1,000 Tons Of Polluted Fukushima Water Dumped In Sea

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/1000-tons-of-polluted-fukushima-water-dumped-in-sea-2013-9

The operator of the leaking Fukushima nuclear plant said Tuesday that it dumped more than 1,000 tons of polluted water into the sea after a typhoon raked the facility.

Typhoon Man-yi smashed into Japan on Monday, bringing with it heavy rain that caused flooding in some parts of the country, including the ancient city of Kyoto.

The rain also lashed near the broken plant run by Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), swamping enclosure walls around clusters of water tanks containing toxic water that was used to cool broken reactors.

Some of the tanks were earlier found to be leaking contaminated water.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/1000-tons-of-polluted-fukushima-water-dumped-in-sea-2013-9#ixzz2f97pi3vT

[chervilant]

1. Did you know that you get as much background radiation

from eating a banana? Who knew?!?

( jic)

[FBaggins]

3. Quite a bit more in fact.

A banana is 5-6 times as radioactive as the water that was released. Heck... your body is roughly that much more radioactive.

It's also useful to note that quite a bit of radioactive material was spread all over that part of Japan. Monsoon rains will necessarily wash many millions of times as much of it out to sea as the tiny amount on the ground around some tanks.

[chervilant]

19. O, it's you, again...

So, bananas emit measurable levels of cesium 137? How about other long-lived radionuclides? Is the "natural" radioactivity in bananas lethal at the atomic or molecular levels?

You don't mention becquerels, curies, sieverts or millisieverts. You don't mention that cesium 137 is lethal at the atomic or molecular level. You don't mention that less than a dime-sized piece of cesium 137 can contaminate many kilometers of land.

I find it difficult to take you seriously.

[caraher]

20. Breaking this down...

"So, bananas emit measurable levels of cesium 137? How about other long-lived radionuclides?"

I don't think anyone has claimed bananas emit any radioisotopes, nor that they naturally contain Cs-137. K-40 is main isotope of interest in bananas. (I'm sure there's some level of C-14 present as well.) But in any event, the point is well-taken - bananas contain different radioisotopes from reactor-contaminated water. How much that matters is harder to assess...

"Is the "natural" radioactivity in bananas lethal at the atomic or molecular levels?"

There's no evidence that "natural" radioactivity is any more or less lethal than radioactivity from artificial radioisotopes. I think Christopher Busby claims otherwise, but his position is a very lonely one. I'd be inclined to say "yes," simply because we do know single radioactive decay events can trigger potentially lethal cancers, and that mechanism is present for decay of K-40.

"You don't mention becquerels, curies, sieverts or millisieverts. You don't mention that cesium 137 is lethal at the atomic or molecular level. You don't mention that less than a dime-sized piece of cesium 137 can contaminate many kilometers of land."

For reference, a typical banana checks in at around 15 Bq of K-40 and maybe 100 g. The OP said the water deliberately released was checked to have under 30 Bq Sr-90 per liter, or per 100 g, so it would be 1/5 as radioactive per unit mass as a banana - if Sr-90 were the only isotope present. From the article it didn't seem like the Cs-137 concentration factored into their thinking at all, so it could be anything at all.

Of course, the biggest problem with pushing the banana radioactivity thing too hard (which I didn't always fully appreciate) is that it's not the case that eating N bananas results in N times the dose of eating one banana. It's all about sustained potassium levels, and if you ate enough bananas to increase the potassium concentration greatly, your body would just excrete the excess, making any elevated exposure brief. That's why they were concerned with Sr-90 - it does accumulate in bone and essentially never leaves the body - and less concerned with Cs-137 - it has a biological half-life of a few months.

A dime-sized piece of anything can "contaminate" an arbitrary area, depending on the level at which you declare it "contaminated." What activity level (in Bq) is a "dime size" of Cs-137? And what is the level of contamination you're talking about? (Is the concern the external dose reaching some threshold in dose per unit time, or just that the soil should have less than some number of Bq per square meter?)

I think that in the end, it's hard to say, really, that the water has a lower specific activity than a banana, because we only know about one isotope and because there was also an uncontrolled release, according to the article. It does seem plausible that most of the water was radioactive at a "sub-banana" level; it's just hard to say for sure given the information available.

