One Trillion Bq Released By Nuclear Debris Removal At Fukushima So Far

One trillion becquerels by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 14:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

So....is that bad?

Re:One trillion becquerels by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 14:28 · Score: 2, Funny

It's terrible. We have, what, seven billion people on earth? Now there's a population explosion and all of a sudden we have a trillion Scott Becquerels. They can't create Quantum Leap reboots fast enough, and everyone is scrambling to keep all Star Trek-related scripts away from them.
Re:One trillion becquerels by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 14:45 · Score: 1

Because nobody actually ingests fruit, nuts or what not. Right?
Re:One trillion becquerels by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 14:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

So instead of a pro-nuke justification put in terms of banana equivalent doses we get FUD with undefined threats against our lungs and other vital organs? You thought yourself better than the hypothetical poster you so fear?
Re:One trillion becquerels by Noah+Haders · 2014-07-24 15:26 · Score: 1

constipation?
Re:One trillion becquerels by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 16:34 · Score: 1

No, you'll go nuts first
Re: One trillion becquerels by YodaDaCoda · 2014-07-24 17:13 · Score: 1

You are what you eat.
Re:One trillion becquerels by gweihir · 2014-07-25 00:16 · Score: 1

Depends. If you are a nuclear apologists, it is irrelevant. If you want real numbers, its a few 1000 more cases of cancer that unfortunately cannot be identified individually as having been caused by this.

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Re:One trillion becquerels by KingOfBLASH · 2014-07-25 01:42 · Score: 1

Not as bad as one million trillion microbecquerels.
Oh, wait....
Re:One trillion becquerels by azav · 2014-07-25 03:06 · Score: 1

It's bad simply that it has entered the food web and living things.

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Re:One trillion becquerels by gnasher719 · 2014-07-25 03:07 · Score: 1

So....is that bad?
One becquerel = 27 pico curie.

One trillion becquerel = 27 curie.

Sounds a lot less frightening now.

However, one curie is an awful lot of radiation. You wouldn't go near that. On the other hand, becquerel and curie are measures of "radiation per hour", so "1 trillion becquerel released" doesn't make sense.
Re:One trillion becquerels by Scottingham · 2014-07-25 03:13 · Score: 1

Is one curie the amount of radiation it took to kill Marie Curie?
Re:One trillion becquerels by gweihir · 2014-07-25 10:04 · Score: 1

Something tells me that you have no clue what "works" means. Hint: "Booom!" is usually not a part of "works" for power installations.

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Re:One trillion becquerels by c6gunner · 2014-07-25 22:59 · Score: 1

Something tells me that you have no clue what "works" means. Hint: "Booom!" is usually not a part of "works" for power installations.
Something tells me you have no clue what "nuclear reactor" means. Hint: There is no "Boom!" in a reactor failure.
Re:One trillion becquerels by c6gunner · 2014-07-26 23:00 · Score: 1

So, you are claiming 3 Hydrogen explosions at Fukushima, one nearly avoided Hydrogen explosion at TMI and one steam explosion at Chernobyl are not "Boom".
Oh noes. Teh hydrogen blowded up. Quelle horreur. We better go back to using oil and natural gas.
Oh ... wait ...
Re:One trillion becquerels by gweihir · 2014-07-27 17:16 · Score: 1

Pathetic.

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I also measure distance by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 14:07 · Score: 5, Informative

in miles per hour. No but seriously, Bq is disintegrations per second. It's a convenient way to quantify radiation if you have one isotope or it's contained in a small area, but is absolutely ass for a situation like this.

Re:I also measure distance by msauve · 2014-07-24 14:48 · Score: 1

Bq seems a fair measure to me. It's a measure of radioactivity. Would you prefer pounds (or kilograms) of X, with no measure of the rate X is releasing radiation?

To follow your analogy, if the concern is how fast something travels,then MPH is a reasonable measure.

Time (rate) seems an important component of the measure to me. What SI unit do you propose they use?

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Re:I also measure distance by Warshadow · 2014-07-24 15:02 · Score: 1

While it's not a good thing, using Becquerels is a convenient way to make something sound worse than it actually is. It's 27 Curies, which is about 0.18% of the activity of the sources they use for some gamma sterilization machines (which can be around 15000 Curies or 555,000,000,000,000 Bq). Now that is a scary amount of radiation.
Re:I also measure distance by msauve · 2014-07-24 15:21 · Score: 1

The Curie is not an SI unit. It is, however, locked to the Becquerel by a fixed ratio. They measure exactly the same thing, so in what way do you claim Bq are "bad?" The GP seems to want a measure of disintegrations without regard to time, which makes zero sense. It's like claiming you did work or expended energy when trying to lift a 1 Kg rock with 1 N of force.

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"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Re:I also measure distance by fnj · 2014-07-24 15:52 · Score: 1

MPH is a reasonable measure ... What SI unit do you propose they use
Meters per second springs to mind. Base units make the most sense.
Re:I also measure distance by Artifakt · 2014-07-24 16:26 · Score: 3, Interesting

