Labours Love Lost ...

We've endured another election. This time it was for the NSW Government. Mind you, I don't want to give the impression that having the vote is not worthwhile or important. No. It's all the circus performances before the election that needs to be endured. Labour is out and a coalition of Liberal and National Party will rule the roost. We'll see what that portends ...

Eat Your Spinach

The radioactive spinach that was threatening the world turns out to be that which was grown in a research centre and was never on the market ...

"The ministry says the radioactive cesium was detected on Thursday in a leafy vegetable taken from a field in Edogawa ward on Wednesday. The vegetable is called Komatsuna, or Japanese mustard spinach. The radioactive level was 890 becquerels per kilogram, exceeding the legal limit of 500.


The vegetable was grown at a research center, and is not being sold on the market."


Still ... Don't drink the water if you are under 12 months old ...

Radiantly Healthy

We're still hoping it will be OK to go to Japan ... it's not the radiation, but more a question of hotel rooms being taken by the poor souls from the tsunami towns. Flights to/from Tokyo seem to be more-or-less normal, but shuttle services from Narita airport to the city are sometime stopped due to power saving measures.

The very poor reporting on TV and the comics (sorry, that's newspapers to the less discerning) about the radiation problems shows that a headline is much more important than actual fact and explanations. Maybe it is true that, despite most of the population having at least ten years of "education", the general public are too dim to understand real data and its meaning even if said data is interpreted in a simple way by known experts. Sadly, the experts are as guilty as the journalists. We watched an expert from the ANU, a fellow we've know for over 20 years, spouting the most blatant propaganda vis-a-vis Global Warming. It seems that, like the Cheshire Cat, words mean what the sprooker whats then to mean and to the Devil with unbiased logic. Disagreement is tantamount to treason ... (For further entertainment in this vein and a Oscar winning performance of hubris, I recommend the current production, "The Mad Monk", at the local theater in Canberra.)

Back to radiating ...

I think this diagramme, which came from the Japanese government, is useful to explain some aspects of absorbed dosage.

Unfortunately, it's a bit more complicated if you ask, "dosage of what?"  Gamma, X-ray, Beta, Alpha, Neutron radiation? Hence, the use of the Sievert which is a unit of "Equivalent Dose" - Alpha weights 20 times the others. Which part of the body? Hence, the "Effective Dose" - eg: gonads weighted 20 times skin. How long was the exposure? Hence, the "per year" factor.

This page (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2922671) seems to do a reasonable job of explaining some of the complications. There are difficulties over unit of measurement and their interrelationships - Rem, Rontgen, Gray, Sievert, Becquerel, Currie, just for starters.

The fact that some of the foods in the area are radioactive comes as no surprise - they ALL are. Trouble comes when there is no comparison with what the "normal" levels were before the earthquake and tsunami. Maybe the foods were not measured before the event - I don't know at this stage. The same comment applies to the drinking water - everywhere (which includes Australian sources of water).

The average nuclear radiation from a person is reported as, something like, 400 microSv per year. You might as well suggest that it is dangerous to go to a football match where you would be surrounded by all those people next to you and all radiating nasties and giving you cancer ... what bollicks!

Interestingly, radon levels have always posed a problem and, not least, in the UK. The building methods in the UK include the wide use of Breeze Blocks which are made, in part, of the ash from conventional power stations. These release radon. The heath authorities in the UK commissioned a detailed study which measured the levels radon in homes in England and Wales. Not surprisingly, the results showed that people living in geographical areas where granite rock predominates were subject to greatest exposure to radon - Cornwall 700% higher than Norfolk. This is a natural phenomena ...

Unfortunately, we don't seem to be able to face up to the simple fact that our civilization is electricity based and we will, inevitably, need nukes to power our iPads ...

Comprehending Disaster

The Japanese earthquakes and tsunami disaster seemed to be beyond my comprehension until I visualized the whole of Batemans Bay, Batehaven and Sunshine Bay being wiped out while we were sat at the cafe.

All the anti-nuclear voices seem to be more concerned for, what they imagine to be, more worthy lives than the tens of thousands that have been killed by this and other natural phenomena which, daily, wreak havoc across our world. I, for one, am pro-nuclear power. If this design for a MOX reactor - note: NOT the ancillary, essential cooling systems - can withstand a category 9 quake and a monster tsunami, I say, build some Pebble Bed units - not near the beach though. Water has the pleasing property of being able to be pumped along pipes.

I got an email from Tokyo pals who are shaken and not stirred. The "system" sprang into action - as per plan. Lest we forget, Tokyo was flattened by Allied (US) bombing - far worse than London; more akin to Dresden - and the resilience of the people re-built what we see today. Remember Kobe 1995? Nothing keeps a well organised society down for long ...

So far, the silliest of the comments made by TV reporters went something like, "This is the worst nuclear disaster the Japan has had to face". I wonder if he had ever heard of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Maybe he thought that "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" were just manga characters. Back in 1945 the Allied "success" created something like a minimum of 250,000 dead and hundreds of thousands of radiation casualties - a tad worse than the Chernobyl episode even though some 350,000 people were re-settled.

We'll wait and see how things are in a couple of weeks and the make a final decision which way to fly to Europe.

Donations to the Red Cross Japan Appeal here.

Quaking At The Thought ...

We were glued to the news reports about the earthquake in Japan. Last week it was Christchurch. If we were as paranoid as most the dope-heads down here in Lala Land, we'd be convinced that the Deities have it in for us. After all, we've been to those places several times and are planning another excursion soon. It's not so. Just the usual bit of plate-shifting that puts the whole of mankind (oops, that's a pejorative, sexist noun) in their place. No doubt the Hand Wringing, Anti-Nuclear Brigade will have a field day.

What should we do about the pending trip? We'll sit on our collective hands for a week or two. No flight tickets have been bought yet, so that we'll have a think about alternatives. Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok spring to mind as stop-off locations. It would mean we couldn't fly JAL which would  not please the Memsahib ...

Transit Hotels

We have somewhere to rest our weary heads in Sydney on the way out and London when we arrive after 13 hrs of flying time - plus 3 hours before departure and 1 hour after landing - hopefully on time (fingers and anything else that helps crossed).

Using the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule, we will be staying at the same hotels we have used over several years.

The Airport Sydney International and The Comfort Hotel Heathrow - nothing flash, convenient and good value.