MIT students receive Rudenberg Award for Fukushima reporting

In a newsletter e-mailed to MIT alumni, Professor Richard K. Lester, Chairman of the Nuclear Engineering Department at MIT reported the following:

As you may know, in the days following the earthquake and tsunami a dozen of our graduate students launched the MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub to meet the worldwide demand for accurate, reliable technical information about the situation at the Fukushima plant. Over the next few weeks the students received over 1.6 million visitors to their website from around the world. This month, in recognition of their efforts, the students were awarded the Reinhold Rudenberg Memorial Prize by the MIT School of Engineering. The Dean’s citation read in part: “The work of these students demonstrates the importance of excellence in societal communication for the advancement of energy conversion, and they themselves have demonstrated technical leadership in the best tradition of MIT engineers.”


The award is also reported on the MIT website at:

Students of the MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub awarded the Reinhold Rudenberg Memorial Prize

http://web.mit.edu/nse/newsandmedia/awards_mitnse.html

The students and Chairman Lester ( back row, second from left ) are pictured.

PamW

You decide: Is MIT Nuclear Engineering Dept shilling for the nuclear industry?
Thu Mar-24-11 08:31 PM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x734833

Does the award mention how they referred that 1.6 million website visitors to nuclear industry lobbyists for more information ?

They were as wrong as the people expecting the Rapture last weekend.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x284853

Both statements were far off.

The difference is that one person retracted the error and apologized... the other stands by it and has lemmings here continuing to follow him over the cliff.

edit to add: and it's irrelevant to MIT's ethics scandal.
Nice attempt at deflection.

You know very well that he said it. He was given a chance to retract the "Chernobyl on steroids" multiple times and not only refused to do so... but said that it was already worse.

Do you understand what "could become" means?
With 3 reactors and 4 spent fuel pools at risk, it definitely could have become chernobyl on steroids.
And it's still not over yet.
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/15/this_could_become_chernobyl_on_steroids

It isn't and you can't.

"My term is... 'this is Chernobyl on steroids'"

"Is it definitely going to happen or could the crisis be averted?" - "no, I don't think it can be averted"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7JvuUwpq40

It's also hardly the only other time he said it. As I said, he was asked a number of times whether he stood by the prediction and he said that it had already become worse.

He said this will go for months and that it "will be" worse than Chernobyl.
He said he doesn't think Tokyo will need to be evacuated.

The host is trying to make the show interesting, asking excitedly if it will be apocalyptic, will they have to evacuate Tokyo, is the government lying, etc.
Arnie answers reasonably, refuses to call it apocalyptic, says they probably won't have to evacuate Tokyo, and that the government isn't lying but isn't revealing everything and is downplaying it.

There is no spin for his errors... hard as you might try.

The host is trying to make the show interesting, asking excitedly if it will be apocalyptic

I agree. And most of Arnie's answers are just right (though note that he said that radiation levels would be too high for workers to return and deal with the fires - this too was wrong). You're correct that he (here) doesn't rise to the bait. I was just giving you an example where he clearly wasn't talking about "could".

So even the host clearly heard him say "will be".

2:03: gundersen: "Well my term is 'this is chernobyl on steroids', this will be worse than chernobyl, exactly how much worse I don't know, but it's pretty clear to me that it will be worse than chernobyl".
2:16: host: "You say 'will be', do you think it's definitely going to happen? ..."

So from the context, his full sentence, it's clear that he's saying this is a developing situation and that the result will be worse than chernobyl (he previously said that this will go on for months).

It's a common use of language, for example, we get wild fires out here in California, and the first days of the fire the reporters ask the fire officials how bad it will be, they know it's growing and will get worse before it's bought under control, and the fire officials compare it to previous fires - "this is worse than (names some fire from the past), this will be worse than that". It's a common use of language, and nobody gets confused when fire officials use that terminology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2007_California_wildfires
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_wildfires

and they used the terms "is" and "will be" interchangeably, even though the thing barely existed on paper.
Just google the phrase "is Apollo on steroids" http://www.google.com/search?q=%22is+apollo+on+steroids%22

And as I pointed out, Gundersen clarified it twice by saying "will be", and the host understood.

I agree that he muddied his statement in this interview. In others he didn't. I won't look for an example because virtually every search brings up youtube videos and I won't go there at work. Are you seriously telling me that you didn't see them? HIS site was boasting just a month or so ago that he was the first one to say that it was worse than Chernobyl.

