Last updated on March 1, 2013
Update 18:00(CET)/16:00(UTC)/01:00(JST)
There isn’t much new in the NISA and JAIF reports so I won’t write up the status of the reactors now.
The pressure in the number 1 reactor pressure vessel continues climbing, its now up to 700kPa(about a tenth of the normal operating pressure). But containment pressure is stable at 150kPa and temperature in feed water nozzle is slowly declining.
The big news of the day is that TEPCO will dump some radioactive water into the sea in order to make room for higher activity water from reactor number 2. I haven’t seen any breakdown on the isotopes found in the water intended to be flushed. IAEA writes this
TEPCO has estimated that the potential additional annual dose to a member of the public would be approximately 0.6 millisieverts (mSv), if they ate seaweed and seafood caught, from near the plant, every day for a year.
Quite a small dose(a bit more than one tenth of what a normal Swede gets in a year from background radiation) that won’t have any measurable health consequences. I wonder how large it is at all compared to what is leaking continuously into the sea.
There is no luck in finding the leak that is pumping out all the highly active water from the number 2 reactor. NISA has released a new overview on the ducts and tunnels connecting everything.
Links(English)
IAEA Briefing on Fukushima Nuclear Accident
Reuters Japan releases radiation into sea
Blogs(English)
NEI nuclear notes Lessons from Fukushima
Atomic power review Sunday evening update
Links(Swedish)
SvD Svensk kamerateknik på väg till Fukushima
Blogs(Swedish)
Emil Isberg Jag har motionerat till #piratpartiets vårmöte #ppvm11
Mikael Ståldal Lobbyorganisationen Miljövänner för kärnkraft
In your face Hög tid för omställning
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Varför pumpar man inte över det radioaktiva vattnet i en pråm? I worst case scenario, att pråmen går sönder, och släpper ut allt vatten, så är man ju bara miljömässigt tillbaka till ruta 1, att släppa ut vattnet direkt i havet.
Det är det man jobbar med just nu. 🙂
Another question that someone asked on another blog:
—
http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3991373119/dry-cask-storage-vs-spent-fuel-pools
“Having “dry standpipes” installed to provide a path for emergency water supply to spent fuel storage pools would be a low-cost backup when the other backups have failed. Does anyone know if any nuclear plants have such plumbing installed ???”
—
I seem to recall that there are external connections to Swedish nuclear power plants, in order to make it easy to connect external cooling water from a fire engine, for example.
I would be grateful for a link to a resource on this, written in English preferably.
Is the plumping intended only for cooling the fuel in the reactor, or are there external “standpipes” for the spent fuel pools too?
I suspect that not many scenarios with total loss of power to spent fuel pools have been considered, especially not loss of power for weeks or large scale physical damage to the pools. I would imagine that it will get a lot of attention after this!
I am not familiar with any resource on it, I can try to find something that looks reasonable!
“Broken pieces of fuel rods have been found outside of Reactor No. 2, and are now being covered with bulldozers, he said. The broken pieces may be from spent fuel rods in the spent-fuel pools, rather than from the reactors themselves. Hydrogen explosions have flung them out of the reactor building. ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/world/asia/08japan.html?ref=global-home
If this is true, there certainly will be a lot of interest in emergency cooling for spent fuel pools!
Damn, thats not something one wants to have lying around unprotected!
10 000 ton vatten uppges vara från den centrala anläggningen för använt kärnbränsle och 1500 ton från källarna hos reaktor 5 och 6. Strålningsnivån hos vattnet uppges ligga på “100 ggr gränsvärdet” och upp till “500 ggr gränsvärdet” för vad som får släppas ut i normala fall vad nu det kan innebära för faktiska strålningsnivåer. Vattnet i källarna hos reaktor 5 och 6 utgör ett hot mot kylsystemen hos dessa block, och man vill kunna pumpa in betydligt mer radioaktivt vatten i anläggningen för använt kärnbränsle där 10 000 ton lågaktivt vatten finns. Detta så att man kan fortsätta med arbetet att återställa elförsörjningen till block 1-3, där det högaktiva vattnet hindrar arbetet. Uppenbarligen så anser man att man inte kan få fram någon annan förvaringsplats för detta vatten inom rimlig tid och att risken med att släppa ut detta lågaktiva vatten är liten jämfört med risken att vänta.
