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| Fukushima: It's much worse than you think | ||
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| Scientific experts believe Japan's nuclear disaster to be far worse than governments are revealing to the public. Dahr Jamail Last Modified: 16 Jun 2011 12:50 | ||
Japan's 9.0 earthquake on March 11 caused a massive tsunami that crippled the cooling systems at the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. It also led to hydrogen explosions and reactor meltdowns that forced evacuations of those living within a 20km radius of the plant. Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 39 years of nuclear power engineering experience, managing and coordinating projects at 70 nuclear power plants around the US, says the Fukushima nuclear plant likely has more exposed reactor cores than commonly believed. "Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively." TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of. "The problem is how to keep it cool," says Gundersen. "They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?" Even though the plant is now shut down, fission products such as uranium continue to generate heat, and therefore require cooling. "The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor," Gundersen added. "TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water." Independent scientists have been monitoring the locations of radioactive "hot spots" around Japan, and their findings are disconcerting. "We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl." Radiation monitors for children Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier this month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced full meltdowns. TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record. Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable. In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant. The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster. "There is and should be concern about younger people being exposed, and the Japanese government will be giving out radiation monitors to children," Dr MV Ramana, a physicist with the Programme on Science and Global Security at Princeton University who specialises in issues of nuclear safety, told Al Jazeera. Dr Ramana explained that he believes the primary radiation threat continues to be mostly for residents living within 50km of the plant, but added: "There are going to be areas outside of the Japanese government's 20km mandatory evacuation zone where radiation is higher. So that could mean evacuation zones in those areas as well." Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been reported. "They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days." According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles". "We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters." Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well. The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer. "These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April." Blame the US? In reaction to the Fukushima catastrophe, Germany is phasing out all of its nuclear reactors over the next decade. In a referendum vote this Monday, 95 per cent of Italians voted in favour of blocking a nuclear power revival in their country. A recent newspaper poll in Japan shows nearly three-quarters of respondents favour a phase-out of nuclear power in Japan. Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US? Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns, thus far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. Dr Shoji Sawada is a theoretical particle physicist and Professor Emeritus at Nagoya University in Japan. He is concerned about the types of nuclear plants in his country, and the fact that most of them are of US design. "Most of the reactors in Japan were designed by US companies who did not care for the effects of earthquakes," Dr Sawada told Al Jazeera. "I think this problem applies to all nuclear power stations across Japan." Using nuclear power to produce electricity in Japan is a product of the nuclear policy of the US, something Dr Sawada feels is also a large component of the problem. "Most of the Japanese scientists at that time, the mid-1950s, considered that the technology of nuclear energy was under development or not established enough, and that it was too early to be put to practical use," he explained. "The Japan Scientists Council recommended the Japanese government not use this technology yet, but the government accepted to use enriched uranium to fuel nuclear power stations, and was thus subjected to US government policy." As a 13-year-old, Dr Sawada experienced the US nuclear attack against Japan from his home, situated just 1400 metres from the hypocentre of the Hiroshima bomb. "I think the Fukushima accident has caused the Japanese people to abandon the myth that nuclear power stations are safe," he said. "Now the opinions of the Japanese people have rapidly changed. Well beyond half the population believes Japan should move towards natural electricity." A problem of infinite proportions Dr Ramana expects the plant reactors and fuel cores to be cooled enough for a shutdown within two years. "But it is going to take a very long time before the fuel can be removed from the reactor," he added. "Dealing with the cracking and compromised structure and dealing with radiation in the area will take several years, there's no question about that." Dr Sawada is not as clear about how long a cold shutdown could take, and said the problem will be "the effects from caesium-137 that remains in the soil and the polluted water around the power station and underground. It will take a year, or more time, to deal with this". Gundersen pointed out that the units are still leaking radiation. "They are still emitting radioactive gases and an enormous amount of radioactive liquid," he said. "It will be at least a year before it stops boiling, and until it stops boiling, it's going to be cranking out radioactive steam and liquids." Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to cool two of the units. "Unit four is the most dangerous, it could topple," he said. "After the earthquake in Sumatra there was an 8.6 [aftershock] about 90 days later, so we are not out of the woods yet. And you're at a point where, if that happens, there is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot nuclear fuel lying outside the fuel pool. They've not figured out how to cool units three and four." Gundersen's assessment of solving this crisis is grim. "Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor." Dr Sawada says that the creation of nuclear fission generates radioactive materials for which there is simply no knowledge informing us how to dispose of the radioactive waste safely. "Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further harm to future generations," he explained. "To do otherwise is simply an immoral act, and that is my belief, both as a scientist and as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing." Gundersen believes it will take experts at least ten years to design and implement the plan. "So ten to 15 years from now maybe we can say the reactors have been dismantled, and in the meantime you wind up contaminating the water," Gundersen said. "We are already seeing Strontium [at] 250 times the allowable limits in the water table at Fukushima. Contaminated water tables are incredibly difficult to clean. So I think we will have a contaminated aquifer in the area of the Fukushima site for a long, long time to come." Unfortunately, the history of nuclear disasters appears to back Gundersen's assessment. "With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started," he said, "But they never end." http://english.aljazeera.net/%20inde...828302638.html |
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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
this is sadly what my friend from the Ukraine that grew up in the shadow of Chernobyl said from day 1 - that Ukrainian TV was saying that it was 6x worse than Chernobyl, & that the gov'ts M.O. for this type of thing is minimize, deny, then slowly bleed out.
She said that the official reports that "there was only one death from Chernobyl" are a joke, but plausibly deniable b/c so many people get sick &/or die on a lagged basis, to say nothing of the environmental & health impacts down the road... -
Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
Utility Starts Filtering Water at Stricken Japanese Nuclear Plant
By KEN BELSON
TOKYO — Tokyo Electric Power, the utility trying to contain the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, took a significant step forward on Friday when it began operating a huge filtration system that it hopes will ease the amount of contaminated water produced at its damaged reactors.
The filtering equipment, hastily cobbled together by several foreign and Japanese companies, is urgently needed because the storage facilities at the power plant are glutted with tens of thousands of tons of radioactive water, and are expected to overflow as soon as next week if nothing is done.
If that occurs, Tokyo Electric, known as Tepco, will be forced to dump thousands of tons of even more tainted water into the ocean, and would probably bring down even more criticism on the embattled company and the government, which has been attacked for its handling of the crisis.
Hoping to avoid releasing any more contaminated water, Tepco in late April set out an ambitious nine-month road map for stabilizing conditions at its nuclear reactors. The plan includes setting up a sprawling water treatment facility that is expected to cost about $663 million. Built under the supervision of Toshiba and Hitachi, the filtration system is meant to sift out oil, and then cesium and other radioactive elements, before desalinating the remaining water.
The system is expected to process about 1,200 tons of water a day, which will be stored in tanks, some of which are being brought to the compound. Some of the filtered water will be reused to cool the reactors, reducing the need for fresh supplies. Tepco plans to filter water for about a year, according to Junichi Matsumoto, a spokesman.
Tepco originally planned to begin operating the facility in July, but it sped up construction because contaminated water had been produced faster than expected at the nuclear plant. A leaky valve halted testing of the system on Thursday, and there were several more delays on Friday, before it finally got running. Tepco acknowledged that the system could falter again and have to be shut down for repairs.
While the filtration system was being built, Tepco reduced the amount of water it was pouring into the plant’s stricken reactors to avoid filling up its storage facilities.
The beginning of the rainy season this month has complicated efforts to slow the creation of toxic water.
“It is something like a chemical plant constructed in a rush, so we have to go by trial and error,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, referring to the repeated problems that have plagued the project. “We have had to do this in a hurry, so conditions have been very severe.”
In all, about 500 tons of water is newly contaminated at the plant each day, adding to the 105,000 tons of highly radioactive water that is already stored on the site, mostly in the trenches and basements of the turbine and reactor buildings. Many of these areas are perilously near full to the brim. In the trenches at the No. 3 reactor, for example, there was just seven inches to spare on Friday.
Critics contend that while the filtration system will delay the runoff of radioactive water for a while, Tepco will continue to face water disposal problems because it may take years to fully cool the reactors at the plant.
