Greta Thunberg

[Rroff]

Doesn't all our recycling end up mounting up in places like Malaysia or China? Why spend time sorting it when it all ends up going to some hole anyway.

Supposedly less than 5% goes to China - quite a bit gets shipped to Portugal though which probably negates much of the environmental benefits though.

 

[b00merang69]

Send her to China with it.

 

[willhub]

Supposedly less than 5% goes to China - quite a bit gets shipped to Portugal though which probably negates much of the environmental benefits though.

I must admit I don't do much recycling, partly due to laziness secondly due to my lack of trust in terms of where the recycling actually goes. It also seems bizarre much of our plastic isn't recyclable. It seems an awful lot of faff to separate recyclable materials into separate bins surely if they were to fully recycle it wouldn't matter if they are in a single recycling bin.

I'm all for recycling but I wish it was like some other European countries where it seems much more organised and also you can get some value back through it.

 

[Hellsmk2]

I must admit I don't do much recycling, partly due to laziness secondly due to my lack of trust in terms of where the recycling actually goes. It also seems bizarre much of our plastic isn't recyclable. It seems an awful lot of faff to separate recyclable materials into separate bins surely if they were to fully recycle it wouldn't matter if they are in a single recycling bin.

I'm all for recycling but I wish it was like some other European countries where it seems much more organised and also you can get some value back through it.

I used to think like this, but now spend a lot of time sorting out recycling. I accept that most of it will end up in a landfill as a problem for some other coubtry; however, I can't influence our national or local governments complete ineptitude... Only hope that one day they get the process right.

 

[Lopéz]

There are three options to run your EV:
1. Use free charging places wherever and whenever possible;
2. Just plug it and charge it using your ordinary house 230V plug;
3. Invest in some type of autonomous energy production system in your house (like solar panels installation), pay once and then use it forever for free.

1) This doesn't sound very practical, particularly in rural areas.
2) Flats, apartments, maisonettes, terraced, anywhere on a main road and this ceases to be an option - that's a heck of a lot of homes ruled out
3) Same issues as for point 2, plus when you move you have to do it all again.

 

[Threepwood]

Obviously go for the real tree... Or don't bother with either, that's what I do.

Kinda the same with recycling, I recycle glass and reduce/don't bother to buy plastic as much as possible.

Then, and you'll like this, I've had zero faith in where our recycling goes, so everything goes into the black bin. If I was confident that stuff was being sorted in that regard I would separate. But as is, I believe reduction is more important than recycling

I do take stuff to the tip instead of dumping tip stuff in the bin too.

(any metals I give to the motorbike shop, as he collects and sells on, I consider it my payment to him for free cups of tea and community)

 

[Sankari]

What about the other life that ate those fish? And the animals that ate those animals that ate those fish... Ect Ect through the food chain?

And, I wasn't aware that fukushima had magically stopped dumping radiation into the sea?

The Fukushima leaks were miniscule compared to the vast scale of the Pacific, said Nicholas S. Fisher, an expert on nuclear radiation in marine animals at Stony Brook University in New York. The disaster added just a fraction of a percent to the radiation that’s already in the ocean, 99 percent of which is naturally occurring.

At those levels, you could eat piles of Pacific fish and have nothing to worry about from radiation, Fisher said. The dose of Fukushima-derived radiation from the average tuna fillet, he explained, “would be far less than the total radiation you’d get from eating a banana or flying in an airplane.”

(Source).

Also, have they figured out what to do with the million tons of seriously radioactive water that is being held on site yet?

A subcommittee of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry recommended that the treated water, which still contains tritium, should be released into the sea once the radioactive concentration is below the standard agreed beforehand.

The agreed standard between TEPCO and the local fishing industry association is 1,500 becquerels per liter (Bq/l), which is far below the drinking water standard for tritium water of 10,000 Bq/l set by the World Health Organization.

An additional condition of release, however, is that all other radioactive substances besides tritium must be removed below a detectable limit or in line with regulatory standards.

(Source).

 

[Threepwood]

Dilution the solution to pollution bites back in the end.

I don't think it is fair to compare the entire Pacific ocean radiation levels, though even a fraction of a % is quite a lot considering the size of it.

Do you have any reports on the local area's water? Before being diluted into an entire ocean?

Edit: just to point out that it was you who said humans were safe as long as they didn't eat certain fish of the area. All I did was point out there will be other animals that ate those fish, ergo probably not safe for them either.

