Talk About a Shitty Week...

Rad Journal may be a site devoted entirely to all things radiation, and it may have avoided upgrading its layout since ARPANET launched in 1969, but it's worth checking out nonetheless, as there is some pretty cool stuff there.

Stuff like this:

March 25, 2009

TOKYO – Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a 93-year-old Japanese man has become the first person certified as a survivor of both U.S. atomic bombings at the end of World War II, officials said Tuesday.

Yamaguchi had already been a certified "hibakusha," or radiation survivor, of the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing in Nagasaki, but has now been confirmed as surviving the attack on Hiroshima three days earlier as well, city officials said.

Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on Aug. 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent the night in the city. He then returned to his hometown of Nagasaki just in time for the second attack, city officials said.

"As far as we know, he is the first one to be officially recognized as a survivor of atomic bombings in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki ," Nagasaki city official Toshiro Miyamoto said. "It's such an unfortunate case, but it is possible that there are more people like him."

Certification qualifies survivors for government compensation — including monthly allowances, free medical checkups and funeral costs — but Yamaguchi's compensation will not increase, Miyamoto said.

Yet, Yamaguchi is satisfied that his record is now a historical fact.

"My double radiation exposure is now an official government record. It can tell the younger generation the horrifying history of the atomic bombings even after I die," Yamaguchi was quoted as saying by the nationwide Mainichi newspaper.

Japan is the only country to have suffered atomic bomb attacks. About 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki.

Yamaguchi is one of about 260,000 people who survived the attacks. Bombing survivors have developed various illnesses from radiation exposure, including cancer and liver illnesses.

Thousands survivors continue to seek official recognition after the government rejected their eligibility for compensation. The government last year eased the requirements for being certified as a survivor, following criticism the rules were too strict and neglected many who had developed illnesses that doctors have linked to radiation.

And you thought you had it rough!

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Finally, a Boy Scout Badge for Fat Kids

As if to reinforce their emphatic anti-homosexuality stance, the Boy Scouts of America have introduced a new badge--for playing video games.

Finally, overweight suburban heterosexual boys can get their first badge!

Next on the docket? Badges for masturbation, weight gain, and accidental napping.

Talk about playing to your audience...


In other Boy Scout news--from three years ago--the Radioactive Boy Scout has been arrested!

Viz:

David Hahn, 31, aka the radioactive boy scout was arrested and charged felony larceny on August 1st [2007] after a maintenance worker saw him stealing a smoke detector (smoke detectors contain a small amount of a radioactive isotope) from a ceiling in an apartment in the complex where he lived in Clinton Township, Michigan. Officials later found 16 smoke detectors in Hahn's Detroit suburb apartment.

Hahn became known as the radioactive boy scout in 1994 for his attempt to build a nuclear reactor in his family's backyard shed in Commerce Township, Michigan, he was 17 at the time.

In August of 1994 police stopped Hahn during a investigation into neighborhood tire thefts. This lead officers to find radioactive materials, chemicals, rocks, plastic, glass bottles and two exploded pipes in his car.

In an interview with Michigan health officials, Hahn, said he had been trying to produce energy and hoped it would help him earn his Eagle Scout badge. He acknowledge having a backyard laboratory in a potting shed at his mother's home.

Hahn's reactor was a large, cored-out block of lead, and he used lithium from $1000 worth of batteries to transform samples of thorium and uranium into fissionable isotopes. He gather radioactive materials by collecting small amounts from household products, such as americium from smoke detectors, thorium form camping lantern mantles, radium from clocks and tritium from gunsights. His home made reactor ended up emitting toxic levels of radioactivity, around 1000 times normal background radiation.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency designated Hahn's mother's property as a superfund hazardous materials cleanup site, dismantled the shed and its contents and buried them as low-level radioactive waste in Utah. Hahn refused medical evaluation for radiation exposure.

Hahn's recent mugshot shows that his face is covered with sores which investigators claim are from exposure to radioactive materials. He is being held on a $5,000 bond in the Macomb County jail. If convicted, he could face up to four years in jail.

(courtesy Rad Journal)

In addition to everything else about this news story, I love that 'cleaning up' a Superfund site amounts to little more than 'burying it in Utah.'

This explains so much about the fine people of Utah...

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