"Brea, bûter, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk." That's Frisian for "Bread, Butter, and green cheese is good English and good Fries." In my last diary entry in this series, I had a poll that included a response indicating that I should write all my future entries in Old Frisian to make them comprehensible. A fair fraction of the responders selected this choice. I wish I could accommodate them. But the only Frisian phrase I could find readily on the internet was this one, about green cheese and bread, and it's not even Old Frisian.
In that diary entry I noted that a sign written in good Old Frisian or in good modern English that read: "Coal Wastes! Danger! Stay Away!" could not possibly work. No one can escape coal wastes, whether they are warned or not. Coal wastes are distributed everywhere on this planet. You either have to be exposed to them or stop breathing. There is no other choice.
So that's how Old Frisian is related to my point.
I also gave another poll choice in that diary that read like this: "Lots of stuff has a longer half-life than cesium-137, NNadir, and you are deliberately obscuring that fact." More people selected that choice than selected the choice about whether I should write in Old Frisian.
Well I wouldn't say deliberately. I can't say everything I have to say about cesium, or any other so called "dangerous nuclear waste," all at once. So far it's taken 3 parts, and who knows how long it will go on. I can and will talk about radioactive substances in spent fuel that have longer half-lives than cesium-137, and I don't even have to leave the subject of cesium. Cesium-135, as I noted in Part 1, has a half-life of 2.3 million years. Any cesium-135 we make now in nuclear reactors will probably stay radioactive for a very long time.
Oh-Oh.
I'll talk about that in due course. But first let me engage in my trademark diversions and talk about fishing. I don't know about your father, but my father loved fishing. He was very poor when he was growing up, but he managed to fish. He was, more or less, a single parent's child. He had a father, but mostly when his father showed up - which wasn't often - he'd get my grandmother pregnant again. Then he'd get drunk. Then he'd beat everyone up. Then he'd leave until the next time. So my father didn't go on salmon fishing excursions to Alaska, because it was impossible for him to conceive of ever being able to afford such a thing. Mostly my father fished around New York City. Sometimes he'd catch striped bass in the Hudson River. I don't know everything about what my father thought as a child, while he fished for the family dinner in the Hudson River, but I am sure of one thing that he thought which would be this: "When I am a father, I'm not going to be like my father. I am going to be a good father." He was. My father got married. He never touched a hair on my mother's head in violence. He never left her. He stayed right with her until the moment she died. He came home every night, except for the nights he was working. He never got drunk in my presence when I was a child, not once. When my mother got pregnant for the first time, he hoped that he would have a son that he could take fishing. That would be me.
I wish I could go fishing with my father, even though there's nothing about waiting around all day for the death throes of a fish that excites me or interests me. If you asked me what a striped bass looked like, I would have to look it up on the internet, just like I had to look up the Frisian words for bread and cheese. It was important to my father that I fish, and frankly a somewhat charged issue. Being a child, I wasn't fond of charged issues. I was more inclined to do things that I regarded as play. So I grew up looking at fishing as a burden. But I would go fishing now with my father if I could, just because I loved him so much. I can't go fishing with my father. My father is dead. He had one vice, and it killed him. My father died from tobacco addiction.
The tobacco industry told all kinds of lies about its product. It's a personal issue with me. I'm all for telling the truth about dangerous things, and even potentially dangerous things, like cesium-137 and coal waste.
Let's talk about someone else who can't go fishing with her father, Leide das Neves Ferreira. She is dead. In Brazil, where she lived, her father brought home something that killed her, and at least 3 other people, cesium-137. He didn't know what he was doing, just like my father didn't know what he was doing when he started smoking cigarettes. He must have felt terrible when he realized what was going on, not that he could understand, really, what happened, not like I can.
I am a father. I am not trying to be a different kind of father than my father was. I'm trying to be same kind of father that my father was. I know how I would feel if something that was my fault killed or injured either of my sons. I would never stop being devastated, however long I might live.
Leide das Neves Ferreira was six years old when she died. They buried her in a lead lined casket. Many people were afraid of body and many people wanted her not to be buried at all, at least in a cemetary near their backyard. Every thing about her death has been attended by controversy, even her funeral. People said her body was "dangerous nuclear waste." She ate Cesium-137 because it enthralled her and her family. It glowed. Cesium-137 was in her flesh, just like coal waste is in your flesh.
You can find all of the details of this case on the internet, just like you can learn the Frisian words for "bread" and "cheese."
Here is a 157 page report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, not for writing this report, but for something else.
Here is the Wikipedia article, which is more to the point, especially more to the point than a NNadir diary entry at DKos.
While googling for these links just now, I came across another interesting piece of information, which is about how much Cesium-137 is in a Brazilian fish. If your dad takes you fishing in Brazil, and you catch a fish, and you eat the fish, a full kilogram of it, you glutton, you will,
according to the abstract linked here, have between 0.1 and 0.3 bequerels of cesium-137 in your flesh. How much is a bequerel? A bequerel represents a single nuclear decay of a single atom per second on average. So if you eat a kilogram of a Brazilian fish you will experience one nuclear decay about every 10 seconds in the worst case.
The other day over at Democratic Underground a lot of people got really angry with me when I stated that I am not inclined to express tremendous grief over the death of Molly Ivins. I didn't know all that much about Ms. Ivins, but whatever I did know made me not like her. A whole bunch of people yelled that I am inhuman for saying, just at the moment of her death, that Molly Ivins wasn't my cup of tea. People were seriously angry. Some said they would never read another word I wrote.
I'm trouble.
