I'm sure my brother's family is happy that their son got a domestic mission. Just read that the U.S. government is advising U.S. citizens to evacuate and even chartering flights. I wonder what the church will do. If I had a relative in Japan (church related or otherwise), I would be frantic. It is such a hugh tragedy for everyone. I wonder how it will end. All bets are off with the nuclear reactors problems. I can't stop watching the news and reading the internet for live updates. Japan is changed forever.

Moira

sez this is the beginning of the end and Jesus is coming on May 12.

Dang, sux to be old.

otherwise we'd call them God. ;o)

He's faithful, loyal, ever-present, cares about my well-being, and loves me unconditionally. No sky-daddy can make those claims.

TG

There are 5,000 known dead, and another 5K to 10K missing, many of whom are likely dead. That's not a hypothetical tragedy, that's a done deal tragedy.

We like scaring ourselves with radiation, but our reactions are far out of proportion to the actual dangers.

The several dozens of people at the reactors are in serious but not grave danger. For everyone else, they are more likely to die in a car accident.

Three Mile Island, zero dead, no detectable increase in cancer deaths of those exposed to radiation.

Chernobyl, which was a genuine disaster, 31 dead, essentially all people inside the plant picking up highly radioactive material with shovels after the blast.

Several thousand cases of thyroid cancer, which has a very high survival rate, in the high 90s.

Estimated increased cancer deaths among the 600,000 people exposed to the highest levels of radiation -- 4,000. That's 2/3rds of 1%. Approximately 22% of Ukrainians would die of cancer anyway, had there been no accident, so this estimate raises the cancer rate to still under 23%.

Chernobyl released a huge amount of radiation into the air, and did it over land. Much less is coming out of the Japanese reactors, and is mostly going out over the Pacific.

The likely death toll from radiation from this event will be in the single digits, and almost certainly under 100. Meanwhile, it is likely 10,000 or more died in a matter of minutes in the tsunami. The reactor disasters, while fantastically expensive, won't have anywhere near that death toll. More people will die from car accidents, medical equipment failures, and house fires caused by the simple lack of electricity in that part of the country.

I know that is not the gut level reaction. Humans are spectacularly bad at assessing relative risk. I've been watching the coverage too, and will continue to do so. There are no reactors within many hundreds of miles of me. Meanwhile, the Wasatch Fault is 2 miles away, which has the potential to kill tens of thousands, me included. I sleep fine at night.

The sad thing is that if the sea walls had been 20 feet taller, and/or the backup generators had been up on 20 or 30 foot tall platforms, sounds like the reactors would have survived intact. As a percentage of the overall cost of the reactors, those changes would have cost nothing.

ENS Newswire
Thursday, March 17, 2011 (FLASHBACK)

NEW YORK, New York, – Nearly one million people around the world died from exposure to radiation released by the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl reactor, finds a new book from the New York Academy of Sciences published today on the 24th anniversary of the meltdown at the Soviet facility.

The book, “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment,” was compiled by authors Alexey Yablokov of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy in Moscow, and Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko of the Institute of Radiation Safety, in Minsk, Belarus.

The authors examined more than 5,000 published articles and studies, most written in Slavic languages and never before available in English.

***Needs link



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/17/2011 10:04PM by Susan I/S.

MSNBC LIES About Three Mile Island Health Effects

The Thinker
Thursday, March 17, 2011

First it was Cenk Uygur, and today a special report on MSNBC makes the FALSE CLAIM that there were no “deaths or long-term health effects connected to the accident.” But they never mentioned studies by the Radiation and Public Health Project, including a “new analysis of health statistics in the region found that death rates for infants, children, and the elderly soared in the first two years after the Three Mile Island accident in Dauphin and surrounding counties.” (This directly contradicts what Big Eddie reported — see his “Takedown” below. I guess Big Eddie didn’t get the memo from The MAN …)

I e-mailed Cenk this information, so whose agenda are he and his superiors pushing at MSNBC — could it have anything to do with the fact that former NBC majority owner General Electric has designed Japan’s stricken reactors and many of the reactors in operation in the U.S. today? For the MSNBC research hounds (did you find this, then it mysteriously disappeared from the final report, or what they gave Cenk to read?) here’s the information contradicting your broadcast LIES about Three Mile Island:

***Needs link



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/17/2011 10:05PM by Susan I/S.

