Anti-Nuclear Advocacy Crossing the line into Blatant Fraud

Sword_Of_Truth

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The anti-nuclear lobby has long flirted with fraud and con artistry. Virtually all of the big names in anti-nuclear advocacy (eg Helen Caldicott, David Suzuki, Gordon Edwards, etc...) have engaged in some mild form of fraud for profit. They have no education or experience in the field they talk about while at the same time they rack up speaking fees and hotel and travel costs spreading fear, lies and half-truths.

Now, anti-nuclear activist Chris Busby has blown through the thin blurry line seperating the anti-nuclear lobby and blatant con artistry with his new product line being sold through the "Christopher Busby Foundation for the Children of Fukushima".

The Green party's former science and technology spokesman is promoting anti-radiation pills to people in Japan affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, that leading scientists have condemned as "useless".

Dr Christopher Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster, is championing a series of expensive products and services which, he claims, will protect people in Japan from the effects of radiation. Among them are mineral supplements on sale for ￥5,800 (£48) a bottle, urine tests for radioactive contaminants for ￥98,000 (£808) and food tests for ￥108,000 (£891).

The tests are provided by Busby Laboratories and promoted through a body called the Christopher Busby Foundation for the Children of Fukushima (CBFCF). Both the pills and the tests are sold through a website in California called 4u-detox.com, run by a man called James Ryan.​

Nuclear energy is based on the principle that matter and energy are the same thing, that a little bit of one can be turned into a whole lot of the other. Dr. Busby appears to have made the same discovery as Dr. Caldicott, Dr. Suzuki and others. That F=mc2 (fear and superstition equals money times the speed of light squared).

At 75$ a bottle, he won't have to make an honest living for the rest of his half-life. :p
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
The anti-nuclear lobby has long flirted with fraud and con artistry.
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Well they've got to keep up with the joneses.

At 75$ a bottle, he won't have to make an honest living for the rest of his half-life.
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Well technicaly in the end someone was bound to gain from nuclear operator's lies. Pitty it had to be in such an irrational manner though.
 
I have heard of this guy before. I know that he endorses the idea that over a million people were killed by the Chernobyl meltdown and soon after the Fukushima meltdown he said that the "north of Japan is finished".

Things are, of course, serious and some real transparency is needed with this nuclear crisis but the idea that "the north of Japan is finished" is complete hyperbole.

If he is actually profiteering from this crisis with the emotively-named "charity", "Children of Fukushima"* then he is a disgrace. Though I would want more evidence that this is what he is doing first and evidence that he doesn't believe what he is promoting before I can accuse him of malicious motives.



* Why are these groups always called, "Children of Fukushima", "Children of Iraq", "Children of Global Warming" as if it is only children who suffer from these things?
 
geni said:
People have been assured that the whole thing is safe right?
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It is safe.

In the last 50 years, the number of casualties from causes unique to nuclear power in the west is exactly zero. This includes Fukushima.
 
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Sword_Of_Truth said:
It is safe.

In the last 50 years, the number of casualties from causes unique to nuclear power in the west is exactly zero. This includes Fukushima.
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You have been selling that snake oil since Fukushima. Managed to sell any yet?
 
MG1962 said:
You have been selling that snake oil since Fukushima. Managed to sell any yet?
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You may have got me, I forgot the taikomura incident. I shall consider myself corrected.

In the last 50 years, the number of casualties from causes unique to nuclear power in the west is two.

Two in 50 years, including Fukushima.

Still think nuclear is unsafe?
 
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Sword_Of_Truth said:
It is safe.
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No it isn't. But in fairness that doesn't mean much. Lots of things aren't safe. Driving for one. Indeed the admission it isn't safe is kinda important if you want to implement proper risk reduction protocols (exclusion zones proper waste handling that kind of thing).

The problem is less about big lies like than one though. It is almost certianly true that unless you are involved in the cleanup Fukushima is safe. However after all the inaccurate claims from TEPCO its understandable that people don't belive what they say any more. Thus a marketing opportunity.

In the last 50 years, the number of casualties from causes unique to nuclear power in the west is exactly zero. This includes Fukushima.
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False. Robert Peabody died less than 50 years ago. Tokaimura nuclear accident was in 1999.

