What can the air in Seattle tell us about the Fukushima nuclear reactors?

Science is a wonderful thing. Not only does it give us fun gadgets and fascinating theories, but it also allows us to draw highly-accurate conclusions about events happening far, far away. Since the earthquake in Japan, a team at the University of Washington at Seattle has been testing air filters from university buildings for radioactive particles. Their results have allowed them to gauge exactly where the real threat comes from Fukushima Diachi. Even though, they are approximately 4800 miles apart.

The first comes from the amount of iodine-131 and tellurium-132 which are both short-lived with half lives of 8 and 3 days respectively. That indicates that they must have come from fuel rods that were recently active rather than from spent fuel...

Finally, there are a huge number of possible breakdown products from nuclear fission in a reactor and yet the Seattle team found evidence of only three fission product elements--iodine, cesium and tellurium. "This points to a specifific process of release into the atmosphere," they say.

Cesium Iodide is highly soluble in water. So these guys speculate that what they're seeing is the result of contaminated steam being released into the atmosphere.

Banning photographers at accidents is a mistake

In the old days, the main danger of an accident was a rubber-necker (someone slowing way down to look at an accident). These days, the cell phone sniper is a much bigger danger, as people try to use their cell phones to grab an amazingly gory or dramatic picture of an accident scene. So, it is no surprise that some lawmakers want to ban photographs at car accidents. After all, isn't that the best way to force people to do the right thing, and spare families the trauma of seeing pictures of injured loved ones?

Nope. The fact is this law will be essentially unenforceable... except for cases where law already exist - where someone endangers someone else to get the shot by driving dangerously or getting in the way of emergency responders. And if anyone tries to enforce it, they are more likely to take energy away from the wounded in favor of punishing the stupid.

Let Free Speech win in this case. Forget these well-meaning, but foolish laws.

This is why those Spring allergies are worth it

Watch Out For the Fish in the Road?

An accident was caused in Paderborn, Germany over a bag of goldfish in the road. Five people were injured. The goldfish are assumed to have come from a local fair.