes of fish boats going to and from Japanese harbors; like spokes to a giant wheel
my experience shopping in Japanese grocery stores is that they resemble what we would call a huge fish market, more than anything else with which we are familiar in the United States
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Mar 20, 2011 - 02:16am PT
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It's 3 pm in Japan and things are not looking as hopeful today as yesterday. The power to the pumping stations is still not on and the pressure is rising again in the worst affected reactor. They are planning on a controlled release of radioactive air into the environment.
Meanwhile, I'm wondering at Klimmer's statement about not eating the mantel of a coleman lantern. He seems to insinuate there is radioactivity in that? I thought the problem was asbestos? I ask because I once had a Sherpa kitchen boy eat the mantel out of one of my kerosene lanterns.
I found out about it when he asked me for stomach medicine. When I asked him why he thought his stomach hurt (always a revelatory question in Nepal), he told me that he had a sore throat and he thought eating the mantel might help. When I incredulously asked him why he would think that, he replied that he needed the strongest magic he could find. He figured a little piece of cloth that glowed with fire and never burned up would be it, so he ate an old one before replacing it with a new one.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Mar 20, 2011 - 02:21am PT
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Apparently lantern mantles have both cerium and thorium in them, as those elements radiate a lot of energy in visible wavelengths. They make a woven cotton bag, impregnate with nitrates of rare earths, and when you install the mantle and burn it down, it converts the nitrates into nitrites, forming a 'bag'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mantle
Learn something new, and fascinating, every day. Doesn't sound like eating one of the mantles would be a good idea, though.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 20, 2011 - 02:23am PT
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Coleman made their lantern mantels out of Thorium through the 90s...
eating it was not a good thing as the alpha-radiation is absorbed by the digestive lining. Breathing any of the dust wouldn't be a good thing either...
They are currently made out of Yttrium...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 20, 2011 - 02:27am PT
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on "natural circulation", you need a cooling bath as well as a heat source, otherwise the heat source just keeps raising the temperature of the water until it boils.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Mar 20, 2011 - 02:45am PT
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Given that it's still snowing, there can't be much if any new grass which cattle could graze on outside. It seems more likely that they're eating stored fodder at this time of year. It would also be a natural reaction for farmers to bring surviving cattle indoors in any event, although I wonder if there are all that many cattle there to begin with.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Mar 20, 2011 - 11:22am PT
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Last night, we watched the movie, Fat Man and Little Boy (1989) starring Paul Newman and John Cusack. I thought it was really good on many levels.
Cusack plays a young scientist, an amalgam I think between Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin, the two young scientists who died following accidental exposures. In the movie he has an accident adapted from this scene:
rAdam or Ed,
I think I have a pretty good idea, but can you tell me what would've happened if Slotin (or Cusack in the movie) was not able to flip the neutron reflector off the core how that would've played out? 10 seconds later. One minute later. 5 minutes later. Something like that. Do we know?
Heroic that all three men (two in reality and Cusack in the movie) had the presence of mind to disengage the criticality.
.....
EDIT to ADD
Oh, guess who played Oppenheimer? ANSWER: Dwight Schultz. He was "Broccoli" on Star Trek: TNG and Voyager. He was most excellent, too, I thought, as Oppie.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Mar 20, 2011 - 03:45pm PT
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Thanks for the info on the Coleman mantel. We'll never know if that Sherpa would develop cancer as I always feared, since he died in an accident when he slipped and fell on snow covered stone steps while drunk.
Meanwhile there is a very good editorial in the New York Times by the former Tokyo bureau chief Nicholas Kristof explaining the difference between the Japanese people as a whole and their often incompetent government.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/opinion/20kristof.html?hp
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Mar 20, 2011 - 07:12pm PT
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hey there say,jan... one of my friends that fullfilled her previous travel arrangement, is soon to head back to japan... think it is by way of tokyo...
i was just wondering what she will find--as to getting in and out to her town of kanagawa...
how is tokyo, at the moment, as to planes, etc... and such...
i may email her if i can ... course, she knew how it was, up close, when she left... but i am just wondering if it is harder, now, from folks leaving...
thanks jan...
:)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 20, 2011 - 07:45pm PT
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probably not the place for this discussion, but, the two accidents are discussed together on page 74 of this document:
http://www.orau.org/ptp/Library/accidents/la-13638.pdf
they were separated in time, one was 8/21/45 and the other 5/21/46, but the Pu sphere that was a part of the accidents was the same.
The number of fissions per second as a function of time is given the plot from that document:
you see it drops off due to the transient nature of neutron transport. Prompt criticality is where criticality equals 1 considering only the direct fission neutrons, the other neutrons are the ones reflected back into the assembly, the reflector being what caused the accidents in both cases.
What would have happened? Eventually the assembly heats up until the mechanical configuration changes to decrease the heat source, which is the reflector...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Mar 20, 2011 - 08:35pm PT
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Thanks.
That whole criticality subject is fascinating, it's history, everything. Somehow I missed learning about any of that bitd. Wow.
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Bargainhunter
climber
Central California
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Mar 20, 2011 - 08:47pm PT
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The cavalier non-chalance of Slotin in handling this "demon core" and experimenting with criticality in such a casual manor is pure idiocy, esp. afer Daghlian died the year before doing the same. Read the 4th paragraph about "tickling the dragon's tail". I guess OSHA wasn't around back then.
Mark Twight wrote in Extreme Alpinism, "the burned hand teaches best."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Mar 20, 2011 - 09:00pm PT
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RJ, the reactors in Japan that are having problems were built in the early 1970s, and they must have been designed in the 1960s. They're not state of the art, although a key challenge - safely disposing of reactor waste - remains.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Mar 20, 2011 - 09:02pm PT
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Seems to be a tsunami's worth of drift here.
This disaster is still unfolding and could get seriously fukked into a cocked hat.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Mar 20, 2011 - 10:24pm PT
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Who puts plants so close together that if one goes bad the others need to be evacuated?
The designers of those plants should be thrown to the wolves.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Mar 20, 2011 - 11:48pm PT
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Nothing like a crisis to bring people together!
Who would have guessed that we could reach an agreement finally on ST,
about wolves?
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Mar 21, 2011 - 12:00am PT
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Roxjok, Ron, & Jan: Re Nothing like a crisis to bring people together!
Who would have guessed that we could reach an agreement finally on ST,
about wolves?
Sunnibeaches! Maybe that's why Idaho has been plagued with wolves.
They are hunting for all the engineers, physicists, and politicians that have turned Idaho's INL nuke site into a radioactive dump ground. That nuclear dump has seriously infected the Snake River Aquifer with very dangerous radioactive materials.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Mar 21, 2011 - 12:05am PT
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Neebee-
All I know about what is going on in mainland Japan is what I see or read online. From what I hear, the only inconvenience in Kanagawa is that there will be fewer commuter trains into Tokyo for a long while due to electricity shortage. Your friend is able to text if not call Japan, and get much more detailed information.
I live in Okinawa which is thousands of miles south of the main islands of Japan. We are one hour flight from Taiwan and 2 hours flight from Tokyo. The Americans in mainland have been given the choice of a voluntary evacuation but Okinawa is not affected in any way.
Most of us who have been here many years prefer to stay here to support Japan and our Japanese friends rather than running away.
Meanwhile I have several online American military students who were able to contact me yesterday and tell me that they are working 16 hour a day as relief workers in Sendai, the tsunami center, and would be turning in their homework late!
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Mar 21, 2011 - 12:11am PT
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Perhaps the giant ferocious bloodthirsty wolves that RokJox and Jennie fantasize about are real, but the result of native wolves mutating when exposed to radiation?
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