 

[Sankari]

Dilution the solution to pollution bites back in the end.

It'll be cleaned of all radioactive material before release into the ocean. No problems there at all.

I don't think it is fair to compare the entire Pacific ocean radiation levels, though 1% is quite a lot considering the size of it.

Do you have any reports on the local area's water? Before being diluted into an entire ocean?

Here.

I know you're concerned about bioaccumulation, but this is not an issue:

The radioactivity was concentrated mostly in plankton, but didn't make it up the food chain into fish in great enough levels to be dangerous for consumption according to local legal standards.

Out of all the measured radiation in the biological tissue sampled, about 10 to 30 percent of the amount was due to the nuclear meltdown specifically. The rest of the radiation was from naturally occurring sources in the ocean, like Potassium-40.

(Source).

 

[Threepwood]

It'll be cleaned of all radioactive material before release into the ocean. No problems there at all.

Sorry, I didn't mean the stored water, I meant from the original episode.

Was your original comment wrong about it not being safe to eat certain fish then?

Edit: all these reports makes it seem like nuclear meltdowns are actually rather safe, whodathunk it! Let's build many more and let them pop all over the shop, world energy problems solved!



double edit:

It'll be cleaned of all radioactive material before release into the ocean. No problems there at all.

What does that actually mean? Any radioactive material other than the water will be removed? Will the water itself be radioactive? Or do they remove the water too? Help me out.

 

[Sankari]

Sorry, I didn't mean the stored water, I meant from the original episode.

Again: here.

Was your original comment wrong about it not being safe to eat certain fish then?

I don't recall saying it wasn't safe to eat certain fish. I do recall quoting an article which confirms that it's safe to eat the fish around Fukushima.

Edit: all these reports makes it seem like nuclear meltdowns are actually rather safe, whodathunk it! Let's build many more and let them pop all over the shop, world energy problems solved!

Some nuclear meltdowns are safer than others. It all depends on the circumstances, the manner of the meltdown, the technology involved, and the safeguards in place.

What does that actually mean? Any radioactive material other than the water will be removed? Will the water itself be radioactive? Or do they remove the water too? Help me out.

It's right there in the article, I even quoted the relevant paragraph. Here it is again:

A subcommittee of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry recommended that the treated water, which still contains tritium, should be released into the sea once the radioactive concentration is below the standard agreed beforehand.

The agreed standard between TEPCO and the local fishing industry association is 1,500 becquerels per liter (Bq/l), which is far below the drinking water standard for tritium water of 10,000 Bq/l set by the World Health Organization.

An additional condition of release, however, is that all other radioactive substances besides tritium must be removed below a detectable limit or in line with regulatory standards.

(Source).

 

[Threepwood]

It's right there in the article, I even quoted the relevant paragraph. Here it is again:

So, sorry if I'm being dumb, they actually remove the radiation from the water before releasing? Or they dilute the water with more water so it is less radioactive? If the former, how do they do that (genuine interest) or if the later, the radiation doesnt really go anywhere, its just diluted, right?

I don't recall saying it wasn't safe to eat certain fish.

Spoiler

Also, as for Fukushima, the fallout that is coming from that is mainly going into the ocean, where it is obviously doing most harm to life there. Which ultimately effects us too, as we are one big system, not just humans in isolation to everything else.

Only if you eat some types of fish and only if they were caught in the immediate surroundings of the power station.

 

[Brizzles]

Feel sorry for her tbh.

In a year or so when the wheels have fallen off the bandwagon, and all her current ' friends' have milked her for as much money as the current hype generates.

She will be forgotten, and nothing would have changed, well not in the way she envisages.

 

[Angilion]

Hello again, Threepwood. Since you've quoted me when replying to Evangelion, I'll chip in. I think you've made a mistake due to similar names, since you're quoting something I wrote as a counter-argument to Evangelion saying he didn't write that. He didn't - I did.

So...fish.

You wrote this:

Also, as for Fukushima, the fallout that is coming from that is mainly going into the ocean, where it is obviously doing most harm to life there. Which ultimately effects us too, as we are one big system, not just humans in isolation to everything else.

I replied with this:

Only if you eat some types of fish and only if they were caught in the immediate surroundings of the power station.

Later in the thread, Evangelion also replied to the post you made about ocean contamination from Fukushima Daiichi (as an aside, I'm not sure if "fallout" is the right word to use for radioactive material that leaked out with water and was never airborne) and how it affects humans because it affects life in the ocean. Evangelion quoted an expert in New York who said (absolutely correctly) that the levels of radiation from the Fukushima release that exists in fish caught in the Pacific and sold for eating is so miniscule that it's no risk to human health at all.

