We're Still Here

Must have been a slow news day around this joint today.  Our local rag sent a photographer to the Tai Chi class we attended last week, and sure enough, today our names and picture were blazed across this small town in varying shades of gray.  Fame is so easily achieved these days.  All we had to do was show up and perform our tag team version of this ancient Chinese martial art form and Zap!- Pow!, we're in the paper, in the row right behind our instructor. 

Another example of the slow day was exhibited by our local TV station.  During the entire evening we were given teasers about radiation from Japan being detected right here in Oregon.  Tune in at 10:00 for the details.  I did, just to see what they had to say.  The item came on about thirteen minutes into the program, and after several commercials, which are the entire reason for the news.  Ya gotta suffer through the attempt to lighten your wallet BEFORE receiving anything from them, even if it is of questionable value.

Surprisingly, unlike the network news, they were pretty honest about what was found.  There were traces of radioactive Iodine found in air quality samples along the coast. But, after we were told that, we were also told that a person would have to be subjected to exposure for 80,000 years at the low level detected before any health risk at all would be expected.  Don't know about you, but I'd hate to be subjected to anything for 80,000 years, even life itself.  The tragedies we endure during our present short span of years is quite enough for me.

What has not really been reported through the whole disaster that has befallen Japan, is how well everything involving nuclear power worked.  Depending on how you measure it, this quake was the third or forth largest EVER recorded.  It was at least 7,000 times stronger than the recent New Zealand quake that destroyed much of Christchurch.  The reactors stood through the quake.  The reactors stood through the tsunami.  The containment vessels have mostly held up through the partial melting of the fuel rods the last several weeks.  Even though these plants are forty years old, the company that ran them cut corners affecting safety, and, there was inadequate storage for spent fuel rods, the reactors stood.  Most of the leakage that has occurred was purposely caused in order to relieve pressure build ups, and the amounts released into our atmosphere are so minute as to be almost insignificant.  Too much radioactive Iodine for you?  Wait a month (32 days) - 15/16ths of the isotope will have decayed. 

What else is not being reported is there have been over 500 above ground tests of bombs which released radiation and ionizing elements from detonations totaling the equivalent of more than 478 megatons of TNT in the years between 1945 and 1980.  These releases amount to literally BILLIONS of times more than those of the last two weeks in Japan. Ya wanna know something?  We're still here.  Mostly we're victims of the linear no-threshold hypothesis of the last forty years.  People used to believe, when they heard thunder,  the Gods were angry.  I think it's time to revise our safety standards - the one we use mostly makes life easier for the bureaucrats.

The most interesting lesson I have learned from the recent news is this.  The media will exaggerate the most mundane of events so as to sell more product.  When the event concerns something that matters, like the one in Japan, nothing is sacred.  If it isn't scary enough, they will find someone who will scare you.  If you really want to be scared, just stand beside a busy freeway and look at the massive amount of metal hurling itself toward you at 75 miles an hour.

I must be a little slow.  Two weeks have passed since the quake and this should be old news by now.  Maybe tomorrow will be a regular news day and there will be something else reported that will keep me scared and in line.