All assuming, of course, that we can believe TEPCO or the Japanese government. That's the biggest wildcard here, and their track record is terrible!

[chervilant]

21. Well, "alls I know" is:

I'd rather eat a banana than go swimming in that contaminated water.

(And, EVERY government and too many scientists have lied about nuclear fission, including our own.)

[FBaggins]

29. Just trying to help out

You keep acting as if it's abusive, but helping people pull themselves out of ignorance isn't abuse... though it can certainly be uncomfortable. Let's take a look at some of your misunderstandings.

So, bananas emit measurable levels of cesium 137?

Nothing "emits" cesium. It's the cesium that does the emitting (in this case, beta particles). The Potassium 40 in bananas (and throughout your body) also emits beta particles. So the comparison is entirely appropriate.

How about other long-lived radionuclides?

Potassium 40 is many billions of times longer-lived than cesium

Is the "natural" radioactivity in bananas lethal at the atomic or molecular levels?

Well... no. But then again, nothing is "lethal at the atomic or molecular level".

You don't mention becquerels, curies, sieverts or millisieverts.

Nope. I went further and compared the activity level for each and gave you the results. Bananas emit roughly 130 Bq/kg while the released water was reported at 24 Bq/L. That's roughly 5-6 times as much.

You don't mention that cesium 137 is lethal at the atomic or molecular level.

Which is good... since I would look pretty foolish making that mistake.

You don't mention that less than a dime-sized piece of cesium 137 can contaminate many kilometers of land.

Well now... that's certainly true. But how much do you think we're talking about here? Let's take Pam's IQ test together, shall we?

They reportedly leaked 1,000 tons of water contaminated with 24 Bq/L. Let's imagine that they did it again the next day... and then again the day after that. Then it just kept happening week after week... month after month... even year after year. After a decade... how many "dimes" of cesium do you think they would have released?

Cesium doesn't weigh the same as nickel/copper, but we'll just take the weight of a dime (a bit over 2 grams) and assume that it's all cesium 137. The specific activity for Cesium 137 is a bit over 3 TBq/g. So a dime's-weight-worth of it would be about 7 TBq.

So it would take several hundred years of daily releases like this to equal a single "dime". Though, of course, you would effectively run out of cesium long before that happened.

Until you can pass those kinds of "IQ tests"... it really doesn't matter much to me whether or not you take me seriously.

[PamW]

30. Applause! I concur!

I applaud FBaggins post above in helping educate people to the issues, and concur with what he states.

Although many anti-nukes make the claim that they are in full possession of critical thinking skills; their statements show that they don't understand the science and physics; so how can they possibly be thinking about these issues properly.

The claim that FBaggins responded to above about bananas emitting cesium-137 is such a case. As FBaggins points out, bananas don't emit cesium, and in fact nothing emits cesium. What we are concerned about is the radiation; in this case beta radiation, which is nothing more than high-energy electrons. Both Cesium-137 and the Potassium-40 contained naturally in bananas emit these high energy electrons. ( Are you listening bananas? ) As I have always put it; "a 1 MeV electron is a 1 MeV electron is a 1 MeV electron". There's ZERO difference between electrons emitted from natural radioactivity or from man-made radioactivity. The electron is a fundamental particle in nature, and doesn't come in multiple "flavors". The only difference is the initial energy, and natural radioactivity can put out energies equal to or greater than man-made species. So this "natural radiation is different from man-made radiation" is a bunch of scientific NONSENSE. It's like saying that if I combust hydrogen and oxygen to form water, then that water is "different" than the water that Mother Nature makes.

FBaggins also responded to the confusion in units. The statement was made that there was no mention of "becquerels, curies, sieverts, or millisieverts". That's akin to saying there was no mention of "meters, inches, grams, or milligrams". The units in both sets are for different, incompatible quantities.

Becquerels and curies are both units for the same thing; radioactivity, which is the rate at which radioactive substances decay. Curies is the older unit, and Becquerels are the new SI unit. Sieverts and millisieverts are units of effective dose. That is something completely different from radioactivity, just as the grams and milligrams in my example are units of mass; which is not compatible with units of length of inches and meters.

