“Taking readings, and publishing the results, and pointing out that radioactive shit is the rain” is what the University of California did.
Calculating that the measured level of iodine 131 was 18.1 times higher than the allowed level in the federal drinking water standard, and then expressing it as a percentage so it looks really big and scary, is what enenews.com did.
Pointing out that the 20 Bq/litre of rainwater that enenews.com is getting excited about compares fairly favourably with the 4000 Bq of potassium 40 already in the body of the average person, is what I’m doing.
Matt, I’m also seeing BS in that 18,100% higher bit.
Re-posting from a note I left in GQ:
Nowhere in the Berkeley report one sees the scary “18,100% above federal drinking standards” line, but it seems that is coming from enenews.
They do claim that they are using a converter and the federal standard for the limit allowed, unfortunately the limit they are talking about is not very clear, other forums that I looked at that are acting like chicken littles report that they got it from this EPA PDF:
IIUC the key words are “continuous exposure”, and 4 mrem/yr equivalent to 3 pCi/L (0.1 Bq/L) continuous exposure is the Recommended Maximum Concentration.
Now, IIUC the **dangerous **levels then are **higher **as per the UC Berkeley article, and on top of all this, the 20.1 Bc/Litre reading was an outie, the average looks more like 5 to 4 Bc/Litre, dropping, and hardly continuous.
There is a nuclear plant in Japan that is spewing out radiation that is turning up in New Jersey. The argument that it may not be enough to hurt you is to some degree beside the point. The radiation is not being contained and is spreading around the globe. Excuse me if I think that is not good.
There is however water terribly radioactive flooding into the ocean. There are 17 foot pipes beneath the plants with water within 3 feet of the top. That is a lot of hot radioactive water. What do you do with it?
I read today that the rods wont cool off enough to move for 50 to 100 years. Do you feel the need to discuss whether it is closer to 50? That is a similar argument.
It is a terrible disaster and radioactivity is escaping the plant and poisoning the land. Plutonium is appearing in the dirt around the plant.
How bad does it have to be before a nuke lover admits that a terrible tragedy is occurring and the land is being poisoned . The food grown on the land has radioactivity in it. The fish ,which is the big part of the Japanese diet, is getting polluted with radioactive iodine. How bad does it have to get?"
I understand that some people have a need to drag all those things they consider ‘facts’ around with them, and would never ever get upset about anything, but hey, if you fucking WANT to have a rational scientific discussion full of numbers and figures and science, why not MAKE YOUR OWN FUCKING TOPIC about it?
Nope, for what I have read, (and in the serious literature and press, not your truly BS sources that I suspected as much they were) there has been much controversy on what are the actual dangerous levels of radiation.
I would like to see with what the reporter in Tennessee is comparing the levels to say that the EPA will “dramatically increase the permissible releases”
As mentioned a long time ago (yes, you are still pushing a straw man still), this is a shitty situation and horrible news, but pushing alarmist only leads for the alarmist to be discredited.
So it is a terrible tragedy, but it does not mean the end of the world nor the end of nuclear power.
I would like to see some actual science done at some point. Waiting until after worldwide blanket of radiactive fall out coats the planet, then trying to figure out what it does, that is beyond fucking retarded.
Why not? You ignore everything you don’t like. But what do you expect to hear, anyway? The evil powers that be are killing us all and not telling us, oh woe, let’s riot on the streets?
The iodine is in the rainwater (NOT the drinking water so far, note), so they have to make a decision about what to do if it turns up in the drinking water. The 3 picoCurie/litre limit is based on limiting annual dosage to 4 millirem, or 40 microsievert. (For comparison, the allowed exposure limit for a radiation worker in the USA is 50 MILLIsievert per year: over 1000 times greater.)
The EPA have to decide whether to quarantine drinking water if it goes above the 3 picocurie limit or temporarily raise the limit based on the fact that its currently a REAL overkill safety-wise and that the iodine will 1000 times less in 80 days, 1000,000 times less in 160 days, so exposure will be temporary. It looks like they’re going to temporarily raise the limits. But rant away about it if you wish.
And now, for your pleasure, I fucked up. Enjoy:
I messed up. The claim of 18,100% is 181 times the 3-picoCurie/litre limit, not 18.1. I checked the enenews.com calculation and it’s right. My point above about whether 4 millirem per year is a reasonable safety limit still stands.
(The EPA has its own radiation chart, in the middle of this document: http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/docs/402-k-07-006.pdf You get 4 millirem from a single chest x-ray. You get 24 from cosmic radiation at sea level every year. You get 40 from your own internal radioisotope content.)
My guess is some people in the USA may die from overdosing with precautionary potassium iodide but there will be no harm at all from iodine 131 in drinking water.
Your cite says NOTHING about huge heat fluctuations, but your ability to communicate details correctly (or possibly truthfully?) has been demonstrated to be limited. The reported spike is in the iodine 131 content of the water they’re pumping around. They’re stirring shit up as they move the water.
“Localised criticality”? It’s massively unlikely, and the newspaper’s use of that particular phrase strongly suggests they’re just rehashing the Veress paper rather than having received any new information. Whatever floats your boat though.
Yes, heaven forbid anyone try to bring facts and rational discussion into one of your threads. I could see why that might upset you.
Alas, that is rather the nature of a discussion board. Perhaps your unique insight and perspective may be best suited to a different format, such as a blog. There you can post whatever you like, without having to worry about pesky types turning up to correct you.
If there is no fire, no leaking fuel pools, no leaking reactor, no nuclear reaction going on, what is causing the spikes? These are of the magnitude where it stops workers from getting anything done.
(this assumes they are reporting the truth of course)
Where is the huge amount of NEW radioactive material coming from?
Probably from the torus of reactor 2, which is very likely leaking. As I said, they are pumping water around and stirring stuff up.
The toruses on the reactors (a.k.a. the wetwells, a.k.a the supression chambers) are normally half-full of water during reactor operation. After the station blackout when they lost all coolant circulation, the reactors started to boil their coolant water off, the steam passing into the containment. The water levels dropped in the pressure vessels and exposed the fuel rods, which overheated and ruptured their claddings. All the iodine 131 fission product that had been trapped behing the cladding started to boil out of the fuel rods. The steam and iodine (and caesium and hydrogen too, unfortunately) was periodically vented from the PV into the containment, where it bubbled through the water in the torus condensing the steam, controlling the pressure and stripping out much of the iodine and caesium. As the containment pressure rose, the containment itself was periodically vented to the outside world. The iodine level in the torus water would have gone up and up as PV steam was repeatedly vented through it.
Some time back during all the hydrogen explosions, reactor 2 suffered a loud noise and a sudden drop in its torus pressure. A good bet that its torus isn’t sealed anymore and has been seeping into the pipe trenches, already part-filled from the tsunami.
Now they are pumping water from the trenches into the condenser surge tanks and probably the make-up water tanks. As they do that, more torus water can pass into the trench and the iodine level spikes.
Despite how you try to describe it, and as much as I would love to believe your version, which sounds quite innocuous btw, it simply doesn’t match up with reality.
