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Fukushima Radiation Nears California Coast, Judged Harmless
sciencehabit writes After a two-and-a-half year ocean journey, radioactive contamination from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan has drifted to within 160 kilometers of the California coast, according to a new study. But the radiation levels are minuscule and do not pose a threat, researchers say. The team found a high of just 8 becquerels of radiation per cubic meter in ocean samples off the coast. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for drinking water allow up to 7400 becquerels per cubic meter.
Uh, we had a slight malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?
This isn't worth reporting.
.....and put on your tinfoil hat.....
This should be entertaining!
What is more interesting is our technological capability to detect such minute concentrations of just about anything.
So 2 tonnes of water has the same amount of radiation as 1 banana.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Radiation and radioactivity has got to have the most different unit names thrown at it than anything else. It's like the Inuit terms for snow, except that those at least make sense.
I mean, really: Roentgens, RADs, REMs, sieverts, grays, curies, and now becquerels. What, do they change the name every six months depending on which scientist is in or out of favor?
(Okay, I know curies is a measurement of radioactive material rather than of radiation, but still...)
Slow radioactive decay is low radiation. Think about the amount of radiation you'd face holding half a kilogram of Cesium-137. Now, think about if its half life were 8 days instead of 30 years. You'd face 30 years of radiation in 8 days.
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Lots of stuff takes longer than that to diminish, and lots of that stuff is present in quantities that actually matter.
what about the fish that are living in it the whole time? How contaminated are they? And we still eat fish out of that water.
Actually there is nothing to see here, but thanks anyway for the weak attempt at a Bill Hicks rant.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
This is just Japan's way of trying to get America back for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Response time is a little slow, but as the U.S. Post Office has been known to say: better late than never.
350,000 curies x 0.0114 gram Cs-137/curie = 3980 grams (4 kg) – of Cs-137. It decays by beta emission which in water is quickly absorbed; typically within 10mm - 15mm.
But don't let a good scare story go to waste.
A becquerel is the radioactive decay of a single atom per second. Your body has 4400 becquerels of radiation due to a naturally-occurring radioactive isotope of Potassium. If you drank a liter of seawater that would mean Fukushima has increased your radiation dose by 0.008 becquerel - less than a 0.0002% increase in radiation internally in your body. This is literally less than a drop in a bucket. The salt is far more likely to kill you than the radiation.
How long does it take for the radiation in a banana to dissipate to only 10%? And what happens to the banana in the ocean?
Fortunately it is incredibly dilute. Here's some fun facts. If you can manage to drink a cubic meter of the ocean water (after removing the salt so it won't kill you), you will be slightly less radioactive for a while due to potassium loss. Don't try it all at once though, it could kill you due to 'water poisoning').
If you're the sort to panic, you will add more radiation to your body by taking potassium iodide pills than the water will contribute.
You mean all the pretty pictures and panic-stricken posts on Crackbook for the past few years about how California was *already* subject to radiation from Fukushima were bullshit?
Gee. You can't believe *anything* you read on the internet anymore. *LOL*
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Cesium accumulates in your body because it's chemically similar to potassium, which your body needs for nerves to function (among other things). So it can accumulate no more than potassium does.
Potassium has a naturally occurring radioactive isoltope, K-40, which like Cesium undergoes both beta and gamma decay. The amount of K-40 in the typical human body contributes 4000-5000 becquerel to your natural radiation dose. So your contention that there is "no safe minimum dose once it is in your body" is clearly wrong. Everyone who has ever lived has been exposed to a relative "huge" amount of radiation from K-40 throughout their entire lives, and our species is still here.
I've had two CT scans this year.
Compared to that, a maximum of 8 becquerels per ton of seawater is pretty much meaningless.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Have gnu, will travel.
Damn it's 925 times lower than the maximum allowed by the U.S.A. EPA guidelines. And I wanted to make a "mostly harmless" joke.
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Sorry you lost on American Gladiators. Hope you get over it soon, it's been several years.
You would have read this:
The findings are reassuring, Buesseler says. He measured a high of just 8 becquerels of radiation per cubic meter in the samples. Of that, he says, less than 2 becquerels came from cesium-134 traced to Fukushima. The remainder is largely from strontium-90 and cesium-137: Some of that is fallout from mid-20th century atomic bomb tests in the Pacific, and some may have come from Fukushima—these isotopes lack the half-life fingerprint that ties cesium-134 to the Japanese disaster. The total level of radiation is hardly worth worrying about, Buesseler says: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for drinking water allow up to 7400 becquerels per cubic meter. Buesseler is presenting his latest findings Thursday at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry North America’s annual meeting.
