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Japan Earth

China Detects 10 Cases of Radiation Contamination, 2 In Hospital 150

According to an article at The Sydney Morning Herald, "China has detected 10 cases of radioactive contamination among passengers, aircraft, ships and containers arriving from Japan since March 16, quarantine authorities said on Saturday. On Wednesday, radiation exceeding permitted levels was detected on two ships from the Japanese port of Chiba, near Tokyo, in the ports of Nantong and Zhangjiagang, Li Yuanping, spokesman of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said on its website." Meanwhile, airborne radiation from Japan is detectable in China, but thus far not considered a danger.
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China Detects 10 Cases of Radiation Contamination, 2 In Hospital

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  • by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Sunday April 03, 2011 @07:53PM (#35703538) Homepage Journal

    Abnormally high radioactivity was first detected on a ship that arrived from Japan at the southeast port of Xiamen on March 22.

    Two Japanese travellers were briefly hospitalised the next day with elevated radiation levels after arriving in eastern China on a commercial airliner from Tokyo. Their clothing and luggage was destroyed.

    Not destroying your luggage: 60 dollars ($50 if paid at least 24 hours before check-in).

    • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Sunday April 03, 2011 @07:55PM (#35703562)

      Abnormally high radioactivity was first detected on a ship that arrived from Japan at the southeast port of Xiamen on March 22.

      Two Japanese travellers were briefly hospitalised the next day with elevated radiation levels after arriving in eastern China on a commercial airliner from Tokyo. Their clothing and luggage was destroyed.

      How do you destroy radiation?

      • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03, 2011 @08:14PM (#35703694)

        You do it like with radiation (uranium, thorium, etc.) in coal - you burn the stuff where radiation is and then you say you don't have radiation anymore since it went "up the chimney"! Problem solved!!

        Maybe the nuclear industry could take a hint from coal - just burn the radioactive waste on big pile! Problem solved! DUH!!

        • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          They had a big BBQ in chernobyl some time ago but the assholes who lived next door complained and called the fire department.

        • by lennier ( 44736 )

          just burn the radioactive waste on big pile! Problem solved! DUH!!

          TEPCO is way ahead of you. They've been applying that remediation strategy at Fukushima since right after the tsunami. They're called "spent fuel pools".

      • In China what you do is mix it into the baby formula and pet food, along with anything else toxic you happen to have lying around.

      • The same way you destroy lead and other heavy metals.

        Wrap it up. Call it new. Sell it to unsuspecting Americans.

        Problem solved.

      • How do you destroy radiation?

        Mix it with red dye, paint some plastic toys with it and ship them to America...?

      • Set phasers on 'destroy'

      • by Lord_of_the_nerf ( 895604 ) on Sunday April 03, 2011 @10:21PM (#35704390)

        How do you destroy radiation?

        Detention then disappearance?

        China already has processes to stop undesirable elements.

        • ROFL

          Sadly, they are not the only ones with such an advanced process. The USA has a research facility placed in Cuba, so in case things go wrong only muslims and communists will face the consequences.

      • by cyfer2000 ( 548592 ) on Sunday April 03, 2011 @10:52PM (#35704550) Journal

        I think it is lost in translation or that Aussie news website is spreading FUD. The Chinese news [tutechanw.com.cn] I read has information like this

        1. 1, Two tourists, one 70 years old the other one is 77 years old, were found radioactive March 23. Both were from places far away from Fukushima Daiichi site.
        2. 2, The 77 years old showed strong but harmless radioactivity. The other one had less radioactivity.
        3. 3, Both were sent to hospital at March 23:15.
        4. 4, The 77 years old took a hot water shower in hospital.
        5. 5, The 70 years old did nothing but sleep.
        6. 6, Both left hospital at March 24 00:20am with their own clothes.
        7. 7, No mention about luggage.
        • Very odd since the highest level of radiation spreading far away from the exclusion zone outside Fukushima or Miyagi was detected in Ibaraki 15/march/2011, around 7 am at 1.5 uS/h, when fire destroyed the outer shell of unit 4. Even the radioactivity in the ships is very doubtful since the sea currents go south-north in Fukushima's coast and the ports mentioned in the article are in the Yangtze delta. Maybe the chinese should look upstream the Yangtze river from more radiation.