For the IAEA to postulate that ingesting radioactive contaminated fish every day for a year exposes one to 1/3 as much radiation as a healthy outdoor lifestyle is criminal. Ridiculous that people don’t read about the difference between internal radiation exposure and external radiation exposure. After years of assurance about how professional the Nuclear Industry is with its safety and preparedness, these guys make the BP disaster look like it was handled well. I guess being subjected to propaganda about how safe low level radiation is, can brainwash even those who are professionals in the industry.
Karl – Your academic credentials must be outstanding and your scientific research must be unquestionable for you to make such a claim.
Please point us to this research that can be used to prosecute the UN-affiliated scientists that you have accused of “criminal” activity.
Karl – Pretty please?
Brian, I’m not the TEPCO Plant Operator who made the ridiculous statement to calm the public (repeated by IAEA on their own website, without taking the time to do their own assessment) that you can calculate fish and seaweed contamination when you dump 10,000 tons (not gallons or liters) of “low level” irradiated seawater (which would be impossible to be homogeneous in its contamination) likely measured for radiation with a quick crude Geiger assessment and as the statement made in the initial writeup, no isotopes are disclosed. Then they have us believe they can ascertain how much radiation you’d be exposed to if you ate said fish and seaweed daily. They state no more than .6 mSv because that sounds nice and safe.
You don’t have to be a Nuclear Physicist to smell incomplete and frankly impossible science.
Do you disagree that ingesting radioisotopes daily for a year in no way equates to external “background” radiation. I restate my assertion that ingesting radioactive isotopes will give a population a much higher rate of cancer because it stays in a person’s body and affects proximate cells, whereas the same amount of radiation when emanating from the sun and not able to pass through the skin and be absorbed, will probably not contribute to a heightened cancer rate. The radium dial workers showed us all those years ago, that internal radiation kills quickly (months and several years) at high levels. Current safe levels quoted by Health Physicists, and used by IAEA
http://hps.org/documents/risk_ps010-2.pdf
are a derivative of guesswork done in those early days of Radium poisoning, so 1930s science. We do not irradiate humans internally to see how it works out, so the only conclusive science on the matter is epidemiology.
Modern physicians and biologists know that internal radiation is the killer and that fallout and nuclear pollution from an accident can and will get in the food chain, and will stay there.
http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf
Sorry guys but your love affair with the Nuclear Power is more dangerous than the town or city you’ll destroy the next time this happens. It affects countries and hemisphere’s and doesn’t go away.
Allright guys, turn the cooling back on and discus this in a levelheaded manner or I’ll vent you out of the premesis before pressures get too high.
Karl, if you suspect people of being criminal you report them to the proper authorities, not mouth off about it in blog comments.
Michael, point taken. I consider this blog to be part of the future of Nuclear Power, because I see a group young scientists are enamored with this technology, and who have a far different perspective than I do. I’m 41 years old and I do write my politicians about my concerns, but I’m sure you’ll agree there is no authority in charge of truth from the IAEA. If you felt they were being criminal, how would you suggest reporting them? You are many channels away from being able to voice that concern, and the message will not make it to that elite group.
I didn’t come to your board to be a troll or cause trouble, but a post here is seen on the internet broadly, and that particular statement made by TEPCO is only one example of statements that should be challenged when discussing the merits and dangers.
If you felt they were being criminal, how would you suggest reporting them?
Well you’re the one that accused people of being criminal, so it’s up to you really.
I see a group young scientists are enamored with this technology
Maybe you do. And? Are you sure you are even corrent in that view? Have you taken a moment to actually try to get to know us and our position? Or are you jumping to conclusions on first impressions alone?
Karl I suggests you look up how a Sievert is defined…
Karl, 30% addition in dose on top of background sounds like a number that is calculated taken into account ingestion of radionucleides. The conversion factor for internal dosage (from Bq to dose in Sv) is different from external dose.