So, that's 6 Bq that was most likely deposited by aboveground or underwater Pacific nuke testing.
You can now return to your previously scheduled freakout over "ZOMG RADIATSHUNS!"
It's fortunate there is so little to accumulate. Note that it's not a one-way movement, it has a 70 day biological half-life (30 with prussian blue treatment).
Maybe it's a slow news cycle . . .
In terms of reporting a danger, you may well have a point but, you can also look at it in terms of reporting that once it crosses the ocean the radiation is at a very low level and does not present a threat . . . In which case you may still have a point. Well at least now we have a benchmark for how long it takes radiation to get to the U.S. from Japan, might come in handy someday.
There is no safe minimum dose once it is in your body, slowly disintegrating, radiating into your organs and cells.
There is also no safe minimum exposure to sunlight, no safe minimum amount of air to breath, no safe minimal exposure to germs, no safe minimal ingestion of food. Nothing you do is safe.
But, if your definition of safe is something that is unlikely to cause any harm or ill effect, then small radioactive doses, internal or external, are quite safe, particularly in comparison to many things that we do in everyday life that we consider safe.
Cesium is an alkali metal, which means it readily exchanges into and out of the salts in your body. The biological half-life of cesium is about 70 days, so it wouldn't accumulate in humans as you describe as long as there is a source of non-active cesium to replace it.
We're also talking 8 atomic disintegrations per second (individual atoms are being counted here)...we get more activity from the long ago weapons tests than we do from Fukushima.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
It will take about 100yrs for the amount of fukushima caesium 137 released into the environment to diminish to only ~10%.
Years since event | caesium137 remaining
30yrs | 1/2
60yrs | 1/4th
90yrs | 1/8th
One. Hundred. Years.
Can you give us the breakdown again? But in yahrens?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Never mind your body is also mildly radioactive.
And that your local background radiation may actually be higher than the exposure to that quantity of water.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
"Did you wake up this morning?"
"Well...yeah..."
"Then you aren't safe. You never were "safe", and you never WILL BE "safe". "Safe" is a lie and an illusion. Get used to it!"
"What if I'd said "no" to you?"
"The answer would still be the same, only preceded by the blast of an air horn to wake you up."
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Seasickness sacked several seamen who set sail in search of cesium in the sea. The say the seasickness ceased after stopping to seize the cesium sea samples they were seeking. So the cesium samples were safely secured by the sailors, sans-seasickness.
If this was so harmless would could ask yourself then why the media blackout? Many more times bigger than Chernobyl which doubled your life time rads dose.
Cores are going to continue melting down through the earths mantle, the "China Syndrome".
A containment pool that if burns will dwarf everything that has happened thus far.
Becquerels is not the significant radiation measure, but the release of cesium, strontium, plutonium, and no, there is no safe level of radiation, especially plutonium.
Why are radiation measuring baselines now being conducted over major cities by the US gov.?
Try finding any real information on any of this. Also, listen to what Nuclear physicists have to say who aren't pro establishment.
One note: the break down products become progressively more radioactive, not less, and there are many many kinds.
The genetic pollution is not even a known but knows no end.
The cancer rates and death from heart disease are a few indicators to track over the following decades.
The sites are so radioactive that not even robots can hope to clean it up as their electronic would fail due to the electromagnetic flux.
Fukushima, the gift that keeps on giving (for decades, centuries, eons?)
Too late, that line was attempted above.
The big risk however is that unlike most radiation sources, cesium is bio-concentrated. Drink the water regularly, or eat fish that live in it, and pretty soon the concentration in your body is going to be *much* higher than in the water.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Sure the danger is minimal so long as it stays in the water. The problem is that cesium is bio-concentrated - so if you drink the water your body filters out and stores the cesium so that before long your own radioactivity is far higher than the water. Worse if you eat animals who live in the water - like mercury poisoning the effect becomes more dramatic the further up the food chain you go.