        • by mldi ( 1598123 )
          Those frozen banana daiquiris must have been damn good!
    • They must have gone nuts when their cameras were destroyed
  • from china ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03, 2011 @07:54PM (#35703550)

    this being from China, we must assume this is a political maneuver, and that any truth behind it is incidental.

  • PR perhaps? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cptdondo ( 59460 ) on Sunday April 03, 2011 @07:55PM (#35703558) Journal

    Given the long standing animosity between the Japanese and the Chinese, and the Chinese Gov't's total control of information, now much of this is true and how much is PR to smear Japan?

    My personal guess is that it has just enough truth in it to be irrefutable but little basis in actual fact. The chinese immigration goons could just have been told to grab 2 passengers at random and tell them they're contaminated and haul them off to the gulag^W hospital.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There a wide margin between analysis and throwing shit at the wall to see what will stick...

      Guess on which side you are...

      How aboot 'unrelated considerations'. Yes Japan and China are not always in good terms. But China immediately send support and search teams after the quake/tsunami/nukesplosion.

      They are close to Japan. The plant is throwing up 24/7 for the last month or so.

      And when a neighbouring country detect radiation from ships or people coming from japan you decide it's a political move ? /yeah sure

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by DMiax ( 915735 )

        If radioactive contaminant can get on a ship to China (btw the plant and the port are on the other side of Japan wrt china) no place in Japan is safe from it which probably means the end of the country altogether. Japanese and foreign authorities agree that radiation did not reach other cities in Japan. It may be false, of course, but it looks probable.

        And if you think that helping with the tsunami means they will not do something relatively innocuous like creating a PR stunt to smear Japan (remember: no li

        • Re:PR perhaps? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Renraku ( 518261 ) on Sunday April 03, 2011 @09:36PM (#35704198) Homepage

          You have to understand the scope of the situation. Most likely they had radiation detectors set to the most sensitive level. As in, they'll detect you if you ate a banana three days ago because of the isotopes present in the banana.

          • Detectors in Hiroshima are picking up no radiation whatsoever [windows.net].

            Good to know that China has better detectors tho.

            • by xnpu ( 963139 )

              You don't think that's weird when even measurements in Europe and US show heightened radiation likely to be from Japan? In this particular case I'm going with the Chinese measurements rather than the Japanese ones.

              Regarding the Chinese having better detectors, that's unlikely but certainly possible. Don't forget China is building fairly modern nuclear plants like they are McDonalds franchises.

              • According to http://www.mitnse.com/ [mitnse.com]

                To date, radiation detected in milk is on the order of picocuries (10-12 Curie) per liter. This is 5,000 times lower than the FDA’s Derived Intervention Level. A Derived Intervention Level is the point at which the FDA would act to take the food in question out of our food supply.

                That doesnt seem like its anything worth being hospitalized over.

          • The "banana dose" was of course propaganda crap dating back to the time of TMI and assuming that all potassium in the banana was the radioactive isotope. Real bananas don't have more than traces of radioactive potassium in them. The banana dose was a deliberate attempt to confuse the issue and trivialise the radiation exposure issue - which is odd because TMI really didn't release much so there was no need of such stupid propaganda.
            One "banana dose" is equivalent to the dose you would get from somehow sha
            • by Cyberax ( 705495 )

              Get a Geiger counter and a banana. Watch it start clicking like crazy.

              Bananas even sometimes trigger radioactive detectors in seaports.

              • by dbIII ( 701233 )
                Have you done this or are you just passing on the stuff from back in TMI days?
                • by Cyberax ( 705495 )

                  I've done this personally. Other potassium-containing distances are equally "terrifying".