Internal dose is worse compared to external dose, you get no argument there. IAEA have used peer reviewed practices in order to calculate the internal dose from ingesting contaminated fish, the only way to get better numbers is to do studies on actual future studies on actual cancer frequency in the Japanese population (much like done after WW2). Will they differ from the current numbers? They will probably enrage the greenies as the mass cancer cases and deaths will not happen.
I’ll try to stifle my frustration. Sorry about my tone.
Johan,
I appreciate your comment. It makes sense and I began to read more about the history and current definition of the Sievert unit.
Rolf Sievert postulated that it was important to factor in both the type of radiation, and the tissue affected if you are to use a single measure of the effect of radiation to the body, thus his “Dose Equivalent”. I am surprised that a pioneer in nuclear medicine would try to use a single measure to quantify health effects on various organs, but he did, thus confusing people who try to wield this unit of measure when they don’t have a specific organ in mind. If a unit varies based on its environment/application, it must be used VERY carefully, I think you’d agree.
1 Sv = 1 J / kg • [w]
with w being the weight factor including type (varying from 1 for x-rays to 20 for alpha particles found in fission) x tissue type factor (varying from .01 of external skin exposure to .20 for gonads)
Taking the whole range of .01 x 20 to .20 x 20 or weight factor of .20 – 4.0 — so in the case of fission radiation, the dose equivalent is from 1/5 to 4 times the energy/kg present, depending on the tissue.
That variation 20 to 1 (gonads vs. skin) was changed in 2002 in the value of Sievert altogether because it was considered too confusing, and the weight factor Wr of the Sievert is now changed significantly when speaking of Nuclear safety in energy. The BIPM now states that the tissue type factor is dropped, thus making a Sievert or Dose Equivalent 20 times the engery/kg present, essentially recalibrating the Dose Equivalent effects of energy/kg as being from 5 to 100 times more than previously calculated.
http://www.bipm.org/en/CIPM/db/2002/2/
This has the net effect, since Seivert’s danger levels were not recalibrated at the same time, of making the Seivert appear to be 5 to 100 times lesser of a unit than it was before removing the tissue factor.
Let me try an example that assumes no massive reset on use of mSv everywhere in the industry in 2002 even though the unit changed significantly:
In 2001 a nuclear worker for example was allowed 20mSv/yr
.020 Sv = .01 x 20 x y (Grays)/year
y = (.01 x 20)/.020 = 10 J/kg/year
and in 2003 that same nuclear worker is still allowed 20mSv/yr
.020 Sv = 20 x y (Grays)
y = 20/.020 = 1000 J/kg/year or 100 times the allowed radiation annually.
If you use the tissue factor for gonads it still allows 5 times more radiation than previously allowed. I’d be happy to be wrong about the recalibration of the Sv either in 2002 or that its safety values were in fact recalibrated to fit the new generic Sv.
But none of this addresses the internal exposure vs. external transient exposure. Even Seivert did not describe an additional factor of perpetual exposure to tissue. He was working with transient radiation exposure, not persistent, correct. His research and the simplicity of the Sv or RAD or REM measure of external exposure predates modern cancer research, and even our understanding of DNA, or the bone seeking properties of 90Sr. While many epidemiologists have refactored, the nuclear industry (including TEPCO and the IAEA) continues to use very old standards.
Karl: “The BIPM now states that the tissue type factor is dropped, thus making a Sievert or Dose Equivalent 20 times the engery/kg present, essentially recalibrating the Dose Equivalent effects of energy/kg as being from 5 to 100 times more than previously calculated.”
That’s not correct, and in any case, who cares?
If you knew anything about radioprotection calculations, you would know that limits for the whole-body dose is always the most conservative, and this is what is commonly tossed around when discussing exposure in the wake of an incident like the tsunami. Nothing has changed there.
If you’re concerned about exposure to your hands when working in a glove box, you might want to know the equivalent dose to just your hands, since hands can withstand greater amounts of radiation than other parts of your body. Other than specific cases like that, you’re not likely to care.
“But none of this addresses the internal exposure vs. external transient exposure. Even Seivert did not describe an additional factor of perpetual exposure to tissue. He was working with transient radiation exposure, not persistent, correct. His research and the simplicity of the Sv or RAD or REM measure of external exposure predates modern cancer research, and even our understanding of DNA, or the bone seeking properties of 90Sr. While many epidemiologists have refactored, the nuclear industry (including TEPCO and the IAEA) continues to use very old standards.”