"this is worse than (names some fire from the past), this will be worse than that". It's a common use of language

And even if he limited it to that, he would still have been as badly wrong as the guy you quoted earlier. It will not be worse than Chernobyl. It's barely a tenth as bad (not even that by the important measures) and has little prospect for getting much worse.

That's his 3/16th reply to the question "is there a chance that it will be worse than Chernobyl?"

In this case it's the reporter laying out the "could" line... and Arnie saying that it already IS as bad.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1103/16/jkusa.01.html

Of looked at a calendar?

Then I call you on it and you edit them out of context.
For example, by leaving off "could become".
While that nuclear industry PR puff piece was going viral,
good journalists like Amy Goodman were getting the real story.

When Kris said so?

If it bit you in the ass.

Is this what you're talking about?

I'm sure that Fukushima is also worse than Chernobyl for Fukushima.

Any other non-sequiturs you want to run with?

The actions of the students at MIT's Nuclear Engineering department were unethical. Frankly it crossed the line to despicable. When their faculty advisors tried to brush it off instead of coming clean and reprimanding the students, they abrogated their duty also. IN and of itself these faculty advisors' actions can be seen as a matter of judgment. However given their past production of fallacious "special interest science" on behalf the nuclear industry and given the fact than they also approved the website referring visitors to nuclear industry lobbyist for more information, they too demonstrated a clear inability to live up to accepted ethical standards of academic behavior

and that plant continues to release large amount of radiation into the environment.

and we have received little "reliable accurate information" from TEPCO or the Japanese government

yup

The fact that it "isn't over" doesn't mean that we can't make a comparison.

and that plant continues to release large amount of radiation into the environment.

How much is a "large amount"? Can you compare it to the first days of the incident? How many days/months/years would it take at that level to increase the Fukushima release tenfold or more?

When TEPCO stops lying and the Japanese industry and gov officials stop covering up...

Institute for nuke technology pats the students of said institute of nuke technology on the back for their pro nuke industry coverage. yay!

has the mechanical engineering department finished the genie-back-in-the-bottle-machine yet? guess not.

MIT lost a lot of credibility because of this.

But I'm just trying to find the positive in all this.




http://www.an-morgen-denken.de/doku/200jahre/ausstellung/2.etage/flure/nr.20/nr20.6.htm



And his son was no slouch.

http://www.theforecaster.net/content/ns-obit-rudenberg-012909

The OPer lost a lot of credibility putting up easily debunked bunk.
================================

What pray tell was "debunked" - i.e shown to be false.

If you recall from our discussion when I originally suggested the "mitnse.com" website
as a reliable source of information, the usual anti-nukes claimed that it was not officially
approved by the faculty, and that it was something that some students were doing for
parochial interests.

We see from the OP that the students had the approval of the faculty.

That was my point. Evidently it went over your head.

There was nothing from my OP that was disproved; so I don't see any way shape
or form that anything has been "debunked".

PamW

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=282854&mesg_id=283790

And you never responded.

We're not rehashing that ancient history because you refuse to go to
the library and look up the text of a law that was passed many years
before the advent of the Internet and the Web.

The question that I'm posing to which you are responding is

"What was debunked in the original post that started this thread".

If you can't parse the English language properly, please tell me
which languages you can parse properly. I can speak German.
Would that work better for you?

PamW

I did write OPer. You've now shortened it to OP. I'm not referring to this OP, I am referring to you. And I posted one example of debunking you, where I still await a response.

In fact, laws passed years later is exactly what debunked your claim in the thread I just pointed to. No library attendance necessary. If YOU think you can find something in a library to prove YOUR assertion...go right ahead. I have shown that your statement was inaccurate.

No amount of insults changes that.

I have shown that your statement was inaccurate.
===============================================

NO - if you would care to go the the library and look up the text of the 3 laws that govern spent fuel disposal in the USA:

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987

you will see that you are incorrect.

Those Acts of Congress establish that it is the policy of the USA that spent nuclear fuel would not be reprocessed, in favor of a "once through" fuel cycle. The spent fuel or "nuclear waste" would be buried in a geological repository. In the 1987 Act, Congress chose Yucca Mountain as that repository.

