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http://www.podniesinski.pl/portal/fukushima/

Journalist visits and takes pics of the area, 4 odd years after the tragic events.

Odd to see how a world after us, if follow, might look





Dump sites with sacks of contaminated soil are usually located on arable land. To save space they are stacked in layers, one on top of the other.



The contamination work does not stop at removal of contaminated soil. Towns and villages are being cleaned as well, methodically, street by street and house by house. The walls and roofs of all the buildings are sprayed and scrubbed. The scale of the undertaking and the speed of work have to be admired. One can see that the workers are keen for the cleaning of the houses to be completed and the residents to return as soon as possible.



By hand, the roofs of all the buildings are cleaned one by one




Finally we visit Masami Yoshizawa’s farm, who, like Matsumura, returned to his ranch shortly after the disaster to take care of the abandoned animals. Yoshizawa’s story is more interesting, however. Not long after the accident his cows started to get mysterious white spots on their skin. Yoshizawa suspects that this is due to the cows eating contaminated grass. He is trying to publicise the case, he is in contact with the media, and protests in front of the Japanese parliament, even taking one of his cows. Unfortunately, apart from financial support and regular testing of the cows’ blood, there is no one who is willing to finance more extensive tests.





One of the cows with spots on its skin



Another cow with spots, inside the cowshed


Namie at dusk. Despite the area being totally deserted the traffic lights and streetlamps still work.






More pics if you click through.

The spots on the cows remind me of the marks that cows get if they puncture themselves on barbed wire. Perhaps the spots are local wounds caused by radiation.

Good set of photos, reminiscent of the Chernobyl forbidden zone.

I partcualy like these


They both have pro-nuculear power messages on them, very ironic.

Love the abandoned street lit up.

Lights still work.....

No ones ever coming back though.

The shot of the overgrown cars. Eerie.

If I get bit by one of those cows, will I get superpowers?

But the second pic. Eeries as all hell.

I'm surprised the farmer isn't getting attention for the cows. There must be plenty of scientists who would be quite interested to study the effects of low level radiation on large livestock.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The spots on the cows remind me of the marks that cows get if they puncture themselves on barbed wire. Perhaps the spots are local wounds caused by radiation.

That would be my guess as well. Given that the blood tests are coming up negative they're probably little more than superficial damage to the hair follicles. Maybe caused by alpha radiation which never penetrates more than the upper layers of the skin.

The cows and any product from them is probably safe to consume, but you'd want some extensive tests to be sure of course.

Get any Alpha particles in you however and there pretty dangerous. there short ranged but pretty powerful.

i would not want to eat anything that came from those cows.
.

 reds8n wrote:

Spoiler:

Just wow, that one gets to me.

No pics of Godzilla?

That shot of the cars is very eerie.

Thanks for posting, very interesting.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I'm surprised the farmer isn't getting attention for the cows. There must be plenty of scientists who would be quite interested to study the effects of low level radiation on large livestock.

There is a big governmental control of the media and a law was passed that everything regarded to the Fukushima "incident" is a state secret. The public is told that everything is under control, while radioactive ground water is seeping into the sea.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I'm surprised the farmer isn't getting attention for the cows. There must be plenty of scientists who would be quite interested to study the effects of low level radiation on large livestock.

There is a big governmental control of the media and a law was passed that everything regarded to the Fukushima "incident" is a state secret. The public is told that everything is under control, while radioactive ground water is seeping into the sea.

This seems incredibly counter productive. Events like this are too rare not to learn from and hiding it will not help in either the short or long term. It's not like the problem will go away... well, not for a few millenia.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
This seems incredibly counter productive. Events like this are too rare not to learn from and hiding it will not help in either the short or long term. It's not like the problem will go away... well, not for a few millenia.

Sure, but by then the politicians responsible will be dead and it will be someone else's problem. Refusing to accept responsibility is how they turned a minor incident into a major disaster in the first place, so why should it be any different now?

There's also this:
Fukushima evacuation has killed more than earthquake and tsunami, survey says

Before anyone starts, I don't know or care about MSNBC's "bias"; that was just the first result that came up on Google, and I've seen it elsewhere. What it fails to mention is that the estimated number of deaths which will be caused by the radiation release will be ... zero. Or at least, nothing that can be separated from the normal statistical variance.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I'm surprised the farmer isn't getting attention for the cows. There must be plenty of scientists who would be quite interested to study the effects of low level radiation on large livestock.

I'm somewhat disappointed that --yet -- not one of these cows has bitten someone, giving them the proportional strength of a cow.

or something.