                  • by dbIII ( 701233 )
                    OK then, looks like more than just tiny traces of those isotopes - but did it come within an order of magnitude or two of the legendary banana dose?
                    I've mucked about with potassium a little bit (it really rips into cracks in steel via liquid metal embrittlement) but never put a geiger counter anywhere near it.
        • Mod parent up please. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that there's a nefarious plot from the Chinese government, cptdondo and DMiax make good points.
      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        Japanese people travel to many countries in the world. Funny that only China discovered radioactive travelers. Let me know if/when Canada detects radioactive travelers.

        Small but measurable contamination is believable, especially that close to the source, but amounts that make a trip to the hospital and disposal of clothing necessary is a bit suspect.

        • by swalve ( 1980968 )
          Radioactive travelers were discovered at O'Hare airport that same week.
        • by xnpu ( 963139 )

          No clothing was disposed. Please read the original Chinese article, not the Aussie anti-nuclear propaganda.

      • Re:PR perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MidnightBrewer ( 97195 ) on Sunday April 03, 2011 @09:50PM (#35704262)

        I live in Japan and I can tell you that China did not immediately send support; they sent a handful of people after several days, and finally ramped things up when it became the media circus it is now and people started commenting that China wasn't really participating much.

        The Chinese government's radiation scare is just that; with the exception of Japanese TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) workers, nobody's been allowed close enough to suffer any significant exposure. If they were exposed, then they voluntarily traveled inside the 20-km evacuation radius and it's their own damn fault. The cases of contamination were mostly due to radiation detected on ships, which was most likely on the ships' hulls themselves, picked up from trace amounts in the ocean.

        The Chinese themselves say it's trace amounts. However, they also don't usually use radiation detectors at the airport, either, and they don't disclose their definition of abnormally high levels.

        This is business as usual for relations between Japan and China. Google last year's scuffle when a Chinese trawler rammed a Japanese coast guard ship and see what you get.

        • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          What a troll. A quick search of Google shows China sent a search and rescue team not 2 days after the quake, and has been continuously sending aid since then.

          But when I see the words "wasn't really participating much" it only sounds to me like somebody just wants more.

        • by rikasa ( 1760376 )

          I live in JP too. This is what the government website is telling me about radioctivity in my area 211km away from the Fukushima power plant as the crow flies in Saitama Prefecture [windows.net]. These readings appear to be supported by many independent sources too. While readings peaked for two 2hr periods at 1.2uSv/h on March 15th, they've remained relatively low. From what I gather; the United states has up to twice this level of environmental radioactivity with apparently no harm. While I'd prefer to see no I-131 and

        • ...nobody's been allowed close enough to suffer any significant exposure. If they were exposed, then they voluntarily traveled inside the 20-km evacuation radius and it's their own damn fault

          Au contraire...The Fukushima facility is releasing ginormous quantities of fission byproducts, particularly Iodine-131 and Cesium-137. If fission were no longer occurring, the release of the short-lived fission isotopes would be tapering off but that does not seem to be happening. Instead, there appear to be ongoing

      • They are close to Japan. The plant is throwing up 24/7 for the last month or so.

        Lets take an actual look at the data around Japan and see whether it matches up.

        In particular, lets look at data from (courtesy of [mext.go.jp]) Hiroshima [windows.net] (inland, southwest), Tokyo [windows.net] (east coast), Fukuoka [windows.net] (coastal, southwest), and Osaka [windows.net] (south).

        All of those show near zeros across the board for environmental radioactivity-- with the highest reading @ Tokyo a mere 2% of the "notify your local official" level. Of them, only tokyo has detectable radiation in its water.

        Im not nuclear scientist, but I think its fair game to c

        • by AlecC ( 512609 )

          Im not nuclear scientist, but I think its fair game to call shenanigans when folks a thousand miles away start claiming that the radioactivity skipped over Hiroshima and landed in China.