Here, you just don’t know what you’re talking about. Low doses and low-dose-rates carry less risk. Google “DDREF.”
Karl I will have a more in depth look into your question tomorrow. But just a brief reply, one do take into account that radionuclides linger in the body. When one calculates the does a person will get from ingesting a Bq of some radionuclide one takes into account the biological half life of the radionuclide and where it accumulates in the body etc. The so called ingestion dose conversion coefficients, i.e the factor that converts a certain amount of ingested Bq of a radionuclide into a equivalent dose in Sv, are constantly updated and revised based on new data.
As far as transient vs extended exposure. One can easily argue that our bodies are very accustomed to extended exposure since everything is radiating including ourself. Remember that the natural background radiation can vary from as low as 1 mSv/year to as high as 100 mSv/year depending on where you live in the world and there is no indication that people in areas with higher background has more cancer.
I will look into the rest tomorrow if I can find the time!
Johan – All of this “internal exposure vs. external exposure” stuff is just nonsense, and it’s easy to see why.
To convert from grays to sieverts, one has to multiply the absorbed dose by a quality factor, Q, which depends on the type of radiation. For x-rays and gamma-rays, it’s 1; for alpha particles it’s 20. As anyone who has taken a basic modern physics class knows, alpha particles do not have much penetrating power. The layer of dead cells on the outside of one’s skin are sufficient to stop it from penetrating the body. If only external exposures were considered, the quality factor of alpha particles should be zero, since they can’t get in.
Nevertheless, the quality factor of alpha particles is 20, because the exposure has to be internal. The alpha emitting particle must be inhaled or ingested, and once inside the body, the alpha radiation has the potential to do substantial damage, which is why the Q factor is so high.
Karl simply talking nonsense.
*blinks*
Gah… why didn’t I think of that! Of course you are right Brian: the Q factor already weighs that in, or alpha radiation would have a Q near 0.
You all missed the point about how a mSv is measured when you’re talking about radioactive material in water or on land or in the air. TEPCO makes a statement to the public about how many mSv is here, and how many mSv is not detected there. You can’t detect Sieverts, you calculate them. If they measure radiation in Curies, or any other unit with sensors, they then make a gross calculation to Sieverts and the weighting factor is lost. After 2002, the term stopped using tissue weighting.
So if you’re in the lab, and your advising professor sees you doing something he considers to be a breach of safety protocol, how would the two of you go about checking? Do you measure energy, proximity, and time of exposure and apply a formula to calculate your dose equivalent exposure? Do you presume if it was alpha particles that you either inhaled it and that’s bad or you didn’t and that’s fine, so let’s not measure? Neither. You rely on a personal external dosimeter that accumulates all types of radiation and indicates your assumed total exposure when you take the time to check it once every 3 months. You don’t try to understand if it was proximity, if the contaminates are somehow currently on your clothing, or made it into your lungs or your bloodstream. Now take your experience with how you concern yourself with radiation and your own health, and become a TEPCO plant operator. Measure the radiation in the ocean with an instrument, consult a table and write it off. Nevermind that this discussion started with 100x permissable radioactive water being dumped in the ocean, and the truth is the radiation in the ocean next to Fukushima is several million times permissible levels because their design allows this uncontrolled mess to gush into the ocean, sieverts are thrown around as a simple conversion, and as far as the press and seemingly some experts are concerned, considered our goto barometer of whether or not this accident is exposing people to harm, and will continue to do so in contaminated air, water and food. I understand that some here believe that Junk Science may be the most relevant problem that the fission industry faces right now, but isn’t the grossly disproportionate reaction by TEPCO about “minimal” exposure a very strong sign to all of you that the industry can
a) produce more than one “One in a million chance” meltdown in my lifetime (3 now and counting)
b) misrepresent the dangers in realtime and not get chastised by the scientists who work in that field because they fear discussing this will be the setback that will crack nuclear power.
