Slashdot Mirror
One Trillion Bq Released By Nuclear Debris Removal At Fukushima So Far
AmiMoJo writes The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says more than one trillion becquerels of radioactive substances were released as a result of debris removal work at one of the plant's reactors. Radioactive cesium was detected at levels exceeding the government limit in rice harvested last year in Minami Soma, some 20 kilometers from Fukushima Daiichi. TEPCO 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. The plant is believed to be still releasing an average of 10 million becquerels per hour of radioactive material.
So....is that bad?
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.
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.
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".
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
(holds pinkie to corner of mouth).."one *TRILLION* Becquerel!" (uproarious laughter from nuclear engineers)
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
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.
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.
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?
Relax, I see nothing but glowing reviews.
Table-ized A.I.
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!
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).
I prefer to measure it as .006 USCoalBurningEmissionsYears.
I don't believe that's an SI unit, though.
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.
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.
Why is Snark Required?
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.