          Since the radioactivity is claimed to have come on people disembarking from an aircraft which followed more or less that course, I can't see why you call it "shenanigans".

          • Because I dont imagine there are any aircraft flying out of Fukushima, and the levels at Tokyo and all the other similarly large cities are basically nil.

            And as someone else has remarked, the levels even 30km from the reactors @ Fukushima (32uS/h, last I checked) were still lower than the dosage you receive from flying in the atmosphere anyways.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Add to this that it was first reported more than a week ago (25th March) and nothing more has been mentioned.

      Once again the media trawling for best scare stories for their readers.

      I stopped reading mainstream tabloid stories and instead tend to visit, World Nuclear News [world-nuclear-news.org] that seem to filter out the hysteria and present the known facts, including actual reading instead of meaningless 'x' times.

      • by tsm_sf ( 545316 )
        That site is run by a trade association. I'd be curious to hear more about its editorial policies.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DMiax ( 915735 )

      Given the long standing animosity between the Japanese and the Chinese, and the Chinese Gov't's total control of information, now much of this is true and how much is PR to smear Japan?

      It does not look even remotely true. The ship where they found "radiation" arrived in china on 22nd of March, which does not look enough for the contaminants to reach the ship. Moreover the stopped passengers are Japanese, and China has already an experience of stopping Japanese men for bogus reasons (some of them were taken as "spies" for retaliation in the Fisherman incident a few months ago).

    • It's not just past animosity, China has a HUGE economic interest in trying to smear Japan. A lot of Japanese factories have been knocked offline(a lot of Japanese factories with key technologies to boot), and you can bet your bottom yuan that China is licking it's lips trying to get as much of that capacity(and technology) moved over to China as they can. By making people think the case is much worse than it is, you will make investors get nervous and be much more willing to agree to the PRCs terms for d
      • It's not just past animosity, China has a HUGE economic interest in trying to smear Japan. A lot of Japanese factories have been knocked offline(a lot of Japanese factories with key technologies to boot), and you can bet your bottom yuan that China is licking it's lips trying to get as much of that capacity(and technology) moved over to China as they can. By making people think the case is much worse than it is, you will make investors get nervous and be much more willing to agree to the PRCs terms for doing business in China(the transfer of all that technology to the PRC government) so they can get their factories online somewhere "safe".

        Yup, to factories built with bricks done by child slave labor, for example. The top brass of PRC government has done many things right, but making China a worker's paradise and building a welfare state sadly are not among them.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 03, 2011 @08:00PM (#35703606)

    With the radiation level dropping lower and lower to 0.1-2 uSv/h, way below what you'd get from a single flight (40 uSv), this is just another case of the Chinese hating the Japanese. Maybe I'm not so used to the way "mainlanders" think anymore, having move from liberal Hong Kong to Europe years ago, but IMO it really is time to leave the past behind. Sadly, judging from the timing of broadcasting nationalistic WW2 documentary directly after the quake and now this, I guess it will take another generation at least.

    • by DMiax ( 915735 )
      One generation and one big political change. Nationalistic pride and/or xenophoby only needs a little effort to keep alive. If there are political reasons to keep hating Japan, then hate will continue as long as it will be useful. Happened and happens everywhere. In Italy it is the Muslim and Roms for example.
    • by lennier ( 44736 ) on Sunday April 03, 2011 @08:34PM (#35703860) Homepage

      With the radiation level dropping lower and lower to 0.1-2 uSv/h

      I'm sorry, but - what?

      Which "radiation level" are you referring to? There's not one "the". There's the trace emissions in the jetstream worldwide, there's the iodine and cesium contamination locally within the evacuation zone (in one hotspot measuring higher than in the Chernobyl exclusion zone), there's the over 1Sv/hr extremely hot water (like, stand next to it for an hour and you get radiation sickness) in the drainage pit under the plant, there's the thousands times normal iodine contamination leaking into the seawater, with the potential to either make a lot of fish very sick or worse, bioaccumulate in fish tissue for decades to come. There's the "jumpers" being recruited to work onsite in multi-Sievert conditions where you get your lifetime's exposure in 15 mins...

