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.

Comments

I also measure distance

[Anonymous Coward]

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:English motherfucker, do you speak it?

[Cyberax]

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.

Re:Pick your units of radiation...

[DamnOregonian]

I prefer to measure it as .006 USCoalBurningEmissionsYears.

I don't believe that's an SI unit, though.