Why were there so many concerns about the radiation making it to the west coast and contaminating the fruit and such for months though? 

Because it makes good clickbait!

I was disappointed though because Dr Michio Kaku was talking about it on network TV he went into great detail about how dire the consequences would be with dead fish washing ashore in California that were contaminated with radiation.

I love reading Kaku's articles on theoretical physics, but unfortunately he was very dire in his predictions about Fukushima.  You wouldn't expect it from someone who wrote the following:

http://mkaku.org/home/articles/

The Physics of Extraterrestrial Civilizations
Sure, we have our technology: airplanes, the internet, satellites. But what would an advanced civilization millions of years old look like? Learn about the different types, and why our civilization ranks a measly Type-0.

The Physics of Interstellar Travel
What would it take to reach the stars? Explore the real physics behind interstellar travel.

The Physics of Time Travel
It looks easy in the movies, but time travel is still theory. Learn about the physics behind navigating time travel.

What to Do If You Have a Proposal for the Unified Field Theory?
Looking for a way to present your theory of everything? Let Dr. Kaku guide you on your path towards submitting a well formed proposal on the Unified Field Theory

So You Want to Become a Physicist?
Becoming a physicist in 3 exciting steps! What more could you want?

Hyperspace and a Theory of Everything
How would a ‘carp scientist’ explain the 3rd dimension, to his 2 dimensional pond inhabitants? Learn about higher dimensions from Dr. Kaku’s well known childhood story – the Japanese Tea Garden.

Black Holes, Wormholes and the Tenth Dimension
What lies on the other side of a black hole? Discover the quest to find a ‘theory of everything’, which could finally explain some of the strangest objects in the cosmos and beyond.

M-Theory: The Mother of all Superstrings
What makes M-Theory a mother of all theories, and when will scientists be able to verify it? Learn about the people and concepts behind the M-Theory.

Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey
A vivid and exciting look at higher dimensions and their role in a ‘theory of everything’.

Excerpt from ‘THE FUTURE OF THE MIND’
An excerpt from Dr. Kaku’s New York Times bestseller for your review

During the Fukushima TV coverage here there was a scientist giving some good advice on the question whether Norwegians in Tokyo should leave the country and go home.  She advised that if they do, they would receive a higher dose of radiation during the flight back home than they would get from staying and receive the increased radiation from Fukushima.

I think it's pretty much agreed on now that the evacuation from the area around Fukushima caused far more harm than good.  Yet, the criticism if the authorities hadn't given the orders to evacuate would be rougher.  Also, all kinds of health problems would easily been attributed to radiation.

I'm not saying nuclear energy never can cause serious problems. But even now it's safer than anything else.  It requires much less area.  There's so much fear about it which ought to be named superstition, and that has likely slowed development by a decade or more.  Nothing's perfect, but the path to the energy source as close to perfection as we can hope for has some necessary technological steps.  Even fossil fuel is one of them.  I can argue that fossil fuel is stone age technology literally, but at the same time we must acknowledge that it's an absolutely necessary stepping stone for the next technological level.

Even if there is some support for nuclear power, there still is this not in my neighbourhood problem.  How about this taboo: Could they be placed next to or even inside, to the degree the infrastructure can be allowed, national parks?  They don't require that much space, and if there is a disaster, few humans will be directly affected by radiation.  At worst, people would no longer visit the park and nature would be left otherwise undisturbed, which isn't entirely bad from a protective perspective.  Being left alone would probably be a good trade-off for wildlife for a few percent increase of cancer.

During the Fukushima TV coverage here there was a scientist giving some good advice on the question whether Norwegians in Tokyo should leave the country and go home.  She advised that if they do, they would receive a higher dose of radiation during the flight back home than they would get from staying and receive the increased radiation from Fukushima.

I think it's pretty much agreed on now that the evacuation from the area around Fukushima caused far more harm than good.  Yet, the criticism if the authorities hadn't given the orders to evacuate would be rougher.  Also, all kinds of health problems would easily been attributed to radiation.

I'm not saying nuclear energy never can cause serious problems. But even now it's safer than anything else.  It requires much less area.  There's so much fear about it which ought to be named superstition, and that has likely slowed development by a decade or more.  Nothing's perfect, but the path to the energy source as close to perfection as we can hope for has some necessary technological steps.  Even fossil fuel is one of them.  I can argue that fossil fuel is stone age technology literally, but at the same time we must acknowledge that it's an absolutely necessary stepping stone for the next technological level.