Changing subject a bit. I’m getting the sense that many of you do not fear radiation; that if it’s controlled it’s safe and besides, radiation is everywhere so it’s fearmongering to speak of fission materials and byproducts as highly dangerous. Maybe I’m wrong about that. But I personally do fear that the effects of radiation on the body were GROSSLY underestimated in the past, and I am willing to accept that people living in regions surrounding Chernobyl, and the morbidity of the people who cleaned up Chernobyl are the best evidence we have of that. I know that IEAI and many other bodies believe they have put to rest all doubt that Hiroshima/Nagasaki and Chernobyl continued to cause cancers and birth defects from chromosomal damage, but their only argument that this was not a problem is their lack of evidence. They continue to use the 1% cancer increase argument. Other people have found evidence contrary to that finding and continue to. And the IAEA have not addressed this matter in light of those findings.
If they measure radiation in Curies, or any other unit with sensors, they then make a gross calculation to Sieverts and the weighting factor is lost.
They don’t… they measure the isotope contents with counts for each separate isotope. Since the Q value is known for each isotope they can calculate an accurate mSv value from that.
I’m getting the sense that many of you do not fear radiation
Why should we fear it? That’s just stupid and it doesn’t help anyone.
We have respect for radiation. We learn what it is, what it can do and how we should handle it.
Fearing radiation would be as stupid as fearing water. We know water is dangerous… if nothing else the tsunami disaster shows the incredible destructive power of water. But if we were to fear water because of that, out lives would be impossibel to lead: we wouldn’t be able to get a glass to drink, take a shower, go for a swim. So we respect water and stay informed of how to act with and around it.
“Why should we fear it? That’s just stupid and it doesn’t help anyone.”
People tend to fear the unknown. It’s a natural reaction, and Karl here provides a very illustrative example of this. As he has demonstrated, his understanding of the science of radiation and radioprotection is almost nonexistent, and thus, he is afraid.
Most people prefer to confront their ignorance by actually learning something. Karl, apparently, is one of those unfortunate people who prefer to revel in their ignorance — shouting at imaginary demons and marveling that not everyone shares their irrational fears.
Frankly, I don’t think that anyone can help him, because he does not want to learn anything. In his deluded mind, the various organizations involved are all corrupt, and his thinking stops there. All the explanations in the world are worthless after this.
Wow, I guess you pinned to stupidity badge on the non-physics major, though I don’t think I’m the only one here who doesn’t have an advanced degree in physics. I admit I’m trying to learn and come up to speed without the background that most here have. But are you not showing a lack of critical thinking if you accept all that you have been told by your physics professors, or IAEA, or the media is fact, especially when you are talking about Nuclear medicine and pathology which I believe noone on this forum is even remotely versed in?
When my Energy Systems professor, Peter Warter, at the University of Delaware (Chair of the Dept. of Electrical Engineering at the time) presented a class-long lecture proving that there was not enough wind on earth to drive windmills to meet our then current energy demands (1991), he was trying to show that efficiency in energy use was the important goal for the next generation of EE’s. I could have chosen to accept his math and forever dismiss wind energy as viable source OR discount the proof as largely hyperbolic with some interesting math to get us thinking. I did the latter. He would not fault me for challenging his work. He would rely on me to do so as a prudent engineer. I’m not saying I then took the time to blow holes in all of his assumptions, I was a busy student at the time and needed focus on solving problems I’d be tested on, but the point was that people are fallible and as engineers we are trained to question EVERYTHING especially things they haven’t proven to themselves through experience. That doesn’t mean we can’t prove things to ourselves or take basic concepts as fact. But Brian your need to dismiss everything I’ve said as just “Wrong”, and finally break your argument down to the fact that I’m not capable of learning is not really useful.
Do you consider the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the Strontium 90 Baby Tooth Survey that was used as testimony to give reason to stop above ground nuclear testing junk science? Did I learn about that in recent days? Stop trying to bark me down and consider what assumptions previous scientists made that were terribly wrong, because they were too sure of their work.
Do they even teach Engineering Ethics anymore? It was a required course for my degree (BEE).
BTW, I’m worked up about the safety of reactors because I live within the evacuation zone of 2 live reactors, and a 3rd decommissioned reactor used as a permanent storage pool. Our plant has fault several miles from it. Look up San Onofre or SONGS. It’s built like a brick shithouse (fortified) but at this point, security against someone doing something malicious to it is not well covered. And in the past the batteries needed to start the diesel generators were offline for 2 years, so we were as unprepared during that time for a power loss as Fukushima was (with the exception that our containment claims/appears to be much higher.
