Monday, September 19, 2011

Talk About Erosion! (and Radiation)

Well, it has been proved that sunflowers do absolutely nothing to absorb the radioactive Cesium from soil.
On the plus side, that means I can eat the seeds now.
You can see the Asahi Newspaper article here.
Our city, Takahagi has posted radiation levels on their website. So we are apparently at average levels.

The Japanese farm ministry has found the "Best" method of decontaminating farmland is to scrape off the top 3-4 cm of topsoil reduced the cesium by 97% in areas that had a carpet of grasses, (75%) in bare soil areas.

In forested areas, removal of the accumlated leaf and branch litter reduces cesium between 50-90%, depending on the age and type of the forest.

They estimate that up to 100 million cubic meters of topsoil will have to be removed and stored indefinitely as low grade radioactive waste. If the forested areas (around 1/2) are not included, that number will come down by several tens of millions. Still enough contaminated soil to fill a 55,000 seat baseball arena 40 times over...

This is why I am against Nuclear Power.

No comments:

Post a Comment