Slashdot Mirror
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?
Go back to bed, America, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America, your government is in control. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up, go back to bed America, here is American Gladiators, here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on the living in the land of freedom. Here you go America - you are free to do what well tell you! You are free to do what we tell 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.
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.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
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...)
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.
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.
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...
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Their kind hates us and wants us to die so of course they're going to lie in order to make sure as many people on the west coast die from this. They hate us. 'They want us to die. That is the way of their xian kind.
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.
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.
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.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
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!"
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.
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.
Wow. Another article on /. about how everyone concerned about radiation from Fukushima are just neophytic morons and radiation isn't all that bad.
And, after all, the radiation is far below background levels.
Except there is no background level of Cesium 137 because its only created by humans.
Except that there's an enormous difference between background radiation levels of naturally occurring elements and between the hot particles from nuclear reactors which, when taken into the human body, typically remain for decades, emitting harmful alpha radiation and continually causing severe damage to surrounding tissues which can and does lead to cancer.
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.
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.
Alliteration fail... that should have been "large lizards."
It's almost as dangerous as Ebola!
It's already been 2.5 years? Bullshit.
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.