You then replied:

Edit: just to point out that it was you who said humans were safe as long as they didn't eat certain fish of the area. All I did was point out there will be other animals that ate those fish, ergo probably not safe for them either.

To which Evangelion replied:

I don't recall saying it wasn't safe to eat certain fish. I do recall quoting an article which confirms that it's safe to eat the fish around Fukushima.

They didn't recall saying it because they didn't say it. I said it.

Evangelion and I aren't contradicting each other, either. I was referring, very clearly, to the immediate surroundings of the power station. A ban on fishing in that specific area was put in place. Evangelion was referring to fish caught in the Pacific ocean (a lot of which is thousands of miles away from that bay) and sold for eating. Which doesn't include fish in that bay because fishing was banned there.

Incidentally, it's not even certain that any fish from the immediate surroundings of the power station contain dangerous levels of radioactive materials. It's more than the Japanese government are being extremely cautious. For example, after repeated testing of shellfish and octopii caught in the area showed absolutely no effect at all from the leak fishing for and selling them was allowed...but only those specific species and only if a catch meets radiation levels twice as stringent as normal. Just in case you're not aware - all living things on Earth are radioactive. Most non-living things too, but absolutely all living things. You're radioactive. I'm radioactive. This coffee I'm drinking now is radioactive. Bananas are quite famously radioactive because a banana is a unit (unofficial, but quite widely used) of radioactivity. Potatoes are radioactive. Trees are radioactive. Etc, etc, etc. So there are limits on how radioactive something can be and still be sold as food and the limit for seafood caught in Fukushima is half the limit for seafood caught anywhere else around Japan, which is itself less than a tenth of the limit for seafood caught around the USA. So the radioactivity limits for seafood caught in Fukushima are less than one twentieth of the radioactivity limits for seafood sold in the USA.

So, sorry if I'm being dumb, they actually remove the radiation from the water before releasing? Or they dilute the water with more water so it is less radioactive? If the former, how do they do that (genuine interest) or if the later, the radiation doesnt really go anywhere, its just diluted, right?

I'll chip in here as well, with two main points:

1) You're mixing up radiation with radioactive material. You're not being dumb. You're just making a mistaken assumption (that radiation and radioactive material are the same thing). The reporting is probably to blame for that, since mainstream reporting of anything scientific is usually massively simplified when it isn't just plain wrong.

None of the "radioactive water" itself is very radioactive. The vast majority of the "radioactive water" itself isn't radioactive at all. The biggest issue is radioactive material in the water, not the water itself. So the cleanup process removes the radioactive material from the water, seperating it into water (which can be dumped into the ocean) and a vastly smaller volume of dry radioactive material (which could probably be dumped into the ocean anyway, but won't be). The system works very well, so there's no problem in that respect. It'll remove all the strontium, cesium, etc. The water that comes out will be unusually pure water. Much purer than normal ocean water.

So what's the problem? Well, there isn't one, really. Dump it in and nothing will happen.

However, a small minority of the water is itself slightly radioactive because the hydrogen atoms in it have 1 proton and 2 neutrons in their nucleii instead of the more common 1 proton and 0 neutrons. Hydrogen-3 instead of Hydrogen-1. Often called tritrium. It's still hydrogen, so an H20 molecule made from it is still water. Which is why the processing won't remove it - removing water from water is quite different to removing stuff from water. But it's not much tritium and not much radioactivity. Which brings me neatly onto my next point...

2) Dilution matters, enormously so. It could be argued that dilution is the only thing that matters. As Paracelsus famously put it, the dose makes the poison. Take cyanide, for example. One of the most famous poisons and it certainly is very toxic to humans. Have a look on the "Cody's Lab" channel on Youtube and you can find a video of him drinking cyanide. It's not fake. It's really cyanide...but it's very diluted and thus completely safe to drink a mug of it.

It's true that some substances aren't excreted quickly by humans and so could in some circumstances accumulate and thus result in repeated doses becoming dangerous by accumulation even though no one dose is dangerous. Arsenic is probably the most (in)famous example of that as it was sometimes used in the past as a murder weapon for exactly that reason. But even then, if it's diluted enough it'll still be fine because it won't accumulate enough either because the excretion rate will exceed the intake rate or the accumulation will be so slow that the person will die of old age before the accumulation reaches hazardous levels. Even with substances that can accumulate in humans, dilution is still of paramount importance. Particularly relevant in this case is the fact that tritium does not bioaccumulate in humans so that potentual hazard simply doesn't apply in this case. Also relevant is the fact that there's about 14 millilitres of water made with hydrogen-3 in the storage tanks at Fukushima. The phrase "a drop in the ocean" is true in the most literal possible sense.