“It’s just a matter of time before it overflows,” said Satoshi Sato, a nuclear engineer who formerly worked for General Electric at the reactors in Fukushima. “It’s an endless game.”
The water stored at the plant is contaminated with cesium 134, cesium 137 and iodine 131 with a total radioactivity estimated at 720,000 terabecquerels, more than the amount of radioactive material that has been spewed into the air at the plant so far.
The new filtration system still faces many hurdles. The companies operating it, including Areva from France and Kurion from the United States, have little experience working with seawater. And Tepco must still dispose of the radioactive material that is being sifted out of the waste water; it is mixed with a chemical agent to create a toxic sludge.
During the summer, Tepco will bring 370 tanks to the Daiichi plant to store an extra 40,400 tons of radioactive water. A mega-float that can store yet more water is moored near the plant.
The contaminated water has been an unavoidable side effect of Tepco’s “feed and bleed” strategy for dealing with the four destroyed reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. To cool them for eventual dismantling, the company is pouring huge volumes of fresh water and sea water directly onto the highly radioactive reactors, which contaminates the water, creating an environmental headache.
The devilish consequences of the company’s efforts became clear in April, when rivers of contaminated water seeped through cracks in drainage pits and flowed directly into the Pacific Ocean. While that leak was plugged, a lack of storage for contaminated water soon forced Tepco to deliberately release an additional 11,500 tons into the sea.
The dumping led to an international outcry. In waters near the plant, a variety of fish and seaweed were found with higher than normal levels of radioactivity, prompting a ban on the sale of marine products harvested from parts of Japan’s Pacific coast.
Several workers at the plant have been burned around their feet and ankles after they stepped in highly radioactive water. Reducing the amount of water in and around the power plant will make it easier for workers to undertake other repairs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/wo...ef=global-home
the per kilowatt cost remains an open question.Comment
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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
Interesting, so what happened to the petabecquerels of radiation released?The water stored at the plant is contaminated with cesium 134, cesium 137 and iodine 131 with a total radioactivity estimated at 720,000 terabecquerels, more than the amount of radioactive material that has been spewed into the air at the plant so far.
https://wasatchecon.wordpress.com/20...born-children/
1 petabecquerel = 1000 terabecquerels.By contrast, at Fukushima, Asahi Shimbun reported that by 24 March the accident might have emitted 30,000 to 110,000 terabecquerels of iodine-131. A widely cited Austrian Meteorological Service report estimated the total amount of I-131 radiation released as of 19 March ranged from 10 petabecquerels to 700 petabecquerels . A Japanese government estimate issued April 12 calculated the total I-131 release at 130 to 150 petabecquerels total release by the April date. The amount of I-131 released from the Fukushima site has been enormous relative to the US incident.
As I calculated before, 1 petabecquerel would be equivalent to 307 grams of Cesium 137.
720 terabecquerels = 221 grams of Cesium 137.
221 grams divided by 105,000 tons of water (plus 500 tons/day) = really, really small number.
Again if all the radioactive material were pure Cesium 137, this would be roughly 0.00000211 grams per liter.
The number games continue...Comment
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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
c1ue, can nuclear contaminated water truly be filtered?Comment
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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
Turning back to Chernobyl, the Russians went to great lengths to cover the exposed core with Boron and the whole thing was roughly stabilised within a couple of weeks. Here in the UK, we had one incident of radioactive cloud and rain and that was it. We still have radioactive sheep on our Northern hills being monitored on a regular basis. But the Japanese seem to refuse to contemplate using Boron. They have still not make any reference to building an earth Bund around the coastal area to contain the worst of the radioactive drain off of the cooling water.
So what happens if the situation gets even worse and they lose a substantial area of the total to radioactivity? Then what are the rest of the world going to continue to do; sit and watch? Here in the South East of the UK, we may have been saved by the very dry and warm early spring with a drought and all the normal Atlantic weather driving across the West and Northwest. But for how long.
If the US is recording "particles" of radioactivity, then the whole planet is at risk. No, re-phrase; the whole planet might get beyond acceptable levels of radioactive pollution.