These policy decisions by the US Congress gave us the nuclear waste problem, and the problem of creating a repository capable of isolating the waste for many thousands of years. The long term is due to the very long-lived components of nuclear waste; the actinides like Plutonium. However, Plutonium and the other actinides are not really "waste", they are fuel. Plutonium and the other actinides should be recycled to the reactors as fuel, and the multi-thousand year waste problem disappears. ( It was the anti-nukes that are principally responsible for getting Congress to foist the "once through" plan on the nation.)

If the USA reprocessed spent fuel, then we would have a fuel cycle like that described by Dr. Till of Argonne National Lab in the following:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Q: And you repeat the process.

A: Eventually, what happens is that you wind up with only fission products, that the waste is only fission products that have, most have lives of hours, days, months, some a few tens of years. There are a few very long-lived ones that are not very radioactive.


PamW

"In early 1982, President Reagan rescinded the Carter policy, allowed programmatic (as opposed to case-by-case) approvals for reprocessing of U.S. origin fuel by the Euratom nations and Japan, and even said that reprocessing could again be considered in the U. S."
==============================

And then what did the Democrats in Congress do? They passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982,
which said that it would be the policy of the USA to use a "once-through" fuel cycle, and that spent fuel would be disposed of in a geological repository.

The Act instructed the DOE to conduct a nation-wide search for the site of a geological repository.

The DOE did that search, and had a number of sites under consideration.

Then in 1987, the Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987, which told DOE to stop the consideration of all sites except one. The US Congress decided on which site the USA would use as its nuclear waste repository. That site was Yucca Mountain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 created a timetable and procedure for establishing a permanent, underground repository for high-level radioactive waste by the mid-1990s, and provided for some temporary federal storage of waste, including spent fuel from civilian nuclear reactors.
...
In December 1987, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to designate Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the only site to be characterized as a permanent repository for all of the nation's nuclear waste.


PamW

That's a firmly established pattern with you, PamW.

The "Act" did not say "that it would be the policy of the USA to use a "once-through" fuel cycle" as you have claimed.

Feel free to provide a link supporting your claim. But don't bother with the Heritage Foundation site:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/03/nuclear-waste-policy-amendments-act-of-2008-modernizing-spent-fuel-management-in-the-us

There, what you claim they loosely report...but it's also unsupported. The Act does not prevent reprocessing. In fact, it says:

"...any repository constructed on a site approved under this part shall be designed and constructed to permit the retrieval of any spent nuclear fuel placed in such repository, during an appropriate period of operation of the facility, for any reason pertaining to the public health and safety, or the environment, or for the purpose of permitting the recovery of the economically valuable contents of such spent fuel."

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/42/usc_sec_42_00010142----000-.html

Nice try, PamW.

:eyes: :hi:

PamW is making false claims and providing supporting evidence by crappy links, no way. :sarcasm:

PS. Anyone have a link to that one where the crayon coloring book about carbon dating proves the gov wants us to drink radioactive wine? :rofl:

:eyes:

:rofl:

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

In response to one of DrGregory's posts, someone wrote:


Unfortunately, DrGregory's post #11 was deleted (as were several others in that thread),
but if you read his other posts in that thread, you'll see he made numerous errors.

I examined the posts you cite and I don't know what you find wrong with them.

There was a post in which it was claimed that the Earth would heat up to infinite temperature if there was no re-radiation of heat energy. That would be correct. What happens to a material if there is only a heat input and no heat outflow? It just keeps getting hotter and hotter. The differential equation would be:

Cv (dT/dt) = Q

The product of the heat capacity and the derivative of the temperature is equal to the heat input rate Q. The solution to that equation grows without bounds. The Earth's temperature doesn't grow without bounds because it re-radiates energy at a rate proportional to the 4-th power of the temperature. Look up the Stephan-Boltzmann law.

The other post cited the degree to which solar heat is retained by the soil on which it falls. That is a function of what is called the "albedo", and your other poster is correct that the bulk of the radiation a given area of the Earth receives from the Sun is re-radiated back into space. This is true for any celestial body that doesn't produce its own heat, but is heated by a star. It's elementary astro-physics.

So what do you think is wrong?

PamW

DrGregory said it here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=256645&mesg_id=256760

I provided some corrections to that part of his post here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=256645&mesg_id=258573

I examined the post your "DrGregory" made with regard to radioactivity being "contagious". I must say that he is correct on that one too. It does seem to contradict the popularly accepted "wisdom", but he is correct that radioactivity is not contagious.

