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Fukushima Fallout Reaches San Francisco
- orenmazor 16y agostop calling it fallout.
- jpitz 16y agoI'm hard pressed to come up with an alternative. Fallout is fissile byproducts falling to ground from the atmosphere after a "nuclear explosion." While Fukushima did not experience a nuclear explosion, the results are similar, if not vastly safer. The problem I had with the article was that it didn't deal with public health risk until the very end.
- orenmazor 16y agoyou can call it radioactive contamination, which is what it is. fallout is a _type_ of radioactive contamination, as well as an excellent dessert survival game. but you're right. its easy to pick the wrong word without thinking. it just bugs me that 'fallout' is the one they go with, because I know its done to get eyeballs.
- JonnieCache 16y agoI know this is pedantic, but the phrase "dessert survival game" is just too good to let go. And now I'm hungry.
- jamesbritt 16y agoWhy, and what's the proper term? (And if it's the wrong term, why are researchers at MIT and Cornell calling it "fallout"?)
- orenmazor 16y agoI've really only been following http://mitnse.com http://mitnse.com these days, because so far they've been pure facts. I haven't seen any use of 'fallout' there. links?
- gamache 16y agoThat's likely because aerial fallout is as yet a non-issue, and will likely (hopefully!) remain so.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- aj700 16y ago...and stop calling nuclear reactors "nukes". (Oh the people who do were conflating the terms WITH THE INTENTION of scaring the stupid?!)
- sambeau 16y agoThese news stories say more about the incredible sensitivity of radiation sensors than they do about nuclear safety (or personal danger). Here, in the UK, radiation from Fukushima has been picked up in Glasgow and this 'fact' has been reported widely in the media here. Reporting this is interesting for scientists but unnecessary and possibly disingenuous (to the point of misleading) for the wider public. It can only lead to a heightened sense of panic. Obligatory analogy that I've just thought of: Just because a telescope can see an exploding supernova does not mean we are in any danger from its blast.
- patio11 16y agoIn related news: scientists have discovered that an uncontrolled nuclear reaction over one hundred trillion times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb is releasing radiation of all known varieties, including lethal gamma radiation, and will result in the inevitable exposure of all of the earth's surface within the next twenty-four hours. Fallout is expected to reach San Francisco within eight minutes, and no known technology is capable of outrunning it, to say nothing of evacuating the entire city in time. Scientists claim we are safe - but can they be trusted? We go to you live in Japan, historically believed to be the origin of this dangerous phenomenon.
- afterburner 16y agoI accept the absolutely gigantic upside of this object. Good thing, too, since I never had a choice.
- Tichy 16y agoIf we were exposed directly (without magnetic shield), it really might not be so healthy? I think staying in space for too long is not healthy, either? Haven't researched it, though. In any case these useless comparisons only make me not trust the pro-nuclear-power crowd, because their arguments are dishonest (comparing apples with oranges).
- patio11 16y agoI think staying in space for too long is not healthy, either? Space is uniformly lethal to unshielded humans within minutes and you have about a ~2% chance of dying on any attempt to get there, but yeah, in principle, that radiation is some scary shit!
- panacea 16y agoIt's difficult to combine the various units of measurement they use in the article (combined with the difficulty in comparing point radiation readings with doses over periods of time), but my understanding of the article is that the radiation detected is a fraction of 1 percent above what we normally receive as background radiation (anyone able to confirm or correct me)? ie: Measurable but completely insignificant.
- Symmetry 16y agoThat actually overstates the danger. If the rainwater remains that radioactive for an entire year it will give people 1 percent above normal background radiation, but really I can't think of how the radioactive iodine levels could possibly remain that high so long. So more realistically the citizens of San Fransisco are looking at their yearly radiation dose going up by .1%.
- panacea 16y ago"but really I can't think of how the radioactive iodine levels could possibly remain that high so long" Erm... the reactors and spent fuel ponds keep leaking radiation and the half-life is way more than a year?
- aj700 16y ago"Professor, without knowing precisely what the danger is, would you say it's time for our viewers to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside?" Professor "Yes I would, Kent."
- Symmetry 16y agoWhy is the EPA limit so low if their aren't any negative health effects until the doses get so many orders of magnitude higher?
- afterburner 16y agoMaybe it involves one-time exposure vs long-term repeated exposure from continued presence in the environment? Maybe it factors in biological concentration of radioactive material (especially as it goes up the food chain)? And biological concentration in specific organs of the human body, such as the thyroid?
- ori_b 16y agoSafety margins are also a good thing. I'd hope that there's a factor of 10 on most potentially dangerous chemicals.
