U.S. ambassador to Japan will publicly eat Fukushima fish amid radioactive water release outrage

alphacyberranger@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 482 points –
U.S. ambassador to Japan will publicly eat Fukushima fish amid radioactive water release outrage
fortune.com
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The level of ignorance around any nuclear related incident is astounding

If the radiation levels are truly negligible then the media shares blame for getting people upset over it.

Oil companies are ultimately to blame. After all, it was the Rockefeller Foundation who did the early radiation studies in the 50s, and then blatantly lied about the results to make radiation sound super scary. They claimed that there was no safe dose of radiation, and that any exposure, no matter how small, led to a direct, linear, increase in cancer risk.

And then the oil companies funded politicians who declared education to be the enemy, so now Americans don't know enough physics to know that every day, they are swimming in safe doses of ionizing radiation. That ocean water has millions of tons of natural uranium oxide dissolved in it.

US nuclear policy has been based off of these lies, it's part of why nuclear power is so expensive.

Those same oil companies actually paid to found Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to specifically advocate against nuclear power, by spreading fear and lies about how nuclear physics work.

The Rockefeller foundation still funds Greenpeace, and still requires that Greenpeace be anti-nuclear to receive that funding. All while being heavily invested in oil.

Greenpeace has been boycotting oil companies before you were even born. Nuclear isn't green and neither is oil. Don't spread misinformation

And also accepting oil money to fight against nuclear power. They were literally founded to spread the lie that nuclear isn't green.

Hell, you can look it up for yourself, they still take money from the Rockefeller Foundation.

They have never been as blatantly owned by oil money as Friends of the Earth, which was founded by a man who hated nuclear much more than he hated oil company money.

The current Rockefeller Foundation pretends to care about the environment. They even (partially) divested from oil company stocks a couple years ago.

Nuclear is not green, stop spreading misinformation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_energy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable\_energy#Nuclear\_power

Seems to be listed, It's just that Oil money has paid for a lot of lies. Spoiler, it's because nuclear is the only true threat to fossil fuels.

Yes it's listed under Non-renewable energy sources

Just because something is non-renewable does not mean it is non-sustainable, just like how something being renewable does not mean it is sustainable.

Hydro (or tidal barrage) power is an example of a renewable energy source, but it restricts river flow such that life can't exist as it naturally has for eons, like fish swimming up/down river, etc., or restricts the flow of minerals and nutrients that feed various niches of river or inlet biodiversity. Those effects on a local ecosystem can lead to other species collapsing elsewhere, which can impact other species, including humans.

Coal power is an example of a non-renewable resource as it depends on minerals that form at much slower rates than on the sorts of time scales humans use those minerals. Coal also leads to deaths of many humans and other species not only in the mining of resources (mine collapses, tailing pond ruptures, lung diseases, etc.), but also in the burning of the minerals via the release of radiation and other particulates that can impact local communities.

Nuclear is, imo, the best non-renewable source we can exercise for human purposes, so we should still pursue it.

It's still non-renewable and not green, only idiots would purse that when you have better alternatives available

Only an idiot wouldn't persue it when it is one of the safest, most reliable, and least polluting (including renewables) options. Radioactive waste is minimal, and modern reactor designs can reprocess it. It is easy to contain, though we do need a solution for long term storage that doesn't really exist yet, but that's basically just some location to bury it. There is enough material to last us for the foreseeable future while we develop other sources to be able to rely on 100% of the time.

It's not the safest by any margin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country

It's not the most reliable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Crisis_since_late_2021

It's not the least polluting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste_dumping_by_%27Ndrangheta

There is enough material to last us for the foreseeable future while we develop other sources to be able to rely on 100% of the time.

There are enough alternatives to ditch nuclear already and rely on better sources

It's not the safest by any margin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident s_by_country

From that link...

Relatively few accidents have involved fatalities, with roughly 74 casualties being attributed to accidents and half of these were those involved in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.[6]

Compare that to estimated 7 million killed every year by pollution from burning fossil fuels.

https://ourworldindata.org/data-review-air-pollution-deaths

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Bud, that link specifically lists nuclear energy as being sustainable and green. Did you not understand that, or were you just hoping nobody would actually click on the link?

It doesn't, learn how to read

From the link

The role of non-renewable energy sources in sustainable energy has been controversial. Nuclear power is a low-carbon source whose historic mortality rates are comparable to those of wind and solar, but its sustainability has been debated because of concerns about radioactive waste, nuclear proliferation, and accidents.

They're literally explaining to you why the contraversy even exists, which is oil propaganda.

Nuclear is green. It's emissions are almost zero greenhouse gases and won't contribute to global warming.

You seem to have reading issues. Nuclear is not green

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Nuclear energy is the closest thing we've got to green energy that we're going to get for the foreseeable future. Anyone opposing it is an idiot.

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Truly. The evacuation order itself killed more people around Fukushima than radiation did.

I want to know more about this do you have an article you recommend?

Damn that's pretty sad

It is. And it’s maddening that people just say the word Fukushima as evidence against the viability of nuclear power. Radiation is such a boogeyman to people. Not well understood. And I don’t even think people know that there was a tsunami that killed 2000 people. 1 death from radiation - a plant worker.

Sure, let’s discard a high capacity, carbon-neutral, baseline-capable form of energy over this.

People don’t even know that smokestacks on coal fired power plants spew radiation into the atmosphere. The fact that nuclear deposits it in barrels is actually a plus.

It's reasonable to be concerned about the long term health effects of tritiated water. It's very unlikely this will have any effects though. It's only like a few grams. I bet fusion power would produce a whole lot more, even through the blanket. That could have considerable local health effects.

Also, no news piece ever mentioned how far from the coast Japan is planning to release that water

Yes, the ignorance is mainly caused by governments and lobbies keeping quiet about what actually happened and washing down data

More like, ignorance caused by my local news deciding to run a story telling people there is a controversy, without making a simple statement like the water is less radioactive than a banana. There's a controversy in part because the media encourages it, at almost every opportunity.

If you believe it's safer than a banana why don't you go living in Futaba? I heard the houses are pretty cheap there

Most folks, including nuclear advocates, have little understanding of either fission products or neutron activation. They really have no need to. I don't think the data isn't there if you look for it though. It's just not simple to understand.

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