The very underestimated problem of RADIOACTIVE lenses

[Andrew Reid]

lol what, you still need your earthquake?

 

Would Fukushima have happened without one?

[Huuow]

I´m pretty sure the reactors in Germany were amongst the safest in the world... the more I´m impressed by this very drastic action. There will always be something... Why take chances?

[fuzzynormal]

Why take chances?

 

Rabbit hole of philosophy, that.

[Huuow]

Rabbit hole of philosophy, that.

 

more like a grammar hole... srsly what?

[dahlfors]

There's no such thing as a "perfectly safe nuclear industry".  Try saying that to people living in a 5000 mile radius round Tchernobyl or Fukushima.  
There's not a single nuclear plant which has insurance, simply cos they can't find an insurance company willing to cover the risk.

 

In Belgium, with it's "perfectly safe nuclear industry", 2 of the 3 plants have had to shutdown due to tiny microscopic cracks in the plant's core.  Noone inside the perfectly safe nuclear industry knows how to solve it, or what to do with the core and the rest of the plant.  The plants will very probably never startup again.  

 

Nuclear energy creates a wonderful legacy for our children and great granchildren : nuclear waste.  Which will be here at least as long as we are.  Plenty of it was dumped in the oceans, is leaking now and we have no idea what to do with the rest of the waste that's stored all over the planet right now.

 

Off topic for a lens thread. But I suggest you do some reading, since:

 

1) There's currently a reactor running in Norway that runs on Thorium. If power goes out in such a power plant, you don't need any coolant - the fission will halt when it isn't fed energy to keep the process going. The one in Norway is the first Thorium plant to be run in production, but there's a few other Thorium reactors being built & developed around the world as well. Conclusion: nuclear industry can be perfectly safe.

 

2) There's processes for processing high-radioactive nuclear waste into low-radioactive waste already existing today. There just hasn't been much of an interest (and capital) in further development of construction of such plants, mostly it has just been done for research purposes. And yes, you could extract energy from nuclear waste processing as well, so it doesn't need to be that much of a loss. With investment in nuclear waste processing tech, there doesn't need to be that much of a legacy for coming generations.

 

Unfortunately most of our energy production will produce waste in one way or the other for coming generations, until we can produce solar & fusion energy well enough. If you're interested in energy production, I highly recommend watching this interesting TED talk on fusion power: 

[fuzzynormal]

more like a grammar hole... srsly what?

 

Dear Sir,

 

In response to your quip regarding my grammatical abilities, and/or inabilities, I present to you a re-visitation of correspondence context.  Wherein you wrote:

 

"Why Take Chances?"  

 

I responded in kind with not these words verbatim, but nevertheless this sentiment:

 

"That is a simple question in which an individual's subjective answer would partially reveal their complicated fundamental existential opinions regarding how they live their life."

 

Of course, that sentiment that was wrapped up in a common metaphor and spoken word nomenclature such as, "Rabbit hole of philosophy, that."  

 

Notice that wherein the metaphor "Rabbit Hole" refers to something simple on the surface that is quite complex below it.  

 

However, I tend to believe you would rather read a reply, while still pithy, conveys a stronger grammatical sentence structure.  Thus I present to you this:  "That question is a rabbit hole of philosophy."

 

Sincerely,

Guy-who-is-bored-and-has-nothing-better-to-do-than-type-this-nonsense-at-the-moment-but-is-too-lazy-to-use-vowels-for-this-last-word-srsly.

 

(Is my video rendering done yet...?)

[Brellivids]

The saddest FACT about nuclear energy industry is that Thorium is much safer much more plentiful and cheaper to obtain and the reason it's not used as a energy source is nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons and nuclear energy go hand in hand.

 

The human population could be powered via global solar grid that moves energy from where it shines to where it does not shine via cables.  The last big war that started at 2003 has costed well over 1 trillion dollar so far.

Imagine how large solar cell manufacturing infrastructure could be built with that money.

 

Tesla Motors Giga factory has a price tag of over 5 billion dollars. The factory will be larger than all the other battery factories in the world right now combined. Top of the line Intel semiconductor FaB / factory costs about 1-1.5 billion dollars with high end robots and all. Now you can perhaps quess that a colossal solar panel factory would be much cheaper .. add to that equation the little snippet that sand the source of silicon is RATHER PLENTIFULL .. This is children level math that could change the whole world.

[FilmBrute]

Andrew, if this camera stuff doesn't work out for you, I am pretty sure this forum can just branch off into a nuclear/radioactive themed discussion board. :lol:

 

Anyway, I'm a bit with the OP on this. Every day we come in contact with all sorts of stuff. Not just lenses and cameras, but microwaves, led cups.... other "radioactive" things? None of us know how much exposure we have to all this stuff. Maybe the lenses and viewfinders aren't so bad, but maybe other things we come into contact with are more dangerous. Ingesting stuff orally, through nasal cavity, or ocularly seems... quite easy? And maybe the effects on infants or those with poor immunity, or certain type of skin (not color, maybe cellular differences) are magnified. 

