Fukushima Reactors 2-4 in full China Syndrome - NOBODY CARES!! (California, natural)
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The first link (*.pdf) was quite interesting and very well researched; one would expect symptoms of PTSD in workers who would have hyper-emotional reactions to what occurred, even taking blame onto themselves for the horror with which they were (to varying degrees) responsible, as well as the innocent victims' emotional reactions. I found the separation of actual physical indicators in the brain cells of the personnel and victims to be quite concise and very carefully documented.
Bluntly, it isn't only the psychological harm that occurs in any disaster, but the actual and provable, physical harm that the irradiation does to the human cellular components that makes the evidence against nuclear dependence so damning. Sure, most nuclear plants probably won't ever meltdown. But just one meltdown can cause immediate as well as continuing physical as well as psychological damage.
The question is - is it worth it? For some it apparently is (especially if they are kept ignorant of the true, both immediate and generational, far reaching impacts of a meltdown). For some, they can imagine that they live far enough away from any such nuclear plant to avoid any impacts to them. For others, it may be a fair tradeoff - some of their lives for the rest of ours. And for still others, it may be too much for any people to suffer, whether near or far, related or not.
BTW FYI - my dear niece had sold their house, packed their stuff - and had their orders to Tokyo cancelled one day before their flight departure date. Now they may go to Texas instead... whew. My little grand-nieces and nephews won't go through that at least.
Robert Alvarez, a former senior Energy Department official in the Clinton administration, has issued a similar warning, saying if an accident causes the Unit 4's pool of spent fuel rods to drain, it could release of 10 times as much radioactivity as Chernobyl, the Russian nuclear plant disaster of 1986.
Well not surprising really... It's pretty simple if you're worried then don't eat the seafood from Japanese waters, the entire Pacfic Basin isn't glowing in the dark...
Here's a pic of Bluefin migration patterns (taken from one tuna known as Terry).
Notice something interesting...? They migrate through the waters off Fukushima, so it's not especially relevant to anything. They were near the plant, and picked up some radioisotopes. Like said above if you're concerned don't eat seafood caught in the waters off the east coast of Japan. It's quite simple.
However... look at the actual figures, average radioactivity in Tuna from Potassium 40 is 350 bq/kg (A becquel is a disintegration per second and a method of measuring activity). Total cesium activity in those bluefins was 10bq/kg, that's an increase of 2.8% for fish that have except for their migration lived their ENTIRE lives in the Fukushima contaminated waters off eastern Japan from being an egg. So if you eat 100 Kilograms of Tuna a year before the accident, you can now only really eat 97.2 kg to remain within the same exposure figures.
The major issue here is that ignorance breeds fear, and most people are ignorant of just what is radioactive around them, and what their exposure rates are. Well when you consider that you yourself average a count of around 4400 bq from Potassium 40 (give or take based on your actual mass), having an additional 10bq added (if you eat 2.2lbs of Tuna) going to have any serious health effects?
Given that people on average weigh from 120lbs to 250lbs (ignoring the lower and upper 5% of body masses), that means that the person sitting next to you right now is dosing you with between 2854 K40 disintegrations per second, and 5945 disintegrations per second. You're worried about 10bq from Tuna, which will in general pass through your system in say 24 hours. Ok so next time you're in a crowded room I'd suggest you ask the biggest guy there to stand outside for 2.4 minutes(around 2 minutes and 24 seconds to be clearer ), because that is the same dose you'd get from eating this 2.2lbs of tuna over the dose you'd get from that guy.
Well not surprising really... It's pretty simple if you're worried then don't eat the seafood from Japanese waters, the entire Pacfic Basin isn't glowing in the dark...
Here's a pic of Bluefin migration patterns (taken from one tuna known as Terry).
Notice something interesting...? They migrate through the waters off Fukushima, so it's not especially relevant to anything. They were near the plant, and picked up some radioisotopes. Like said above if you're concerned don't eat seafood caught in the waters off the east coast of Japan. It's quite simple.
However... look at the actual figures, average radioactivity in Tuna from Potassium 40 is 350 bq/kg (A becquel is a disintegration per second and a method of measuring activity). Total cesium activity in those bluefins was 10bq/kg, that's an increase of 2.8% for fish that have except for their migration lived their ENTIRE lives in the Fukushima contaminated waters off eastern Japan from being an egg. So if you eat 100 Kilograms of Tuna a year before the accident, you can now only really eat 97.2 kg to remain within the same exposure figures.
The major issue here is that ignorance breeds fear, and most people are ignorant of just what is radioactive around them, and what their exposure rates are. Well when you consider that you yourself average a count of around 4400 bq from Potassium 40 (give or take based on your actual mass), having an additional 10bq added (if you eat 2.2lbs of Tuna) going to have any serious health effects?