People tend to see/hear the word "radiation" and interpret it as "DEADLY!", but even if all the harmless radiation is ignored (like visible light, for example), the amount matters enormously. The amount can be the difference between "immediate death" and "completely safe even if you were exposed to it for a thousand years". The amount is of critical importance, so dilution is of critical importance.

 

[Threepwood]

Hello again, Threepwood.

Hello!

Thanks for writing that out, and clearing up, I appreciate that. Digesting!

Massive whoopsie for conflating the two of you! *hangs head in shame*

I agree dilution matters, I'm just wary of how long or rather, how much dilution can go on before becomming saturated with too much bad stuff.. not just radiation but also everything else.

I wonder if 'flowout' would be a better term than fallout...

 

[Amp34]

If CO2 emissions are broadly irrelevant, why worry about them? The difference between "irrelevant" and "broadly irrelevant" is minimal - neither are of any importance.

And my answers are "no" and "that question is irrelevant because it's a rephrasing of the first question and only makes sense if the answer to the first question is yes".

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is far from irrelevant. It makes no difference how many people are involved. 8T and 4 people has the same effect as 8T and 1 person. It's the amount that matters.

CO2 emissions for a country as a whole are broadly irrelevant. The most important factor is CO2 emissions per person. We need to reduce our emissions PER PERSON down, rather than scapegoat the largest countries because they have the largest emissions. That doesn't mean we should completely ignore each countries emissions however, just that it's far less important that the emissions PER PERSON.

The whole point of the question is that it's basically rewording the original question, so not irrelevant at all. And if you answer no, then why are you concerned about Chinas overall emissions? China would have to reduce it's per person emissions to below 4t CO2 per person, (so significantly lower than the UK) to go back to emitting less than the US.

While I'm not saying your aim is this, most people I've come across that talk about China in this way are using it as a scapegoat for their own countries per person emissions. I.e. they don't want to actually do anything themselves, they want others to do it all.

The average European/North American has far more impact on the environment than the average Chinese person.

But they might not die as quickly, which might give you more time to treat the other problems. Or it might be that the fever reduces the effectiveness of the treatment that would otherwise cure them. And I'm stretching the analogy a bit far now, so I'll be more direct - solving any evironmental issues is of at least some use in solving the whole problem.

Agreed. But irrelevant. You seem to still be under the impression that I'm advocating a more sustainable human population instead of pushing to reduce emissions. Wrong. It's not an either or. My argument is that reducing emissions is not going to solve the issue entirely. We need a multi pronged attack.

You are the only person who has mentioned genocide. It's entirely a strawman of your own devising. I have not said you have advocated genocide. Nobody else in this thread has said you have advocated genocide. You are the only person who has talked about advocating genocide. You have not advocated genocide. I have not advocated setting the moon on fire to reduce energy usage by reducing the amount of energy needed for street lighting at night. Greenpeace has not advocated building thousands of huge power stations based on creating energy from millions of people flapping their arms for hours every day. Donald Trump has not advocated solving climate change by attaching ropes to the Earth and using rockets to pull it further away from the Sun. Although he might - you never know what nonsense will pass through his brain and immediately onto Twitter.

So you're going down the semantics argument. You're the one that brought up mass killing. I used genocide as a catch all term for that... If you want to go down that route I'm out. This is not about and has never been about mass killing, genocide or any other way of removing billions of humans from the earth. YOU are the only one that brought that up and arguing semantics is not going to change that.

The stated timeframe is from months to maybe as much as 15 years. It's an immediate crisis, as I'm sure you've read. And not from climate change deniers. Very much the opposite.

Yes. Yet the vast majority of scientists and advocates are not talking about removing fossil fuels overnight. The argument is about becoming carbon NEUTRAL, not carbon free in a few years.

As I said, you brought up mass killing, which is the argument against overpopulation equivalent to those claiming reducing carbon emissions to zero overnight.

