Reuters: Radioactivity rose to 1,850x Sunday from 1,250x measured on Saturday,

[flamingdem]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/27/us-japan-seawater-idUSTRE72Q04520110327?WT.tsrc=Social%20Media&WT.z_smid=twtr-reuters_%20com&WT.z_smid_dest=Twitter

TOKYO (Reuters) - Radioactive iodine in sea-water off Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant rose to 1,850 times the usual level from 1,250 times measured on Saturday, Japan's nuclear safety agency said on Sunday.

Separately, senior agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama said leakage from reactor vessels was likely to have been the cause for high levels of radiation found in water that has accumulated in turbine buildings.

The radioactive water within the plant has hampered workers from restoring its cooling systems.

[mrJJ]

1. 10 mil. times normal

newscrawl

NEWS ADVISORY: 10 mil. times normal level of radioactivity in water at No.2 reactor (13:12)

http://english.kyodonews.jp/

[flamingdem]

2. Thanks, oh s**t, that makes No. 3 look much less worrisome!

Is that a typo, 1 Million!?

Are workers going in there? Wonder if they're warning that they can't even get in there now.

[TheMadMonk]

3. Ten million times normal for water, which is one of the least radioactive...

...bulk substances known to man. AND half an hour or so after it's removal from the vicinity of the reactor core again non-radioactive except for any contaminants. A complete and utter Furphy. A red herring. A disigenuous use of a partial truth to force an entirely erroneous conclusion. Need I continue?


As for the values mentioned in the OP of 1800 & 1200 times normal, this, I believe, is for water tested 100m from the discharge outlet. A distance that was very irresponsibly misreported as 100 KILOMETRES a week or so ago when there was another large discharge.

Yes they are high. Yes they are unacceptable for day to day opperations. However, in an emergency, over a short period of time they are litterally a drop in the ocean and nothing to worry about, provided the most basic of precautions are taken. Mixing effects and the simple fact that radioiodine decays to nothing in a couple of weeks means that it is not an issue anywhere more than a few tens of kilometres downcurrent from the plant. And only an issue for foodstuffs taken from the affected area in the two weeks or so immediately following the last "excessive discharge".

BTW. Anything which can be stored longer than that "cooldown" period is perfectly safe to eat. All that milk, could be turned into cheese, or simply processed for UHT milk. The spinach (vile stuff) could be safely composted at the very least, and there is no real reason at all why it could not be used for livestock feed. Fish(/anything) could be frozen and stored for a month or two.

Thats radioiodine the most volatile, most bioreactive and the most easily distributed of the nasties being "farted" out by the reactors.

The other major volatile being emitted by the reactors is radioactive caesium which does have a rather unfortunate half life of thirty years or so, unlike radioidine's few days. It also appears to have a certain small affinity for muscle tissue, but the metabolic pathway which assimilates caesium is "open" and it is flushed from the system in just over a week if the exposure is not maintained. A ten day biological "halflife" in combination with a radiological halflife of thirty years works to prevent environmental exposure to radiocaesium being a problem unless that exposure is prolonged over a very extended period of time. And in fact no data exists to link it with any known form of chronic (long term) radiotoxicity.

Fortunately so far the true radiologically and biologically active demon has not put in a substantial appearance. Strontium-90 is a close mimic for calcium which causes it to accumulate to some considerable degree in bone tissue, which in turn puts it close to the fast dividing cells of bone marrow. It is this which makes leukemia one of the more common radiation"fallout" induced cancers. Fortunately it, and thyroid cancer (sometimes caused by radioiodine) are amongst the most treatable of cancers. (And yes I will acknowledge that the "catchall" diagnosis of leukemia has the nasty distinction of being able to hit both ends of the treatabilty spectrum with equal facility.)

To "scale" the threat. Look at it like this.

• Radioiodine detected = A reason to pay attention. Not an issue in any way unless present in huge quantities or in significantly elevated quantities for an extended period of time. (1 year or more.)
  
• Radiocaesium detected = A reason for concern. but more as a harbinger and proxy than threat in its own right.
  
• Radiostrontium detected = A definite cause for concern. Mostly as an indicator that the fecal matter has most definitely hit the proverbial. And, easily managed with propper screening of calcium rich products.
  
• You don't need a torch to find your way in the dark = you're fucked.

