Here's how to make green #transit even greener. Put the tram tracks on a carpet of grass or sedum. 2 kms of track creates 1.5 football fields' worth of green space, reducing air pollution and urban heat island effect.
#Israel has now dropped the equivalent of 150% as many tons of explosives on #Gaza as the US dropped in atomic bombs on #Hiroshima. I am sure you have seen the photos of what that did to Hiroshima.
25,000 tons of explosives on Gaza means 70 TONS of explosives dropped for EACH & EVERY square km of Gaza. Or 180 tons/sq mi.
It would be like dropping 8500 TONS of explosives across every inch of #SanFrancisco.
TOKYO, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Japan on Sunday marked the 78th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing on Hiroshima, where its mayor urged the abolition of nuclear weapons and called the Group of Seven leaders' notion of nuclear deterrence a "folly".
I am a historian of nuclear science & technology at Hiroshima Peace Inst & Grad School of Peace Studies. My book Nuclear bodies: the global hibakusha (Yale 2022) surveys harm from #nuclear production, weapon testing, & reactor accidents across the globe, & medical models that obscure harm from fallout particles.
Collecting oral histories in 20+ countries , I examine how communities, families and interior psychology suffer via exposures.
I track nuclear #colonialism (selecting the irradiated) arguing the #ColdWar was a limited nuclear war against these populations.
I also explore our relationship to our HL nuclear waste, asserting it is how our descendants will know us. Our choices now reveal our lack of consideration of the 1000s of generations of living beings for whom this waste is already a part of their world.
Previous life: l was a chef & worked w/ #organic food
"THERE is an abundance of reasons why it is folly to continue with building nuclear reactors.
"There is the cost which is huge compared with investing in more genuine sustainable energy. There is the problem with #RadioactiveWaste, for which there is no solution yet for the legacy waste, let alone producing more.
"There is the potential for attack: if wind turbines were attacked it would make for a difficult situation, but if a #NuclearReactor were to be sabotaged it would be the equivalent of a #NuclearBomb going off.
"And the latter also goes for a breakdown at a plant. We need to remember the effects of Chernobyl and Fukushima which continue to this day.
"Looking at #Britain, many of the nuclear reactors are sited on the coast and the proposed #SizewellC on the east coast. With #GlobalWarming, the sea level will rise and there is the chance of tidal surges with a threat to these reactors.
"But there is another factor which is never mentioned by the proponents of nuclear energy — the fuel used is uranium, and it will be in the future.
"This is mined mainly on the lands of indigenous people across the world. Countries and regions where uranium is mined include the land of the #FirstNations in Canada, the lands of the Navajo (Dine) in the southern United States, the land of the indigenous people of #Australia, Namibia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the DRC), Niger, Greenland and #Kazakhstan.
"The miners and their families have suffered over the years from mining this dangerous radioactive mineral in poor conditions, with illness and early death.
"In a recent statement printed in the Morning Star, the people of Niger (note this is not Nigeria but Niger, a former French colony) said that they were fed up, 'because for over 50 years, #France has relied on uranium from #Niger for its energy security. We know that French farmers were generously compensated when their land was requisitioned in the 1970s to build nuclear reactors. But for our people the mines have only meant dangerous working conditions, ill health, and historically poor remuneration.'
"From the #DRC, a former Belgian colony, Joe-Yves Salankang Sa Ngol, of the Congolese Civil society in South Africa, said: “Before the uranium would destroy life in #Japan referring to the nuclear bombs the US dropped on [#Hiroshima and #Nagasaki] it first started by destroying life in Shinkolobwe.'
"The #Shinkolobwe mine in the DRC was owned by a Belgian company which sold its first 4,200 metric tons of uranium to the US for the #ManhattanProject.
"Here is what #JoshuaFrank said in his book, #AtomicDays, about the conditions. “Paid very little, at times less than the minimum wage, these miners would enter deep uranium shafts and chip away at the walls, often 1,500 feet below the earth’s crust.
“They filled their wheelbarrows with the uranium ore, all the while choking on soot and dust particles. It was dark. There was no ventilation. It was tremendously difficult, perilous work. They ate in the mines and drank water that dripped from the walls. The water contained high quantities of radon — a radioactive gas emanating from the ore.”
"He continued: '#Radon exposure causes lung diseases, the dangers of which were well known to scientists and the medical community prior to World War II. But the Dine the [#Navajo] were deemed expendable.'
"And Frank also said: 'In addition to the impact on #Dine health, their land too was ravaged. Upwards of three billion metric tons of waste was created as a result of extraction on Dine lands, a dizzying amount to poison native communities throughout the south-west [of the US] to this day.'
"These, and many more stories of the same situation across the globe, show how supporters of nuclear power have turned a blind eye to the suffering of the miners and their families, not to mention the devastation done to their land.
"However, in different regions the local people are fighting back. For example, in #Greenland, in 2021, a ban on uranium came into force after the Inuit government’s successful election campaign.