- pyre 16y agoBecause humans aren't the only ones that might potentially be affected? Amphibians are especially susceptible. You'll can find a lot of hubbub about frogs being affect just by the change of UV radiation from the reduction in the ozone layer.
- Symmetry 16y agoIn the case of frogs thats because of skin thickness and won't apply to radioactive iodine in the water, but I take your general point that other creatures might be more susceptible to it than humans are.
- pyre 16y agoWell, I thought it was due to the permeability of their skin which allows them to more easily absorb contaminants, but I'm not especially studied on the issue.
- serichsen 16y agoMostly because of hysteria. When half of the world screams "OMG EVIL ATOMS", it is difficult to get anything allowed that is significantly higher than natural exposure (sometimes not even that).
- nickolai 16y agoI disagree with the "no health risk" part. There are serious and proven health consequences for chronic anxiety, which this kind of news is obviously stirring up. Outside Japan(in the SF area for example), the news coverage of this "fallout" may cause more health issues than the "fallout" itself.
- pacomerh 16y agoAbsolutely, man, the only time I've been really sick, it was because I was stressed with anxiety, that gave me all sorts of problems, mental and physical.
- stretchwithme 16y agoThis article mentions four elements, iodine-131 and 132, tellurium-132 and cesium-134 and 137, and then focuses on the one with the short half life. Isn't cesium dangerous for a lot longer? Or is iodine the problem because it collects easily in the human body?
- gammarator 16y agoCs-137 has a half life of 30 years, so yes, it is the longer term risk. However, the "biological half-life" of cesium is only about 70 days [1], so it leaves the body relatively quickly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cs-137#Health_risk_of_radioactive_caesium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cs-137#Health_risk_of_radioacti...
- brazzy 16y agoIntensity of radiation is the inverse of half life. The shorter the half life, the more dangerous a nuclide is while you're exposed to it.
- iwwr 16y agoBiological half life is the time the body takes to eliminate half the substance in question (or half the toxicity thereof). In this case, the shorter the half life, the less dangerous the specific thing is.
- stretchwithme 16y agoMakes sense to me. A thing with a half life of forever isn't radiating at all.
- acconrad 16y agoI seriously can't tell if this is a bad April Fools joke or not.
- gammarator 16y agoHere is a frequently updated page from the UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering department: they're reporting test results from air, rainwater, tap water, and milk. http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/UCBAirSampling http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/UCBAirSampling The detected amounts are tiny, and the site places them in context of other kinds of exposure.
- z92 16y agoFrom the article... > US Environmental Protection Agency places a limit for the amount of iodine-131 allowed in drinking water of 4 becquerels per litre > By comparison, San Francisco's rainwater contains 16 Bq/litre. It's four times the safety limit for drinking water! Am I missing anything?
- sorbus 16y agoYes, possibly the next few paragraphs: > This number needs to be placed in context, however. Norman and co say: "If a person were to drink a typical amount of water per day containing the EPA limit of I-131, then in one year he or she would receive a whole body dose of < 0.04 mSv (4 mrem). This dose should be compared to the US average annual radiation dose of 6.2 mSv (620 mrem)." > And since Iodine-131 has a half life of 8 days, and so decays very quickly, Norman and co say that it is extremely unlikely that the public will be exposed to anywhere near these levels in drinking water. > They end their paper with this conclusion: "Thus the levels of fallout we have observed in San Francisco Bay area rain water pose no health risk to the public." - It's not the safe limit that's being exceeded, it's the recommended limit. - It's still an extremely small amount, which would have very very little effect on you (it would be only about 2% of the average annual dose of radiation, if you drank rainwater containing the concentration found for an entire year). - It will probably last only a few weeks, so if you want to panic you can drink bottled water instead of tapwater for a while (how quickly does rainwater get into the pipes and become tapwater?)
- drags 16y agoWe don't drink rainwater directly -- it probably sits in treatment facilities for a while before coming out of your faucet.
- Tichy 16y agoTrust in the government?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- sipajahava2 16y agoIf I am remembering correctly, the concern with ingestion of I-131 is that it concentrates in the thyroid and the thyroid can receive significant damage by primarily the beta radiation. The gamma radiation emitted in the decay will likely cause minimal damage as much of it will pass through the body without interacting with the soft body tissue. In the following quote the article seems to be discounting the airborne/water contamination by comparing the whole body dose (gamma radiation), which really shouldn't be the main concern. " If a person were to drink a typical amount of water per day containing the EPA limit of I-131, then in one year he or she would receive a whole body dose of < 0.04 mSv (4 mrem). This dose should be compared to the US average annual radiation dose of 6.2 mSv (620 mrem)." Seems misleading or improperly reported.