And once the cesium is incorporated into your body then that low penetration is working against you, with almost 100% of the radiation damaging your body tissues rather than escaping into the environment.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It'll shrink a little and make your banana hammock look loose.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
then it probably slowly dispersed in the currents of the ocean? It would eventually sink. Some diagrams I've seen show much of it settling on the sea mount walls surrounding the Hawaiian islands, so sucks to be them? Strontium-90 is about the same half-life, and it likes to replace calcium in bones. In in the next 15-100 years we will see what the actual aquatic life's damage is...assuming there isn't another, even worse accident between now and then lol.
No, the biggest risk from Japanese radiation is Godzilla. The collection and concentration of decaying radioactive isotopes within my body will likely result in mutant superpowers (I'm crossing my fingers for Teleportation) while a skyscraper-sized lizard that can walk and shoot energy beams from his mouth is extremely destructive and deadly. Use some common sense. SMH.
There is no safe minimum dose once it is in your body
Either you are claiming you are not alive (yet somehow still animated enough to type), or you are claiming that living to an age of 120 while still active and healthy is "unsafe".
Personally I consider 120 years old to be quite a long life, and also do not accept the advice of zombies.
350,000 curies x 0.0114 gram Cs-137/curie = 3980 grams (4 kg) – of Cs-137. It decays by beta emission which in water is quickly absorbed; typically within 10mm - 15mm.
But don't let a good scare story go to waste.
Which means if you eat or drink the stuff, the radiation is totally absorbed by your tissues, unlike Gamma radiation that for the most part goes through you like light through glass.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
caesium 137 bioaccumulates.
Concentrates its way up the food chain.
There is no safe minimum dose once it is in your body, slowly disintegrating, radiating into your organs and cells.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
This should be modded UP to informative.
I am trying to understand why this perfectly reasonable informative comment, with a link provided, that accurately describes *exactly* what caesium 137 does when ingested has been modded down to -1.
This is a perfect example of mod trolls at work.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Cesium accumulates in your body because it's chemically similar to potassium, which your body needs for nerves to function (among other things). So it can accumulate no more than potassium does.
Statement of fact.
Potassium has a naturally occurring radioactive isoltope, K-40, which like Cesium undergoes both beta and gamma decay. The amount of K-40 in the typical human body contributes 4000-5000 becquerel to your natural radiation dose.
Loosely related association.
So your contention that there is "no safe minimum dose once it is in your body" is clearly wrong. Everyone who has ever lived has been exposed to a relative "huge" amount of radiation from K-40 throughout their entire lives, and our species is still here.
Strawman argument.
Your comment describes the process all micro-nutrient analogues undergo as a radioisotope, exactly what mrflash818 stated. Your reply is a strawman because you attempt to say that C137 as an emitter is no more dangerous than potassium which is clearly false. C137's relatively short half life means it is highly energetic and when it is ingested at a sufficient dose in a human will trigger thyroid cancer.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Alliteration fail... that should have been "large lizards."
Slow radioactive decay is low radiation.
That's a rapid decay rate when compared to other radio-isotopes, sr-90 is a 600 year half life which is quite rapid when compared to pu-239, who's halflife is 25,000 years. The issue here is not the radio-isotopes decay rate compared to a human lifespan, it's the decay rate compared to other radio-isotopes.
Think about the amount of radiation you'd face holding half a kilogram of Cesium-137. Now, think about if its half life were 8 days instead of 30 years. You'd face 30 years of radiation in 8 days.
The energetic levels of a radio-isotope's alpha, beta and gamma emissions differ. Your scenario would just mean you are holding a different radio-isotope. What it wouldn't take into account is the toxicity of it or the radio-isotopes that have a longer decay rate.
Furthermore you are looking at n years * 20 iterations (where n is the half-life) of daughter products, meaning a "short-lived" radio-isotope, like C137 will take 600 years to become benign, 12000 years for sr-90 and half a billion years for pu-239. So, yeah, 30 years is a short half-life.
All of which is effectively forever for human beings.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Lots of stuff takes longer than that to diminish, and lots of that stuff is present in quantities that actually matter.
For example pu-239 whose halflife is 25,000 years and is fatal to humans in the 1-10 microgram range.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
How long does it take for the radiation in a banana to dissipate to only 10%? And what happens to the banana in the ocean?
It becomes mooshy and useless, much like your penis.
There is no safe minimum dose once it is in your body, slowly disintegrating, radiating into your organs and cells.