The only way to reduce population enough in that timeframe is killing billions of people. We can't support 8+ billion with archaic farming methods, let alone that and extremely limited bulk transportation and a general antipathy towards technology (which is the inevitable result of technology being seen as the cause of the problems, as you stated it is). So either it's an immediate crisis, in which case the required enormous amount of population reduction would require killing billions of people or the population can decrease as a result of increased living standards, which would take generations and would massively increase the population first...in which case there can't be any sort of crisis requiring population reduction now.

Also, contraception is technology. Would the population reduce much in a situation in which contraception was seen as being part of what caused the problems?

You're still arguing your straw men that I've already pointed out are wrong so no point repeating what I've already said here, other than to point out (AGAIN) that it's in tandem with emissions reductions and a push towards all the other things we are trying to push for as environmentalists. The issue is that is just not going to be enough, not that we shouldn't try and reduce our individual environmental footprints.

As I said in an earlier post, go and read websites from NGO's like Population Matters and see what they are advocating and what they are actually doing. Hopefully it'll make the argument clearer and explain why you're going down the wrong path with your current line of thinking.

The main page quote by Attenborough is a good start:

"All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people, and harder - and ultimately impossible - to solve with ever more people."

And here is a page on the sort of things we can do to help to create a more sustainable population. https://populationmatters.org/solutions

Reducing population by increasing standard of living also creates another effect - it increases the average age of the population, dramatically so for quite a long time. That causes problems. A standard of living that's merely normal in wealthier countries with current technology today results in an average lifespan in the mid 70s and a cleaner environment plus even slightly better technology should increase that to at least 80, probably more. It's already reached 84 in Japan, for example. 80 is a very conservative estimate. 90 is a possibility. There is an initial large increase in population, partly because healthier people are on average more fertile, partly because increased standard of living dramatically reduces the proportion of people who die young and partly because the custom of having more children will remain for some period of time. Add in the fact that the first generation after the change will be living to ~80 (or more) on average and there's no way the population will reduce below pre-change levels quickly. It also creates huge problems with the increasing average age of the population. Japan has already passed 25% of its population being past retirement age and the proportion is increasing.

That problem does eventually go away when enough people die, but it has to be addressed. What is the solution? Nobody seems to have one (Japan's attempted solution is to try to *increase* the population).

And there in lies the problem, standard of living is going to increase anyway (at least, until we irreparably damage the environment). Either we artificially hold back those areas of the world that aren't up to developed countries standards of living or we have to deal with the fact that there are 5 billion people that will be demanding their "fair share" of the resources that are disproportionately being used by those living in developed countries.

Your example of Japan is a good one. It's a prime example of a country that are just trying to ignore the problem. Most other countries are doing the same, but using a different method (immigration). All that's doing is pushing the problem on to the next generation.

But radical socioeconomic changes will be required anyway, both to solve the problems and to solve the results of the solutions to the problems. Our current socioeconomic system isn't able to work with a greatly reduced population, less paid work and less environmental impact. People will need a new one that's fit for purpose in those conditions and they'll need one soon. But what will it be?

I agree. And that's also what we need to be focusing on. Organizations are already coming up with new methods of measuring progress and people are working on all those problems. As above, just ignoring them and assuming we can inflate these problems away (by increasing the number of each generation) is not in any way a sensible answer, yet it seems to be what most believe is the solution.

This is also the point I was trying to make about technology. The solution to the problem generally ends up causing unintended consequences which we then have to try and solve... with more tech, which also creates more unintended consequences etc etc. Technology is not the panacea some people believe it is. It helps, but we can't "technology" our way out of all the problems we currently have, especially the environmental ones.

I think you have the cart before the horse. Population reduction can't be the solution to the existing problems unless it's implemented quickly by killing billions of people in a very short period of time. Population reduction by improved standards of living would be the *result* of solving the existing problems, not the solution to them.

And again. Your strawman. The aim is to have a more sustainable human pupulation as well as reducing our individual impact on the environment. It's not an either or, they are in tandem. As you rightly point out, the timescale is too long for just a reduced human population to solve everything. Equally, reducing our individual impact means we can have a higher sustainable population. The reality is it's still likely to be no where near the 7.5-9 Billion number we are currently looking at.

I disagree with your disagreement. A larger area requires more transportation, which increases environmental impact. Lower population density would make that worse, not better, unless you're envisaging a lot of wholly independent city-states with a lot of uninhabitated land between them.

I think you're misunderstanding me there. What you wrote is my point. People that live in dense urban areas use less CO2 and generally less resources per person than people that live in remote rural areas.