Surely there is a case to be made for the rest of us to gang together and say, enough, we want the whole thing cloaked in Boron, NOW! And then that begs the question; who has any Boron? How much do we need? Who will lead the operation?
Sitting doing nothing is surely not an answer?Comment
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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
When we had a fire in a nuclear plant, it was at Windscale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire Any closely packed radioactive debris might get hot too, so the answer is; they might become as dangerous as the molten piles.don; c1ue, can nuclear contaminated water truly be filtered?
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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
I am no expert, but I don't see why not. H2O doesn't itself get radioactive, so the filter processes that are used to purify water should be able to work on the radioactive bits as well as the non radioactive elements in solution.Originally posted by don View Post
Which is to say, mostly. It would be tough to 100% purify and the process of concentrating all non H2O (result of purification) itself would lead to a larger weight of more concentrated radioactive material.Comment
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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
Dear Chris and Don:
Ever hear of dumping contaminated water, i.e. about enough water to fill three swimming pools, into the Pacific Ocean???????????
Being a Stalinist, I prefer the SIMPLE, FASTEST, EASIEST, CHEAPEST, WORKABLE AND VITAL SOLUTION. I am not interested in bull-sh*t and lies and delays. The best and easiest solution is to dump the three swimming pools and the storage tanks of water into the Pacific Ocean.... And why is that the best plan? The water in these pools is safe so that you can swim in these pools, if need be.
Do you realize how big the Pacific Ocean is? It takes four and one-half hours (and sometimes five hours) in a jet passenger-plane from San Francisco International Airport to just get to Honolulu, and that jet travels at 550 miles per hour. Honolulu, Hawaii is only about one-third of the way across the Pacific. Do you realize how much water is in the Pacific Ocean?????????? And the Pacific Ocean has depths to as much as 36,000 feet. In addition the North Pacific Ocean is connected to the South Pacific Ocean, the latter which is much larger than its northern neighbour. Please remember that the South Pacific Ocean is connected with the Southern Ocean. Those oceans all connect to the Indian Ocean. And there is water connexion to the South Atlantic, the North Atlantic, and the Arctic Ocean.
And remember, the water in these pools is safe enough to swim in for short periods of time, if need be. It is no big issue if you fall into one of these swimming pools at Fukishima. If you are worried about radiation, don't go into hospital or eat a banana.
So stop making a mountain out of a mole hill. There is absolutely ZERO problem with dumping the swimming pools of water into the Pacific Ocean. ZERO PROBLEM. End of issue.
Do you remember how Stalin dealt with defeatists and trouble-makers during WWII? The issue of dumping a drop of mildly radioactive water is settled! End of issue....... Now let's get on with winning this war for our survival against those who wish us poverty and starvation. End of issue.
Or do you sympathize with the Islamists in Iran and Pakistan? Are you allied with the goals of the Taliban and Al Qaide? We either win this war for our way of life, or we go under. Japan is our ally, and if Japan goes under, we all go under.... We are all in this war together.Last edited by Starving Steve; June 17, 2011, 07:42 PM.Comment
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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
Rather than even expend the effort and the time to filter the odd particle out of the swimming pools of water, dump the water into the Pacific Ocean. Use a pump. Call me (Starving Steve) because I could use a good job! It sounds simple, and it would be a quite effective to solve this problem of storage/cooling water and waste-water disposal.Originally posted by c1ue View Post
Being a moron, I like simple jobs that are easy to do.
As far as the spent-fuel rods at the bottom of the swimming pools, about 25 feet down, take those out and dump them into the sea. They are losing half of their radiation every 30 years from the Caesium-137, therefore, they would be even more spent in 30 years, and almost something edible. By 120 years, only 1/16th of the Caesium-137 would be left. So for the next 120 years or so, dump the fuel rods into a trench in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Then the fish could eat the caesium in the 22nd Century, with no ill effects.
As far as the really long half-life Uranium 235, I will eat that stuff now. It is so spent that it releases about the same radiation as a banana. (If I am wrong in this hyperbole, I am not that far wrong.) There is nothing in nature that is highly radioactive and has billions of years for a half-life....... Sorry, eco-frauds! No such isotope of uranium (or any other element) exists on this planet. The longer the half-life, the less radioactive it is. Billions of years for a half-life is about as stable, safe and boring as anything can get.