Again you see the problem with spin? If you had just said there have only been three casualties from causes unique to nuclear power in the west (four if you count argentina) your argument would still have been fairly solid. Problem is now any future statements from you have to viewed in the light of the possibility that there is stuff you are hiding and/or don't know about.
 
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geni said:
No it isn't. But in fairness that doesn't mean much. Lots of things aren't safe. Driving for one. Indeed the admission it isn't safe is kinda important if you want to implement proper risk reduction protocols (exclusion zones proper waste handling that kind of thing).
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That depends on what definition of 'safe' one is using. Yours would seem to be 'zero risk', which I would call 'absolutely and completely safe'. If one goes by the more common usage of the word 'safe', then nuclear is safe, as in 'having a better safety record than literally every other form of mass electricity generation ever employed by human kind.'
 
geni said:
No it isn't.
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Fasle statement, given your own confession below.

geni said:
Again you see the problem with spin?
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Yes... I see you doing it so hard and fast that I wish I could duct tape a generator drive shaft to your head.


If you had just said there have only been three casualties from causes unique to nuclear power in the west (four if you count argentia) your argument would still have been fairly solid. Problem is now any future statements from you have to viewed in the light of the possibility that there is stuff you are hiding and/or don't know about.
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So according to you, there were FOUR casualties in 50 years to causes unique to nuclear energy in the west.

Putting "4 in 50" in perspective, fifteen men died on the Deep Horizon rig that went up in flames starting the BP Gulf spill in 2010. Eighty people died in a single incident at a hydro electric plant in Russia in 2009.

If that does not meet a reasonable definition of safe, then you aren't capable of being reasonable.
 
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I am not sure I would count the Taikomura incident as solely nuclear in origin. Indeed, the problem was caused by radioactivity, but it absolutely reeks of the same kind of thing that happened in Seveso, except that in Seveso, there was nothing but a chemical incident. Ditto Bhopal, which was purely chemical, but appears to have been as bad as Chernobyl in its own way.

Chemical plants are not safe, there is a lot of high-energy reactions going on, after all, that's what most chemical plants are all about, and people die, quite a few, every year in chemical plants.

So I don't think that incident counts in terms of "nuclear accidents", simply because it was a classic "you shouldn't put that into this" accident like so many things that go wrong in chemical plants.
 
The correct measure of the damage of Fukushima is not in the number of deaths, but in economic damage, which is very large. Large areas of Fukushima including whole towns and villages with homes, businesses, etc. have been evacuated for a long time. Furthermore, nobody wants to buy food grown in Fukushima.
 
bikerdruid said:
sixty??
wow....there's snake oil for you.
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You're right.

Sixty is too high... at least according to the World Health Organization:

As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost all being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within months of the accident but others who died as late as 2004.​
 
Puppycow said:
Furthermore, nobody wants to buy food grown in Fukushima.
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...thanks to profiteering scaremongers like Busby. But hey, even anti-nuclear fraudsters need food and shelter (*cough*caviar in a 300 dollar a night hotel room*cough*) right?

Funny thing about food, no one has died from eating food grown in Fukushima since the eathquake, but 31 people in germany died from eating "organic" bean sprouts.
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
Fasle statement, given your own confession below.
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Selenium tetra-azide has never killed anyone. Is is safe? Not remotely.


So according to you, there were FOUR casualties in 50 years to causes unique to nuclear energy in the west.
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3-4 that I know about.

Putting "4 in 50" in perspective, fifteen men died on the Deep Horizon rig that went up in flames starting the BP Gulf spill in 2010.
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And working in the oil industry isn't generaly considered safe.


If that does not meet a reasonable definition of safe, then you aren't capable of being reasonable.
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There is a reason that will built nuclear power plants have elaborate safety systems in place and I'm aparently not allowed to build one in my back garden.
 
Puppycow said:
The correct measure of the damage of Fukushima is not in the number of deaths, but in economic damage, which is very large. Large areas of Fukushima including whole towns and villages with homes, businesses, etc. have been evacuated for a long time. Furthermore, nobody wants to buy food grown in Fukushima.
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Bhopal?
 
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