Even though they measure the same thing, the Becquerel is a very, very small unit. If somebody was talking about the risk of a dam breaking, and used the cubic centimeter for measuring the volume of water behind that dam, perhaps with a note that a single cc of water can killl a person if they choke on it just right as a justification, wouldn't you still prefer a unit such as gallons, or cubic feet or cubic meters, Wouldn't that be better in helping asses the real consequences of a dam failure even though we are measuring the same thing? Or wouldn't it be better to give information on just how many acres downstream would be flooded and how many people live on that floodplain, even though that's all a very different kind of measurement? There are plenty of cases where either a similar measurement that uses units more in keeping with the situation or a measurement of something different may either or both be better.
Using SI units is a good thing overall, but what if those units are many orders of magnitude outside of the thing they were designed to measure and there's a non-SI unit that isn't? Or, what's the point in preferring Km./liters over miles/gallon if we are talking about how much fuel it took to send Voyager 1 outside the heliopause? Neither one is very useful when we are not exactly sure just where the edge of the solar system is, or how to measure it, and Voyager will keep on coasting many light years farther in the end, if its trajectory even has an end in the lifetime of the universe.
I see using becquerels in this case as similar to someone being opposed to a government project, so they give how much it costs in the currency of some nation currently undergoing hyperinflation, so the project costs a bajillion, bajillion, Saganillion Elbonian Smerdlaps, That's not the same thing as writing about the US economy for a European audience and converting to Euros, or writing about the European economy for Japan and converting to Yen. Even though we know a conversion rate for the uints, and it's fixed as of a given date,,using some units for currency could still be an attempt to make the numbers sound so large they prejudice the average reader more than they inform. You should look at what level of information the average person reading an article from that particular source will have in deciding whether a difference of units is simply a difference or if there's some intent to mislead - and since you asked it as in what way X is :bad?", hopefully we can agree attempts to mislead are bad.

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Re:I also measure distance by Artifakt · 2014-07-24 16:29 · Score: 2

Oooops! I would drop an 's' from assess and make it asses. Why just mispell something when you can make what someone will probably call a Freudian slip, after all? Please excuse me.

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Who is John Cabal?
Re:I also measure distance by Solandri · 2014-07-24 18:16 · Score: 4, Informative

Bq seems a fair measure to me. It's a measure of radioactivity. Would you prefer pounds (or kilograms) of X, with no measure of the rate X is releasing radiation?
It's a bad unit to use in this context because it's a measure of individual atomic decays per second. It's kinda like you asking me how far you have to walk to get to the nearest bus stop and me telling you the distance in angstroms. The scale is just completely devoid of any common reference frame for the number to be intuitively useful (not that most people have a common reference frame for radioactivity). That's why Bq is commonly used by people trying to scare the public about radioactivity - when you're talking about a lot of material like, oh, a field, it results in really, really big numbers.

Let's put it this way. A block of soil one square mile by 1 foot deep (790,000 m^3) has a natural radioactivity of 653 billion Bq. If they excavated 1.1 trillion Bq of radioactive material from Fukushima, then they removed about as much radioactive substances as is naturally contained in 1.7 square miles of soil one foot deep. Of course the piece of information that we're missing (and no it's not in TFA) is how much volume of material they removed. If we knew that, we could come up with a ratio and say "Ah hah! The stuff they removed is x times more radioactive than the natural radioactivity of dirt!"
Re:I also measure distance by AmiMoJo · 2014-07-24 19:43 · Score: 2

The units are not that important, what matters is the relative numbers. The point of the story is that TEPCO is failing to prevent the release of radioactive material from the plant in enough measure to contaminate nearby crops and make them worthless. Relatively speaking the amount of released material is lower now, but expected to rise once they start further decommissioning work.
In this case the unit used by TEPCO and the government is Becquerels, and there has been a great deal of discussion about it in the Japanese media so people are aware of the issues. It serves as a measure of how effective TEPCO's efforts to reduce emissions is.

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Re:I also measure distance by MrL0G1C · 2014-07-24 21:32 · Score: 1

It's worse than that it's like asking someone how far the bus stop is and the person answering 10mph.
I can't help but notice that the lack of any meaningful measurements was used by several slashdotters to say the radiation was low and then several modders conveniently overlooked the fact that their math made no sense whatsoever and modded them up because the message is pro-nuclear.

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Re:I also measure distance by msauve · 2014-07-24 22:55 · Score: 1

"It's kinda like you asking me how far you have to walk to get to the nearest bus stop and me telling you the distance in angstroms."

No, it isn't. Angstroms are not an SI unit. It's more like asking how far the next town is, and getting an answer in meters instead of km.

"The scale is just completely devoid of any common reference frame for the number to be intuitively useful"

So, the public has an intuitive understanding of Curies? OK.

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Re:I also measure distance by Warshadow · 2014-07-24 23:58 · Score: 1

Perhaps I should have been more clear. I think it's a bad unit to use, because it's being used to purposefully scare people. The large order of magnitude of the measured values is misleading. Saying 1 Trillion Becquerels makes it sound a lot worse than it actually is.
Re:I also measure distance by msauve · 2014-07-25 00:12 · Score: 1

The article was reporting on a relative increase, and actual harm. Radioactive material is normally being released to the atmosphere from the site at a rate of 10 MBq / hr. The article points out that there was some recent work which released it at a rate of 280 GBq / hr, over a period of 4 hours. That's 28,000X the normal rate (over 3 years' worth), and it resulted in radiation contaminated crops 20 km away.

You're making it sound a lot better than it actually is.

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"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Re:I also measure distance by msauve · 2014-07-25 00:22 · Score: 1

That should be "over 3 years worth per hour..."

1.12 TBq would normally take 112000 hours (over 12.7 years) to be released.

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"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Re:I also measure distance by Rich0 · 2014-07-25 02:03 · Score: 1

"It's kinda like you asking me how far you have to walk to get to the nearest bus stop and me telling you the distance in angstroms."
No, it isn't. Angstroms are not an SI unit. It's more like asking how far the next town is, and getting an answer in meters instead of km.
More like nanometers. Bq is measuring events on an atomic scale. nm is actually a little too big, but it is getting close.
When diluted into even a pond (let alone an ocean) trillions of Bq aren't actually all that much. People eat about 9 trillion Bq of potassium each year from bananas alone, so if humanity collectively drank the entire pacific ocean they might double their dose (and have one heck of a sewer bill).
Re:I also measure distance by msauve · 2014-07-25 02:24 · Score: 1

The headline here was way off - this was over 1 TBq being release to the atmosphere recently over a single 4 hour period. It resulted in radioactive contamination of crops 20 km away. The total amount of radioactive material released from the site is obviously much, much greater.