So we can make armour for tanks with U-235. That sounds fine and practical to me. Also ammo can be made from U-235 because uranium is very dense at over 18 grammes of uranium weight per cc of water displacement. Gold is even more dense than that, but not by much.
Some uranium ammo shot at over 700 miles per hour at the Taliban, Al Qaide or Hamas would just make my day!Last edited by Starving Steve; June 18, 2011, 11:28 AM.Comment
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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
Gearheads untie!
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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
Is Fukushima becoming a dreaded Black Swan . . .
TOKYO — The Tokyo Electric Power Company said Saturday that the filtration system it had struggled to put into operation had broken down after just five hours, a disappointing setback in its efforts to cool the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The company said that the sprawling system, which is designed to siphon oil, radioactive materials and salt from the water used to cool the reactors, had been shut down because the levels of cesium recorded were similar to those requiring the changing of filters.
The filtration system was built ad hoc and rushed into service because Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, is quickly running out of space to store the tens of thousands of tons of water that have been contaminated after being poured into the reactors and spent fuel pools.
Some of the tanks, basements and other storage facilities at the power plant have inches to spare and could overflow within days. Tepco hoped to reduce the amount of contaminated water by reusing the newly filtered water. The company is also bringing in hundreds of extra tanks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/wo...ef=global-homeComment
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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
Way back in 1978, I took a train ride to our east coast and visited the Yarmouth Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries facilities. What was fascinating was the largest exhibit, which was their discovery of radioactive particles on the sea shore. A lot of them. They had some there for us to observe. One was a small piece of Plutonium. These particles had been scattered right up the West coast of the UK and had been driven over the top of Scotland with the tides. They stemmed from what in retrospect was a silly decision made at Sellafield nuclear plant, to dump some machine shop slurry, (cutting oil and the like), from machining parts for the nuclear bombs we had been making there, down a pipe leading to the sea bed just off shore. They "thought" they would simply sink to the bottom and stay there. It turns out that a single particle of Plutonium can kill you very slowly as it does not move and it remains active for roughly 250,000 yrs. Makes a nice site for a tumor...
All nations with access to the sea rely on their inshore waters for a major part of their food supply; Japan particularly so, as they eat a very large part of their diet from the sea. For example, they use seaweed, where we might use greens. They harvest thousands of tons of it every year. Seaweed only grows where there is sufficient light reaching it at the sea bed for photosynthesis to enable it to grow. Probably in waters less than 50 feet deep.
"In Japan, over 600 square kilometres (230 sq mi) of Japanese coastal waters are given to producing 350,000 tonnes (340,000 long tons) of nori, worth over a billion dollars. China produces about a third of this amount.[4]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nori
So, to suggest that this is not an issue and that dumping radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean is a non event is, well, how does one put it? Stupid comes to mind.Comment
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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
If the half-life of plutonium is 250,000 years, that sounds safe enough for me to eat. I wonder what some plutonium would taste like in spaghetti sauce or on top of a baked-potato. Is it chewable, or would it be gritty?Originally posted by Chris Coles View Post
One can not have a LONG, LONG, LONG half-life and have radioactivity that amounts to anything. And 250,000 years is pretty long. One will get no tumours from plutonium, and plutonium and other exotic elements such as neptunium and thorium are found in rocks of uranium, worldwide.
If plutonium is not chemically poisonous such as arsenic, lead or selenium are, I'll eat the plutonium. If you are frightened about radiation, don't eat a banana. Don't eat a fish-bone. Don't live at high altitude such as in Mexico City, D.F. or around Colorado Springs, Colorado. Don't sun-bathe. Don't go into a hospital. Don't travel by air. And don't sleep too close to your spouse. In fact, I would not even sleep too close to your dog or cat. Don't get granite counters. Don't travel on dirt roads. And definitely, stay-out of the northern or southern lights during magnetic storms. Forget about eating the jackets of baked-potatoes. Forget about eating root vegetables and mushrooms. Don't work in soil. And forget about getting a dental X-ray. A chest X-ray could kill you. Forget about an MRI. Don't drink too much water because of the radon. Don't swim in lakes or the sea because of the odd atoms of tritium created by cosmic rays. Stay-out of dust storms in deserts. Don't rent a basement apartment because of the cement. And definitely don't swim in the swimming pools at nuclear reactor sites.
