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NOAA Study: Radiation From Fukushima Very Dilluted, Seafood Safe
JSBiff writes "Ars Technica is reporting on a study by NOAA scientists who surveyed the ocean near Fukushima, which concludes that while a lot of radioactivity was released into the water, as would be expected, it diluted out to levels that pose little risk to wildlife or humans, and that the seafood is safe to eat. Perhaps we needn't worry so much about "millions of gallons of radioactive water" being released into the ocean, like it's a major environmental disaster, as it's really not — the ocean is many orders of magnitude larger than any accidental release of radiation which might happen from a nuclear plant."
I wonder which will prevail ?
I lied. Heh. I wish I wondered.
Unless they were doing a lot of extra work to match isotopes, most of the "bulk" radiation in the ocean from power generation is from burning coal.
There's really quite a bit of U in coal, and if you burn a gigatons of the stuff a ppm here and there starts to add up.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Oh yeah, fine. But a small point-- it's a straw man, as nobody is drinking the sea water, but billions of plants and animals are bio-concentrating the minerals. Your basic clams end up with like 110,000 times the radioactivity of the surrounding seawater, because all they do, all day long, is filter seawater.
Momentarily there will be people posting to assure you that it's a major disaster and that the huge death toll has been covered up by the International Nuclear Advocacy Mafia (tm).
How about those tasty apex predators that bioaccumulate contaminants? I won't (on purpose anyway) be drinking seawater any time soon, but I might be eating tuna....
1 million gallons of dirty water sounds bad--until you dilute it into 350 quintillion gallons of clean water.
And hey, compared to all the fecal matter you're eating with your seafood, a little cesium is nothing.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Is pickled radiation any less harmful?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Here is one set of numbers on natural sources of exposure. http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/natural.htm
It all starts at 0
Ignoring the fact that radiation bio-accumulates up the food chain! Sure, seafood not showing rads noowwwww, but give some time for those fish to eat those other fish who ate the radioactive plankton. It ain't as simple as "water was diluted" when isotopes have long half-lives.
Go to the atolls which were nuked in the Pacific, and go ahead and eat the coconuts.
That the pollution will mix and spread out evenly over the ocean... That really depends on mixing effectiveness.
Deleted
Oh, sure, they'll keep saying it's safe until Godzilla rises from the sea and wreaks havoc on Tokyo!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
So is the fish and sea water in Japan now homeopathic and going to make people immune to radiation?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
If not, background radiation would be lethal and we'd all be in a jam. Lord preserve us!
I know, I know, this is slashdot, but there IS a link to a fine article summarizing the study. The study, in this case, wasn't a "statistical model" sort of study - they actually went around in a boat for months, sampling water, wildlife, etc. No assumptions - actual empirical evidence.
in other news NOAA employees have decided to quit eating seafood
Given the propensity of government to lie or manipulate the truth, I don't believe a word of what the NOAA says. Everyone should look at this with a very healthy dose of skepticism.
I felt that this whole "Crisis" was overblown as an attempt to dissuade the middle east that Nuclear Power is the solution for the near future.
Let's test that the way they did long ago. The ones who are reporting the seafood to be safe should be required to eat it.
We'll watch them for a few months to see whether they become ill.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Whoosh.
After all the coverups and bullshit. I find it hard to believe anyone.
So I will go with the tried and tested way. If it's suspect, don't go near it.
Really - it's hard to tell with all of those vertical lines. I once worked for a company that had "illlinois" in the letterhead. Everyone ignored the spell-check alert because it was trendy to do it all in lower-case and they figured that the error was just the first letter missing the cap.
This is fine, but we shouldn't forget that NOAA is part of the US Department of Commerce, the Cabinet department of the United States government concerned with promoting economic growth, and they will not tell us anything that might possibly slow down the buying and selling of things. Oh, like seafood.
as opposed to dilluted
For those of us who actually eat seaweed, what are those levels like?
Any scholarly studies on this?
Reread StoneyMahoney's post a couple of times.
You jelly?
Whoosh.
Wikipedia says that an estimated 520 tons of radioactive water were dumped into the sea. That rounds out to a shade under 60,000 gallons of water. Compare that to the volume of the whole Pacific Ocean (174400000000000000000 gallons) and you start to see just how minor the release was in the grand scheme of things. Just to really show the difference, if we use the same ratio in terms of distance and make the Fukushima release as the height of a common housefly, then the Pacific Ocean is a trip to Pluto, halfway back, and a bit more besides.
Sent from my CR-48
...but I remember them saying there was no harmful radiation hitting populated areas and people didn't need to evacuate. We were told there was not going to be a meltdown and things were going to be fine.
So sorry if I don't want to eat Japanese fish for a while.
I thought all they had were giant jellyfish around Japan the last couple years. People don't eat those, which may be part of why that's all that's left.
The solution to pollution is dilution.
We now have an answer for all our environmental dump! the ocean! thanks for the research scientists!
Ooo! Ooo! Can I play?
Wooooosh!