Given that people on average weigh from 120lbs to 250lbs (ignoring the lower and upper 5% of body masses), that means that the person sitting next to you right now is dosing you with between 2854 K40 disintegrations per second, and 5945 disintegrations per second. You're worried about 10bq from Tuna, which will in general pass through your system in say 24 hours. Ok so next time you're in a crowded room I'd suggest you ask the biggest guy there to stand outside for 2.4 minutes(around 2 minutes and 24 seconds to be clearer ), because that is the same dose you'd get from eating this 2.2lbs of tuna over the dose you'd get from that guy.
Thank you for the clarification. From what people were saying in prior posts, I was under the impression that the tuna were glowing in the dark.
Well not surprising really... It's pretty simple if you're worried then don't eat the seafood from Japanese waters, the entire Pacfic Basin isn't glowing in the dark...
Here's a pic of Bluefin migration patterns (taken from one tuna known as Terry).
Notice something interesting...? They migrate through the waters off Fukushima, so it's not especially relevant to anything. They were near the plant, and picked up some radioisotopes. Like said above if you're concerned don't eat seafood caught in the waters off the east coast of Japan. It's quite simple.
However... look at the actual figures, average radioactivity in Tuna from Potassium 40 is 350 bq/kg (A becquel is a disintegration per second and a method of measuring activity). Total cesium activity in those bluefins was 10bq/kg, that's an increase of 2.8% for fish that have except for their migration lived their ENTIRE lives in the Fukushima contaminated waters off eastern Japan from being an egg. So if you eat 100 Kilograms of Tuna a year before the accident, you can now only really eat 97.2 kg to remain within the same exposure figures.
The major issue here is that ignorance breeds fear, and most people are ignorant of just what is radioactive around them, and what their exposure rates are. Well when you consider that you yourself average a count of around 4400 bq from Potassium 40 (give or take based on your actual mass), having an additional 10bq added (if you eat 2.2lbs of Tuna) going to have any serious health effects?
Given that people on average weigh from 120lbs to 250lbs (ignoring the lower and upper 5% of body masses), that means that the person sitting next to you right now is dosing you with between 2854 K40 disintegrations per second, and 5945 disintegrations per second. You're worried about 10bq from Tuna, which will in general pass through your system in say 24 hours. Ok so next time you're in a crowded room I'd suggest you ask the biggest guy there to stand outside for 2.4 minutes(around 2 minutes and 24 seconds to be clearer ), because that is the same dose you'd get from eating this 2.2lbs of tuna over the dose you'd get from that guy.
Well I wasn't just referring to food. All monitoring. I stopped eating seafood a few yrs ago. If it is a reliable source, different story.
Thinking nuclear fallout is unsafe isn't ignorance. Their is no SAFE level of ionizing radiation. Cesium is similar to potassium, but doesn't mean all of it is processed in 24 hrs. Not sure where you go the idea that you body just gets rid of all this stuff. Did you listen to the news article? The damage can be severe and cumulative. Please don't try to dismiss nuclear fallout as trivial. Certainly you are welcome to follow your own guidelines.
Thinking nuclear fallout is unsafe isn't ignorance.
There's a huge amount of FUD about "fallout", yes it's unsafe, but so is driving your car, getting out of bed in the morning, or walking down stairs. Indeed since you use the term "fallout" it indicates to me you have only a small knowledge on the subject, because I don't really care from where I get exposed to radionuclides, just that I do, that could be a just sub critical Plutonium sphere, or eating a banana.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CDusr
Their is no SAFE level of ionizing radiation.
That's actually a semi-truth, there are no established safe levels for exposure to radiation. That does not mean there are no accepted safe levels, it's just the difference between a scientific solution and a practical solution. The reason there's no scientifically proven safe limits is quite simple, there are not a lot of volunteers available to get dosed and then have every aspect of their lives controlled so that we can establish those limits, so most of the evidence is from either exposure from accidents such as Chernobyl, Windscale, TMI, Fukushima etc. or from the bombings of Japan.
Then we really only get information about what we know were doses that were acutely fatal, once we get over them, then it becomes increasingly difficult to figure out what impact the exposures have on those peoples lifespans. For instance we know that the LD50 dose is around 450,000 mRem (4.5 Sv) (i.e. 50% of the people affected will die from the immediate effects of that level of exposure to radioactivity without medical intervention). However it's very difficult to assess whether someone who died say 5 years after this event from some health problem whether this was caused by the exposure.
Then there are other issues as to the mechanisms of how exposure leads to death, back in 40's 25 workers at Los Alamos inhaled considerable quantities of Plutonium dust, there was an estimated 95.5% they would develop lung cancer, none of them did, which is quite a feat really given the lifestyle of people back in the 40's, you'd expect just one or two to develop lung cancer just from smoking.