Effective dose measured in Sieverts is a metric of the amount of biological damage due to deposited energy. If you have a given amount of Cesium-137; you know the radioactivity, but you can't even begin to talk about dose because you haven't specified what the high-energy electrons (betas) are going to be depositing their energy in, and what the geometry is which also affects the calculation of dose.

So when I see some anti-nuke claiming that they can "think critifcally" about nuclear energy when they demonstrate such a fuzzy, nee non-existent grasp on the pertinent science; it's a little like someone claiming that they can think critically and clearly about solving integro-diffential equations in the calculus; but their handle on mathematics shows that they don't even understand the arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. With such a manifest ignorance of elementary mathematics, how could they possibly begin to understand advanced mathematical theory in the calculus or beyond?

The single constant trait of the anti-nukes I've noted is their manifest sense of being self-righteous. They are like teenagers that "think" they know everything when they conclusively demonstrate that they understand very little.

But they have zero reservations about taking their demonstrated misunderstandings, absorbed bits of false propaganda, and a fuzzy and confused sense of logic and reasoning capability; and they claim to have used all that to come to an informed opinion on nuclear energy, and have no problem with disputing the facts that professionals in the field are attempting to teach them.

Frankly, there's a wide spectrum in the intellectual capabilities of humans. Some just don't have the mental horsepower to understand the scientific principles and facts that are clearly understood by other humans.

I would have a better chance of explaining quantum physics to my cat than to attempt to explain nuclear energy to some; they just don't have the mental capacity.

PamW

[oldhippie]

32. Thank you PamW .....

That's the best, most righteous rant I've seen in quite a while.

[chervilant]

31. No,

you're not "just trying to help."

The nuclear physicists I choose to use as resources are far more credible than some anonymous blogger who seems invested in minimizing or denying the extent of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.

[PamW]

33. Minimizing?? Denying????

chervilant,

I am neither attempting to minimize nor deny the extent of the incident at Fukushima.

I am attempting to ACCURATELY portray the severity, and put it into proper perspective.

The fact that an ACCURATE assessment is seen by some non-scientist anti-nuke as being "minimization" or "denial" tells one more about the anti-nuke than it does about the accident at Fukushima.

I'm sorry that the Fukushima accident was less severe than you had hoped for; but facts are facts.

I sincerely doubt that you have nuclear physicists for resources that are more credible.

We were the laboratory that monitored the Fukushia accident from the beginning:

https://str.llnl.gov/JanFeb12/pdfs/1.12.2.pdf‎

WE are the ones that had our sensors deployed to the site within a few hours of the start of the event; and WE are the ones that got the most accurate data and did the top-notch analysis as events unfolded.

So your temerity at claiming you have better sources is ill-founded.

PamW

[madokie]

2. If its ever been shown that nuclear energy is not a sane way to make our electricity

this is a perfect example of why that is. No if and or buts about it.
On paper it looks good but in reality it sucks, simple as that.

[PamW]

4. Why not do the calculation for yourself?

madokie,

Why not do the calculation for yourself? You can use your own sources to find out the area of the oceans, and the average depth in miles; so you can calculate the volume, and hence the mass of the ocean water.

TEPCO dumped 1,000 tons. Calculate what fraction that is compared with the mass of the water already in the ocean.

Also consider that the water in the ocean isn't radioactivity free. The water itself contains Tritium produced by Mother Nature high in the atmosphere. The water also contains salts of Uranium and Thorium

A colleague of mine has a collection of "fossils"; things like shark's teeth. He takes them around to the science classes at area schools, along with a radiation detector. Sure enough; those shark's teeth are radioactive, and the children and teachers want to know why.

When the shark was alive, it was swimming in the seawater, and ingesting the seawater. Its body was extracting the minerals in that seawater in order to make teeth. Some of the minerals in seawater are salts of Uranium and Thorium which are naturally radioactive. So the shark's teeth are radioactive.

If people really did the calculations and found out just how much radioactivity is in the environment already, courtesy of Mother Nature; they'd wonder why people are concerned about the relatively trivial amount of radioactivity represented by 1,000 tons of slightly radioactive water.

