Slashdot Mirror
EPA Makes a Rad Decision
New submitter QuantumPion writes
"The Environmental Protection Agency released draft guidelines last month that could significantly relax radiation hazard standards in the case of a radiological event in the United States by using risk-based decisions. The goal is to have limits that make sense in an emergency that are different from the limits in day-to-day life. From the article: 'Currently, the only guidance are the extremely strict standards that apply for EPA Superfund sites and nuclear plant decommissioning, which are as low as 0.010–0.025 rem/year, far below the natural background levels in the U.S. of 0.300 rem/year, and even well below the average amount of radioactive materials that Americans eat each year. And these guidelines aren’t really different from the 1992 PAG, except in the area of long-term cleanup standards and, perhaps, standards for resettlement. What’s the big deal here? As radworkers, we’re allowed to get 5 rem/year. 2 rem/year doesn’t rate a second thought. ... No one has ever been harmed by 5 rem/year, so setting emergency levels at 2 rem/year is pretty mild and more than reasonable. ... Think of it this way. The situations covered by these new guidelines are similar to someone dying of thirst who has the chance to drink fresh water having 2,000 pCi per gallon of radium in it. While the safe drinking water levels are 20 pCi/gal for Ra, 2,000 pCi/gal is of no threat, especially if you’re going to die from imminent dehydration. Of course, a bag of potato chips has 3,500 picocuries, so go figure.'"
I got a real charge out of it!
Radiation Chart
pay for by mr bruns nuclear power co
Um, you do realize that radiation is everywhere. So it's nearly impossible to be not exposed to radiation. Hell, even television that we watch gives off a fair amount of rads, so either you can accept it, or freak out about it. Your choice, although, if you choose the first part, you're liable not to have as many ulcers in the nearby future!!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/03/10/fukushimas-refugees-are-victims-of-irrational-fear-not-radiation/
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Article is devoid of citations. Are Irish spuds as highly radioactive as Idaho spuds? Are spuds from Oregon spuds from volcanic spuds as radioactive?
Chips can't be radioactive if produced from material free of radioactive material.
The truth shall set you free!
"We're changing the standards so you can't sue us immediately after the disaster. But if you get cancer 30 years down the line, we and our money will be long gone and no longer giving a darn in Pattaya Beach, Thailand."
[End Of Line]
future proofing the failure litigation.
This isn't Fark
Everything with Potassium is Radioactive!!
OMFG, let's all die of eliminating an essential mineral from our diets. :)
BTW, That Red clay mud that half the country is covered with has Uranium in 3-4% concentration in a lot of places; thus the Radon problem.
Vitamin R is provably good for your health, from thousands of Manhattan Project retirees, if you're not predisposed to leukemia...
.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Mmmmm. Picocurries.
That's almost unheard of in any matters that contain the word "radiation".
Rad, dude!
That's totally tubular, dudes!
I am officially gone from
Of course, a bag of potato chips has 3,500 picocuries, so go figure.'"
So slashdotters are safe then, since we only eat cheetoes... which I expect have been so thoroughly processed to remove any and all traces of this "potato" thing you speak of to render it both nutritionally and radiologically inert.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Is to make rules more stringent, and ban Bananas
Ever read Physics for Future Presidents? It's a good source of scientific information that should influence public policy more than it currently does.
No one has ever been harmed by 5 rem/year,
Yes I quoted a bit out of context.
Nevertheless: how do you know that?
Point is: you don't.
After Chernobyl and especially after Fukushima /. (and I guess other media as well) are full of bullshit how harmless radiation is, or how harmless fallout is or how harmless pollution by a certain radioactive element is.
Sorry ... hundred thousands of dead people in the decades AFTER the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and AFTER Chernobyl say something different.
I really don't get what the agenda is behind those more and more upcoming stories about "radiation is overrated, it is harmless" is.
You sit in a radioactive environment: you die. You die awful horrible painful.
So, why would one spread stories, blog comments, /. stories and other news to claim different?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Just blocked by a bunch of political hack blockheads for over 17 years.
1996 March 26
Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards
Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission - Joint Meeting
Dr. Paperiello : [Director of the office of Nuclear Material and Safeguards]
"I do not believe the linear, non-threshold model, but I use it as the basis of all health effects evaluations that are my official NRC duties. I want to make something clear. We use it in the agency. I use it. I don't as scientist believe it."
