for those of you who are annoyed at the media's fear mongering, some links to facts you may share

[kareina]

I don't tend to follow the news myself, but I have enough friends on LJ and FB who do and who comment on it that I pick up on a fair few things that are happening in the news. I gather that one of the hot topics just now is nuclear power and the dangers associated with it. If anyone is interested in reading science articles on the topic the Geology Journal, Elements, has made freely available all of the articles in their 2006 issue which focused on things related to nuclear power. Article titles from that issue include:

The Nuclear Fuel Cycle: A Role for Mineralogy and Geochemistry

Uranium Mill Tailings: Geochemistry, Mineralogy, and Environmental Impact

Spent Nuclear Fuel

Uranium Mineralogy and Neptunium Mobility

Nuclear Waste Glasses - How Durable?

Ceramic Waste Forms for Actinides

These articles were written for a general audience and may be of interest to those of you who are complaining about the fear mongering the media is engaging in.

(Oh, if anyone actually reads any of these articles please let me know--I include links to things now and then, but never know if anyone ever clicks on them...)

Comments

[siloeke.livejournal.com]

Largely it's in the news because the earthquakes Japan damaged a number of their reactors, and then the tsunami knocked out a significant portion of their backup safety-measures. It's difficult to ascertain exactly what the facts are since the media is being ridiculous about it (I believe the word 'apocalypse' was used), but there has been partial meltdown in some of the reactor cores. There is an exclusion zone and so far it doesn't seem that too many people were exposed to any harmful amounts of radiation, other than those workers who remained behind to try to keep the reactors under control. These people are for the large part older technicians who already had children, so that any effects the radiation exposure may have on them are unlikely to be seen in their lifetime- however, there is still the risk of something going seriously wrong.

Obviously this event has reignited debate over the safety (or otherwise) of nuclear power, but neither side is really willing to be completely rational about it.

[kareina.livejournal.com]

Yah, there has been more than enough mention of that topic in FB, LJ, and, not surprisingly, the various geology blogs I follow. Seriously, I don't think I am missing anything by not reading the news articles themselves.

[clovis-t.livejournal.com]

If you want to see ridiculous, check out The Sun. Out of morbid curiosity, I had a look at their headlines one day.
"Nuke cloud 'could reach Tokyo'!"

Sigh.
And this is (I believe) Britain's biggest selling newspaper (if you can call it such).

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Sadly no time to read through them at the moment, but although I don't really like nuclear power, because it is a very expensive fuel source, both economically and environmentally, something that people seem to be ignoring in the media is that at least 100,000 people per annum die from fine particulate pollution caused by coal fired power stations, 30,000 pa in the US alone.

That's before you factor in the many miner and other worker deaths every year and the cost of natural disasters that can be fairly said to be caused or exacerbated by climate change. We're scared about the wrong power. And let's not get onto oil and gas and geopolitics ...