PamW

[madokie]

5. I'm pretty sure that nothing in nature is even close to what man has made

sure plutonium is found in nature but for the most part it is considered man made.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/plutonium.html

As I said using nuclear energy to boil water to make steam to power turbines that turns generators to make electricity is totally and completely insane. If it was only discovered today it would not be used. We were sold a pig in a poke when we allowed it to begin with. At some point in the future I'm convinced there will be no nuclear power plants. The risk are simply too great
now put that in your pipe and smoke it

[PamW]

7. Why don't you LEARN instead of guessing WRONG!!

madokie states:
I'm pretty sure that nothing in nature is even close to what man has made

WRONG!!! WRONG!!! WRONG!!

Why don't you get an EDUCATION in the field instead of guessing WRONG and saying the You're SURE.

The non-scientists are so "impressed" with the long-life of Plutonium, and they "think" ( term used loosely ) that Mother Nature can't do better.

WRONG. Mother Nature does MUCH better. The 24,100 year half-life of Plutonium is nothing compared to the 9 BILLION year half-life of Potassium-40 that you have in you right now!!!

The Rankine steam cycle happens to be one of the BEST and MOST EFFICIENT ways of converting heat to work. That's why we have been using it for over 200 years.

Whenever I hear someone claiming that the Rankine steam cycle is old, or primitive; I think what musicians and those that appreciate fine music would think of someone who said, "Why does violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman play an over 300 year old violin made by Antonio Stradivari? You would think he would play a new 21st century violin; one made out of high-tech carbon fiber, and not wood".

What do you think musicians and those who appreciate fine music would think of the person that would make such a statement.

They'd conclude that he was ignorant and uncultured and didn't know what he was talking about!

The Rankine steam cycle has "withstood the test of time". To bad you can't appreciate such things.

PamW

[madokie]

9. I didn't say it was the only thing

I simply used it as an example. Whats the rankin cycle got to do with what I'm saying. Not a thing. I didn't say it was old, out of date or any of that, I said that it is insane that we use the spliting of atoms to boil water. How about some proof you are the scientist you claim to be. I'm not convinced you are anything but a keyboard commando spouting your bull about nuclear energy. possibly even a paid shill for the industry.

Seems to me the ignorant is on your part. A failure to understand what I said is a good example of that.

[PamW]

12. Why???

madokie says:
insane that we use the spliting of atoms to boil water.

WHY?? What don't you like about it?

Should we be doing something else with the energy from splitting atoms?

Is it the boiling that you don't like? Do you think we should heat water to less than the boiling point?

Or is it the fact that we are heating WATER that is your beef? Do you have another coolant in mind.

Please don't just parrot the screed from the anti-nuke gurus. Tell us specifically WHY splitting atoms and
using the atoms to boil a working fluid, that working fluid being water in particular; is insane.

What is wrong with it?

PamW

[madokie]

13. PamW

I can't believe you have such a hard time figuring that one out. I'll leave it to you and your imagination. Good day

I'm done with you, bye bye

[PamW]

14. I see...

madokie,

In other words; you can just parrot the screed from the anti-nuke gurus.

If you don't have anyone to parrot, and have to think on your own --- you have nothing to say.

I understand COMPLETELY!

PamW

[madokie]

15. You can go straight to

you know where. Pamw no one is as dumb as you want to make them out to be. Nuclear energy is dangerous and it is not because of the rankine cycle nor of boiling the water, its because of the fact that they don't know what to do when shit happens when it goes wrong. If whats going on in japan right now is not a clear example of that I'll kiss your ass.
Now go away and bother someone else. K
Take your smart ass elsewhere, I'm done with you.

[FBaggins]

16. So "I'm done with you" really translates to...

"I want the last word"

its because of the fact that they don't know what to do when shit happens when it goes wrong.

We don't?

They seem to be doing a pretty good job of faking it in Japan. Just about the worst possible event in a western reactor design (x3) and we're arguing whether a handful of people might get thyroid cancer later in life. No deaths from radiation and no serious risk to the public. You've got to grasp at a heavy rainfall as your latest reason that nuclear power is a poor way to boil water.