The linked article/summary is inaccurate as the scientists who did the study are not NOAA folks. They're from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Stony Brook University, and the University of Tokyo. [author affiliations from the actual paper from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ]. The study was funded by the Moore Foundation, National Science Foundation, and WHOI.
So please redirect all government conspiracy comments to the university/academic conspiracy forum.
Perhaps we needn't worry so much about "millions of gallons of radioactive water" being released into the ocean, like it's a major environmental disaster, as it's really not — the ocean is many orders of magnitude larger than any accidental release of radiation which might happen from a nuclear plant."
isotopes get concentrated up the food chain. It's not different in the ocean than it is on land. It rains, the plants absorb it, cows eat the grass, and it gets concentrated in milk.
After all, the ocean is way bigger then any sewage. It will dilute it.
Be seeing you...
I would not trust this conclusion. Simple dilution does not mean absence of risk. Despite this being a comment on Slashdot, I read to the end where I'm struck by this conclusion:
"Although the seas in the immediate vicinity of Fukushima probably experienced a very high dose of radioactivity during the months immediately after the disaster, as long as none of the isotopes accumulate in any organisms, the effects are unlikely to be long-lasting."
I strongly suggest looking up scholar.google.com and checking the isotopes: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/03/21/134567288/radiation-by-the-numbers-isotopes-to-watch
Off-handed dismissal of bioaccumulation risks is rather shocking. There are also differences between exposure to radiation and having a radioactive particle lodged within your body for prolonged, embedded exposure.
Would the NOAA lie to us about radiation or oil or anything? You already have your answer just simply by their track record on the Gulf of Mexico disaster. Just the very numbers of the official estimates and how they only changed from ridiculously minimal to realistic shows there are dishonest interests involved.
http://www.reefrelieffounders.com/drilling/2012/01/24/ee-scientist-is-accused-of-lowballing-size-of-gulf-spill/
http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/
While some are pointing to the obligatory http://xkcd.com/radiation/ and I respect Randall, the lowballed numbers we are receiving from media with vested interests don't rank this disaster accurately. Even hardened robots can't last more than a few hours at the Fukushima 1 plant where the radiation is 73 sevierts, and that warrants careful examination of what we're told the risks are to broader areas. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120329a1.html
Whatever the truth is about Fukushima, it isn't coming from the NOAA.
Perhaps we needn't worry so much about "millions of gallons of radioactive water" being released into the ocean, like it's a major environmental disaster, as it's really not â" the ocean is many orders of magnitude larger than any accidental release of radiation which might happen from a nuclear plant
I don't know about you guys, but I read that as "freely dump all radioactive waste you want into the ocean," so let's get busy rimming every continent with coastal reactors and solving the energy crisis with no thought of tomorrow!
In fact, if the ocean can handle radioactive waste, it can probably handle anything else, too, so I think I just found a great place for all our nonrecyclable plastic and toxic sludge...
Obligatory:
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Yep it's low in radiation but don't mind the extra 100 bc's of cesium 137 it won't hurt you
Now the "techies" sites are getting in on the eat our food propaganda huh?
600000 iterations make a truth
Few years ago state of Hawaii claimed the same, arguing that they should be exempt from EPA regulations (on sewage treatment capacity) because they release their sewage far in to the ocean and ocean is huge.
There have been too many lies about that, so I'm sorry I do not accept any statements, and will not accept any food from Japan.
Not sure how 'little' radiation you all think has been released, or where you are being fed your pro-nuclear information. When you find Cs-134/137, you will find TONS of other things: Ag 110, Americanium, PLUTONIUM (since MOX fuel EXPLODED!), Neptunium. So you are not dealing with 1 or 2 easily identifiable things, Cesium is used for testing since its recognized internationally as the go-to Isotope for detecting radiation.
As of 1 week ago, 73 SIEVERTS PER HOUR was detected inside Reactor 2. There are 6 reactors. 1, and 3 cannot even be accessed --- the radiation is HIGHER. Number 4 is holding 460 million tons of SPENT FUEL rods and the building is ready to collapse. All the while, they have pumped hundreds of thousands of tonnes of water into all the reactors to keep them submerged and cool.
the SPC of Reactor 4 is confirmed broken, Reactor 2 has corium melt through.
This is the worst environmental disaster we have ever, ever seen. Downplaying this as "scaremongering" is ignorant, and very very stupid.
Another study FROM WITHIN JAPAN AT THE ACTUAL SITE OF REACTORS: "Using data on contaminated water near outlets of the plant, an agency team, led by senior researcher Takuya Kobayashi, estimated the amount of radioactive substances that went directly into the sea after March 26 last year., "The researchers said 18,000 trillion becquerels of radioactive iodine and cesium have leaked from the plant into the sea."
Radiation is mostly harmless. You could also ingest small amounts of poisons with no ill effects, so go ahead and do that too.
that's providing you don't eat any of the fishes six eyes
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
The reason food is safe is because they are only testing 1% of the food in Japan and they are only testing for one particular radioactive isotope and no others... and these other radioactive isotopes when ingested obsorb into the bone causing cancer. So is it really safe? Probably not!
45 ton radioactive water leaked:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-HlHyygEGY