Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
What you’re looking at is what some believe to be radioactive produce from Fukushima. Photos are making the rounds online and fear is likely spreading with each click of the “share” button. Probably not so great for the businesses trying to revive Fukushima’s manufacturing centers. Once a major producer for Japan’s agricultural and fisheries industry, Fukushima is a long way from recovery in those sectors. Even if clean-up and recovery efforts are successful, it will probably be several generations before the fear of contamination disappates. Volunteer-led efforts to inform and empower the public (like Safecast) continue, refusing to wait for the powers-that-be to call all the shots about the coast being clear. In more local news (for this particular Robot), radiation contamination scares persist in the Gobi Desert, where herders living near uranium mines have reported births of two-headed goats and baby camels born without eyes. It rallied a handful of nationalists fond of Nazi fashion to call for more monitoring of mining sites, and government action, but the eccentric dressers have gained more global attention than the environmental concerns they’ve tried to raise. Two headed peaches and mutant baby goats. They make great memes, but at some point – hopefully before we’re all sprouting extra appendages – they probably warrant a closer look beyond the Reddit hits.
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What you’re looking at is what some believe to be radioactive produce from Fukushima. Photos are making the rounds online and fear is likely spreading with each click of the “share” button. Probably not so great for the businesses trying to revive Fukushima’s manufacturing centers. Once a major producer for Japan’s agricultural and fisheries industry, Fukushima is a long way from recovery in those sectors. Even if clean-up and recovery efforts are successful, it will probably be several generations before the fear of contamination disappates. Volunteer-led efforts to inform and empower the public (like Safecast) continue, refusing to wait for the powers-that-be to call all the shots about the coast being clear. In more local news (for this particular Robot), radiation contamination scares persist in the Gobi Desert, where herders living near uranium mines have reported births of two-headed goats and baby camels born without eyes. It rallied a handful of nationalists fond of Nazi fashion to call for more monitoring of mining sites, and government action, but the eccentric dressers have gained more global attention than the environmental concerns they’ve tried to raise. Two headed peaches and mutant baby goats. They make great memes, but at some point – hopefully before we’re all sprouting extra appendages – they probably warrant a closer look beyond the Reddit hits.
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160,000 evacuees, suicides and more. This is a video that sort of catches up on what’s going on as the news of Fukushima gets quiet. It’s about Mikio Watanabe who’s wife commit suicide. He’s now suing TEPCO – the company who runs the Fukushima nuclear plant. There are many sad videos about Fukushima, and this is just one of them. (CNN – Fukushima Suicides)
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Pacific bluefin tuna migrating last year from coastal Japan to the waters off Southern California contained radioactive cesium isotopes from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, scientists reported Monday. This news sent the Twitterverse careening out of control for a time, but what are the facts? The amount of radioactivity in the fish was one-tenth the level the U.S. and Japan consider dangerous, and likely posed no public health hazard or risk to people who ate the seafood, the scientists said. But the study showed for the first time that migrating sea life rapidly brought traces of radioactive elements from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors across vast distances. [Read more about tuna and radiation: HuffPo ~ Bluefin Tuna Radiation: Is There A Health Risk? / The Wall Street Journal ~ U.S. Tuna Has Fukushima Taint
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Kelp along California Coast infected with higher levels of radiation. Yes, kelp will absorb it, but at the same time, animals eat kelp and that means it’s everywhere. Yet, it’s said to not be at a harmful level. It’s just higher than it was before. (redorbit – kelp)
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