      Somewhere in the world, yes, there is "a" radiation level associated with this Situation Normal All Fukushima'd which is still in the microSievert range. That does not mean everything everywhere associated with it is peachy keen and shiny.

      It's entirely possible, for instance, that the 20km zone might not be usable for farming for the next 300 years.

      • by compro01 ( 777531 ) on Sunday April 03, 2011 @08:49PM (#35703938)

        there's the thousands times normal iodine contamination leaking into the seawater, with the potential to either make a lot of fish very sick or worse, bioaccumulate in fish tissue for decades to come.

        What exactly is going to bioaccumlate for decades? Iodine-131 has a half life of 8 days and decays into stable Xenon-131.

        • The question is whether or not they are detecting Iodine-129, which decays into Xenon-129, but has a half-life of 15.7 million years. I know nuke bombs and fission reactors create it, but haven't heard how much of this isotope has been found.

          Unlike I-131, I-129 IS a problem in the environment over the long term.

          • by AliasMarlowe ( 1042386 ) on Sunday April 03, 2011 @09:58PM (#35704286) Journal

            What exactly is going to bioaccumlate for decades? Iodine-131 has a half life of 8 days and decays into stable Xenon-131.

            The question is whether or not they are detecting Iodine-129, which decays into Xenon-129, but has a half-life of 15.7 million years. I know nuke bombs and fission reactors create it, but haven't heard how much of this isotope has been found.

            Unlike I-131, I-129 IS a problem in the environment over the long term.

            On the other hand, to detect comparable rates of beta emission, you'd need about 700million times as much I-129 as I-131. The half-life determines not just the time scale of the emission process, but also its intensity per gram of material.

        • Damn those Pesky Facts!

        • Cesium-137 is. In Bavaria, quite a long way from Chernobyl, all wild sows are radiation tested after been shot, and most of them treated as nuclear waste since the radiation they get from eating fungi is too high for consumption. This is 25 years after.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Wow FUD much? about 2% of all boars shot have radiation levels too high to eat, and the level of radiation found is no where near the level linked to cancer.
            http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/312515/germanys-radioactive-boars-a-legacy-chernobyl

            You would have to eat 3 lbs of boar meat that is 10x the legal limit to get the same dose as just living one year longer.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward

            There are still wild boar in Germany??? On less panicky note:

            About 2 percent of the 50,000 boars hunted are above the legal radioactivity limit, Reddemann said. And the government's radiation protection office says some mushrooms have registered up to 20 times the legal cesium limit. .......
            European officials insist that occasionally eating contaminated boar meat or mushrooms does not pose an immediate health risk. Public health agencies are typically conservative in setting limits for radioactivity in food.

            Eating 200 grams of mushrooms tested seven times above the legal cesium limit, for example, would amount to the same exposure as the altitude radiation taken in during a 2,000-mile flight, according to Germany's Office for Radiation Protection.

            In Austria, authorities say that eating the unlikely amount of 2 pounds of contaminated boar meat that is 10 times above the legal cesium limit would amount to two-thirds of an adult's normal annual radiation intake by food.

            http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014654517_apeugermanyradioactiveboars.html

            So, in reality, in Bavaria people panic lots it seems. You would have to eat boar meat every day for months and months to be affected by this. There ain't that many animals left in ALL of Germany! There is only a problem if you plan on actually farming certain crops in soils that received lots of cesium fallout.

