[HN Gopher] American Honey Is Radioactive from Decades of Nuclea...
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American Honey Is Radioactive from Decades of Nuclear Bomb Testing
Author : onychomys
Score : 39 points
Date : 2021-04-22 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| excalibur wrote:
| > These explosions were tests, shows of force to rival nations,
| and proof that countries such as Russia, France, and the U.S. had
| mastered the science of the bomb.
|
| Except for the two that weren't.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Sort of depends on how you define "show of force"
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| That's precisely what they were.
|
| TL;DR, it was becoming apparent that Japan was not going to
| surrender, and were willing to fight to the last man
| standing. The nuclear bomb drops were to demonstrate to the
| Japanese government that they were clearly outmatched by the
| end of the war.
|
| It worked.
| potiuper wrote:
| There was no need to burn two cities. The head honchos
| could have been taken to the test(s); with the possibility
| of surrendering earlier with less territory lost to
| Soviets.
| snypher wrote:
| The reasoning I have heard is that USA wanted to show it
| just wasn't a one-off or all-or-nothing attempt. By
| showing they could do this multiple times, it was a more
| effective weapon.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Could have just done two demonstrations/tests...
| jaywalk wrote:
| Those two were on the other side of the world, and they're
| talking about US honey.
| dwighttk wrote:
| > Here we show that vegetation thousands of kilometers from
| testing sites continues to cycle 137Cs because it mimics
| potassium, and consequently, bees magnify this radionuclide
| in honey. There were no atmospheric weapons tests in the
| eastern United States, but most honey here has detectable
| 137Cs at >0.03 Bq kg-1, and in the southeastern U.S.,
| activities can be >500 times higher.
| ggreer wrote:
| Here's the actual paper described by the Vice article.[1]
|
| For those who aren't familiar with the unit, a becquerel[2] is
| one nucleus decay per second. The highest level of Cesium
| radioactivity they measured was 19 becquerel per kilogram of
| honey. For comparison, natural potassium has around 31,000 Bq/kg.
|
| To put it in more concrete terms: eating a kilogram of the most
| radioactive honey they found would be equivalent to eating two
| bananas.[3]
|
| 1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22081-8
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel
|
| 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| As the article notes, a much more important thing to consider
| is how it influences insects working with pollen and producing
| that honey rather than how it influences humans who consume it.
| lucasnortj wrote:
| go vegan, problem solved
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I remember a few years ago, there was a lot of concern that much
| of the honey sold in American supermarkets was of unknown origin,
| and possibly from Asia where safety regulations are more lax.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2011/11/25/142659547/re...
|
| Well, I guess there's now there's an easy way to tell if your
| honey is really from America or not: grab a Geiger counter.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Uranium glows under UV light so I guess you could try that.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| b0tzzzzzzman wrote:
| Odd, no mention of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
| potiuper wrote:
| No bomb cloud that dispersed heavy elements.
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(page generated 2021-04-22 23:02 UTC)