The problem here is that you seem to uncritically accept discredited studies or listen to fake experts? From the conversations here it seems like you WANT to believe that radiation is more dangerous than it has been shown to be. My question is why?
For instance other studies has not been able to reproduce what the tooth fairy project claims to show. Some easy digging would have shown you that. http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q616.html
Some of your other questions/claims sound a lot like what Helen Caldicott and Busby usually claim.
The test ban was as much politics as science, but I think everyone can agree that its good to avoid unnecessarily spreading radionuclides into the atmosphere in the fashion bombs did.
We do in fact have experts in radiation biology etc within this network. Me personally am not an expert on the topic but it was covered in my education. Not everyone commenting here is connected to NPYP and I only speak for myself when I write.
I don’t just believe in people or take their word for it, I look into the studies myself. There is nothing in the literature I have seen that suggests the cancer risk due to internal exposure should be orders of magnitude greater than what is estimated now. One can surely improve the models used for internal exposure, but that is a completely different discussion.
I don’t honestly see any logical reason to be worried about living close to a nuclear power plant. If Fukushima has shown anything it is that even when the absolute worst natural disaster strikes a decades old plant and cripples its defenses it still won’t necessarily lead to any deaths at all. Lets wait and see until more is known on Cs-137 deposits to draw any conclusions on if there will be any long term impact.
I would worry much more about living close to coal power plants(which emit far far more radioactive material to the atmosphere than nuclear power does), refineries (consider for instance the fire that went on for 10 days in the Chiba refinery after the Japanese quake), downstream from a dam(hundreds of homes where flushed away by a failed dam after the quake) etc.
Google for Bernard Cohen and read his writings about risks.
Why is it not a worry to live 30km from a commercial reactor? Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone is that large. I’d walk away from my home, default on my mortgage, ruin my credit, probably get zero compensation from the power company who doesn’t adequately self insure, wait for years for the government to maybe compensate me for my financial loss, and a swath of land where I live could become a dead zone where no one goes.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/funds-fs.html
There is no other technology in the history of the world that has that kind of danger footprint, that I know of, though you’re right that slow poisoning from coal or oil refining is killing lots of people. I guess living next to a bioweapons lab would suck too.
I suspect your Fairy Tooth link is result of a bad google, Johan. That page had a generic question asked by someone mixing up Baby Tooth with Plant emissions and then answered by an expert who didn’t clarify the historic relevance of the Baby Teeth. The Baby Tooth Survey studied the accumulation of Strontium 90 in human children’s teeth in St. Louis starting in 1959 and its correlation with atmospheric Nuclear weapons testing’s rise and fall.
http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/dental/articles/babytooth.html
Prior to that, isolated above ground weapon’s testing wasn’t understood to be harmful to people (obviously barring the US’s unforgivable bombing of Japan)
I wouldn’t try to argue that power plants emit 90Sr, much.
Regarding Bernard Cohen, I think it’s fair to say that this topic of nuclear health & safety has stratified the nuclear space tremendously. The image of a professor challenging Ralph Nader to a poison chicken match makes him sound like a zeolot just like you guys think of Busby and Caldicott. The whole reason for this website seems to be in defense of and industry that’s had to keep defending itself ever since it was developed. I’m just sayin.
Karl, you are right, I assumed you where referring to the infamous tooth fairy project.
About exclusion zones. In the history of light water reactors there has been one accident so far that required evacuation (Fukushima). It required one of the strongest earthquakes in history combined with a 20 meter Tsunami.
I think those are pretty good odds compared to living close to refineries, hydropower damns, coal power plants etc.
About Cohen being a zealot. I dont agree, he makes some very strong claims. But the difference between Cohen and Caldicott/Busby is that Cohen stands firm in science. he makes the claims he do becausescience supports them.
I am not defending an industry(I could care less about light water reactorsto be honest),we are defending an energy source with amazingpotential against the nonsens the anti’s usually spew out.