            Anyway, here are some facts,
            http://www.epa.go

            • "In Austria, authorities say that eating the unlikely amount of 2 pounds of contaminated boar meat that is 10 times above the legal cesium limit would amount to two-thirds of an adult's normal annual radiation intake by food." You said, "So, in reality, in Bavaria people panic lots it seems. You would have to eat boar meat every day for months and months to be affected by this. There ain't that many animals left in ALL of Germany! There is only a problem if you plan on actually farming certain crops in soi
              • is quite likely if you are a subsistence hunter. Just saying

                Apart from the sheer idiocy of that expression beloved of Tea Partiers, how many subsistence hunters do you think there are in Bavaria? - which is one of the world's most advanced states. Bavarian hunters don't usually need to live off their wild boar, they visit the supermarket on their way home from the BMW plant, or maybe the research establishment at Garching. This is just one of the silliest posts I've read in a long time.

                (I now also recollec

                • You asked, " how many subsistence hunters do you think there are in Bavaria?"

                  Well assuming it meant "annually" where the article said "50,000 boars hunted", I'd say there are around 25,000 boar hunters.

                  Each one gets an average of 2 boars per year, yielding 80 lbs of meat. Since the article said, "In Austria, authorities say that eating the unlikely amount of 2 pounds of contaminated boar meat that is 10 times above the legal cesium limit would amount to two-thirds of an adult's normal annual radiatio
      • It's entirely possible, for instance, that the 20km zone might not be usable for farming for the next 300 years.

        Unlike the fields that are now perma-flooded by a mix of sea water and oil, or the ones were the topsoil got washed away and simply soaked in the same mix of sea water and oil? For what it is worth, a sizable portions of the fields in that region are going to be unusable for farming for some time. There are talks of moving a larger portion of the food production to Hokkaido as it was untouched and still has loads of unused space.

      • Which "radiation level" are you referring to?

        All of them. take your pick [mext.go.jp]; of all the prefectures listed, the only one with remotely "interesting" levels is Fukushima, and its levels are getting rather low as well-- until you get about 30km away, there isnt much in the way of radioactivity there either.

        Its not peachy keen; the tsunami wrecked whole villages and people wont be living there again for some time. The radiation issue will be over long before the rest of the problems are dealt with. The tragedy in all of this is that when the japanese fin

      • by Malc ( 1751 )

        Does the leaking water only carry iodine out of the plant? If so, why isn't it carrying anything else, like caesium?

    • by data2 ( 1382587 )

      Sorry, I don't know what it is on here all the time, comparing dosage with an hourly dose. While real levels in the vicinity, OUTSIDE the evacuation zone, were measured more like 10-100uSv/h (still not that much), going with the low level of just 2 uSv/h you get a higher radiation dosage than your example flight every day. And since this has been going on for quite some time, people have gotten quite a few additional flights. Why don't we just start giving the dose per minute. It will sound even less... Thi

  • by RanBato ( 214181 ) on Sunday April 03, 2011 @08:34PM (#35703848)
    Than to allow these type of false alarm / fear mongering articles on their main page. No actual numebrs mentioned in article 1. Article 2 makes it pretty clear there is no danger. Nothing to see here, please move on.
  • I must hunt and kill my very own Totoro! This earthquake is ruining everything...
  • by Anonymous Coward

    There seems to be problems tracking long term health records in societies with lots of nukes.

    Recording health records of radiation related health problems of radiation from a long term leak like Daiichi seems to be non-existent. In fact, will be difficult to establish as it can only be bad news and there are interests that would not want to keep tracking this information. The interests that would want to track public health are general and dispersed, the interests that do not want to track this in

  • From what news sources in Korea (much closer to Japan than China) have been saying throughout, increased radiation is being detected but it's not to the level where you'd have health concerns or need to destroy anything. Similarly I don't recall reading of radiation levels in japan itself (eg. Tokyo) that might point to the need to destroy luggage or hospitalise people .. maybe the people from near the reactor might cause concern but I think their concern would be for their homes and family rather than with
    • by xnpu ( 963139 )

      How's voluntary check up on the hospital propaganda? Oh wait, you read the Aussie version, which claims destroying clothes and other things which didn't happen.