 

And imagine more toxins entering our bodies from generation to generation. And our DNA. mutating and reflecting that, being passed down generation to generation. And maybe our risk for cancer will go up a bit, but we won't know why. Because the sum of all the different poisonous exposures are just too subtle to correlate to any particular result. 

 

So maybe the radioactive iscoramas aren't so harmful... but they do contribute the sum of all the poisons we are exposed to. 

[jcs]

Junior shared two real risks with thorium in lenses

1. Cataracts
2. Increased cancer risk if thorium dust inhaled or ingested

Thanks Junior for sharing this info. Some will be comfortable managing the risks (including keeping lenses away from kids), others will choose to avoid the risk due to their particular situation. Keeping smoke detectors away from curious kids is also a good idea (americium: alpha particles and gamma radiation: http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/americium.html).

A friend of mine was concerned about Fukushima radiation in LA and was considering moving back to Atlanta. I explained that the risks were currently low and pointed out he gets far more radiation and toxins from smoking- so he should quit first before worrying about Fukushima. He didn't quit smoking and stopped worrying about Fukushima.

There's a high end sushi place in Beverly Hills (Sugarfish) which discusses heavy metal (methyl mercury) and Fukushima radiation risk right on the menu: http://sugarfishsushi.com/our-food/foodthoughts/food-safety

They mention a blood test to measure mercury toxicity- this only measures recent exposure (I did a blood test for gadolinium which was supposed to clear the body completely within about 90 minutes after injection, before the bonded chelator broke down exposing the body to toxic gadolinium. Over a month later it was still detectable in the blood). A better test for mercury, lead, uranium, arsenic, aluminum, gadolinium and other toxic heavy metals is a DMSA heavy metal 6 hour urine collection which is then run through an ICP spectrometer to measure metals. It's not very expensive- around $100.

DMSA and EDTA and other chelators might be helpful in removing radioactive metals from the body. Having a healthy gut, liver and kidneys will help the body excrete toxic metals and prevent reabsorption (which is a problem with the typical western diet of low nutrient processed foods).

I still eat sushi in moderation (but very rarely tuna; was my favorite). Do I bring a Gieger counter in to measure the fish before eating? No, but that could be fun especially if wearing a tin foil hat :)

[nazdar]

...
I still eat sushi in moderation (but very rarely tuna; was my favorite). Do I bring a Gieger counter in to measure the fish before eating? No, but that could be fun especially if wearing a tin foil hat :)

Again, you must know what are you searching for and how to measure it. Its important how sensitive you Geiger is, how big sensor you are using, when it was calibrated, how big is the background radiation at your Sushi bar, etc etc. Sometimes you end with that, that you find other unxpected local sources of radiation, like people runing with beeping Geigers on the Pacific coast who are maybe measuring radiation which is coming from local US radioactive waste or poluttion dumped in to the sea rather than that one which really came from Fukushima. ;) Its like making camera shootouts, everybody loves it but almost nobody is doing it properly, so they rather say it ways quick and dirty test and result is pretty lame useless as usual.

Btw Fukushima disaster is aproximately 100x scale of what hapened in Chernobyl! And they are still continuously dumping radiaoctive water in to the Pacific ocean since then for years. For many people its just old news which happened 3 years ago so they dont care of it anymore, but it didnt stopped its still actual. At Chernobyl they closed sarcofag and somehow locked the problem, but in Japan they dont know what to do with it and are still pouring waste to the nature. Only what we hear from them is all that PR bullsh*t that it will be ok.

Most ridiculous thing is that the solution for tsunami is just to move around 20 meters of elevation up to the hill and you can watch tsunami disaster safely from your windows. Its that simple. This was first thing which came to my mind when I was watching videos from Japan how people are runing up to the hills to safe their life and then safely videoing all that hell under them. It was really just few elevation meters betwen life and death, between disaster and safe life. How that nation which gave tsunami word to the world and had to deal with this disaster for centuries can be so dumb and dont setle just few meters up away from it???? No, they are just watching it first hand and then go back down bury their relatives, repair their homes and infrastructure just to wait for another disaster?!?!? I simply dont get it. Good luck than its your life your choice :( But if they built Nuclear plant just by the ocean, its not their local problem anymore its problem of us all dammit!

Very same with people who lives at tornado alley. Its like living on the route where giants walk. I really dont like to wait for another emotive and scarry TV news.

Just few meters ...