Mr. Muckerhide:
"And Walinder in his communication on this whole issue as a member of the ICRP and UNSCEAR essentially pointing out that when he goes through the biology and establishes that the underlying biology cannot support such a premise says, "It is difficult for me to understand how people can believe that such an enormously complex phenomenon as dose-response of radiogenic cancer can be identified with an equation of the first degree, I don't hesitate to say that this is one of the great scientific scandals of our century."
Mr. Willis: ... "As was suggested a month ago locally, we're killing something like 10'000 people a year by failing to use radiation as a means of pasteurizing food. That many people are dying. The impacts of what we are doing in radiation protection, if you will, on research in medicine - there are a number of other areas - are very devastating. So as a responsible professional organization, we felt that it was incument upon us to try to say something."
"I'm on the board of Directors of the Health Physics Society"
- - - -
I hit my quarterly dose limit at least six times in my ten years as a staff Engineer at a commercial nuke and later at a US DoE facility - I most assuredly DO 'have a dog' in this fight. I worked with maintenance people who did it every quarter for years in a row. WOOF! WOOF!
Maybe we should go have a talk to the FDA about "Radioactive materials Americans eat each year."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
C14 as a beta decay isotope in my body, has nearly no effect on my body. The water in my cells will capture it already.
Holy shit, I hope you never are put in charge of anything related to radiation safety, as this is so wrong to the point of being dangerous if someone had to make a decision based on that. And I was the radiation safety officer for a previous project I worked on...
GNNA ()GAY NIGGER Prima donnas, and and committees uncover a story of of playing your FreeBSD at about 80 already aware, *BSD move any equipment percent of the *BSD
Think of the leukemic cancerous mutants around you! And you may gain superpowers too, like the ability to run up huge medical profits for your healt provider before you dastardly die!
EPA is vomit.
You nuclear power nuts would gain a lot more traction if you were more honest. Every time you try to compare ingesting radioactive isotopes of potassium to being exposed to stuff like cesium, you just show yourselves for the ignorant liars that you are. Don't you wonder why decades of campaigning hasn't brought you anywhere closer to your nuclear dreams?
Yes, eating certain radioisotopes is dangerous. Some isotopes concentrate in areas of the body and emit radiation that is much more harmful when it is in the body (alpha radiation).
However, The chart is given in Sv. Sv takes into account that some radiation is more harmful than others. So, the biological effects from 1 mSv should be the same whether it came from an alpha emmiter or a beta emmiter.
Again, some radionuclides concentrate in parts of the body (others are eliminated quickly - see effective halflife which combines radiological halflife and biological halflife). So, how can we know how many mSv we might get from ingesting one isotope or another? You want to look at commited dose. This is a calculation of how much dose (mSv) you recieve from ingesting some radioisotope. You then use that figure, in mSv, to compare against the chart on xkcd. What you might be interested in is ALI (annual limit on intake). This will give you an amount of a radionuclide (measured in activity or mass) that, if ingested, will give you the highest allowable dose (measured in mSv).
So, you can compare the damage done by various radioisotopes done to you in various ways if you are comparing them in the right units, mSv. But you couldn't compare them just by giving the amount of substance (without considering what kind of radiation and what in the body was irradiated). But, those calculations can be done, and the answer is given in mSv or mrem. This is why the xkcd chart uses mSv for the units, so that a meaningful comparison can be made.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Since radioactive materials have been actively released into the environment for well over half-a-century, current background levels may not be a good measure of the actual, natural background levels.
Sounds like a misinformation campaign succeeded..
You're 100% right that the Fukushima accident is associated with those two isotopes. That is correct.
But the table of most common Uranium fission products on the Wikipedia page says I-131, Cs-137 and Sr-90. Sr-90 in roughly equal amounts to Cs-137 and with similar half-life.
Yet it is impossible to find any news report from Fukushima discussing whether the Sr-90 reached the seawater and whether that bio-accumulates in the shellfish and fish and Nori seaweed in the east Japan sea for the next 300 years. Sr-90 can give you leukaemia if ingested and incorporated in your bones: chemically similar to Calcium.