There is also no safe minimum exposure to sunlight, no safe minimum amount of air to breath, no safe minimal exposure to germs, no safe minimal ingestion of food. Nothing you do is safe.
There is no safe level of ignorance either.
But, if your definition of safe is something that is unlikely to cause any harm or ill effect, then small radioactive doses, internal or external, are quite safe, particularly in comparison to many things that we do in everyday life that we consider safe.
You are incorrect. Small doses are highly toxic because the meabolism transports them to sites around the body where they continue to emit radiation and gestate cancer. Oppenheimer's own research found pu-239 to be fatal at 1-10 micrograms, toxic as an inhalant or when ingested. So your statement contradicts even the 50 year old science.
As for energetic levels, and depending on the radio-isotope analogue, if they are beyond a certain level they are cancerous, if they are below a certain level they are mutagenic to the DNA and cause transgenic disease. So, no, there is NO safe level of exposure just whether you or your progeny experiences the consequences.
As for your "comparison to many things that we do in everyday life that we consider safe", any risk of exposure is measured against the severity of consequences. An argument like that presupposes that you have control over your exposure to the risk, which you don't have with radio-isotope exposure in the foodchain. The difference with Fukushima is that the risk is being increased e.v.e.r.y.d.a.y and no-one has any control over that exposure anymore.
This leads to the fundamental point missed in this argument. WHOI, with a small budget detected C137 of the coast of the US with just 50 samples from the pacific ocean. No government funding, one boat and a small group of dedicated scientists. Should we just assume that the rest of the ocean is hunky dory and "just the bits they were checking" happened to have radioceasium in it?
That is why there is no safe level of ignorance.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Because quantities do matter. 8 Bq/Tonne is tiny. If you drank this water for a year (3 litre per day), and your body somehow managed to store every Caesium atom, then that would be less radiation than 1 banana and less than 1% the radiation that is in your body naturally.
All this article shows is that radiation is easy to detect, even in tiny quantities, and gamma ray spectroscopy lets you identify the isotope, which in some cases means you can trace the origin.
The "no safe level" meme is mad. Its like saying that because if car hits you at 50 mhp you have a 50% chance of dying, so if it hits you at 1mph you have a 1% chance of dying (linear no threshold), even a 1 in a million chance of dying is dangerous, so even cars travelling at the speed of continental drift are dangerous.
You guys are getting all your facts out of kilter. Iodine is the one that does the Thyroid thing and it doesn't bio accumulate at all (just take lots of non radioactive Iodine). Caesium-137 get distributed throughout the body and also does not bio accumulate (70 day half life), this can be reduced to a 30 day half life with treatment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C....
There is a lot of data for the threshold model with ionizing radiation exposure, but because of liability reasons no one is going to make policy with it.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
You certainly are not applying the environmental measures stated in the article to your application. More dangerous is intentional, agenda-driven mis-characterization or real world risks.
You guys are getting all your facts out of kilter. Iodine is the one that does the Thyroid thing and it doesn't bio accumulate at all (just take lots of non radioactive Iodine).
Yep, you're right, thanks for pointing that out about the destination of the micro nutrient.
The issue is the radio-isotope's journey through a body if it is a analogue of a micronutrient that body uses. Tritium it is mutagenic to DNA at 0.018590 MeV for beta emissions and Caesium-137 is a beta and gamma emitter at 1.176 MeV so it is much more energetic. C137 gets organically bound and that increases the decay rate into the tissue, it doesn't seem to be used in medicine so I would prefer not to have a gamma emitter floating around inside me as it decays, whatever it gets attached to for 30 odd years.
However, whilst I think the risk of direct exposure to C137 is low, it is in the food chain and it has its own way that it bio-accumulates for 30yrs*20 decay cycles, around 1400 years, not as much as some other radioisotopes but longer than anyone living today.
Many of these products decay in geological timeframes so the amount of time they are toxic in the foodchain is a serious concern. US coast is protected by those deep currents washing the cold deep water. To test for and to identify other radio-isotopes you would need a proper government effort, perhaps international effort to determine exactly which radioactive products of Fukushima have contaminated the Pacific Ocean and the quantities it will continue to pour into the pacific ocean.
All we know right now is, they weren't there before, they are now and that it only took a couple of years to get across the Pacific. This will continue to unfold for many many years.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Your tinfoil hat is slipping off again. Make sure to squeeze it on really tight this time. Like, put it in a vise, maybe.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
It's almost as dangerous as Ebola!