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"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Re:I also measure distance by gewalker · 2014-07-25 02:45 · Score: 2

Conveniently, there is an even better comparison. You have to disperse all of the radioactive soil into the air to make a similar comparison. We don't actually pump soil into the air though. We do however burn coal.
Webpage According to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), the average radioactivity per short ton of coal is 17,100 millicuries/4,000,000 tons, or 0.00427 millicuries/ton. This figure can be used to calculate the average expected radioactivity release from coal combustion.
Converting this to metric equates to about 0.174 MBq/ton (metric ton).
WebpageLargest coal plant in America burns 11 millions tons of coal per year.
Now 11,000,000 tons * 0.174 MBq / ton is 1.914e6 MBq -- a bit less than the twice the totally scary 1 trillion Bq
The average coal plant burns coal with around 0.5 trillion Bq / year
Now, not all of the radiation get released into the atmosphere, a lot of it ends up in the ash. But the ash is stored in ponds and left in piles on the ground, so its not a terrible improvement in terms of safe radioactive containment.
Re:I also measure distance by LordLimecat · 2014-07-25 03:59 · Score: 1

As everyone else has said a milion times already, Bq is not a quantifiable "amount" of radiation, its a rate. You cannot release x Bqs in y period of time, any more than you can travel 50mph in 2 hours. You could say "I travelled 100 miles", or "I am currently travelling at 50mph", or "over 2 hours I averaged 50mph", but mph is not , itself, a quantity. Same with Bq.
From Wikipedia
One Bq is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one nucleus decays per second.
Re:I also measure distance by Altrag · 2014-07-25 04:10 · Score: 1

Just measure in Planck units. Don't get much more base than that!
I think his issue wasn't in the units but in the dimensional analysis. Its like saying "I walked a total of 3mph!" Uhhh.. total? You can't really compute a total of "X per unit time." At least not in any way that makes physical sense. You could add up all of the individual units (or integrate over it if you want to go continuous) but then you're effectively removing that "per unit time" bit and the original statement still doesn't make sense (and even that doesn't work without knowing how many hours I spent walking.)
Re:I also measure distance by msauve · 2014-07-25 04:20 · Score: 1

Oh, bullshit.

You really have no clue what you're talking about. When one says X Bq were released, the meaning is that radioactive material which releases radiation at that rate has been released.

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Re:I also measure distance by LordLimecat · 2014-07-25 05:15 · Score: 1

No, thats not what theyre saying:
On Wednesday, Tokyo Electric Power Company presented the Nuclear Regulation Authority with an estimate that the removal work discharged 280 billion becquerels per hour of radioactive substances, or a total of 1.1 trillion becquerels.
Theyre treating Bq as if its a quantity of radiation. They dont know what theyre talking about. They multiplied 280 billion by 4, and ended up with 1.12 trillion-- which isnt how rates work.
Re:I also measure distance by msauve · 2014-07-25 05:39 · Score: 1

You're in the "slow classroom," aren't you?

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"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Re:I also measure distance by LordLimecat · 2014-07-26 17:23 · Score: 1

Except that they dont list what material they are talking about, and anyone who has done 5 minutes of research know that units like the Sievert and the Gray are far more useful when talking about human exposure, because they compensate for the different sorts of radiation and their effects.
Saying "1 curie" doesnt tell you much if you dont know what its 1 curies worth of, or how much total matieral we're talking about.

Is that a lot? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 14:07 · Score: 1

Can someone with experience comment on whether that is a lot or not? Obviously it's not what anyone wants released into the environment, but as a non-becquerel expert it's hard to have some sort of relevance.

Please no car analogies though.

Re:Is that a lot? by calidoscope · 2014-07-24 15:33 · Score: 2, Informative

Not that much. A typical Tc99m scan involves injection a bit over a billion (10E9) bq per person, albeit half life is only 6 hours. Reminds me of a "warning sticker" for a CB radio - "Danger 5,000 milliwatts".

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Re:Is that a lot? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 16:12 · Score: 1

"one trillion Bq of radioactive substances"? That phrase doesn't even make sense.
A Bq is a disentegration per second. So a mass of material can have an activity measured in Bq, such as:
"the radioactive substances released have an activity of one trillion Bq"
but you can't use Bq to measure how much substance was released.
Also, a Bq only tells you that there was a disentigration. It doesn't tell you what was released.
A release of low energy beta's is fairly harmless, a release of 10 MeV gammas is fairly serious.
This is just scare mongering. They put out a big number trying to scare people.
To put it in perspective, a gram of material has something like 10^22 atoms in it.
If there are 10^9 disintegrations per second, that means you are depleting a very small amount of material,
something on the order of 0.000000000001 grams.
Re:Is that a lot? by AmiMoJo · 2014-07-24 23:10 · Score: 1

This is a common misunderstanding of the way the released radioactive particles affect humans. The material from Fukushima bioaccumulates inside the body. It has already been found to be doing this in wildlife and people near the plant. Once inside the body's organs it can remain for decades, slowly damaging the DNA and leading to cancer. Things like x-rays are one-off events that deliver a single dose, much of which is blocked by tissue (that's why parts of the image are dark), this stuff bypasses all the protection and sits there slowly emitting indefinitely.

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Re:Is that a lot? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-25 01:40 · Score: 1

What is the material that is bioaccumulating? This is slashdot, not the comments section of youtube... you don't have to gloss over what these 'materials' are.
You know that x-rays cause cancer, too, and that they do so by being 'blocked by tissue'? DNA isn't something that is held in the center of your body and surrounded by 'tissue' that shields it from radiation. (Also, the 'dark' parts of a developed x-ray image are the parts where the x-rays passed completely through the body and hit the film.)
What exactly is 'all this protection' that the body has that scary Fukushima radiation bypasses?
Uncontrolled release of radioactive materials is a bad thing, but I don't think you're doing anyone any favors by talking about it. You sound like a wacko who picked up a few technical words here and there but lacks even the most superficial understanding of what any of them mean. Your little screed reads like some of the antivaxxer things I've read.
Re:Is that a lot? by LordLimecat · 2014-07-25 04:02 · Score: 1

The material from Fukushima bioaccumulates inside the body.