Sadly, in a time of major catastrophe, when food is at a premium, much perfectly good food will be condemned, because while "contaminated" that contamination is so minor that it would only present a detectable threat, in a very large population, if it continued for a solid year or more.

[JDPriestly]

4. Interesting information, TheMadMonk. I hope you are right.

[TheMadMonk]

5. Well I slightly screwed up the half life of Iodine. It's 8 days, not a couple.

Which extends the period it presents some danger from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. Still not an issue without continued ongoing exposure.

And while strontium exposure alone can be managed by avoiding calcium rich foodstuffs, some of the other radioactive rubbish which would be released alongside strontium-90 are not quite a manageable, hence the shit having hit the fan if it's there to be discovered.


And yet, even with the shit and fan fully engaged (so far thankfully not yet) the WORST that can possibly happen carries a casualty figure appoximately 1% of the normal annual butcher's bill for coal. Matched megawatt for megawatt that number blows all the way out to 5% or so, but ONLY if we allow Chernobyl to be the typical "once in a generation" nuclear event AND THEN use the most pesemistic casualty figures for that event.

Truth be told, even Fukushima is probably on the nastier side of "normal" for an extreme nuclear event. Just about everything which could possibly go wrong with a nuclear reactor has gone wrong at Fukushima and somehow, against all expectation and design parameters these reactors survived hits five times heavier than they were ever intended to withstand and their passive containment systems HAVE HELD ON despite the almost total loss of active safety systems.

Excluding Chernobyl as an entirely atypical event, head to head, number for number, death for death, nuclear power is safer to both the public and workers in the industry than the watch-industry for public safety, air travel. In fact the casualty figures for civilian nuclear power are so low that any form of statistical comparison with any other industry considered remotely hazardous gives results indistinguishable from statistical noise. Even allowing Chernobly, a lifetime industrywide comparison still leaves nuclear power sitting quite comfortably on the safer side of air travel.

Not even adding Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the mix can make "The nukular" less safe than any number of everyday risks including simply breathing air carrying "normal" levels of petrochemical and coal byproducts. Getting into a car is begining your circus carreer on the highwire, juggling chainsaws by comparison.

Half the problem (public opinionwise) is we've gotten ourselves into a "No precaution is too much." death spiral. Where every added precaution begs the question, "If it's so safe, then why all the precautions? Better take a few more just to be sure." And now we have an entire world that without evidence (and indeed with any amount of evidence to the contrary) is convinced that any possible precaution is less than enough.

Despite a demonstrable casualty rate which is on a par with petite pointe needlcraft. Allow me this small hyperbole OK, after all the "anti"s are ready enough to with their "We're ALL going to DIE!!!!1111!!!!"s

[SpoonFed]

6. repetitive, ill-logical non-sense

The pro-nuke cognitive dissonance is clear to see.

Anyone who believes the inane, ranting above should
go watch the documentary from 1988 called Radio Bikini
and think about it.

[SpoonFed]

7. Watch this short clip...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ks4iLdMC8s&NR=1

[TheMadMonk]

8. Distrubing as that clip may be, it's also a part of why I do trust...

...nuclear power and its safety record.

However the results were obtained (and whatever lies were told at the time) we do have the population data necessary to establish with considerable statistical certainty the risks associated with various levels and types of exposure to radiation.


I am perfectly willing to accept that there is no magic threshold of exposure below which the risk drops to 0. However, there are limits, below which, the appreciable risk becomes utterly immeasuable against the froth of the many, many other far more likely (and creative) ways we have of dying and killing each other. Changing any one of those even marginally for the better would (and sometimes even does) show greater improvements in population wide health than achieving a risk level of zero point zero for nuclear. Permissible everyday limits are set way way below that limit of measurability.

Even now, that remains the case for the general public in Japan. Yes if the crisis goes on long enough, with no let up in escaping contaminants, measurable ill health effects would eventually become apparent. But an hour, a day, even a week, exactly how do you isolate half a death, fifty years in the future, in an entire province already ravaged by earthquake and tsunami?

The workers on the spot? Their exposure is being limited to roughly the lowest level that can be clearly linked with measurably elevated cancer rates. Just barely enough to tell a worker who does ultimately get cancer, that there is a 1 in 1000 chance it was caused by that one exposure event and a 999 in 1000 that it was triggered by something else in the environment, or came pre-programed into their genome from conception.