Teachers, here is another teachable moment for kids, especially in high school and college. I think even a third-grader might be able to understand most of this. Maybe it is about time the general public understood radiation, what it is, and where you come into contact with radiation.Last edited by Starving Steve; June 18, 2011, 12:49 PM.Comment
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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think
There we go, in part, I stand corrected; the half life is ~ 24,000 years. As for toxicity, these are the details for Plutonium.Precautions
See also: Plutonium in the environment
[edit] Toxicity
Isotopes and compounds of plutonium are radioactive and accumulate in bone marrow. Contamination by plutonium oxide has resulted from a number of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents including military nuclear accidents where nuclear weapons have burned.[87] Studies of the negligible effects of these smaller releases, as well as of the widespread radiation poisoning sickness and death following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have provided considerable information regarding the dangers, symptoms and prognosis of Radiation poisoning.[88]
During the decay of plutonium, three types of radiation are released—alpha, beta, and gamma. Alpha radiation can travel only a short distance and cannot travel through the outer, dead layer of human skin. Beta radiation can penetrate human skin, but cannot go all the way through the body. Gamma radiation can go all the way through the body.[89] Alpha, beta, and gamma radiation are all forms of ionizing radiation. Either acute or longer-term exposure carries a danger of unfavorable health outcomes including radiation sickness, cancer, and death. The danger increases with the amount of exposure.
Even though alpha radiation can not penetrate the skin, ingested or inhaled plutonium does irradiate internal organs.[33] The skeleton, where plutonium is absorbed, and the liver, where it collects and becomes concentrated, are at risk.[32] Plutonium is not absorbed into the body efficiently when ingested; only 0.04% of plutonium oxide is absorbed after ingestion.[33] Plutonium absorbed by the body is excreted very slowly, with a biological half-life of 200 years.[90] Plutonium passes only slowly through cell membranes and intestinal boundaries, so absorption by ingestion and incorporation into bone structure proceeds very slowly.[91][92]
Plutonium is more dangerous when inhaled than when ingested. The risk of lung cancer increases once the total radiation dose equivalent of inhaled plutonium exceeds 400 mSv.[93] The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the lifetime cancer risk from inhaling 5,000 plutonium particles, each about 3 microns wide, to be 1% over the background U.S. average.[94] Ingestion or inhalation of large amounts may cause acute radiation poisoning and death; no human is known to have died because of inhaling or ingesting plutonium, and many people have measurable amounts of plutonium in their bodies.[78]
The "hot particle" theory in which a particle of plutonium dust radiates a localized spot of lung tissue has been tested and found false—such particles are more mobile than originally thought and toxicity is not measurably increased due to particulate form.[91]
However, when inhaled, plutonium can pass into the bloodstream. Once in the bloodstream, plutonium moves throughout the body and into the bones, liver, or other body organs. Plutonium that reaches body organs generally stays in the body for decades and continues to expose the surrounding tissue to radiation and thus may cause cancer.[95]
A commonly cited quote by Ralph Nader, states that a pound of plutonium dust spread into the atmosphere would be enough to kill 8 billion people. However, the math shows that one pound of plutonium could kill no more than 2 million people by inhalation. This makes the toxicity of plutonium roughly equivalent with that of nerve gas.[96]
Several populations of people who have been exposed to plutonium dust (e.g. people living down-wind of Nevada test sites, Hiroshima survivors, nuclear facility workers, and "terminally ill" patients injected with Pu in 1945–46 to study Pu metabolism) have been carefully followed and analyzed. These studies generally do not show especially high plutonium toxicity or plutonium-induced cancer results.[91] "There were about 25 workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory who inhaled a considerable amount of plutonium dust during the 1940's; according to the hot-particle theory, each of them has a 99.5% chance of being dead from lung cancer by now, but there has not been a single lung cancer among them."[96][97]
Plutonium has a metallic taste.[98]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium
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