Germany and Japan (no, not another military history posting)

[Phillip Hypes <phypes@nis5.lanl.gov>]

A couple of comments about Sandy's two most recent postings:

First of all, I'm very glad that she provides the news articles she does, 
and sincerely hope that anonymous busybody won't convice her to
stop providing them.

About the dismissal of the German nuclear safety board;  does anyone
know if they are going to be replaced?  I would think that even a rabid
anti-nuclear activist would be able to see that you are going to need such
a body if you plan to start shutting down all the reactors within your
borders.  Perhaps the plan is to replace them with Green appointees?

And about the cubes in Japan, the article says at one point that they
are radioactive, and at another point that they are used to measure
radiation.  From the brief description of the facility, I'd expect them to
be TLDs, but the only way I'd ever expect TLDs to be radioactive
themselves is if they were contaminated.  That doesn't seem too
likely at an environmental monitoring station.  Could this be another
example of technical facts garbled by a journalist, or is there some
measurement technology that I'm not aware of?

Phil

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