Professor Richard Muller of University of California - Berkeley Dept. of Physics has a section on this concept in his book "Physics for Future Presidents". I quote the section here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=6DBnS2g-KrQC&pg=PA121&lpg=PA121&dq=Muller+radioactivity+contagious&source=bl&ots=_0hXVJDkBp&sig=NqfcW6BYFvCoSafPTGef2fexAxQ&hl=en&ei=eqXiTeX4Nu_ZiALW542nAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Is Radioactivity Contagious?

If you are exposed to something radioactive, do you become more radioactive yourself? Do you "catch" it like you catch a cold? In the world of science fiction, the answer is yes. In movies, people exposed to atomic bombs come away glowing in the dark. In the real world, the answer is no, it is not contagious-- at least most of the time, and for most radioactivity.

Professor Muller explains that you can get some radioactive dirt on you; but you don't become radioactive, only the dirt on you is radioactive. If you are exposed to neutrons inside a reactor, then that's how we transmute non-radioactive species to radioactive species. However, if you are exposed to a radioactive substance that emits gamma radiation, like Cobalt-60; you will not become radioactive.

I run into anti-nukes with that misconception all the time. One of the arguments I get from anti-nukes about reprocessing of spent fuel is that it will increase the amount of radioactive material. They ignorantly believe that the material used in doing the reprocessing will become radioactive due to the mere exposure to the radioactive spent fuel. They are just plain stupid; reprocessing is a chemical process and doesn't alter the radioactivity in the slightest. If "N" radioactive atoms go into a chemical reaction, then "N" radioactive atoms come out. A chemical process like reprocessing doesn't change the amount of radioactivity, contrary to the ignorant anti-nukes that get their science "education" watching movies and TV.

As Professor Muller identifies, the scientific truth is different from what is portrayed in science fiction. So I can see how you and some other denizens of Democratic Underground who didn't study science and whose science knowledge is derived from watching science fiction could have a great deal of fun making fun of someone who was espousing scientific truth.

PamW

DrGregory said it here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=258185&mesg_id=258192

Then he gave his "theories" about why the steam generators couldn't possibly be radioactive.
Do you agree with him?
Do you think it's physically impossible for the generators to be radioactive?

Then he gave his "theories" about why the steam generators couldn't possibly be radioactive.
Do you agree with him?
Do you think it's physically impossible for the generators to be radioactive?
==============================

Those weren't "theories", they are scientific facts, and I would agree that
it is physically impossible for the generators themselves to be radioactive.

Shall we review what Professor Muller tells us from his "Physics for Future Presidents"

http://books.google.com/books?id=6DBnS2g-KrQC&pg=PA121&lpg=PA121&dq=Muller+radioactivity+contagious&source=bl&ots=_0hYRAxsDp&sig=DTPkRmHDBYKY9frbSNYlXu7oJSA&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false

There is an exception -- a kind of radiation that can make you radioactive: neutrons...Objects exposed to intense neutrons become radioactive. That happens in nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs.

Professor Muller tells us that the kind of radiation that makes things radioactive is neutron irradiation. Where would something get irradiated with neutrons in a nuclear power plant? In the core of the reactor. However, the steam generators are outside the reactor. They are even outside the biological shield. There's no intense neutron irradiation where the steam generators are. Therefore, the steam generators themselves are not radioactive.

Does that mean the generators are totally free of radioactivity? No - they can have radioactive "dirt" on them, as Professor Muller points out:

You will become radioactive if some material sticks to you. Of course, you don't become radioactive; you just become dirty with radioactive dirt....

This is analogous to the "water spots" of my previous post. As I recall, each bus-sized steam generator has just a few grams of radioactive material. When the generators get to Sweden, they will be cleaned of radioactive "dirt", and that "dirt" sent back to Canada. The steam generators would then be free of radioactive "dirt" and can be recycled as any other metal is recycled.

I don't know what your "hang-up" is with this "DrGreg", but in everything that I've examined, he was CORRECT, and you and your friends were the ones that were WRONG in all particulars. So did you drive this person off the forum due to your misunderstandings and poor grasp of science?

That sounds like a shame. People who know the real science and can explain it should be encouraged to participate in forums such as these. Too many times I have seen the ignorant and uninformed drive away people with good science knowledge, just because it didn't agree with the politics of the idiots that don't know the science.