A large country with a more urban population is going to use less resources per person than a small country with a very sparse population. In a global, industrial world the overall population and overall environmental impact is more a factor than that of individual countries. To paraphrase a quote "CO2 does not respect international borders".

Only if assuming the continuation of current levels of technology and current socioeconomic systems. Better technology could improve standard of living without increasing enviromnental impact or decrease environmental impact as well or improve standard of living by decreasing environmental impact. We've already seen many examples, most notably with air pollution in urban areas.

The current economic system requires a rapid churn of stuff and an excess of stuff, so much of what is produced quickly becomes waste and in many cases is designed and manufactured with that in mind. Ending that would dramatically reduce environmental impact without reducing SOL. Random example - I have a very well made woollen jumper that I've had for over 20 years. I wear it often and wash it often. It is exactly as functional as it was >20 years ago, i.e. my standard of living in that respect has not reduced at all. The environmental impact is vastly lower than it would have been with dozens of jumpers, replaced either because they were lower quality and became insufficiently functional or because fashion required many changes. But our current socioeconomic system can't support a change like that.

So I think it comes back to a significantly different socioeconomic system being required.

This is the tech as a panacea argument summed up. The problem is can you provide any example of this from the past?

Conversely this thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place. The industrial revolution is a prime example of this, and even further back there are arguments that civilizations across the world believed their technology was the solution, until it all came crashing down.

I agree with your argument regarding sustainability, however where we disagree is whether technology alone will be the solution. Historically while it usually solves the problem it's meant to deal with, it often caused additional problems (e.g. the harnessing of fossil fuels has been one of the greatest tech breakthroughs in history, but it's also caused one of the biggest problems in history). As you say, a different socioeconomic system is needed no matter what solution we advocate.

 

[Amp34]

But she is a puppet and missing an education.

After gaining 14 As and three Bs (Swedish, Sports and Home Economics) she apparently took a sabbatical from school for a year...

 

[CaptainRAVE]

After gaining 14 As and three Bs (Swedish, Sports and Home Economics) she apparently took a sabbatical from school for a year...

An educated puppet then.

 

[Angilion]

Hello!

Thanks for writing that out, and clearing up, I appreciate that. Digesting!

Massive whoopsie for conflating the two of you! *hangs head in shame*

No worries. The names are similar enough to be easily mixed up.

I agree dilution matters, I'm just wary of how long or rather, how much dilution can go on before becomming saturated with too much bad stuff.. not just radiation but also everything else.

That's a realistic concern. Lots of little amounts can add up to a large amount. A historical example comes to mind - sewage. For a small population of people living in small villages scattered around the country, throwing it in a river worked well enough. Lots of river, not much sewage, plenty of dilution and the rate of natural processing of the sewage exceeded the input rate of sewage. So unless you were very close downstream of a village it was fine. Apply the same process to a city and even with a big river you end up with a huge open sewer and a horrifying number of people dying of cholera. Not fine at all. Early 19th century London is a good example of that. It was a horrendous pit of foulness and death.

But it's less of a concern with tritium than it is with many pollutants because tritrium is radioactive with a fairly short half-life (just over 12 years) and it decays into Helium-3, which is harmless. If I ate much fish, I'd be more concerned about mercury than tritrium. Also, tritrium is solely a beta emitter and therefore only dangerous if ingested. Your skin will block it. Your clothes will block it. A bit of air will block it. Almost anything will block it. Unless there's an implausible large quantity of tritrium very close to you, the radiation won't be a problem unless you ingest tritrium. Even if you did ingest tritrium, it probably wouldn't be a problem unless you ingested enough. How much is enough? Nobody really knows because there are no known examples of any harm done to any person from ingesting tritrium. As radioactive materials go, tritrium is of very little concern.

EDIT: Bah, I should pay more attention. The above is wrong. I was writing about beta radiation and thinking about alpha radiation, so I was wrong because I wasn't thinking enough. Tritium is more dangerous in terms of radiation emission than I stated above. Not terribly so, but it does have more penetrating power than I said.

I wonder if 'flowout' would be a better term than fallout...

Maybe. The way that radioactive material spreads is important. On the other hand, having a single term for all release of radoactive material is useful even if it's not an accurate description of the way it spreads. I'm undecided.

 

[robgmun]

After gaining 14 As and three Bs (Swedish, Sports and Home Economics) she apparently took a sabbatical from school for a year...

14As? She probably shouted "How dare you" until she got the right grade

It's actually no great shakes, I got 11 As and 2 Bs and a C (for french)