I say a lot of controversial things, a lot of things that seem cold and dispassionate. I have my reasons. I want to stir things up. I don't want anybody to assume that anything they think is true is true or clear cut. Nothing is clear cut. Nothing is easy. There are some things about which I will probably never change my mind, but that's because, unlike Leide das Neves Ferreira, I have lived a long time and I've mulled a lot of questions that I asked myself.
So I am not mawkishly mourning Molly Ivins. I'm not really mourning Leide das Neves Ferreira either. Leide das Neves Ferreira was a child. I want you to know about her, because her case is relevant to everything I say, but really, on the human level, I didn't know her myself. She could have been a very beautiful child, photogenic and sweet, as beautiful as a butterfly or a summer rain in a verdant forest. I just don't know. I never looked at her face. I never heard her say a word. Maybe if I did know her, if I'd heard her speak, I would, in fact, really be kicked in the gut by the whole thing, but right now I'm behaving like the cold hearted bastard that many people at Democratic Underground are inclined to say I am.
Leide das Neves Ferreira was a victim. Of what was she a victim? This is my chance to issue a lot of specious platitudes, like "Leide das Neves Ferreira was a victim of poverty" or "Leide das Neves Ferreira was a victim of ignorance," or Leide das Neves Ferreira was a victim of indifference." Arguably these statements would all have an element of truth, but overall, in my opinion, trying to focus your attention in such a way would be a dodge. Let me instead, state the obvious. Leide das Neves Ferreira was a victim of cesium-137. She was a victim of the policy that I continue to advocate, which is to regard so called "nuclear waste," including cesium-137, as a resource appropriate for use. Leide das Neves Ferreira was a victim of people employing the answer that I, NNadir, openly endorse.
The cesium-137 source that killed Leide das Neves Ferreira was made at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was sent to Brazil not for disposal but for use. It was part of a machine that was used to treat cancer, a radiation therapy machine. I don't know if the treatments involving the use of machine before it was abandoned and parts of it were stolen by the men who brought it to Leide das Neves Ferreira's uncle, saved any lives. Maybe they did, and maybe they didn't. But it also killed people, including a six year old little girl.
Victims are used for manipulation all the time. I do it. I'm a far cry from a total innocent like Leide das Neves Ferreira. Sometimes I talk about the total indifference that the world shows to the 65 Mexican coal miners who were killed just south of the US border in early 2006. Sometimes I talk about the thousands of Ukrainian coal miners who have been killed since Chernobyl though most have had far less attention than the Chernobyl victims. I have never knowingly met a single Mexican coal miner, nor do I know a single Ukrainian coal miner personally, nor have I ever known one. I am not mourning them, not like I've been mourning my father, not like I would mourn, may it be forbidden, my own sons. I talk about the Ukrainians and the Mexicans because I am trying to make a point. Someone who wanted to make a point about so called "dangerous nuclear waste" might easily make a point by manipulating Leide das Neves Ferreira. If you poke around on the internet for a few minutes, I'm sure that you can find lots of websites that do just that.
Dirty bomb. Dangerous nuclear waste.
Was Leide das Neves Ferreira killed by "dangerous nuclear waste?"
One more diversion before I 'fess up. I have a correspondent in these diaries, a new friend I think, who writes generally to support what I say. Clearly, though, he doesn't like Bill Clinton as much as I do. Bill Clinton, if you recall, got into an infamous discourse about the meaning of the word "is." That debate may have led to a chain of events that got a lot of people into trouble, including arguably, the children, many as cute as Leide das Neves Ferreira, who get blown to little pieces in Baghdad pretty much every damn day. Bill Clinton's struggle with the word "is" was manipulated, and he did his country a great disservice when he opened himself to such manipulation, as surely he knew was possible. Here is what I say, manipulative bastard that I am: I say that the children who are being blown to bits in Iraq are victims of fossil fuel. I want fossil fuels banned. I love my children.
Here is what I call so called "dangerous nuclear waste:" Spent fuel. People take me to task about that. At some point the cesium-137, which was recovered from "spent nuclear fuel" became "dangerous" in the sense that it killed people, went from being the active agent in a cancer therapy machine to becoming "waste." This waste, that found its way into the hands of a junk dealer, injured people. Was this little girl killed by "dangerous nuclear waste?" Yeah, she was.
I cannot prevent bad things from happening to my sons. I put my little guy on the school bus this morning and that is dangerous, because there could be a patch of ice, or poorly maintained brakes. I try to advocate for school bus safety, but I am fully aware that something could go wrong. You can't do much more than minimize the probability of death or injury to your children. I want my children to have the best chance possible to thrive, to be healthy, to experience all the intense beauty of the world for as long as they can. So I'm writing all about nuclear power for a wholly selfish reason, to protect my own. More nuclear reactors in my view will give everybody's children, including my own, their best shot.
OK, I'm going to wrap up Part 3 soon, and maybe write part 4 sometime in the future, assuming that I am not killed by some random event before I have a chance to do so, something unexpected like the death of Leide das Neves Ferreira. I still haven't discussed cesium-135 all that much.
Before I go, I want to tell you one more thing more. To repeat, Brazilian fish contain cesium-137. I told you how much. Brazilian fish also contain coal waste, just like you do, mercury and lots of other bad stuff. I don't know how much exactly, but I do know it is an area of concern. But let's return to the subject of radioactivity and talk about Brazilian fish. I have calculated that there are about 500 billion curies of radioactive potassium-40 in the ocean. This is the lowest amount that there has ever been. Every fish that has ever lived, every fish you may have eaten, Brazilian fish, every fish that dinosaurs ate, had a hell of a lot more radioactivity in it than is represented by the cesium-137 in the fish I told you about.