It's already been 2.5 years? Bullshit.
Sorry, but the level of ignorance is expecting one chemical to behave exactly like another when chemistry shows us that they don't.
Cesium is a Potassium analog in the body and seeks muscle mass as the main potassium channel. It has a biological half life from 30-110 days depending on which study you read.
Iodine131 is taken up in the thyroid. Even with no KI treatment, 30-40 days later it has all gone away from radioactive decay.
The microgram quantity for Pu-239 being lethal is due to the fact it is an energetic alpha emitter, has a long radiological half life, and it is a calcium analog so it seeks the bones and stays in a body for 50 years.
The safe concentrations of various nuclides depends on their half life, the energy of the radiation they give off, and whether they retain in the body (does your body use this chemical).
Cobalt-60, the most common radionuclide hazard in operating light water reactor power plants has a radiological half life around 5 years... but it isn't retained in the body well at all and will be eliminated in 7-10 days.
If anyone wants to tell you different, check to see if they can put the title "Health Physicist" beside their name. That is who you go to for a complete and factual answer. (Often with more math than you really needed)
NRRPT/RCT
Potassium has a naturally occurring radioactive isoltope, K-40, which like Cesium undergoes both beta and gamma decay. The amount of K-40 in the typical human body contributes 4000-5000 becquerel to your natural radiation dose. So your contention that there is "no safe minimum dose once it is in your body" is clearly wrong. Everyone who has ever lived has been exposed to a relative "huge" amount of radiation from K-40 throughout their entire lives, and our species is still here.
And don't forget about radioactive Carbon. Carbon-14 incorporated in your DNA strands, explodes 40 of these DNA strands every second of your entire life.
And still, what will give you cancer? Is it the "radiations" from Carbon or Potassium or Cessium or Uranium or Plutonium or Xenon or Iodine or whatever?? NO! Your cancer will most likely can be traced to some of the man-made chemicals that are assumed safe until showed otherwise that you are eating, touching and breathing in every day.
This entire paranoia about radiation is a clear example of irrationality of people. Just because something can be measured does not make it more dangerous than the stuff that is not measured or too diluted to be easily measured. Most of the (potentially, no one knows really) deadly chemicals that are too diluted to be measured are many 100,000,000,000,000,000 times more concentrated than the radiation people can actually measure.
So if you are in any area, and are not evacuated because of "radiation dangers", then that is a sign that you are virtually 100% as safe as anyone else on this planet. When it comes to radiation dangers, it is one of these things where I can actually sleep at night about because there is no danger from something so easily detectable. I'm more worried about a chasm opening under my house, or a meteor striking me on the head, than some "radiation from any nuclear power plant, active, broken, or otherwise" harming me or anyone else.
Furthermore, it has been shown over and over again, that exposure to some radiation has a protective effect by stimulating immune response and apoptosis mechanism resulting in renewal. Creatures exposed to some radiation did a lot better than ones that had their background levels reduced.
So there is rationality and facts on one side and there is emotional irrationality on the other. But then people that are not rational don't generally become rational because of things like "facts".
Plutonium is toxic because it's a heavy metal. It's also radioactive. It will poison you by heavy metal poisoning well before you have enough to suffer toxic radiation exposure.
Low concentrations of low-activity radioisotopes generally follow this pattern. C-137 is a heavy metal, and I would wager it's toxic in its own right; in low concentrations, the radiation is probably benign (as asserted), while the heavy metal toxicity is significant; and in lower concentrations still, the heavy metal toxicity becomes tolerable, and then insignificant.
Plutonium is exceedingly toxic. Its slow radioactive decay is distressing because dilution in the environment isn't sufficient to reduce its toxicity to any sane level: we have to warehouse spent nuclear waste forever, or we'll destroy everything. This is why nuclear warfare is the stupidest thing humanity has ever invented.
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We do know what radiation does. We do know the dose is insignificant compared to want you received from space. It really doesn't accumulate much at all. To be a concern it would need to accumulate trillions of fold increase. It can't do that. And these things have decay profiles on the order of a human life, not geological time scales.
It really is something we do know. For example that bad diet is *way* more of a risk. Driving ever in your life is more risk. We *know* from the *data* that this does not pose any measurable risk at all at these levels.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
We do know what radiation does.