Even if there is some support for nuclear power, there still is this not in my neighbourhood problem.  How about this taboo: Could they be placed next to or even inside, to the degree the infrastructure can be allowed, national parks?  They don't require that much space, and if there is a disaster, few humans will be directly affected by radiation.  At worst, people would no longer visit the park and nature would be left otherwise undisturbed, which isn't entirely bad from a protective perspective.  Being left alone would probably be a good trade-off for wildlife for a few percent increase of cancer.

There was a recent documentary about the conditions there right now and they even showed journalists going into the reactor using protective hazmat suits and later decided to send a robot in to retrieve the control rods.  The robot malfunctioned
The surrounding cities have been cleared for people to come back and yet no one wants to come back, they have become ghost towns.  Maybe in the future to reassure people we will just have to build nuclear reactors in places where humans do not live and just set aside land for that.  I know here in NY no one would want to live anywhere near a nuclear reactor, after the water contamination at Brookhaven happened.  However we also see pesticide contamination from farm fields getting into the aquifer, so the best option is to drink filtered water.  I'm not sure why the other reactor is getting shut down, though I do know there were security concerns with a reactor being so close to NYC at Indian Point and there had been some leakage in the past into the Hudson River.
We're now banking on wind farms which there are miles of which being installed off of Long Island and it's being said that they also have the side benefit of being able to weaken hurricanes (?)  We also have a lot of hydroelectric and now solar power being used here.  Glad to see the fracking ban, and I would say I'd much rather have nuclear over any fossil fuel.  Not just because of the climate concerns, but for health reasons too.

I haven't watched this but this is the kind of stuff that was being mentioned



"Expert says 2020 Tokyo Olympics unsafe because of Fukushima" ugh

The 60 Minutes documentary was far better and they actually took you inside the reactor with a specialized crew trained for clean up.



That one was from October.  They also talk about how surrounding cities are still abandoned.

Fukushima ghost towns

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fukushima- ... 0-minutes/





https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes ... fukushima/



robots going into the plant



different source



talking about radioactive leaks still continuing

During the Fukushima TV coverage here there was a scientist giving some good advice on the question whether Norwegians in Tokyo should leave the country and go home.  She advised that if they do, they would receive a higher dose of radiation during the flight back home than they would get from staying and receive the increased radiation from Fukushima.

I think it's pretty much agreed on now that the evacuation from the area around Fukushima caused far more harm than good.  Yet, the criticism if the authorities hadn't given the orders to evacuate would be rougher.  Also, all kinds of health problems would easily been attributed to radiation.

I'm not saying nuclear energy never can cause serious problems. But even now it's safer than anything else.  It requires much less area.  There's so much fear about it which ought to be named superstition, and that has likely slowed development by a decade or more.  Nothing's perfect, but the path to the energy source as close to perfection as we can hope for has some necessary technological steps.  Even fossil fuel is one of them.  I can argue that fossil fuel is stone age technology literally, but at the same time we must acknowledge that it's an absolutely necessary stepping stone for the next technological level.

Even if there is some support for nuclear power, there still is this not in my neighbourhood problem.  How about this taboo: Could they be placed next to or even inside, to the degree the infrastructure can be allowed, national parks?  They don't require that much space, and if there is a disaster, few humans will be directly affected by radiation.  At worst, people would no longer visit the park and nature would be left otherwise undisturbed, which isn't entirely bad from a protective perspective.  Being left alone would probably be a good trade-off for wildlife for a few percent increase of cancer.

I would endorse nuclear power plants inside national parks long before what Trump is trying to do, which is to make fracking permissible in those parks.

Even if there is some support for nuclear power, there still is this not in my neighbourhood problem.  How about this taboo: Could they be placed next to or even inside, to the degree the infrastructure can be allowed, national parks?

Personally I would be against placing them in national parks, not for any fear of contamination, but because when I go to a national park I prefer to see as little infrastructure imposed on the landscape as possible, besides the bare minimum of visitor centers, transportation network, lodging, etc.  Some parks don't even have much of those.  

