Disgusting display of humanities lack of empathy

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2011-04-05 17:33

This NYT article confirms what my fears were all along, that the international community doesn't give a damn about what's happening in Japan:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/world/asia/05japan.html?_r=2&ref=world

The article states that the reason Japan is dumping water into the ocean is because THEY ARE RUNNING OUT OF STORAGE CONTAINERS and can't manufacture them quickly enough. I can't believe this is happening. If I were head of government of any powerful nation I would command the top engineers of my country to build some steel containers and would use my best military planes to get them to Fukushima ASAP. If Japan refuses I would threaten them with sanctions or military action.

But I wouldn't just watch as they dump thousands of gallons of radioactive water into the pacific ocean, where it will be shared by the entire planet within weeks.

‹ Cesium137 and a fresh water pond How bad is this for marine life in the Pacific? Read ›

It is unfortunate that they

Submitted by Brian (not verified) on Tue, 2011-04-05 17:54.

It is unfortunate that they need to dump some of the water (the least radioactive water) into the ocean. I won't try to defend that course of action, as well as not knowing how they arrived at that decision.

However, to put it in perspective, the volume of Earth's oceans is about 1 billion cubic kilometers (300 million cubic miles, 10^21 liters; according to http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/SyedQadri.shtml). The water they have dumped is something like 10s of tons perhaps (haven't checked this number). 10 tons = 10,000 kg = 10,000 liters. That's a factor of 10^17 dilution, which is kind of a lot. For comparison, there are something like 10^22 grains of sand in the world.

Brian [BRAWM team member]

Brian...

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2011-04-05 18:15.

How long would it take for the radioactive water to actually dilute with all of the ocean water in the world? Isn't it more accurate to take a smaller amount of water in the region? The figures also don't account for the water that's been leaking (w/radioactivity 7.5 million x normal levels). Also doesn't take into account other pollution in ocean water. Yes, any single radioactive dump, weapons test, etc will have only minute impact...isn't the broader societal issue here the continued pollution/contamination levels? For example high mercury levels in seafood are already an issue...