Meanwhile back to practical exposure limits (since I could discuss the reasons we have no scientifically proven limits all day). The NRC has an occupational dose of 50mSv per year, background radiation in the US varies from 0.15 uSv to 1.4 uSv, so you'd need one whole hell of additional exposure of a lot to reach the NRC occupational dose limits.
Look the doses you get daily are from a whole bunch of stuff, if you wear eye glasses made of glass you're probably getting dosed 0.11 uSv/year, CT scans give you about a 5mSv dose (but you need to be careful with that one, because the area dosed receives that amount, but the figure reports the equivalent energy as a whole body dose, so the area receives a much higher dose). Good ol' CRT TV's give you 5nSv/hour in X-Ray radiation. So maybe your Mom was on to something when she told you to not sit so close to it. If you sleep 8 hours/day with a partner they're dosing you with an estimated additional 9uSv a year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CDusr
Cesium is similar to potassium, but doesn't mean all of it is processed in 24 hrs. Not sure where you go the idea that you body just gets rid of all this stuff.
Because it does, there's a process called homeostasis that exists in your body. It causes you to maintain a balance of chemistry in your biology. Thus as you intake an element, your body is excreting maybe a little more, maybe a little less of that element. If it did not do this, then you'd wind up with toxic concentrations in your cells, organs, blood stream, brain, etc. in a very short period of time.
There's a metric called the Banana equivalent dose, it's used to try to clarify radiation exposures for people without a background in a hard science. It's criticism comes from the fact that it doesn't take this into account, the EPA and others argue it should only apply for about 3 hours (and thus the BED should be reduced by this factor) I applied a 24 hour (8 times) period since I assume it will exit the alimentary canal in 24 hours, even though if you absorb all of the cesium in the tuna, you'll begin excreting it within hours of consumption.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CDusr
Did you listen to the news article? The damage can be severe and cumulative. Please don't try to dismiss nuclear fallout as trivial. Certainly you are welcome to follow your own guidelines.
Nuclear Fallout can be trivial, or not, it depends on the quantities of the isotopes in that fallout, the amount of fallout that there is, and the half lives of the radioisotopes in that fallout. It's effect on the human body is directly related to the rate of exposure.
I understand the risks (and the inverse square law), which is why I'm not concerned, if the entirety of all of the radioactive material in Fukushima was dropped into the Pacific Ocean, then the average rise in radioactivity exposure would likely be less than 1uSv across the Pacific (and that is being incredibly pessimistic). However that's not going to happen, and most of any radioactive material will stay in Japan (even if it somehow goes critical).
The problem is that the people who do know about this, aren't running around with their hair on fire so get less attention, and often because they're not people think there's a cover up, and there is, but the cover up is like telling your wife you were at work while playing a round of golf, rather than spending a couple of hours of relaxation with your secretary. In most of the actual serious commentaries I've seen from people who know what they're talking about are mentioning contamination within very contained regions. For instance Michio Kaku was mentioned, and he was talking about hotspots in Japan (up to 50 miles from the plant), well if you're not living in Japan then there's nothing to worry about, that's not going to spontaneously spring up from there and drop on "Smalltown US" right next to where you live.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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"Banana Equivalents" are a useful concept ..... bananas are just radioactive enough from potassium isotopes that shipments of them can set off those radiation detectors meant to find smuggled nukes in shipping ports.
The risk of fallout from the Japan hotspots has usually been conceived of as coming from the cores melting their way down to the water table, and then the resulting massive steam explosions blowing the radioactive material up into the atmosphere, there to be carried on the prevailing winds just as the first explosions did (detected in rainwater as far away as Massachusetts, but tiny amounts).
There's a huge amount of FUD about "fallout", yes it's unsafe, but so is driving your car, getting out of bed in the morning, or walking down stairs. Indeed since you use the term "fallout" it indicates to me you have only a small knowledge on the subject, because I don't really care from where I get exposed to radionuclides, just that I do, that could be a just sub critical Plutonium sphere, or eating a banana.
That's actually a semi-truth, there are no established safe levels for exposure to radiation. That does not mean there are no accepted safe levels, it's just the difference between a scientific solution and a practical solution. The reason there's no scientifically proven safe limits is quite simple, there are not a lot of volunteers available to get dosed and then have every aspect of their lives controlled so that we can establish those limits, so most of the evidence is from either exposure from accidents such as Chernobyl, Windscale, TMI, Fukushima etc. or from the bombings of Japan.
Then we really only get information about what we know were doses that were acutely fatal, once we get over them, then it becomes increasingly difficult to figure out what impact the exposures have on those peoples lifespans. For instance we know that the LD50 dose is around 450,000 mRem (4.5 Sv) (i.e. 50% of the people affected will die from the immediate effects of that level of exposure to radioactivity without medical intervention). However it's very difficult to assess whether someone who died say 5 years after this event from some health problem whether this was caused by the exposure.