But I know what you mean; many people espouse having nuclear, but don't want it near them.  Yet another funny thing is that a lot of people live close to other risky infrastructure without realizing it.  I happen to live very close to a railroad line which regularly has loads of oil, or hazardous chemicals like chlorine, go through.  A railway accident with one of those trains would be disastrous.  And it does happen from time to time.  But not many people think about it.  

Yes, which is why I had "to the degree the infrastructure can be allowed".  That applies to the areas just outside the park which are more acceptable.  These days people are seriously discussing constructing wind farms next to or in national parks, for the sake of the climate, which is not only so utterly futile, but a massive rape of the landscape, as well as being lethal to birds.  I don't think I would want a nuclear plant inside a national part (even if mostly underground and hardly visible), but I would definitely prefer that to a wind farm.

Also, there should be no nuclear plants near fault lines! 

Proofing a nuclear reactor from failure due to seismic shaking is fairly straightforward.

On a related note, nuclear fusion reactor plants do not face these dangers. Meltdown is impossible because the stable plasma-state inside the chamber are dependent on a constant temperature and pressure within due to exact requirements inherent for plasma production. If a slight imbalance occurs in the equilibrium, the plasma instantly defuses and reverts to its natural hydrogen state. Thus no 'chain-reaction' events can occur.  Fallout isn't a problem because the byproducts of fusion are not enriched like uranium. I could go on, but there is more here on the ITER website.

Yep!  Fusion within a plasma is a very delicate process that cannot simply runaway in the environment if control was lost or containment failed.  It's similar to the counter-intuitive effect of breaking a plasma globe.  Just looking at one, it might seem pretty scary, with all these very high-voltage arcs inside.  But if it breaks, it ceases to do anything interesting and isn't dangerous, because the conditions for forming the plasma are no longer met.

In the age of nuclear weapons testing, there was a somewhat common public fear that a nuclear test could "ignite the atmosphere" or something similar, killing everyone on Earth.   But the physics did not support such fears at all; there was no way a nuclear explosion could cause a self-propagating chain reaction in the environment.

but a massive rape of the landscape, as well as being lethal to birds.  I don't think I would want a nuclear plant inside a national part (even if mostly underground and hardly visible), but I would definitely prefer that to a wind farm.

I've often thought it a tad ironic that things like windfarms and hydro-electric dams are often spouted to be the 'most sustainable' and 'eco-friendly' of all energy sources, and yet any amount of basic research can inform you that these technologies are relatively mediocre when it comes to environmental matters (though still a step up from fossil fuels). Others like improved nuclear power plants (including fusion reactors) or geothermal facilities are demonized as disastrous and unpredictable death-machines due to the fearmongering of a less enlightened age (the sixties). Or it's just ignorance on the part of the investors because windmills are easier to understand then nuclear centers (this was a reason given to me by a electricity company PR representative I talked to months back). Or it's just plain old greed. It seems to me like the world would benefit from a little bit more scientific literacy about this. Among other things of course.

Yep!  Fusion within a plasma is a very delicate process that cannot simply runaway in the environment if control was lost or containment failed.  It's similar to the counter-intuitive effect of breaking a plasma globe.  Just looking at one, it might seem pretty scary, with all these very high-voltage arcs inside.  But if it breaks, it ceases to do anything interesting and isn't dangerous, because the conditions for forming the plasma are no longer met.

In the age of nuclear weapons testing, there was a somewhat common public fear that a nuclear test could "ignite the atmosphere" or something similar, killing everyone on Earth.   But the physics did not support such fears at all; there was no way a nuclear explosion could cause a self-propagating chain reaction in the environment.

Nuclear weapons testing was absolutely disgusting.  The socalled superpower countries would test on islands and expose local people to tons of radiation and now there is a big lawsuit underway on some of these islands as the locals have developed cancer.  Yet another way in which darker skinned people were treated as less than humans.  They would either forcibly relocate indigenous people or expose them to high levels of radiation.
Nuclear weapons need to be banned from the planet.

but a massive rape of the landscape, as well as being lethal to birds.  I don't think I would want a nuclear plant inside a national part (even if mostly underground and hardly visible), but I would definitely prefer that to a wind farm.