Nothing about being "from Fukushima" has any affect on what the material does. Its makeup does. Is it radioactive Iodine? Potassium? Thorium? Uranium? Cobalt-60?

Bq? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 14:08 · Score: 1

Why not list what Sv of exposure people might be exposed to instead of a measure like Bq which produces large, meaningless numbers for headlines?

You don't even want to know how many Bq the Sun releases, but what matters is who is exposed to what danger.

Re:Bq? by msauve · 2014-07-24 14:59 · Score: 1

In Fukushima, radiation rips hair out for you!

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Re:Bq? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 16:51 · Score: 1

Can you name one person who died at Fukushima due to radiation poisoning or cancer? Just one will do, thanks.
Re:Bq? by WaffleMonster · 2014-07-24 17:15 · Score: 2

Can you name one person who died at Fukushima due to radiation poisoning or cancer? Just one will do, thanks.
If you can't name a specific person does this mean something important?
Re:Bq? by blindseer · 2014-07-25 14:43 · Score: 1

Yes, it is important. POTUS was able to name the one American that died on an airplane shot down over disputed territory only hours after it happened. Our modern society has access to information in detail and speed that is mind boggling. If Fukushima was the disaster that people claim it was then it would seem to me that we should be able to know the names, ages, places of residence, and specific cause of death of every person that died from that disaster. If someone cannot so much as give a name then it sounds like rumor to me.
An example is that we know the names of the people that died in the collapse of the towers on 9/11. If I had to I should be able to find the name of a single person that died then and there. Fukushima is another disaster that occurred in a developed nation, with news crews in the vicinity within hours (if not minutes) and remained there for years. Someone knows who was working on that site. If someone developed radiation poisoning from this accident then someone knows and someone went to the news. They may have gone to the news because they'd get piles of cash for the scoop, or they may have gone to the news out of concern for public health. If someone, just one, died from radiation that can be attributed to Fukushima then we should know that person's name.
TLDR: Pics (or names) or it didn't happen.

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Re:It's time by dunng808 · 2014-07-24 14:09 · Score: 1

The real question is, how many Babel Fish can you shoot in a becquerel? ... or ...

Do those Fukushima engineers have enough towels to clean up the mess?

Apologies to Douglas Adams.

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Open Slate Project

Re:English motherfucker, do you speak it? by upuv · 2014-07-24 14:24 · Score: 1

Here for the super lazy

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=becquerel...

Re:English motherfucker, do you speak it? by Cyberax · 2014-07-24 14:27 · Score: 5, Informative

One Becquerel means one decay per second. So Fukushima each month emits radioactive material that adds additional 1 million decays per second to the environment.

This is a very small number, the natural activity of radioactive materials inside a human body is about 10000 Bq. One gram of radium is 37 billions Becquerels. So the whole Fukushima disaster emitted the equivalent of about 30 grams of radium, not a trivial amount anymore, but still very small on the global scale. For comparison, one ton of uranium-bearing minerals contain about 0.1g of radium.

10 million becquerels/hours is a strange unit by Streetlight · 2014-07-24 14:45 · Score: 1

Since the becquerel has units of reciprocal seconds and one hour is 3 600 seconds, the number quoted 10 as million becquerels is 36 000 million with no units. Hmmm...?

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Re:10 million becquerels/hours is a strange unit by serviscope_minor · 2014-07-24 23:29 · Score: 1

Since the becquerel has units of reciprocal seconds and one hour is 3 600 seconds, the number quoted 10 as million becquerels is 36 000 million with no units. Hmmm...?
Yes and no.
Bq is the measure of radioactive events per second. Multiply that by time and you just get a (unitless) count of the number of events.
Except they are dividing it by time giving events/s^2. That indicates that the number of events per second is increasing. As in things are getting more radioactive.

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So does this mean I shouldn't visit Japan? by i_ate_god · 2014-07-24 14:47 · Score: 1

I was kind of keen on visiting Japan during the fall months. I have no idea how this impacts my decision.

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Re:So does this mean I shouldn't visit Japan? by msauve · 2014-07-24 14:53 · Score: 1

Don't eat rice harvested last year in Minami Soma.

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Re:So does this mean I shouldn't visit Japan? by Tablizer · 2014-07-24 17:18 · Score: 3, Funny

Relax, I see nothing but glowing reviews.

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Table-ized A.I.

Pick your units of radiation... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 15:00 · Score: 1

Becquerels, roentgens, rems, sieverts, pick your units of radiation.

For energy, lets use ergs instead of joules as an energy of watt. Then we can go with hyperinflated numbers instead.

For crying out loud, one becquerel is a single ATOM popping its top off. Imagine if we measured visible light this way instead of via lumens. Much bigger numbers.

Of course, this raises the question why we need yet another fscking unit of radiation? Simple answer: makes it sound big and scary for the anti-nuke crowd to crow about is why.