You owe poor Pam a kiss... but for her sake I hope you're no more a man of your word than of civil discourse.

[PamW]

17. Another "my mind ( sic ) is made up; don't confuse me with the facts...

madokie states:
, its because of the fact that they don't know what to do when shit happens when it goes wrong.

As FBaggins points out; all the pronouncements from the anti-nukes that Fukushima was an ELE - Extinction Level Event - and that somehow we were all going to die because of this has not panned out. I can just sense the manifest disappointment from the anti-nukes.

We seem to be "gifted" with what I call the "binary thinkers" - there's only a single bit, a single on/off decision in their logic; perhaps explained by a single functioning neuron.

Something is either "100% safe" or "100% dangerous". Or at least that is how they "think" about nuclear energy.

However, these same people drive cars, fly in airliners; and do thousands of activities that are not 100% safe.

I find it confounding that people are so unthinkingly adamant that nuclear power is so dangerous; when the event that they point to hasn't killed a single person. The issue here is what to do about some water that is contaminated with radioactivity and about that leaking into the ocean. However, the amount of radioactivity that is already in the ocean courtesy of Mother Nature manifestly exceeds the radioactivity from Fukushima by many orders of magnitude.

Contrast this with the response to an airliner crash or a car crash. Unlike Fukushima, those events really kill people; but it is Fukushima that they adamantly claim is "dangerous".

Consider the last 50 years; the year for which we have had nuclear power in the USA. In the USA, with plants that meet US nuclear regulations unlike Chernobyl and Fukushima; the single severe accident that the US nuclear power industry has had, namely Three Mile Island killed or injured NOBODY.

In that same time period, tens of thousands of people have died on airliners, and about 2 million ( 40,000+ per year for 50 years ) have died in auto accidents. However, are any of these people adamantly claiming that airliners are dangerous and need to be banned? Are they saying that cars are dangerous and need to be banned?

NO - but they will figuratively "stamp their feet", and proclaim without any logical justification or evidence that nuclear is dangerous; and that is the final word.

It is the final word for people who don't have the logic or evidence with which to carry on a debate. They can only parrot the anti-nuke gurus that do their thinking for them.

Once again; I COMPLETELY understand.

PamW

[FBaggins]

6. There's a more relevant calculation in this case.

The amount of water isn't particularly relevant. Plenty of gullible/ignorant people see 300 tons of contaminated water as a bigger deal than one liter of water containing the same amount of activity.

The water that was released was measured at 24 Bq/L (below even drinking water standards). So if 1,000 tons were "dumped" (really just rainwater released exactly as the system was designed to do)... then that's one million liters... or 24 million Bq.

By comparison, a single self-illuminated exit sign contains 1-2 Trillion Bq of tritium. Tens of thousands of times as much activity. Heck... few people wear wrist watches these days, but the limit for those glowing watch faces was almost a million Bq. Would "dumping" a couple dozen wristwatches into the sea really warrant international news attention?

[PamW]

8. IQ Test

FBaggins states:
Plenty of gullible/ignorant people see 300 tons of contaminated water as a bigger deal..

FBaggins,

EXACTLY!! It's really an IQ Test - a test of intelligence as to whether people have enough mental horsepower to see what is important.

If I took a given amount of radioactivity that was dissolved in a liter of water. I have a liter of radioactive water.

Suppose I add more pure water to make a gallon. Now I have a gallon of radioactive water. Is the danger worse?

Suppose I add a whole swimming pool of water to that gallon; have I made the danger intractably worse?

Once again we see the appalling LACK of mental horsepower and critical thinking skill when it comes to thinking scientifically.

PamW

[phantom power]

10. Pretty much everybody has the horsepower. It's just multiplication.

People are trained to not bother, because our culture is totally saturated in the belief that radiation is supernaturally dangerous, so much so that "no amount is safe," regardless of the actual physics, chemistry and biology.

Witness the typical reaction to the "metric banana dose," or comparisons to EPA radioactivity standards for drinking water. Or the average radioactivity in human tissue. People literally refuse to believe it.