      Why can't people see this for what it is? Australian anti-nuclear propaganda. Are the immune to criticisms because they're supposedly western?

  • by kombipom ( 1274672 ) on Sunday April 03, 2011 @11:28PM (#35704718) Journal

    You can detect (and identify) the radiation from the atmospheric bomb testing that took place decades ago! Radiation detection equipment is extremely sensitive. Without numbers (and units) "detected" means absolutely nothing. Please /. stop reporting this non-news, it's just infuriating to anyone with even a basic understanding of radiation safety/physics.

  • The /. article title helps propagate the widespread popular confusion between radiation and radioactive materials. Radiation helps you detect contamination with radioactive materials, similar to how light helps you detect the sun. The editor should have stuck with either of the phrasings from the first link -- "10 cases of radiation" or "10 cases of radioactive contamination" -- rather than combine them.

  • than the fear and hysteria in the media, are comments like you see under slashdot articles about this nuclear tragedy claiming, basically "no big deal"

    false alarmism: wrong

    false complacency: equally wrong

    do you know how much fucking radiation that plant is leaking into the environment? if an appreciation of how much nuclear radiation is going into the environment from fukushima does not sober you up, you are a grade aaa usless asshole

    at least the hysterical can plead ignorance. what's your excuse asshole?

    • by lbbros ( 900904 )

      at least the hysterical can plead ignorance. what's your excuse asshole?

      That physics does not follow hysteria. The situation is serious, but the media are blowing it way out of proportion.

      And as someone said, detectable means nothing. The detection systems are so precise they can identify the natural background.

      • at least the hysterical can plead ignorance. what's your excuse asshole?

        That physics does not follow hysteria. The situation is serious, but the media are blowing it way out of proportion.

        And as someone said, detectable means nothing. The detection systems are so precise they can identify the natural background.

        I'm sorry... but how exactly does one blow the worst
        nuclear accident in the history of mankind... out of
        proportion?

        http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=126888 [novinite.com]

        Oh, also... car analogy time... You have a detector
        that measures things falling from the sky. Ok... things
        are ALWAYS falling from the sky.

        Now, how about if today, full sized vehicles are dropping
        from the sky.

        So... if you "detect" full sized vehicles dropping from
        the sky, the data might be relevant, to anyone without
        a cement dome for a helmet.

        -AI

        • So what you're saying is, you believe a patriotic Russian anti-nuclear activist over everybody else? Not that he would have any incentive to suggest that Chernobyl wasn't nearly as bad as Westerners think, of course.

          For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion

          Good idea, why not start now?

  • Par for the course, the Slashdot crowd hates on China irrationally, and it gets moderated up due to the ridiculous groupthink. What, you need another Soviet Union to blame everything on and which you can reflexively call evil everything that comes out of there? Aren't you still busy hating on the Arabs?
    • it is not about 'hate' it is about the basic historical reality of the chinese government.

      the baby milk scandal was covered up and whistleblowers put in prison

      SARS more of the same

      if there were a nuclear accident in China, the government would lie about that too

      every government lies, but China has a special affinity for putting anyone who points this out into prison for long periods of time and harassing and abusing their families.

  • So instead of feeling sorry for the japanese people, they attack them politically by faking radiation sickness? Awful as usual.
  • This could be another blow for japan that has already been going through so much of hardships, if travel to japan becomes unsafe then no one will be going there, also the japanese economy has suffered heavily in the last few weeks due to the natural calamities that have taken place.
  • As is too often the case, the slashdot summary is a bit inaccurate. First, the phrase "thus far not considered a danger." has a link to an article that says that the National National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) does not consider traces of iodine-131 in that air to be a danger. It says nothing about ships, containers or luggage. In addition I would like to encourage anyone writing these summaries not to use such ambiguous language: saying something is not considered dangerous is almost always untru

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