 "Photo: MCT PHOTO")
While Ball State students studying in Japan were on Spring Break, the country experienced the worst earthquake in the country's history and shocked the nation into crisis. Now they face a difficult question — stay in the country of upheaval or return home.
Student Scott Combs remained in Tokyo for the break, and said he's staying after it ends early next month.
"I plan to continue my studies as well as my adventures over here in Japan," he said in an e-mail. "The people I'm living with are still a bit on edge, but everyone is staying calm."
Lila Ilyas, another Ball State student studying in Japan, said she was in Australia when the quake hit. It was only shortly after the earthquake that many of the students living in her international dorm temporarily returned to their home countries, or traveled to the southern area of Japan.
With the devastation engulfing the country, Ilyas said she didn't want go back sooner than she needed to.
"I had planned to return to Japan March 16, however since the state of affairs in Japan was unstable I was allowed to postpone my return until this Friday," she said in an e-mail. "My area of Tokyo has mostly returned to normal and I really look forward to returning."
While both students live in Tokyo, they are far enough away from the wreckage and safe.
"It's relatively quiet where I am right now. The effort is now currently focused on search and rescue of the people from the destruction up north," Combs said. "The area around as well as the nuclear power plant issue is also what is being dealt with currently."
Saiful Islam, radiation safety officer and associate professor of physics and astronomy at Ball State, said Japan's main concern is making sure the nuclear power plant in Daiichi is stable.
"The main thing they are tying to do is cool down the plant and the main fuel rod, which is housed beneath the reactor," he said. "You need water flowing through that, which will replace the harmful gases."
Islam said he thinks Japan is doing all they can to suppress the reactor.
"They are doing everything right," he said. "However, in case it goes out of control, there are other options ... such as burring the entire place with cement and other material [similar to what's being done in Chernobyl, Ukraine], but it is not in that state yet."
Islam said the people who need to be concerned are people living within 10 to 20 miles around the nuclear reactor. He said people, food and soil around the area could be exposed to large amounts of radiation.
While Ball State students studying in Japan were safe after the earthquake, people in United States are worried about radiation contamination. However, some local experts said it is not a concern.
Stuart Walker, director of IU School of Medicine - Muncie and alternative radiation safety officer, said there would have to be a much larger amount of radiation for it to make it to the United States.
He described the travel of radiation like a volcano erupting. The plume coming from the volcano travels into the atmosphere, where the particles disperse and dissolve. He said when things travel into a large fluid such as the atmosphere, particles get farther and farther away from each other, essentially cutting the amount of radiation in half.
Walker said the radiation drops so dramatically that even the most sensitive devices cannot read the insufficient amount of radiation.
"As far as I know, at this point the amount getting to the West Coasts are not measurable with normal means," he said.
Walker highlighted how people have radiation around them every day.
"If you live in Indiana you are exposed to radiation because we have radioactivity in things such as radiation gas from people's cellars or carbon 14, radon, and other sorts of low levels of radioactive material," he said. "They even used to manufacture dishware in the 1950s that had a radioactive metal in it, which was even detectable with a Geiger counter."
But for people in Japan, the levels of radiation are dangerous. Walker said the country is taking specific and simple precautionary measures. The three most important are distance, barriers and time, he said.
"One thing people are doing is staying indoors because one thing that diminishes danger from radiation is a barrier. So people inside to some extent have some material between them and the radiation," he said. "People who are working [at the site] reduce the time of their exposure like being in at only 15 minutes at a time, because the longer the time the bigger opportunity of danger. And of course distance. People are making sure they are as far away from the radiation as possible."
David Call, assistant professor of geography, said he wasn't surprised by the amount of damage when he heard about the incident in Daiichi.
"[When I heard about it], I was sorry to hear about all the problems, but I guess I wasn't shocked. Nuclear power is usually safe, but it's hard to make an energy source without any problems," he said.
Call said it was the first nuclear reactor to fail in 25 years, which is good in comparison to other energies.
"For the nuclear plants ... the weakness was the backup generators were in an area that wasn't protected for tsunamis," he said. "Sometimes things come together the wrong way. It's like you're winning in blackjack, and then all of a sudden you're losing seven or eight hands in a row."
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11 comments
Have fun with 2 headed babies and cancerous tumors, for the next 50 years until the Uranium runs out, since you obviously have no idea of the dangers of nuclear materials. BTW, if your nuclear waste does poison my land, I will have justice. As for me, I will be using low-energy, smart technologies to build my house to power itself for 8 months on solar power alone, equipping a duel source methane/ethanol heater to heat my house, and eating fresh fruits and vegetables all winter long from my lean-on green-house. My children will inherit a land with healthy waters and soils, and a working understanding of how to gather energy from the growth of plants and animals. Since both of my primary energy sources are constantly refreshing, my house will be just fine long after the 50 years when your Uranium runs out.Your house, on the other hand, may look great for a decade or two, but even before the nuclear power is gone, your children are gonna have some issues. Issues that will last for, what, the next 3000 centuries? Good luck with that!
"plus the fact that any latitude this far north is marginal."Solar does just fine this far north, if you actually did the math on a 12 hour day of sunlight, you would understand that it will do just fine for most homes for nearly 8 months of the year, and will provide a legitimate supplement even in the middle of December.
While it may not be a complete energy source during the winter, you seem to believe that in the future your energy must come from one source? Apparently you have bought that big discouragement lie by fossil fuel and large corporate energy interests, and the funny part is that your average house energy doesn't come from one source right now! NG lines, 220V Power (from Coal, Solar, NG, Waste Plants, Nuclear, Wind), telephone power (whatever volt that is) and 97-Octane in your vehicle...
