All potatoes are radioactive.
But not all radioactivity comes from potatoes.
Ah, I probably didn’t link to the information on chlorine-38 and iodine-134. But hell, somebody would just say it was trolling or something, so I sort of don’t give a shit. Besides, nothing we say is going to change a fucking thing there.
I’m still hoping for somebody to pull a rabbit out of a hat and the whole thing is over.
I’m not sure he’s trolling, yet. I think he’s possibly young and probably quite smart: maybe a little too used to being the smartest person in the room most of the time. He has good knowledge in some areas and glaring holes in others, and is very good at making unwarranted leaps of logic.
For example, his IB Times link says they found silver 108 in the turbine hall water. Silver 108 is a very low-yield fission product with a listed half-life of only 2.4 minutes, so it’s a kind-of justified leap to claim that there’s a fissioning reactor leaking somewhere. However, there’s two problems with this.
Firstly, the chances of a fissioning reactor being undetected are rather small. Fissioning reactors release a LOT of heat, way more than the decay heat they’ve been struggling to deal with for the past couple of weeks. FX would probably wave this away by claiming the Japanese authorities know about it but are covering it up.
Secondly, silver 108 has a longer lived nuclear isomer, silver 108m, with a half life of around 130 YEARS, and this is also produced as a fission product and decays to silver 108. So the short-lived silver 108 is continuously being generated by the slow decay of silver 108m, and is absolutely not evidence of an ongoing fission reaction. There are a few other errors in the IB Times article: Cobalt 76 does not seem to actually exist and technetium 99 has a half life of over 200,000 years, not hours as claimed (but it’s isomer, Tc 99m does have a half life of 6 hours. It’s almost as if the writer picked the shorter-lived isomers deliberately for some reason…)
Cites: silver 108 isotopes: Chemical Elements.com - Silver (Ag)
Silver 108 and silver 108m being produced in reactors: http://www.springerlink.com/content/t6w7386325765n34/
And just for interest, silver 108m left over in seawater from the Bikini atoll bomb tests: Silver-108m in Biota and Sediments at Bikini and Eniwetok Atolls | Nature
Unless all you live around is potatoes.
Nobody is going to say posting a link to information is trolling. They may dispute the information. Or they may learn something. That is normal here.
Speaking of hard core, there is evidence that the radioactivity is evidence of a core breech. It is not spent fuel rods. It is much worse.
If you’re talking about short-lived isotopes in the turbine hall water, read up a couple of posts above.
Actually, I think he’s mixing up a real event with a star trek episode.
No one is questioning a partial meltdown has occurred. What we ARE saying is that’s not an especially big deal, if we’re trying to discuss the actual radioactive release that’s happening.
Right cesium and plutonium are like mothers milk.
It is a very big deal.
I will repeat what I said upthread: If your post doesn’t include hard data, preferably measured in Sieverts and/or Becquerels, then you are not contributing.
Do any of you have ANY cites contradicting the IAEA reports of radiation levels and current threat?
I would curl up in bed with a subcritical lump of plutonium, wrapped in aluminum foil, for a goddamn year. Plutonium’s danger level is HIGHLY dependent on form, quantity, and exposure method.
A meltdown that has occurred is a big deal, partial or otherwise. Just ask the shareholders or people evacuated. A meltdown that has not occurred is just a hypothetical risk. The difference is the entirety of the problem.
In Socialist Japan potatoes nuke you!
How the “big deal” is presently characterized in the media and in threads like this all over the Internet today and the ultimate consequences directly related to the Daii Chi plants by the time this is all over with are two very different things. Believe it or not. 
It’s not even leading the news today.
I just depends on whether you are an informed realist, or an anti-nuke alarmist, stoking fear of the unknown.
Well, they couldn’t ‘say’ it here, but they could certainly write it. It seems you can write almost anything (carefully staying in bounds of the rules of course).
That’s been clear to some people for a while.
I have radioactive isotopes in my drinking water RIGHT NOW! Aaaghhhhh! Why isn’t the press reporting on this? Coverup?
I don’t blame the official reports from being careful and sticking to what they know. But it is exactly that, the not knowing that gets my fuel rods overheated. If the same disaster occurred in the US, would the level of idiocy be the same? Is this some Japanese clusterfuck mentality? Or is it worldwide?
There is no way to really tell at the moment.
Is it that nobody has any equipment? Or that the Japanese have refused any help? What is the real deal?
At first, I was almost sure that they (the officials, the people who are in charge, whoever that actually might be) were just being assholes, not telling anybody anything, and of course they knew.
Then, it really started looking like they actually didn’t know.
Now, it seems either they really don’t know, or they are the hugest assholes on the planet. Maybe it’s both.
Normal people, even the ones that think nuclear is a needed (but dangerous) means of electrical generation, even they find it hard to believe that nobody anywhere is prepared to deal with this shit. Not just that there is no plan, but there is no technology to deal with it.
There is talk that Japan is thinking of nationalizing the nuclear plants. That is a wise first step.