Re:Pick your units of radiation... by Noah+Haders · 2014-07-24 15:36 · Score: 4, Informative

agreed, the bequerel as a unit is bad enough, but it's even worse when people mis-use it. A bequerel isn't a count of something, like coulomb or joule (or "atoms popping tops off") but rather a rate, like amperes or watts. it's (atoms popping off) per second. so the notion of "bequerels per hour" makes no sense, or "a total of N bequerels".

the best you can do, if you want to measure the number of atoms blowing their wad over a period of time, you multiply the atoms-blowing-chunks-rate with the number of seconds in the time period. So, if something has a radioactivity of N bequerels, then there are 3600 * N atom pops per hour. Or, as we do with electricity, you could measure atomic pops with the unit bequerel-hours. You could also say "my atomic trash emitted N bequerels (or N/3600 bequerel-hours) over the course of the clean-up period.

honestly, the bequerel-hour may be the most common-sense method to measure radioactivity. It's grounded in the physical world (atomic pop-offs) unlike things like greys, and it's similar enough to watt-hour that people will use it right.
Re:Pick your units of radiation... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-24 16:03 · Score: 2, Informative

No.
A dose released in a short amount of time is much more damaging than a dose released over a long period of time.
If you have a high dose*time over a second, the body won't be able to heal itself.
If you have the same dose over 10 years, your body can heal the damage.
Also, the Bq is a worthless unit because it doesn't tell you *what* is released.
A decay that releases a low energy beta is fairly harmless, but if it releases a 10 MeV gamma, that is very bad.
But then again, I'm just some "pro nuc AC", so maybe you should rely on people who don't know what they are talking about.
Re:Pick your units of radiation... by Noah+Haders · 2014-07-24 17:16 · Score: 1

Bq/hr, can you use it in a sentence?
Re:Pick your units of radiation... by nojayuk · 2014-07-24 17:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

A cubic kilometre of seawater contains about 10 trillion becquerels of the naturally-occurring potassium K-40 isotope. That's ten fucking disasters per cubic kilometre using your scale and there's a lot of seawater on this planet (1.3 billion cubic kilometres according to most sources).
Re:Pick your units of radiation... by DamnOregonian · 2014-07-24 17:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

I prefer to measure it as .006 USCoalBurningEmissionsYears.

I don't believe that's an SI unit, though.
Re:Pick your units of radiation... by ericloewe · 2014-07-24 21:02 · Score: 1

A Becquerel-hour should be good enough to quantify most non-acute exposures.
I do agree on the alpha vs. gamma point, though.
Re:Pick your units of radiation... by nojayuk · 2014-07-24 21:11 · Score: 2

Ten trillion nuclear disintegrations of potassium-40 occur in a cubic kilometre of seawater every second. A single nuclear disintegration per second is a becquerel (Bq). Usually Bq are qualified by being associated with a mass or volume, Bq/litre or Bq/kg. Radioactivity in seawater is usually measured in terms of litres but if you make the sample size big enough (cubic kilometres) the numbers can look really scary.
Re:Pick your units of radiation... by bickerdyke · 2014-07-24 22:27 · Score: 1

Bq isn't a dose! It's activity.
If you want a dose, you'll measure Sv (Sievert)
That is exactly because of those things you noted. But that doesn't make it worthless. It's just measuring something different.

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bickerdyke
Re:Pick your units of radiation... by serviscope_minor · 2014-07-24 23:24 · Score: 1

A bequerel isn't a count of something, like coulomb or joule (or "atoms popping tops off") but rather a rate, like amperes or watts. it's (atoms popping off) per second.
Yes, and as such it's a measure of the radioactivity of a lump of stuff. As in radioactivity ~= number of atoms popping off per second.
so the notion of "bequerels per hour" makes no sense
Yes it does.
If I hand you a chunk of plutonium every second, the the amount of Bq in your hand (i.e. the number of atoms popping off per second in your hand) is increasing. The result is a certain number of Bq per hour increase.
It's just another derivative. Just because speed is a rate, doesn't mean that speed/second makes no sense. It does and it's called "acceleration".

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Re:Pick your units of radiation... by Mr+D+from+63 · 2014-07-25 01:55 · Score: 1

To reduce your exposure, you should run away at a speed of 1609344000000 angstroms/hour.
Re:Pick your units of radiation... by KingMotley · 2014-07-25 02:50 · Score: 1

I prefer to measure it as 6 milliUSCoalBurningEmissionsYears.
Still not a SI unit, but better.
Re:Pick your units of radiation... by orgelspieler · 2014-07-25 05:55 · Score: 1

Wait... is that a metric fucking disaster or imperial?

Dr. Evil Says... by Irate+Engineer · 2014-07-24 15:34 · Score: 4, Funny

(holds pinkie to corner of mouth).."one *TRILLION* Becquerel!" (uproarious laughter from nuclear engineers)

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Re:Abe Laughs With Glee Of This News by antifoidulus · 2014-07-24 15:42 · Score: 1

Other than both having the word "shima"(island) in them, not really sure there is much else linking Fukushima to Tsushima.....

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Background Radiation by aberglas · 2014-07-24 16:04 · Score: 1

An at least vaguely meaningful measure might be how much it raises the radiation in given environments compared to the background radiation. If 1% then it is not very significant regardless of how many trillion Bequerels are involved.

Unit-of-measure: ZPH by Tablizer · 2014-07-24 17:16 · Score: 1

Zombies produced per hour

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Re:Pah! That's hardly a TBq! by aliquis · 2014-07-24 17:21 · Score: 1

I've drinked 1500 Bq/liter for like 15 years or so at least I guess.

And I'm awesome.

Beware of people - natural radioactivity of 40K by KAdamM · 2014-07-24 17:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

For your information, an average human body contains natural radioactive isotope of potassium - 40K. Every second there are approx. 3000 decays (Bq) of that isotope in your body. It means that every man is approx. 9 billions Bq "on release" per year. 40K emits 1460 keV gamma-ray (that easily goes out of your body) in about 10% of decays, the rest ends in beta-particle only, that stays inside. That's one of the problems of measuring release in Bq, which is not a good idea. Anyway, your one trillion Bq is equivalent of mere 1000 people, if you measure radiation that goes outside of man body. If Fukushima scares you, stay away from people. Don't hug them, kiss them, or - that's the most dangerous - sleep all night near them. Avoid crowded public places, gatherings, public transportation etc. Build a lead bunker. Wait! Radioactivity is already in your body!

