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Fukushima Ocean Radiation Won't Quit

Posted by Unknown on from the fish-can't-catch-a-break dept.

mdsolar writes with an update on how the oceans around Fukishima are doing. From the article: " The Fukushima disaster caused by far the largest discharge of radioactivity into the ocean ever seen. A new model presented by scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts estimates that 16.2 petabecquerels (1015 becquerels) of radioactive caesium leaked from the plant — roughly the same amount that went into the atmosphere. Most of that radioactivity dispersed across the Pacific Ocean, where it became diluted to extremely low levels. But in the region of the ocean near the plant, levels of caesium-137 have remained fixed at around 1,000 becquerels, a relatively high level compared to the natural background. Similarly, levels of radioactive caesium in bottom-dwelling fish remain pretty much unchanged more than 18 months after the accident." The article suggests run-off from contaminated land and possibly a leak in the plant itself are to blame for the levels not dropping as expected.

6 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. 1000Bq per WHAT? by tp1024 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Per kg, per cubic meter, per cubic foot?

    If the writer of an article is incapable of determining how to write meaningful data, the article isn't worth anything at all. (S)He's just a parrot of whoever wrote the original and has no understanding of what this is about.

    1. Re:1000Bq per WHAT? by tp1024 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Also, is it even water we're talking about or is it the ocean floor?

      Fuck everything about the "news coverage" of Fukushima.

      There is ZERO information you can gain from such rubbish that those retards keep puking out into the public even if you know what you're talking about. This isn't even propaganda, it's worse, it's just ignorant drivel designed to say something against nuclear power, by people who don't know the least what they are takling about, just what they want to be talking against.

  2. Re:mdsolar writes by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Then you are an idiot. If you read the summary it seems interesting, and TFA backs it up.

    Dismissing information out of hand simply because of the source is dumb.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. Engineering notation vs. scientific notation by DragonWriter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you have to explain a prefix (here: peta-), don't use it. Since this is Slashdot, the summaries should simply use the ubiquitous "engineering notation:" 1.62E+16 becquerels.

    That's just the common ASCII-friendly version of scientific notation; the equivalent in engineering notation would be 16.2E+15 becquerels, as "engineering notation" differs from "scientific notation" in that while the latter uses the smallest exponent which gives a mantissa >= 1, the former uses the smallest exponent divisible by 3 which gives a mantissa >= 1.

  4. Re:chernobyl - II by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And yet nuclear still manages to be very much environmentally preferable to coal, even after taking such accidents into account!

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  5. Re:1000 becquerel isn't that much by ultranova · · Score: 3, Insightful

    1000 bq isn't that much.

    It is if you have an anti-nuclear agenda to push. Which many people do, for whatever reason.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.