I've often thought it a tad ironic that things like windfarms and hydro-electric dams are often spouted to be the 'most sustainable' and 'eco-friendly' of all energy sources, and yet any amount of basic research can inform you that these technologies are relatively mediocre when it comes to environmental matters (though still a step up from fossil fuels). Others like improved nuclear power plants (including fusion reactors) or geothermal facilities are demonized as disastrous and unpredictable death-machines due to the fearmongering of a less enlightened age (the sixties). Or it's just ignorance on the part of the investors because windmills are easier to understand then nuclear centers (this was a reason given to me by a electricity company PR representative I talked to months back). Or it's just plain old greed. It seems to me like the world would benefit from a little bit more scientific literacy about this. Among other things of course.

While I agree with you about nuclear power plants, we need to separate that from nuclear weapons.  The development of nuclear weapons has a long dark history, which is often the case with the military.  And being an antiwar person, some of the horrible things done by countries with nuclear weapons to people during nuclear testing as well as the dropping of atomic bombs in Japan which I would have strongly opposed had I been around then it put a dark mark on it.  Even the scientists who developed the bombs tried to get the bomb drops and testing stopped and signed a letter to that effect- the fact is the government and military tricked them.

Even if there is some support for nuclear power, there still is this not in my neighbourhood problem.  How about this taboo: Could they be placed next to or even inside, to the degree the infrastructure can be allowed, national parks?

Personally I would be against placing them in national parks, not for any fear of contamination, but because when I go to a national park I prefer to see as little infrastructure imposed on the landscape as possible, besides the bare minimum of visitor centers, transportation network, lodging, etc.  Some parks don't even have much of those.  

But I know what you mean; many people espouse having nuclear, but don't want it near them.  Yet another funny thing is that a lot of people live close to other risky infrastructure without realizing it.  I happen to live very close to a railroad line which regularly has loads of oil, or hazardous chemicals like chlorine, go through.  A railway accident with one of those trains would be disastrous.  And it does happen from time to time.  But not many people think about it.  

We've had those kinds of spills here in the NE, and then people in orange suits come and cordone off the area and dont tell anyone what was spilled until someone actually goes out there to investigate and report it.  I remember a few years ago one of those spilled got people so sick that they were reporting seizures near the area of the railroad accident and the EPA wouldn't talk about it until someone actually went out there and photographed what happened and reported on it.  In another case a company contaminated the aquifers with a chemical spill and our state govt was trying to get them to pay for its clean up.
In the far distant future perhaps, the ultimate source of energy will be matter-antimatter interactions which will result in a 100% conversion of matter into energy.  Brookhaven labs has been able to stabilize antimatter for a few microseconds so far.
I confused the name of the lab with the nuclear power plant which is in the same county- the nuclear plant which was shut down because heavy water got into the aquifers was Shoreham,  The one just north of the city was Indian Point.

To be clear, I never meant that nuclear weapons are not terrible.

In the far distant future perhaps, the ultimate source of energy will be matter-antimatter interactions which will result in a 100% conversion of matter into energy.

Probably not, because you have to put the same or even more energy to creating the antimatter in the first place.  If antimatter was a freely available resource to pick up from the environment in significant quantities, then it would be the ultimate energy source.  (Also probably a very big problem.)

If we go really long term with extreme advanced technology, then the ultimate source of energy in the universe is rotating supermassive black holes, via the Penrose process.  But that might be too far removed from the current subject.

To be clear, I never meant that nuclear weapons are not terrible.

In the far distant future perhaps, the ultimate source of energy will be matter-antimatter interactions which will result in a 100% conversion of matter into energy.

Probably not, because you have to put the same or even more energy to creating the antimatter in the first place.  If antimatter was a freely available resource to pick up from the environment in significant quantities, then it would be the ultimate energy source.  (Also probably a very big problem.)

Oh I know lol, I was just mentioning how horribly nuclear testing was conducted and how indigenous people were either forcibly relocated or people were outright exposed to radiation without warning.  Some similar things were done by chemical companies like Dow and Dupont, which is why we have thousands of superfund sites now.
I remember reading that antimatter is created during lightning storms, is that the only natural source we have of it?  How much would need to be artificially created to be feasible as an energy source (and it still needs to be controlled- the Brookhaven people were able to do it for 4 microseconds I believe.)