Darn shame.

PamW

The steam generators are contaminated with radioactive particles and are correctly considered to be radioactive.
And you can't just wipe away the contamination like dirt.

And you can't just wipe away the contamination like dirt.
==============================================

Actually you CAN. Evidently you haven't understood one word of Professor Muller's book,
"Physics for Future Presidents".

Because the steam generators were not exposed to neutrons, the generators themselves are
not radioactive. They have radioactive "dirt" on them, as Professor Muller explained.

If you remove the contaminated "dirt", you've removed the source of the radioactivity.

Evidently, you are unable to understand that - or more probably - you are unwilling to
understand that. You want this to be a big problem when it isn't.

I really have no time, and the most contempt and opprobrium for those who discount scientific facts
for their own parochial politics.

If you don't wish to learn, I'll leave you to wallow in your own ignorance.

GOOD BYE!!!

PamW

During nomal operation, boiling-hot water is pumped though these tubes at high pressure, and that doesn't keep the crud from building up. Do you really think you could wipe off something that high-pressure high-temperature water can't remove? If it were that simple, would they really ship it all the way to Sweden to have somebody wipe it off?
No, of course not. Use some common sense.
The stuff is heavily bonded to the surface and can't be simply wiped off or washed off.
If it could be wiped off or washed off, they would do it right there in Canada, instead of sending it half-way around the world.
In that thread, I posted a pdf which describes the decontamination process: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=258185&mesg_id=258387

During nomal operation, boiling-hot water is pumped though these tubes at high pressure, and that doesn't keep the crud from building up. Do you really think you could wipe off something that high-pressure high-temperature water can't remove? If it were that simple, would they really ship it all the way to Sweden to have somebody wipe it off?
No, of course not. Use some common sense.
The stuff is heavily bonded to the surface and can't be simply wiped off or washed off.
===================================

Once again you think that just because you can't think of a way to do it that it can't be done.

They essentially "sand blast" the inside of the tubes and that removes the crud.

You are the one that needs to think things out. How about when the crud builds up on the inside of the pipes in your home or in the radiator of your car under the pressure. I guess you have to replumb the house and buy a new radiator because you can't clean crud that has built up over time and pressure.

Why do you always presume that because you can't think of a way to do something, that someone who is a lot smarter and brighter can't figure out a way to do that which you think can't be done?

The reason Ontario Hydro doesn't do it is because they aren't setup to do it and don't have the facilities and tools that Studsvik has. Why do you take your car to a mechanic? Can't you do everything needed to maintain your car yourself?

As with many industrial operations, it makes sense to have a central facility that can service all the steam generators that are shipped to it, rather than have each reactor operator build their own facilities and hire their own staffs to do the work. Again, not everyone needs to have all the tools and expertise to service their car - we have garages and mechanics that you bring the car to for service.

GADS - it's like having to explain things to a toddler.

PamW

Now you're starting to understand that it isn't as simple as your "Physics for Poets" book says.

When the cat takes a crap on the carpet, I just get out the old high pressure sand blaster and
the mess is gone in a jiffy. Me and my wife refurr to it as "just wiping it off". It's totally
commonplace, our petloving friends do it, too.

If I'm working in the garden and get a little dirt on my hands I just stick them right in the
sandblaster and they come off real easy too.

At least, that's what I read in this coloring book called "Physics for LSD users".

Excerpts from another person replying to DrGregory:

"I simply do not believe you have a doctorate in a field related to physics...too many basic errors"
=======================

Bananas,

It is YOU that appears not to know your physics, yet you self-righteously think you do.

Therefore, it is no wonder that someone whose physics knowledge is flawed because it comes from watching science fiction would think that a person who really has a valid knowledge of physics is wrong.

As Professor Muller points out; someone who ascribes to the popular misconception that radioactivity is "contagious" would certainly not believe a real physicist who espouses the truth that radioactivity is not "contagious.

PamW

DrGregory said it here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=258185&mesg_id=258192

What do you think? True or False?

The steam generators themselves do not become radioactive.
The metal that is the steam generators are not radioactive.

