I don't know

[fabrisse]

I lived in Mannheim, (West) Germany when Chernobyl hit. They're over 1100 miles (1919km) apart from each other according to Google maps. I traveled immediately afterward, first to Cambridge, UK, where there were some trace winds, then to Modesto, CA, where the winds hitting was all over the news, then to Farmville, VA, and finally about 10 days after Chernobyl happened, back to Mannheim.

Americans had be warned not to buy fresh produce, but I'd been gone when the warning went out and no one thought to tell me when I got back. I was a Locavore before the term had been coined because it was so much cheaper and fresher to go to the farmer's market on Saturday mornings. My gynecologists think my fertility issues are probably linked to my exposure to Chernobyl through food. (These days they're linked to the fact that, at 50, I'm menopausal.)

My parents stayed in the US visiting with my sister for longer than I did. The warning was lifted not long after they came back, and since they'd done California before I got there, their exposure was less. (To this one, Dad was at Army War College when Three Mile Island happened, so he was exposed to that, much milder, one.)

When they got back, Dad had a lecture in Nurnberg. I went with them, and, as we drove through the German countryside, we became aware that something was wrong. It finally hit us that we hadn't seen a single cow in the middle of Germany's most famous dairy region. They'd all had to be slaughtered after Chernobyl. The green fields looked stark without livestock in them.

The British eat New Zealand lamb because Welsh sheep had to be slaughtered as their meat was no longer fit for consumption. Even now, Wales hasn't fully recovered from that.

This is what Japan is facing. A country with low birthrates may face a fertility crisis. Kobe Beef, a prime export and a hugely popular local food, may not be edible. Their fields for grain and vegetables may be poisoned.

I've read in some places, mostly before we knew about the nuclear issues of this earthquake, that Japan isn't like Haiti, it's prepared for this. With the nuclear aspect now the biggest headline, I can tell you: it isn't. No country is prepared for the ramifications of nuclear fallout. Japan as a nation is more aware than most. Nagasaki and Hiroshima mean that they have a better clue.

But the realities of food and drink, economic issues, and the emotional devastation from illnesses and death, are incalculable.

Comments

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

We visited friends in Ludwigshaven in the summer of 1987. I was pregnant at the time and packed powdered milk with me, unwilling to drink the local stuff, but the hippie-dippie friends (one of them a nursing mother at the time)felt secure using local stuff.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

You were right across the river from me!

Most milk that summer was imported from France or Switzerland, neither of which had been hit the same way. Still, I think I'd have leaned toward your more conservative take had I been pregnant or nursing.

It's weird when you look at the patterns of settlement. There was little to none in England, not even Cornwall, while Wales was hit hard as were some parts of the Scotland and its islands.

[sunspiral.livejournal.com]

And every few years the nuclear experts proclaim "No really, our new reactor designs are much safer - nothing can go wrong!" And then the reactors are built by the lowest bidder.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

One of the things that strikes me is that the Japanese used every model they could to put the plants somewhere relatively safe. The predictions were the "big" one would be elsewhere. I think that's at least part of the story. No matter how well we can predict, we never have all the variables.

But yes, nuclear reactors at our current level of technology can't be made completely safe -- and especially not if they're built by Reaktors R Us.

[eanja]

Nothing is ever completely safe, but here's a more reassuring explanation of what's actually going on and what the risks are.

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/

Bottom line, you really won't get a Chernobyl like problem out of a modern water cooled reactor, especially not one as well desinged as the Japanese ones. There will always be risks, of course, but Chernobyl was a result of deliberately using technology that everyone already knew was insanely stupid long before anything finally went wrong. (I remember getting graphite reactors as a example of OMG bad engineering in college at least 5 years earlier.)

Though of course, there's always gulf style basic management stupidity, I don't think that will ever go away.

[eanja]

Have been poking further, and I think that prior link I sent you was a little too optimistic- he was apparently describing a newer type of reactor than one of the damaged ones, and I think was probably a little blase about some of the secondary release products.

If you feel like going through another long article, this one has been recommended to me as a better one.

But the consensus still seems to be that this will not be anything like Chernobyl. It will be the next biggest nuclear plant problem ever, but not even close. (A lot of the problem, I gather, is that this was a plant from 71, and therefore doesn't have some of the safety features added to plants from the 80s onwards. Also, no one seems quite clear on why the backup generators were within reach of the tsunami- in the US the are routinely in buried vaults.)

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I will read it, probably this weekend.

[eanja]

Though it's really starting to look steadily worse isn't it?

[snopes-faith.livejournal.com]

*Hugs*

The insidious nature of radiation is so worrying. As someone who grew up in the UK, I remember Chernobyl well. Especially how the true nature of what had gone on was only fed to us in dribs and drabs. My memory may well be at fault but I seem to recall it took several days before they took the decision to slaughter the British lambs, for example. And many, many people went hillwalking without any warning it wasn't at all safe.

You have all my sympathy. I presume the current Nuclear situation won't play out in the same way - different build etc, but the emotional feel of the whole thing is eerily and horribly familiar.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

It does feel eerily familiar. And yes, the British Lamb slaughter occurred, I think, after the milch cow slaughter in Germany.