I lived in Russia and Central Asia. Personally, I don't believe for one second the "statistics" that the former Soviet Union released regarding deaths and birth defects from the Chernobyl disaster. (Call me cynical, but I don't believe the statistics released by the US about Three Mile Island either). I lived in Kazakhstan and was told by people who nothing to gain by lying to me about Semipalatinsk (in NE Kazakhstan) where nuclear testing was done. Horror stories about cancer rates and birth defects from people who worked and lived in that area.

There is a 30 kilometer restricted zone for residents around Chernobyl, although there are some people living in that area anyway. Within that 30 kilometer zone, the immediate 10 kilometer area around Chernobyl is uninhabited. If Japan ends up having a Chernobyl degree disaster, I wonder how much of a restricted zone they will require. I found this information about Chernobyl:

"How safe the area is after a nuclear disaster will depend on what radioactive material was released and where it went. There are four kinds of radionuclides or radioactive isotopes that are of special concern at the site. Iodine-131 is rapidly absorbed by the thyroid gland and increases the risk of childhood thyroid cancer. Cesium-137 mimics potassium inside the body, seeking out muscle. Strontium-90 acts like calcium, attracted to bone. Plutonium-239 and other isotopes can stay in the body indefinitely, irradiating organs.

These four materials escaped from the explosions at Chernobyl to varying distances, given factors such as their mass and melting points. Iodine-131 and cesium-137 were both very broadly transported hundreds of kilometers, while strontium-90 remained in dust just 30 kilometers from the power plant and plutonium traveled only four kilometers or so.

Iodine-131 decays rapidly, and was virtually gone from the environment after only three months, Chumak says. However, cesium-137 and strontium-90 both have approximately 30-year half-lives, meaning they each take roughly three decades for half their material to decay, and plutonium-239, one the main isotopes in nuclear reactors, has a half-life of more than 24,000 YEARS (my emphasis)."

If I were an expat living in Japan right now, I'd be heading out. Millions of Japanese don't have that option.

And, yes, J. Chan, I know this could happen in the US.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/17/2011 11:34PM by moira.

Pres Kimball said they were turning white and delightsome in 1960. They have been dying from uranium mining.

health and environmental impacts of uranium contamination in the navajo nation
http://www.epa.gov/region9/superfund/navajo-nation/pdf/NN-5-Year-Plan-June-12.pdf

navajo president signs uranium ban
http://www.sric.org/uranium/Navajo%20pres.%20signs%20uranium%20ban,%20for%20April%2030.pdf

mortality among navajo uranium miners
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1615135/pdf/amjph00442-0073.pdf

Navajo cannot stop mining on their own lands because they cannot own their land like states do
http://newmexicoindependent.com/49368/uranium-mining-in-navajo-community-okd-by-appeals-court

http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/casey-research/uranium-and-japan

I feel so bad when these kinds of things happen. I feel so helpless and anxious for the people who are suffering. I can make a donation of money but it won't fix the fact we are human and horrible things can happen to anyone, anytime.

They are chartering flights and will be sending a lot of buses up to Northern Japan in order to assist US citizens who wish to leave. The NBC Nightly News showed embassy workers at the Tokyo airport also assisting US citizens.

People who are helping with the human distaster are concerned that with all the attention on the nuclear reactors, the everyday needs of the people in the shelters for food and potable water, etc. will be neglected. I know that our government is already helping in this area, but I hope that our focus and commitment continues.