Let us review a few lines from Professor Muller's book,
"Physics for Future Presidents":

http://books.google.com/books?id=6DBnS2g-KrQC&pg=PA121&lpg=PA121&dq=Muller+radioactivity+contagious&source=bl&ots=_0hYPGzmCr&sig=iuKk4TKT0-QB_N-1wD2jZDy-ReY&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false

You will become radioactive if some material sticks to you. Of course, you don't become radioactive; you just become dirty with radioactive dirt....
There is an exception -- a kind of radiation that can make you radioactive: neutrons...Objects exposed to intense neutrons become radioactive. That happens in nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs.


The steam generators are not exposed to neutrons. The steam generators are located outside the biological shield that surrounds the reactor. So the steam generator is not itself radioactive in the second way Professor Muller speaks of.

Could the steam generators be radioactive in the first way; that is they have some radioactive dirt on them?

Consider what happens when you wash fine crystal in your dishwasher. There are dissolved minerals in the water. At the end of the wash, some drops adhere to the crystal, and when those drops evaporate, they leave behind the dissolved minerals. You get "water spots". Is the crystal damaged or marred? No - it is just "dirty".

In a reactor, the water can corrode some metal parts and the corrosion products dissolve in the water. Since the water goes through the core of the reactor, those dissolved minerals will become radioactive.

Supposed we dipped our crystal in reactor coolant water and allowed to air dry. We would again get "water spots", but those water spots are radioactive. Is the crystal radioactive? NOPE. It's just dirty with radioactive dirt as Professor Muller says. Wipe off the water spots and the glass is free of radioactivity.

That's what happened to the steam generators. The steam generators themselves are not radioactive. However, when they were drained, some water drops adhered to the steam generators and evaporated leaving radioactive "water spots".

It is those "water spots" that are responsible for the radioactivity, not the steam generator material. DrGreg mentions the dissolved material in his last paragraph.

When the steam generators are shipped to Sweden, they will be wiped out to remove the radioactive material. That radioactive material will then be sent back to Canada for storage. As I recall, the amount of radioactive material for each bus-sized steam generator will be the size of a Chapstick lip-balm.

The material of the steam generator itself is not radioactive, so it can be melted down and recycled / reused, like any other scrap metal. No problem with radioactivity.

Unfortunately, as Professor Muller points out; in the world of science fiction, radioactivity is "contagious" and is transmitted by mere contact. Some people didn't learn real science, but they know the science fiction. They are the gullible simpletons that fear-mongers prey on.

PamW

And the person who said "I simply do not believe you have a doctorate in a field related to physics...too many basic errors" based it on their own knowledge.

Nobody said radioactivity was "contagious" - that was some weird tangent DrGregory went off on all by himself. As caraher pointed out in that thead:


And while caraher had no problem with this proposed shipment, the fact is that it is over the established limits and requires a waiver from the regulations. So in addition to the questions about the risks of this particular shipment there is the problem of setting a precedent for future shipments of radioactive waste from other sources. There's no compelling need for this waiver, the plan all along was to bury the waste according to the established guidelines, they're just doing this to make some extra money. This is another case of the nuclear industry shooting itself in the foot by needlessly antagonizing people.

Nope - none of my posts in that thread are in error.
=====================================================

Baloney - ALL your posts have been in ERROR from a scientific viewpoint. You just don't know enough science to realize your errors.

As far as the Bruce Steam Generators, the Canadian Government gave Ontario Hydro the green light to ship the generators to Sweden. They are licensed to do so anytime within a year starting back in February.

So you've been proven 100% WRONG again.

PamW

In a reply to OnlinePoker, DrGregory wrote: "If the company says it is radioactive; then I accept that."

You really are some piece of ...."work".

You are not forthcoming in what you said.

You were NOT CORRECT because in reading the thread I see you said that the steam generator was radioactive because it was exposed to heavy water. Evidently you didn't know that heavy water is NOT radioactive.

You are constantly WRONG because of your manifestly poor understanding of science, and then you won't
"man-up" and admit your errors but try to cover up like a cat that has just excreted on a marble floor.

I've really had enough of your intellectual dishonesty.

So I shall not be visiting here anymore. ( Is this the way you drove Dr.Greg off too?)\

As Dr. Edward Teller once said, "When you argue with a fool, it is hard to tell who is the fool."

Since I'm no fool, I'll be saying, "GOOD BYE".

PamW

My statements in that thread are correct.

:ROFL:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=296568&mesg_id=297661

We had a good laugh over it in the science forum: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x70422