Re:Beware of people - natural radioactivity of 40K by DamnOregonian · 2014-07-24 18:57 · Score: 1

Clearly we need to coat our insides in lead.

General Motors was right all along!

Real world consequences by Required+Snark · 2014-07-24 18:37 · Score: 4, Informative

Now that the Slashdot Pundits have made fun of a number, here's what's happening in the real world.

According to researchers, monkeys in the vicinity of Fukushima City had detectable levels of radioactive cesium in their muscles, while the northern monkeys did not. Researchers also found that the Fukushima simians had significantly lower white and red blood cell counts compared with macaque troops almost 200 miles away.
The researchers suggested their findings mirrored studies conducted on human health impacts following the Chernobyl disaster, where researchers found decreased blood cell counts in people living in contaminated areas.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-fukushima-monkeys-20140724-story.html

The Chernobyl site is in the process of having a New Safe Confinement structure built, which will keep radioactive material from the disaster site from entering the environment for 100 years. Once it is in place some of the radioactive material will be broken up and moved to long term buried storage.,

In contrast, one of the articles states "The plant is believed to be still releasing an average of 10 million becquerels per hour of radioactive material." The quoted 1.1 trillion BQ figure was the result from recent debris removal.

Up to 1.12 trillion becquerels of cesium was dispersed last summer as debris was removed from the battered building of reactor 3 at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, with tainted rice later being found in Miniamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, according to Tokyo Electric.

The amount of cleanup and debris handling remaining is immense compared to the work done in this last operation. This means that the impact of future work will be proportionally larger.

Beyond that, the three damaged cores are still not stable or safe. There is no solid information on the state of cores, or even if the core material is in the containment structure. At least one of the cores is believed to have suffered a complete meltdown and become corium.

The already severely damaged reactors are still at risk for future earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons. Any one of these events could result in another large scale radiation event. The Fukushima disaster is not necessarily over. It's just less active.

So go on and giggle over a number. It shows that you have the collective intelligence of a retarded 11 year old.

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Re: Real world consequences by steven.db.clark · 2014-07-24 23:20 · Score: 1

Was there something in your list of harms worse than what a large coal plant puts when working properly?
Re:Real world consequences by AmiMoJo · 2014-07-24 23:26 · Score: 1

Thanks. The comments on every single nuclear story on Slashdot seem to miss the point entirely. The units are just a way to measure the relative efficiency of the work being done to prevent leakage. The effects are observable, there is no need to guess based on the numbers. This is apparently too complex for most commentators to understand :-(

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Re:Real world consequences by argStyopa · 2014-07-25 01:54 · Score: 2

FUD, now in "patronizing" flavor.
To suggest that critiquing a stupid unit of measure is somehow trivializing the problem is itself a strawman.
If I said that I'm 1,930,400,000,000 picometers tall, people SHOULD mock me for using a stupid unit of measure. When people are primed to overreact to an event like Fukushima and then confronted by a number in public reporting that uses just such an inappropriate unit of measure, one can either mock the report for being foolish, or condemn it for being deliberately inflammatory. Which would you prefer?

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-Styopa
Re:Real world consequences by Archtech · 2014-07-25 06:50 · Score: 1

The story about Chernobyl is far from clear. See, for example:
http://unconventionaltravel.co...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re...
And, in my view most impressive:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffi...
Note that human beings are mammals; so, if other mammals thrive in an area, presumably human being would too (if not excluded by regulations).

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Re:Real world consequences by Archtech · 2014-07-25 07:16 · Score: 1

http://www.dailymotion.com/vid...

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Re:English motherfucker, do you speak it? by DamnOregonian · 2014-07-24 18:44 · Score: 1

To be fair, a gram of radium held for long enough will kill your ass dead. Held for not very long at all, it will just cause your flesh to die and ulcerate.

Re:Are we really counting... by DamnOregonian · 2014-07-24 18:49 · Score: 1

Approximately 66 GBED

Re:... and that's not much. by DamnOregonian · 2014-07-24 18:53 · Score: 1

A trillion Bq is a fairly huge number, especially when spread over a very small area. That will cook you like fried chicken exposed to the afterburner on an F18.

Of course they didn't give us any idea which of our both-true statements reflects reality.

Without context is no.

My daugher had 33 MBq injected last week by virve · 2014-07-24 18:57 · Score: 1

Not to trivialize Fukushima Daiichi but the current release of 10 MBq/h could be compared to the single dose of 33 MBq my baby daughter has injected last week. I was not happy with that because it seemed that the examination was for no useful purpose.

Still, the Fukushima mess has convinced me that nuclear power is a too dangerous path to thread. Unfortunately.

Re:My daugher had 33 MBq injected last week by brambus · 2014-07-25 00:02 · Score: 1

33MBq of what? If it's Tc99m, then it's gone from her system in ~3 days while emitting a total of ~1 trillion 140 keV gamma photons. Now consider the following horror: your body contains ~5kBq of radioactive Potassium-40, where each decay produces betas (90%) and gammas (10%) of 10x the energy for your entire lifetime! Oh noes! So how much is that in about 80 years? About 10 trillion events, but at 10x the energy, so about 100x more energy dumped, not to speak of that beta radiation has a much shorter mean free path than gammas, so the impact is about 500-1000x worse than that of the "useless" medical procedure. And now consider that this isn't the only source of background radiation affecting your body (just the majority source of internal emitters).
Honestly, calm down and enjoy life. Big numbers without context don't mean anything.
Re:My daugher had 33 MBq injected last week by virve · 2014-07-25 00:18 · Score: 1

Yeah, yeah, Tc-99m. I know. It was probably gone much earlier than that because we kept her plenty hydrated and it was chelated as the dimercapto succinicate which is eliminated in the urine. And yes, the radiation is mostly benign gamma that escapes.
Similarly, apparently what gives the Japanese the most trouble at Fukushima Daiichi (as far as I understand) is tritium which is very hard to capture in waste water but luckily decays through a very low energy beta.
Still, they have managed to make a mess with plenty of actinides, strontium-99 and caesium-133 all over the place which was emphatically *not* meant to happen.
Finally, brambus we were probably both wanting to make the point that the mere activity (as measured in becquerel) is not very informative. Dose matters. Radiation type matters. Toxicity matters.
Re:My daugher had 33 MBq injected last week by brambus · 2014-07-25 01:33 · Score: 1

Still, they have managed to make a mess with plenty of actinides, strontium-99 and caesium-133 all over the place which was emphatically *not* meant to happen.