Tsunamis can happen anywhere in the world. I mean on any coast. And they happened in history, there are proofs in Orengon, France etc. Biggest one is just waiting for whole east coast of US, just when the half of old volcano mountain on Canary Islands slips in to the ocean. It can happen now, tommorrow or after 100 years nobody knows.

[Nikkor]

And the other day I saw 4000W solar panels for 2500€, fuck peak oil, bahahahaha

[richg101]

get caught up in radioactivity and it only leads to trouble...

[Pascal Garnier]

Yes all correct.

 

But still no tsunami or magnitude 9 earthquake in central Germany. Odd.

Neither did we have one of those in Belgium.  But microscopic cracks did the job.  Plant is unsafe to use.  I'd rather not think about what could've happened if they hadn't inspected properly.  Or what is gonna happen in the future with that plant, the core and the waste.

[jcs]

dahlfors- thanks for the fusion video- looks like fusion is just around the corner.

[Pascal Garnier]

The point is not whether it's possible technologically or not, it's about what we want to spend our money on.

Fusion technology costs huge amounts of money, that could also be spent on renewable energy, or education, or vaccination campaigns, or on demilitarizing militias in Africa and South America, ... 

 

My biggest problem with fusion is that's yet another centralized means of power generation.

If you want big corporations to control energy supplies and set the price, fusion sounds great.  

 

I much more believe in decentralized ways of generating power, based on a big grid/networked system.  Distributive and collaborative are the keywords.  Jeremy Rifkin explains it much better than I can.

 

 

 

Off topic for a lens thread. But I suggest you do some reading, since:

 

1) There's currently a reactor running in Norway that runs on Thorium. If power goes out in such a power plant, you don't need any coolant - the fission will halt when it isn't fed energy to keep the process going. The one in Norway is the first Thorium plant to be run in production, but there's a few other Thorium reactors being built & developed around the world as well. Conclusion: nuclear industry can be perfectly safe.

 

2) There's processes for processing high-radioactive nuclear waste into low-radioactive waste already existing today. There just hasn't been much of an interest (and capital) in further development of construction of such plants, mostly it has just been done for research purposes. And yes, you could extract energy from nuclear waste processing as well, so it doesn't need to be that much of a loss. With investment in nuclear waste processing tech, there doesn't need to be that much of a legacy for coming generations.

 

Unfortunately most of our energy production will produce waste in one way or the other for coming generations, until we can produce solar & fusion energy well enough. If you're interested in energy production, I highly recommend watching this interesting TED talk on fusion power: 

[jcs]

Nice video Pascal. How do we make the power grid public so this can happen?

As filmmakers, we can use our influence to change the world- through documentaries and narratives, even video blogs and YouTube. Communicating with primality, emotion, music, and logic, in that order. The first step is undoing western materialistic consumerism created by emotional advertising and get back closer to need based spending, using the same techniques that got us here.

We can slow global population growth by helping all under developed countries become developed. If we don't do this, nature will take care of it for us via war, famine, and disease.

Perhaps most important- make organic food locally and make it plentiful and affordable. This is something we can do right now; our number one consumable is food.

As communicators, we can help make this happen. For example- show how to eat healthy and promote companies which use organic foods: http://www.youtube.com/TheHotDishShow :)

[sunyata]

Going even more off-topic:

 

Anyone interested in the anti-nuclear argument should check out Amory Lovins. 

[jcs]

Nuclear power sounds easy:

 

1. Stick fissile rods with graphite rods between them in water.

2. Pull graphite rods out of water to stop absorbing neutrons allowing the fissile rods to heat each other up.

3. The resulting steam turns a turbine, creating electricity.

 

However, making this system reasonably safe explodes into some of the most complex machines man has ever made in written history (covering our bases here as there is evidence in the fossil record that man walked barefoot with dinosaurs*. Who knows how far man may have gotten when Atlantis was destroyed. The loss of written knowledge with the destruction of the Library at Alexandria is incalculable). [The LHC is also very complex, but won't be an issue unless it creates a black hole (bet they don't have insurance either- not that it would matter if the Earth was destroyed].

 

*

This photograph proves it's no way fake and not carved with a dremel etc. So either man was there back then, a time traveler was goofing off, or an alien humanoid was strolling on vacation. To get back on topic, "Ancient Alien theorists believe that the dinosaurs were killed with nuclear weapons" (yeah, this aired on TV). Thus, thorium coated lenses should not be allowed in time travel missions as they could give dinosaurs cataracts or cancer if ingested (a major possibility- see Jurassic Park for example behavior).

[Nikkor]

Dinosaurs never existed, they are just there to prove our faith in God...

[jcs]

Let's do some math:

If God is Love then
Dinosaurs existed to prove our faith in Love.
Since everybody loves dinosaurs, that makes sense :)