"There had been a ban earlier, but this was then overturned in 2013. But with the indigenous #Inuit now in control of the government, the ban will probably hold.
"If we turn to Britain, there is no significant amount of uranium to be found and there is no commercial mining. So, Britain must import uranium from #Canada and #Namibia.
"No thought seems to have been given by the two main political parties which support new nuclear build, or the trade unions, or the media proponents of nuclear power, to the shameful history of uranium mining which will continue if new reactors are built. It has been called nuclear colonialism.
"Several recent reports show that there is no need for nuclear; 100 per cent genuine #renewables can provide Britain with enough energy.
"Supporters of nuclear power should think hard about their positions. Surely, for example, workers in Britain would want to act in solidarity with their mining comrades across the world?"
The #Internet and #web prove vital in emergencies, enabling seamless collaboration and information sharing.
At the @w3c member meeting in #Hiroshima 🇯🇵, Dr. Naoshi Hirata, U. of Tokyo, presented "distributed disaster management data" using a case study for the Noto peninsula earthquake that struck Japan on January 1, 2024. #SVG
This G7 shows that unity is our strength. 🇪🇺 🇯🇵 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇮🇹 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇨🇦
The memory and majesty of #Hiroshima 🇯🇵 are accompanying three days of concertation and coordination among long-standing partners.
President von der Leyen and G7 leaders have covered topics of global importance – from defending the rules-based international order to win-win partnerships with other global partners, health and economic security.
As you wrap your head around particles from wildfires creating risk 1000s of km away, and even on the other side of the world, use this to understand how radioactive fallout particles from nuclear weapon "tests" spread radioactive particles all around the world.
They have been found on every continent, at the poles, in the Mariana Trench, even in #Hiroshima & #Nagasaki.
This is the fallout cloud from the #Bravo test in the Marshall Islands in 1954, taken 15 minutes after detonation. H-bomb tests brought these particulates high into the upper atmosphere where they circled the Earth before "falling out" all across the globe. Many remain dangerous for 100s or 1000s of years.
"Here is the news.
It's dominated by a tremendous achievement of allied scientists - the production of the #AtomicBomb.One has already been dropped on a Japanese #ArmyBase"
This are the words used by #BBC on August 6, 1945, 9 PM, to announce the atomic bombing of #Hiroshima
In the evolving digital landscape, "Identity on the Web" is crucial for online interaction, #privacy and #security.
At the @w3c member meeting in #Hiroshima 🇯🇵, Heather Flanagan, co-chair of the newly created W3C Federated Identity #WorkingGroup discussed challenges in establishing a common understanding of #identity and explored this topic's technological, social, and #ethical dimensions in relation to the W3C’s mission.
I'll be giving a public lecture at the Museum of Literature Ireland in Dublin on Feb 20th titled, "Is Hiroshima Still Radioactive? Nuclear Explosions & the Environment," sponsored by University College Dublin.
There will also be an affiliated poster exhibition from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Details in the flier, or contact me.
Today in Labor History January 24, 1961: A B-52 bomber, carrying three 4-megaton Mark 39 nuclear bombs, broke up in mid-air, dropping its nuclear payload over North Carolina. Five crewmen successfully bailed out of the aircraft and landed safely. Another ejected, but did not survive the landing. Two others died in the crash. Each of the bombs had more than 250 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb. Each one was large enough to create a 100% kill zone within an 8.5 miles radius. A supervisor of nuclear safety at Sandia National Laboratories said that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe." However, there is evidence that the switch of at least one of the bombs was set to ARM. No one knows why none of them exploded. And while the authorities were able to recover the uranium core from two of the bombs, one of them is still lost somewhere in North Carolina.
For a truly terrifying look at just how many times we were just a hair trigger away from a major nuclear accident, read Eric Schlosser’s “Command and Control.”
Oppenheimer finally premiered Friday in the nation where two cities were obliterated 79 years ago by the nuclear weapons invented by the American scientist who was the subject of the Oscar-winning film. Japanese filmgoers' reactions were understandably mixed and highly emotional....
#AI and #MachineLearning models are shifting a number of core assumptions on which the various Web stakeholders have been relying on for years.
In this presentation at the @w3c member meeting in #Hiroshima 🇯🇵, @dontcallmeDOM reviews the systemic impact and possible mitigation the Web community should consider to ensure the long term prosperity of the #Web in the face of these changes.
Hiroshima marks a-bomb anniversary, calls nuclear deterrence "folly" (www.reuters.com)
TOKYO, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Japan on Sunday marked the 78th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing on Hiroshima, where its mayor urged the abolition of nuclear weapons and called the Group of Seven leaders' notion of nuclear deterrence a "folly".
What Japanese moviegoers have to say about Oppenheimer as it debuts on Hiroshima, Nagasaki screens | CBC News (www.cbc.ca)
Oppenheimer finally premiered Friday in the nation where two cities were obliterated 79 years ago by the nuclear weapons invented by the American scientist who was the subject of the Oscar-winning film. Japanese filmgoers' reactions were understandably mixed and highly emotional....