Fukushima is disaster! Why? Because everybody is reporting it that way, of course! Why are they reporting it that way? Because it's a disaster!

[FBaggins]

11. It's the "word problem" aspect that gets 'em

Most people can do the arithmatic if you set it up for them... they just can't convert the real-world scenario into a mathematical statement.

And heaven help them if they ever need to take a numerical measurement and convert it to something that actually means something in real-world terms - let alone make rational decisions on that basis.

[caraher]

18. I agree, but...

I hope this means you won't ever again trot out how small the *mass* associated with a given amount of a radionuclide is. Radioactivity should be specified in Bq or curies, not grams. Trying to minimize a quantity of radioactive material by emphasizing its mass is almost as dishonest as trying to amplify the quantity by citing the mass or volume of water within which a nuclide released is diluted. And I say "almost" only because a knowledgeable reader can work out the actual activity from the total mass by knowing the half-life and isotopic mass; but even then presenting it that way is generally a deliberate attempt to make it hard to figure out how much radioactivity is present.

[chervilant]

22. When I see posts like yours:

Once again we see the appalling LACK of mental horsepower and critical thinking skill when it comes to thinking scientifically.

I have to wonder: do you converse like this face to face, using condescension and sarcasm? Do you honestly think verbal bullying promotes your position? Do you think you sound learned? Do you think you're getting respect from other DUers?

I've developed a strategy for eliminating such vitriol from my experience of this forum. (I'll trust that you understand this strategy, and will not waste time posting a response that I choose not to see...)

(And, btw, many of us "anti-nuke activists" are in full possession of the critical thinking skills you derisively declared lacking...)

[oldhippie]

24. But she's right .....

I guess you just don't like how she expresses herself? So you ignore her? Great strategy.

That's your critical thinking skill right there.

Yup.

[chervilant]

25. Really?

As you don't know me, you have no way of knowing why I choose not to tolerate derision, condescension, and other forms of verbal bullying. I have a right to make that choice, and it has NOTHING to do with my critical thinking skills or my intellect.

BTW, I have much more interesting resources, written by well-regarded members of the scientific community. And, guess what, I don't have to be pro-nuke to ameliorate the random nuclear sycophants on this website.

[oldhippie]

26. Yes, Really.

I only know you from your post.

[chervilant]

28. And, I from yours. n/t

[PamW]

27. I see it more as a challenge..

I see it more as a challenge... a call to improve.

The anti-nuke activists that I have conversed with have skills the call "critical thinking skills". However, I have yet to meet any that demonstrate the grasp of the subject that I or any scientist would call "critical thinking".

Most of what I hear from the anti-nukes are misunderstandings or ignorance of the laws of physics and science.

Their opinion is based on erroneous information; which is why they come to erroneous conclusions.

PamW

[Nihil]

23. And the danger from doing that is ...

... a shitload less than the damage being done at this very moment in your own country
by something a lot less powerful than a typhoon:

>> “You have 100, if not thousands, of wells underwater right now and we have no idea what
>> those wells are leaking,” East Boulder County United spokesman Cliff Willmeng said
>> Monday. “It’s very clear they are leaking into the floodwaters though.”
(http://www.democraticunderground.com/112754117)


>> "Our concern is that all of these sites contain various amounts of hazardous industrial wastes
>> that are now capable of spilling into the waterways and onto the agricultural land.
>> Many of these chemicals are carcinogenic, neurotoxic, and known disruptors of the human
>> endocrine system.
(http://www.democraticunderground.com/112754098)


>> “There are over 20,000 oil and gas wells in Weld County alone,”
>> “Prior to the floods we knew that the oil and gas industry was left to police itself.
>> Now the rivers, agricultural zones and residences get to bear that decision.”
(http://www.democraticunderground.com/112754098)


If people would just step away from their superstitions about "scary radiation" and
recognise the far larger problems around today, the world would be a lot better place.

As it is, the fossil fuel spokesmen/women are just pissing themselves laughing at
how TEPCO is being (rightfully) pilloried for their gross greedy incompetence while
NO-ONE does a damn thing about the historic & ongoing health damage from their
own fortune-building careers.