The actual Fukushima event was majorly overblown in terms of it's release of radioactive substances. There was none. No workers have been seriously injured or killed by radiation, as all injuries were due to other things (such as the hydrogen gas explosion) and other factors.

There's a lot of outright false information such as those scary looking ocean current charts with big red colors, which actually have utterly terrible science. The dosage anyone in Japan is getting from Fukushima is on par with eating some plums or a banana naturally provides your body. It's just a big scare, combined with the public's rather overblown fear of nuclear anything to begin with. Particularly the Japanese public's extra-big fear.

So...no new Kaiju appearing as a result then?

All kidding aside - where is the best source to go to for what really happened/is a result of all this then?

 Killionaire wrote:
The actual Fukushima event was majorly overblown in terms of it's release of radioactive substances. There was none. No workers have been seriously injured or killed by radiation, as all injuries were due to other things (such as the hydrogen gas explosion) and other factors.

There's a lot of outright false information such as those scary looking ocean current charts with big red colors, which actually have utterly terrible science. The dosage anyone in Japan is getting from Fukushima is on par with eating some plums or a banana naturally provides your body. It's just a big scare, combined with the public's rather overblown fear of nuclear anything to begin with. Particularly the Japanese public's extra-big fear.

Indeed. If you regularly fly to other countries, or work on an airline, you get way more radiation just by being in the upper atmosphere for sustained periods than anyone would get from Fukushima, unless you went and stood in the reactor itself.

 reds8n wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I'm surprised the farmer isn't getting attention for the cows. There must be plenty of scientists who would be quite interested to study the effects of low level radiation on large livestock.

I'm somewhat disappointed that --yet -- not one of these cows has bitten someone, giving them the proportional strength of a cow.

or something.

Knowing my luck I would just grow extra long nipples and start lactating.

 d-usa wrote:

 reds8n wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I'm surprised the farmer isn't getting attention for the cows. There must be plenty of scientists who would be quite interested to study the effects of low level radiation on large livestock.

I'm somewhat disappointed that --yet -- not one of these cows has bitten someone, giving them the proportional strength of a cow.

or something.

Knowing my luck I would just grow extra long nipples and start lactating.

You'd also grow 2 more and they'd start migrating to your groin. But you'd get horns

I'm amazed that Japan recovered after over 15000 lives were lost to that reactor going critical.

Oh wait... no one died at Fukushima. It was a tsunami that did all the killing. Fukushima resulted in less than 50 people being injured.

The real casualty was common sense, as everyone started screaming "DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" over nuclear power.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 reds8n wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I'm surprised the farmer isn't getting attention for the cows. There must be plenty of scientists who would be quite interested to study the effects of low level radiation on large livestock.

I'm somewhat disappointed that --yet -- not one of these cows has bitten someone, giving them the proportional strength of a cow.

or something.

Knowing my luck I would just grow extra long nipples and start lactating.

You'd also grow 2 more and they'd start migrating to your groin.

*Wife walks in while I'm sitting on the computer*

It's not what it looks like! I was just milking myself!!!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'm amazed that Japan recovered after over 15000 lives were lost to that reactor going critical.

Oh wait... no one died at Fukushima. It was a tsunami that did all the killing. Fukushima resulted in less than 50 people being injured.

The real casualty was common sense, as everyone started screaming "DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" over nuclear power.

Exalted for truth. Nuclear power is actually safer than coal power, as far as radiation released into the environment (or so I've heard). Not to mention how much less toxic crap gets belched into the atmosphere from a nuclear plant compared with a coal plant.

 ZergSmasher wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'm amazed that Japan recovered after over 15000 lives were lost to that reactor going critical.

Oh wait... no one died at Fukushima. It was a tsunami that did all the killing. Fukushima resulted in less than 50 people being injured.

The real casualty was common sense, as everyone started screaming "DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" over nuclear power.

Exalted for truth. Nuclear power is actually safer than coal power, as far as radiation released into the environment (or so I've heard). Not to mention how much less toxic crap gets belched into the atmosphere from a nuclear plant compared with a coal plant.

Yep. Forbes had a decent little look at this back in 2012.

That's true. The burning of coal releases many particles into the atmosphere, containing radioactive isotopes, that otherwise were safely locked up underground. The same probably is true of gas and petrol.

The problem with nuclear is the production of waste materials such as spent fuel rods, irradiated reactor vessels and the like, plus low level waste including protective clothing and so on.

While I am foremost a fan of wind, waves, sun and similar green sources of energy, I can definitely agree that nuclear power is by far superior to coal and oil.

For our vast enerygy needs, Wind/Solar would rarely touch it.
Nuclear power is what is really needed for clean energy