Well, no argument about whether the power plant was improperly sited (it clearly was) or improperly managed (it clearly was), but I'd hold off on the amount of radiation released as being "a mess" that the Japanese cleanup operation had much to do with. I ran a quick set of calculations on the numbers in this article and assuming all of the release was cesium (which it unfortunately didn't say), I estimated they released only about 340mg of Cs-137 in this cleanup operation (about 0.64ml by volume). I challenge you to find a cleanup operation that can track all pieces down to the last gram of material. That it is not to say that they shouldn't try to do better - clearly they should - but I'm not prepared to lay blame on them for not getting an extremely hard job done to ideal conditions. If the bulk of the material was Tritium, as you say, then it's even less volume/mass than this.

And as for Tritium, at a density of ~0.27kg/m^3 (kinda comparable to helium's 0.18kg/m^3 and much below air's 1.275kg/m^3), I'd say it's not a big deal since it'll just float up in the atmosphere and probably escape to space, *unless* it burns and forms T2O molecules which would sink down towards the ground and possibly get bioabsorbed. Hydrogen has an auto-ignition temperature of ~500C, so I wouldn't really worry about that happening, but maybe I'm making a mistake somewhere. If you have more data, can you comment on my analysis?
Re:My daugher had 33 MBq injected last week by virve · 2014-07-25 07:32 · Score: 1

First of all, I like your analysis.
By "a mess" I meant the fact that what was supposed to be inside the fuel rods came to the outside. That's plenty of a mess for me ;-)
I am not going to check your numbers but it sounds awfully little. Actually, I did check your number for Cs and I get 0.311 g assuming a half-life of 30 years and 6*10^23 for Avogadro's constant. Pretty impressive clean-up.
My vague understanding of this clean-up is that they have enormous amounts of cooling water that has been in direct contact with ruined fuel rods so the pollution is fairly well-defined. The waste-water is filtered and ion-exchanged (or whatever they do) leaving quite clean water with tritium in it. The tritium comes from (correct me if I am wrong) neutron capture in the reactor water over its life-time. It is already in the form of HTO. In principle, I guess, they could distil and electrolyse repeatedly to separate the tritium out. Or they could dump it into the Pacific Ocean. As I understand they chose the latter.
With tritium activation energy and auto-ignition temperature is less relevant not just because has been in the form of water for years but also because its beta-activity makes it insert itself readily into other molecules: A simple way to introduce tritium into a hydrogen containing molecule is to store the compound under tritium gas for a few days.
(Oh, I wrote Sr-99 above where I meant -90 and Cs-133 where I should have written -137. One typo and one genuine mistake :-( I have been too interested in atomic clocks lately.
Re:My daugher had 33 MBq injected last week by brambus · 2014-07-25 09:02 · Score: 1

Thanks.

By "a mess" I meant the fact that what was supposed to be inside the fuel rods came to the outside. That's plenty of a mess for me ;-)
Agreed, but that's because of the incident, siting and management of the plant, not the cleanup. I'd hang those tepco management fuckers by the balls for mismanaging the plant so badly.

It is already in the form of HTO.
Right, that's what I forgot. You're correct that Tritium originates from reactor operations, not radioactive decay after the accident had occurred, but in LWRs it appears to be a by-product of fission reactions (1 in 10000). The neutron absorption pathway is mainly present in HWRs. There is one more Tritium generation path, but it doesn't happen in LWRs (Lithium-6 neutron capture). According to some TEPCO report, Tritium in the cooling water at Fukushima is currently being produced at a rate of ~0.64g per year - how exactly that happens, I'm not sure, since there's no neutron source present at this point. The only explanation I can come up with is that a small portion of the corium is in such a configuration that some low level of neutron moderation is going on, given that moderator (water) is present, but this is pure speculation. Overall the whole of the Fukushima accident shows what a lousy coolant and moderator water is. It works fine for a submarine, I guess, but it's ludicrous to use for gigawatt-scale reactors.

Oh, I wrote Sr-99 above where I meant -90 and Cs-133 where I should have written -137.
I understood what you meant, don't worry.
Re:My daugher had 33 MBq injected last week by virve · 2014-07-25 20:44 · Score: 1

Right, that's what I forgot. You're correct that Tritium originates from reactor operations, not radioactive decay after the accident had occurred, but in LWRs it appears to be a by-product of fission reactions (1 in 10000).