Radiation vs Radionuclide.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Depending where you live, you can receive as much or more from the ground compared to space. But you need to be a commercial flyer for that to become a significant health hazard.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Yeah, like as if you have the scientific knowledge to actually know any better. Your opinions show ZERO physics knowledge. So you are far worse than the govt.
You probably don't have a clue what a becquerel is, do you ? Do you even know what is an alpha, beta, gamma particle, what are the characteristics of neutron radiation.
If the radiation had the slightest chance of doing any harm to the USA, there would be piles of dead bodies in Japan. Thousands of aggressive cancers.
But per the usual, you conspiracy theory nutjobs are hell bent on taking anything the govt say and claim its a lie.
Get a live.
No its not a slow news cycle. Its called radiophobia. Reporters love to report even the tiniest any nuclear sensational misleading factoid. And they make it a point not to ask a rational nuclear scientist or nuclear doctor to analyze the information in a rational way. They are only interested in reporting the anti nuclear (sensationalist) side.
What hot particles from nuclear reactors ?
Alpha, beta, gamma and neutron radiation ?
Except for neutrons, I get all of those while sunbathing in Guarapari-ES-Brazil (yes that beach shown on Pandora's promise, I sunbathed meters from that spot).
You show in your writing you can't differentiate radionuclides from radiation particles, which disqualifies you completely from making any radiation analysis.
Go get a radiation related degree then we can talk some, or at least take a class like this:
https://class.coursera.org/nuc...
Like I did, with 95% grade.
Then we can discuss rationally, with facts.
Be concerned about coal. Nuclear kills when a serious accident happens. Coal kills dozens to hundreds EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Coal powerplants emits a thousand times the level of radiation a nuclear reactor emits under normal operations. Plus poisonous heavy metals.
Nuclear is safe. Coal isn't. Even natural gas pollution and industrial accidents are a much more serious hazard to human life, killing ten thousand every year worldwide.
Coal kills every year more people than nuclear reactors killed over the 80 years we've been operating them.
Mercury, Cadmium, Lead, Arsenic, Radium, Uranium, Thorium, just a small list of elements that come out of a coal plant ash pile (and goes up in its exhaust unless very advanced / expensive filters are installed). While spent nuclear fuel is safety stored in drums with extreme safety margins, coal ash piles are stored outdoors, ripe for a flood to wash it away into the nearest river and contaminate drinking water.
Go fight the real enemies.
Nuclear is the only alternative for baseload energy sources which doesn't produce CO2 and could power the whole planet.
I'm not defending even a 50% nuclear world. Perhaps 25-30% for a few generations until we can master solar+wind+utility scale eletricity storage.
Sure, however I'm not doing that. I'm expecting that organisms, in general, absorb micronutrients with their metabolic processes and that in some, but not all cases, a radionuclide "analogues" a type of micronutrient when presented to a metabolism.
Essentially, I'm expecting organisms to conduct metabolic processes and I'm as concerned with how biota interacts with radionuclides as much as humans and animals.
That's interesting. My information was that pu-239 was an iron analogue, that it's chloride was highly water soluble and its oxide states were an inhalant. It would be unsurprising if it is more complex.
Yes, that was what I also understood.
Well, I am more concerned with how many other effluents of the Nuclear industry processes are making their way into the environment. However, with respect, whilst the use of radioactive materials in medicine is important, I don't think it's just Human biology we should be looking at.
I also think we should be trying understand how these radionuclides interact with the foodchain as a whole. For example, what stops trees from rotting in the forest around Chernobyl?. I am really interested in understanding if it destroys the fungi there, and for how long? I think we are underestimating the importance of that.
I'd like to see more effort to gather data on Fukushima's effluents instead of having media blackouts from the Japanese government. I think this is an international concern now, if that's how plutonium behaves on the earth, what does it do in the ocean?
Especially, when we are talking about all of the industrial effluents from fuel cycle, just how many other effluent/analogues are out there?
Yes, I do discuss this with a person like that, however the math is all greek to me. Of course other aspects of the industry also require you to be an an engineer, lawyer, politician and many other things that I am not. Maybe it was wrong to point to people and say there is no safe level of ignorance because I'm still trying to learn as much as I can. I think it's important to build an understanding of the Nuclear Industry's consequences, so when someone trivializes the behavior of these materials in the food chain, when I know it is not the case, I feel it is appropriate to point out that it is not a trivial matter at all.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.