No, there is little reason you have to have the majority, or any, of your energy from a power line. I will give you that what you parents lived will never be lived by you, but that lifestyle was so stupidly wasteful, someone should smack everyone over the age of 60 for not standing up and stopping this incredible boon-doggle in the 70's when we first actually had to pay for the energy and should have had the testicles to openly deal with the problem immediately. (continued in the earlier post)
Global? No. Just Petrol/Coal mining company. Do the research yourself on why the prohibition movement got funding from Rockefeller, a man who once said he would rather have a dollar from a hundred people than earn a hundred dollars. Nothing is as funny anymore as someone who likes to pocket conversations by claiming that Moral Hazards don't exist in business and government, and that to claim otherwise is crackpot (or as you try to name 'Conspiracy'). As for subsidies, don't even begin to start on that when you talk about petroleum, coal, or especially nuclear. "20 pounds of corn"
We already covered that CORN IS ONLY ONE OF MANY PLANTS THAT PRODUCE SUGARS EDIBLE BY YEAST. Besides, EROEI of 2 is still doubling the energy put in. It may not be 100 like light sweet oil, but it sure beats freezing to death or walking everywhere."Have you ever seen alcohol being produced? It's incredibly time consuming," Yes. I have made more than a few bottles of 8-12% ethanol. Took little more than a solar kettle and about a week of sitting on a shelf, with occasional turning. While distilling was beyond my legal limits, the argument that it takes a "long time" is the basis of stupid, when you have now repeatedly cheered a process that has 300,000 years to get to 1/4 of starting stock for U233 storage, a point at which it STILL isn't safe to handle... The 300,000 years by itself also ignores a shrinking Uranium supply, the processing required to dig a half mile open pit, mine rock, crush the rock, chemically leach the rock, run the remaining powder through extensive machinery, only to run that output through even more machines before it is smelted into pellets, the extensive storage sheltering requirements to avoid accidental exposure, accidental fission chaining, or theft....You are apparently one who is afraid to handle your own business, and you apparently believe that I should be required to be so incapable? I do hope you aren't saying such, but if you believe that I/we must be tied to a nuclear power plant, disallowed to make/gather the fuels/energy I/we desire/require, I think you might just be an enemy of your own future. Do you know how to safely store U233 for the next 90 years, let alone the next 1000, 10,000 , 50,000, 70,000, 90,000, 120,000 , 150,000...?? Why do you appear to hate your children? Do you expect that some other nation should get that dangerous poisoned land? Are you then an enemy of this nation, or just of humanity in general?
Nope. Alcohol has been made since Yeast started eating things and excreting, and that requires no energy input from humans. You are correct in one part, however, the 'Green Revolution' style of farming (strip mine the earth and use electricity to produce your fertilizers) makes alcohol from grains a negative, but plenty of other practices and plants can do purified ethanol with positive returns. Ethanol production hasn't even started to come into it's own. The biggest problem is that those old-prohibition laws are still on the books, so production and sale of distilled alcohol (ethanol) is still illegal without pain-in-the-rear permitting. The real problem with ethanol is that you can actually make it in your own yard, with minimal pollution, and absolutely no profits to any other business. THAT is why ethanol has such a 'problem'. The profits of alcohol as a fuel cannot be easily controlled by any business (or taxed) once people figure out that you can make the stuff in your garage with almost no formal education, and can be produced with things you can buy at any hardware store, or cleverly make yourself.Ironic that the rise of automobiles, and the prohibition period, corresponded? The Model-T was capable of using either petrol or alcohol, with no engine alterations, but at least one industry was missing out with all that home-grown competition..."Solar can't create the kwh's needed," The world used 17Terrawatts in 2008. The sun puts at least that much energy onto the earth every minute. EVERY SINGLE MINUTE... "expensive." Cost is relative. Not dying of an invisible, tasteless, orderless killer, and still having electricity for food storage, medical work, and computers, is worth every cent. Bio-diesel (not ethanol, but still plant based) can be made from nut trees and algae, and you can grow algae while cleaning your drinking water. As for a return to 1880's, you forget that there was heavy coal use in the 1880's, and that certainly won't last either. More like a return to 1280, but even then there were massive forests to cut down... The bigger problem may be simple human growth at this point. We may find out what it's like to be a yeast cell in a bottle, without a dormant stage to save us... Anyhow, either way, the best solution is real, house-to-house Conservation right now. We know we don't have solutions but are yet smart enough (and capable of behaving appropriately) to see the issue coming. Toxic and radioactive clouds from "oopsie" reactors are not a very good way to conserve anything, and the storage solution does not exist.
Why? U-233, WITH A 159,200 YEAR HALF-LIFE (~96% of spent nuclear fuel rods), does not equal safe or reasonable storage time! Do you have the budget to keep that electrified, barbed-wire fence repaired, guard dogs fed, and signs painted in current language, for the next 300,000+ years?? We do not have any right to put such a burden on anyone, ever...Nuclear Plants 'make' Electricity.
Nuclear Plants require that same Electricity on site to work.
No Electricity on site (plant Failure) KILLS 100'S OF SQUARE MILES FOR 100's YEARS.
Even Working these produce wastes that are toxic and radioactive, and which require storage vessels for HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Solar panels do work, even in the midwest. Ethanol is not limited to food crops, and the last time I checked, you eat field corn and soy mostly through beef, chicken and pork, which you can live with being more expensive. Tidal power is a legitimate source for coastal cities, and geothermal heating and cooling can offset some electricity needs.There is nothing sensible about a 'power source' that REQUIRES power, or else it poisons hundreds of square miles. No outward military strategy is ever served if you 'own goal' during production. Just ask the USSR. There are plenty of energy solutions that don't kill all higher-life in a 100square mile area when they stop working.