Well, there is a little deuterium in the water to start with but on top of that we have so many tons of water in an intense neutron flux for 40 years. Without trying to run the numbers, I am sure there is going to be a fair amount of tritium present.
Anyhow, I also just learned about the pathway to tritium in fission yesterday. Great, I learned something new.
Before I sign off from this thread: Do you know of a good, authoritative account of the Fukushima event? I heard rumours that the Tepco crew made some unfortunate choices with the operation of the isolation condensers, and that the one measuring instrument the prioritized above all else (water level) lied to them. Now, I am not going to second guess the decisions they made under extreme duress but I am curious.
Re:My daugher had 33 MBq injected last week by brambus · 2014-07-25 22:49 · Score: 1

Before I sign off from this thread: Do you know of a good, authoritative account of the Fukushima event?
I don't, sorry. I find that there's tons of misinformation and downright falsehood about the event out there, both by tepco and anti-nuke activists, and I'm not gonna waste my time plowing through it and fact-checking every single line. I'm a technologist and as such much rather concern myself with the technology of newer safer and cleaner nuclear power than with politics.
Re:My daugher had 33 MBq injected last week by virve · 2014-07-26 03:01 · Score: 1

Before I sign off from this thread: Do you know of a good, authoritative account of the Fukushima event?
I don't, sorry. I find that there's tons of misinformation and downright falsehood about the event out there, both by tepco and anti-nuke activists,
Right, that's what I have found as well.

and I'm not gonna waste my time plowing through it and fact-checking every single line. I'm a technologist and as such much rather concern myself with the technology of newer safer and cleaner nuclear power than with politics.
Peace, man!
I just wanted to know if you had found something. You seemed very well informed.

and? by sjwt · 2014-07-24 21:05 · Score: 1

Now lets use my favourite dosage level, and all radiation related matters should be in the everyday standard of BED (Banana Equivalent Dose)

We are talking about an exposure of 8,461,539 KG's of Bananas. Or about One 17th the level that Bananas expose humans to in a year. (@140Bqs per KG)

Did you know that Humans are radioactive and rated at about 100Bqs per KG, so we are talking about a release of radiation equal to about 11 million KGS of ppl or less than what the ppl in a city with around 180,000 population releases from the ppl alone.

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Re:and? by GNious · 2014-07-25 00:20 · Score: 1

Precisely the post I came looking for! :)

Yes, absolutely! by Ihlosi · 2014-07-24 21:09 · Score: 1

Would you prefer pounds (or kilograms) of X, with no measure of the rate X is releasing radiation?

Yes, absolutely. I can look up what kinds of radiation X emits and its specific activity.

Re:Yes, absolutely! by msauve · 2014-07-24 23:21 · Score: 1

OK, 3000 tons of radiation contaminated dirt, and 4 million liters of radiation contaminated water. Come back when you figure it out.

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Re:Yes, absolutely! by LordLimecat · 2014-07-25 04:00 · Score: 1

How contaminated is contaminated?

Is that all? by AC-x · 2014-07-25 00:07 · Score: 1

Becquerels are tiny units. In the first 3 months after the accident 14 Quadrillion (1.5x10^16) becquerels were released. For comparison Chernobyl released 14 Quintillion (1.4x10^19) becquerels in total. (source).

Compared to that, 1 trillion (1.1x10^12) becquerels is a big improvement in rate of release and according to Wolfram Alpha represents around 300mg of Cs-137.

Re:... and that's not much. by AC-x · 2014-07-25 00:14 · Score: 1

1 trillion Bq is about 0.3g worth of Cs-137.

You wouldn't want to swallow it, but it's not going to be "cooking" anything.

1 trillion becquerels ? what does that mean ? by GuB-42 · 2014-07-25 02:00 · Score: 1

1 trillion becquerels is 27 curies, or the radioactivity of 27 grams of radium-226.
It's also 66.6 times less than Ted Sprague's base output in Heroes.

lupus? by Thud457 · 2014-07-25 02:18 · Score: 1

selenium poisoning?

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Re:... and that's not much. by gewalker · 2014-07-25 03:37 · Score: 1

Cs-237 is pretty hot, half life of about 30 yrs. How about

Pu-239 .435 kg
U-235 12500 kg
U-238 80,400 kg.

I am sure these sound scary to most people, though Cs-237 is presumably a significant component of the nuclear release in question.

Of course they sound much worse because you can make nukes out of these and that increases the radiation release rate by many orders of magnitude and that mushroom cloud, etc.

To Americans it's Cesium not Caesium, then again most American don't really know what that it is. And most don't understand radiation either.

Re:... and that's not much. by LordLimecat · 2014-07-25 04:24 · Score: 1

There are two types of comments in this thread.

* Comments by people providing definitions for what a Bq is, talking about equivalent measures, giving conversion forumulas, and providing hard facts; generally these are saying that the number is either irrelevant, and / or not really that big.

* Comments by people who are being quite vague, and warning of various undefined threats to various undefined organs because of how big the number is.

Which type of comment do you find more credible?

Re: ... and that's not much. by DamnOregonian · 2014-07-25 04:30 · Score: 1

And mine wass an explanation that radioactivity without density is meaningless. Hold a gram and change of radium in your pocket for a week and tell me 1 GBq is irrelevant. It wont kill you... well, maybe it will after long enough, but it will cause the flesh to fall off. A gram of radium spread out over a square mile? not such a big deal.

Re: ... and that's not much. by DamnOregonian · 2014-07-25 04:31 · Score: 1

* 1 TBq

Re: ... and that's not much. by DamnOregonian · 2014-07-25 04:38 · Score: 1

Or over a gram of radium, enough to cause massive skin ulceration after hours of exposure. You're correct it isnt much Caesium-137, but it's still enough to cause flesh to rot away from your body, in dense enough exposure. Experiment has shown 140MBq/kg of C137 to be fatal within 130 days. Half that, 1 year. So no thanks to being exposed to all 1 TBq of it.

Re: ... and that's not much. by DamnOregonian · 2014-07-25 04:40 · Score: 1

Cs137 is far scarier than the relatively stable elements above. 140MBq/kg of its decay radiation is fatal within 30 days.

Re: ... and that's not much. by AC-x · 2014-07-25 04:42 · Score: 1

Hardly being blasted by a jet afterburner though is it?

Re: ... and that's not much. by DamnOregonian · 2014-07-25 04:50 · Score: 1

that was shameless hyperbole- i felt it obvious... apologies.

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One Trillion Bq Released By Nuclear Debris Removal At Fukushima So Far

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