Posts by Rich Lock
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Scotland is not uninhabitable. It produces a lot of food. You have massively overprojected the destruction that the Chernobyl accident wreaked.
Yes, to a point. Small areas of the UK are still unable to produce food fit for human consumption, as a direct consequence of radioactive fallout from Chernobyl.
But: 1) they are still unable to produce that food 25 flippin' years after being dosed, and 2) the UK is a bloody long way away from the Ukraine.
Best fallout map I could quickly find is here
If I stand at my front door and look north, I can see two petrol stations and an awful lot of light industrial buildings and big box retail. None of which I'd like to be downwind of if they were uncontrollably ablaze after an 8.9 magnitude quake.
When was the last time any of the above laid semi-permanent waste to an area?
What Matthew said. The Buncefield fire did not render most of Hertfordshire uninhabitable for decades.
but is a distraction from other goings-on that actually do have real consequences here.
...so I'm going to shut up now.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to BenWilson,
I'm not against them on principle. If they're on the East Coast, even if there was a leak, the likely fallout is going to be heading out across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean.
You're relying awfully heavily on something you can't even begin to control for disaster limitation, though. There are parts of Scotland which, even 25 years after Chernobyl, can't be used to graze sheep intended for market. And Scotland is an awful long way downwind from your plume source.
What if the wind happens to be blowing in the wrong direction?
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Possibly also worth noting that it appears to have been the Tsunami that screwed the reactors, rather than the 'quake itself.
The reactors shut down due to the 'quake, and stopped generating electricity. So far so good. Normally they would use the external electrical supply to power cooling and control systems, but due to major damage to the power grid, that wasn't available as a power source. The emergency diesel generators started correctly, but were damaged by flooding from the tsunami that followed - the wave overtopped the seawall and flooded them.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Andre Alessi,
After a 9.0 earthquake here, there wouldn't be enough infrastracture (or people) to worry about any sort of nuclear event.
Depends what you mean by 'here', though, surely? A 9.0 quake in the SI woudn't necessarily bring Auckland to a standstill, same as Tokyo is still more or less functioning, but battered.
But any reactor near the epicentre would certainly be worrying me, same as those ones in Japan are.
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I've just finished reading Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science".
Snap (although I've been reading him online for years).
One minor quibble with your post...
Goldacre lays responsibility for the "MMR scare" firmly at the feet of people associated with media - as distinct from the particular researcher at the centre of the controversy.
Although it is true that Dr Goldacre lays the majority of the blame very, very firmly at the feet of a media intent on whipping up controversy and hysteria, the original researcher, Andrew Wakefield, does not by any means get away scot-free.
Dr Goldacre notes that his original Lancet research paper presented an incredibly muddled and flawed methodology, and that those facts presented which are discernable do not support his very, very dubious conclusion. The study has since been withdrawn.
The UK General Medical Council has also found that Andrew Wakefield 'failed in his duties as a responsible consultant', has 'acted both against the interests of his patients, and dishonestly and irresponsibly in his published research'. He has been struck off.
He has also been accused of having financial conflicts of interest, which were undisclosed at the time of the study (basically, he runs a for-profit organisation that offers...shall we say...unconventional cures for Asperger's).
The highly dubious nature of the research and it's conclusions were all apparent at the time of publication. However, it is true that the media whipped up a scare story and ran with it.
It is also true that they are now intent on making him their whipping boy and in doing so distracting attention away from their own huge culpability.
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Hard News: The Thread, It Is Open, in reply to giovanni tiso,
That wave of mud and houses and cars and debris is moving so far inland and so fast and so destructively it's just... unbelievable.
Gobsmacking. Like watching black death unleashed.
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Rich, I know the answer to that. She was having a dark night of the soul.
Nice! Thanks.
Just a short black before I'm put up against the wall, please.
Single or double shot? Ahaha.
I, too, am good for nothing in the morning before that caffiene fix, but afterwards? Why, I feel good enough to cope with anything!
the proletariat's guardians
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That was always my favourite Beatrix Potter
A question that has been troubling me for some time: what the hell was Ms Potter on when she wrote Pigling Bland?
The two bad mice was always my favourite. Smahsing up the doll's house always appealed to me as a lad. Can't think why...
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Che Tibby,
you should introduce him to dymaxion mapping
I had to go away and look that one up.
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Well, technically we should probably be boiling him first, then baking him.