Then there are other issues as to the mechanisms of how exposure leads to death, back in 40's 25 workers at Los Alamos inhaled considerable quantities of Plutonium dust, there was an estimated 95.5% they would develop lung cancer, none of them did, which is quite a feat really given the lifestyle of people back in the 40's, you'd expect just one or two to develop lung cancer just from smoking.
Meanwhile back to practical exposure limits (since I could discuss the reasons we have no scientifically proven limits all day). The NRC has an occupational dose of 50mSv per year, background radiation in the US varies from 0.15 uSv to 1.4 uSv, so you'd need one whole hell of additional exposure of a lot to reach the NRC occupational dose limits.
Look the doses you get daily are from a whole bunch of stuff, if you wear eye glasses made of glass you're probably getting dosed 0.11 uSv/year, CT scans give you about a 5mSv dose (but you need to be careful with that one, because the area dosed receives that amount, but the figure reports the equivalent energy as a whole body dose, so the area receives a much higher dose). Good ol' CRT TV's give you 5nSv/hour in X-Ray radiation. So maybe your Mom was on to something when she told you to not sit so close to it. If you sleep 8 hours/day with a partner they're dosing you with an estimated additional 9uSv a year.
Because it does, there's a process called homeostasis that exists in your body. It causes you to maintain a balance of chemistry in your biology. Thus as you intake an element, your body is excreting maybe a little more, maybe a little less of that element. If it did not do this, then you'd wind up with toxic concentrations in your cells, organs, blood stream, brain, etc. in a very short period of time.
There's a metric called the Banana equivalent dose, it's used to try to clarify radiation exposures for people without a background in a hard science. It's criticism comes from the fact that it doesn't take this into account, the EPA and others argue it should only apply for about 3 hours (and thus the BED should be reduced by this factor) I applied a 24 hour (8 times) period since I assume it will exit the alimentary canal in 24 hours, even though if you absorb all of the cesium in the tuna, you'll begin excreting it within hours of consumption.
Nuclear Fallout can be trivial, or not, it depends on the quantities of the isotopes in that fallout, the amount of fallout that there is, and the half lives of the radioisotopes in that fallout. It's effect on the human body is directly related to the rate of exposure.
I understand the risks (and the inverse square law), which is why I'm not concerned, if the entirety of all of the radioactive material in Fukushima was dropped into the Pacific Ocean, then the average rise in radioactivity exposure would likely be less than 1uSv across the Pacific (and that is being incredibly pessimistic). However that's not going to happen, and most of any radioactive material will stay in Japan (even if it somehow goes critical).
The problem is that the people who do know about this, aren't running around with their hair on fire so get less attention, and often because they're not people think there's a cover up, and there is, but the cover up is like telling your wife you were at work while playing a round of golf, rather than spending a couple of hours of relaxation with your secretary. In most of the actual serious commentaries I've seen from people who know what they're talking about are mentioning contamination within very contained regions. For instance Michio Kaku was mentioned, and he was talking about hotspots in Japan (up to 50 miles from the plant), well if you're not living in Japan then there's nothing to worry about, that's not going to spontaneously spring up from there and drop on "Smalltown US" right next to where you live.
Nobody has their "hair on fire". Cesium is also stored in tissues, though it can pass at different rates, depends on the individual, their health etc... In the meantime, the damage is being done. Damage can be cumulative.
Since you are counting on others to both measure and report correctly, from very small samples, when testing is actually being done, you can't be sure of what you have ingested. Trying to measure it in the body is far more difficult to do so accurately. On a living being basically impossible. Granted this isn't exclusive to radiation. Our environment and food is being contaminated from many sources.
Throwing in Plutonium is completely ridiculous. Yeah, go eat some plutonium. It *is* fallout. That is why I called it such. You are making erroneous assumptions. Of course, the amt of radiation, intensity and duration matters. However, different substances are handled differently in the body, which is the real issue. Internal contamination and very long term environmental contamination can have big consequences.
I choose to drive my car, nuclear power, I am stuck with however and only have one planet to live on. This kind of risk and hidden cost is simply not needed to heat water. The govt and we the people subsidize this industry. Insurance companies don't seem to want to cover Nuclear.
Radiation is damaging, period, it isn't harmless, which is what SAFE means. So no there is no such thing, unless you are completely unexposed to it.
They have test in the US that have been showing increases in Strontium-90 w/in closer proximity to nuclear facilities in children's teeth.
Not wanting your environment contaminated with nuclear fallout and by-products is reasonable. Understanding it has health consequences is also reasonable and scientifically documented. You are welcome to eat and consume all the radiation and nuclear by-products you desire.
I am concerned with all nuclear by products not just Japan, but there have been reports and evidence of the Japanese by-products and effects showing up all over North America. It's still spewing, claiming that it is limited to a small area in Japan is inaccurate.
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