BTW do you have any reference that shows the elevated Sr-90 levels shown in the baby tooth survey can be linked to higher incidents of cancer?
No. There aren’t any studies from that time linking that 90Sr to heightened cancer, that I can see. That was a case, arguably, where people reacted in a proactive way to what they understood at the time to be a threat to long term public health. Specifically, the science of that time understood.
1) Strontium 90 didn’t appear in nature
2) There was an understood max dosage that you could sustain before health was at risk, specifically forms of cancer induced in rats and dogs – previous work by other people showed this
3) The increasing fallout from increasing tests were increasing 90Sr in people, and the relatively fast growth of teeth in children, and the ease of doing a massive anatomical study, served as a good marker.
AFAIK, others have tried to correlate those high 90Sr teeth with increased morbidity from cancer, including the Tooth Fairy Project which used modern reactor proximity studies county-wise vs. control counties, but I wouldn’t cite those as definitive. It appears to me like the kind of science you’d call junk. Personally, I think folks intentions and bias can certainly cause them to completely mess up their study (thus my example of my EE professor), but even in these cases, there is often useful work going on that others can improve on if there is any real science there to start with. It’s important not to change policy or believe in a boogie man because someone writes a scary book with fairy tales. But these debates seem to include valid arguments (along with increasingly ALARMIST I AM RIGHT screaming) on both sides with only statistical data to prove each’s point, at best. Cancer is still and enigma to the medical profession, though they’ve made huge strides.
Karl – You silly person. I never said that you are “not capable of learning.” I said that you do not want to learn. There’s a huge difference between the two.
Strangely however, almost as if you wanted to confirm my speculation, you have launched into a story about how you were so smart and so sure of yourself that you felt obligated to put one of your old professors in his place and prove to yourself that you were right and he was wrong — as if anyone cared.
Well, I rest my case, since I can’t provide any better evidence than that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so thoroughly expose his own disturbing idiosyncrasies. In fact, I’m a bit in awe.
Anyhow, Johan has pretty much covered almost everything else I wanted to say, so there’s no point in my repetition of it.
I’ll just add that, since you won’t respond to any of the technical comments here that correct your obvious misunderstandings, we would appreciate, in the future, if you would keep your conspiracy theories to yourself until you have some hard evidence. The “tin-foil-hat” stuff is starting to become old. If you have any real questions that aren’t posed as lectures about how the entire scientific establishment has got everything wrong, then perhaps some of the people here following this blog can help you.
But I personally do fear that the effects of radiation on the body were GROSSLY underestimated in the past
They were. Now the scale has tipped in the other direction and we are so morbidly paranoid of radiation that we have reached the point where the fear is making is ill.
I am willing to accept that people living in regions surrounding Chernobyl, and the morbidity of the people who cleaned up Chernobyl are the best evidence we have of that.
Well maybe you should read that evidence properly before you draw the conclusion, hm?
If you chose to believe that that IAEA or UNSCEAR are purposefully downplaying the number of cancers after Chernobyl and that all the long term studies done on Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors are faulty. Then of course you are free to believe that.
That is not in anyway a scientific point of view though. The studies after Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl has shown pretty conclusively that radiation just ain’t all that dangerous.
Of course I am not afraid of radiation anymore than I am afraid of water. As a recreational diver I know that as long as I am careful and the water is not in my lunges then water is perfectly safe. But it has to be treated with respect. Same with radiation, electricity, chemicals etc, respect not fear!
What I have seen TEPCO state is that if someone where to eat the fish etc exclusively from the ocean outside of the plant, then in a year they would get something like 0.6 mSv extra in dose. I don’t see anything wrong with that statement, I don’t see why it I should chastise them for that. The way they arrived at that number, I presume, is that they have a fairly good grip on how I-131 and Cs-137 is accumulated in fish and then its just a matter of seeing how much fish someone eats and look up the ingestion dose conversion coefficient for I-131 and Cs-137 which contains our best current knowledge of the health effects of consuming those two radionuclides.
What I could complain about is how, in general during this accident, figures that should be in gray is consistently given in Sievert instead etc. Most of the time this seems to be sloppiness because most of the measurements are gamma measurements and 1 milligray of gamma = 1 millisievert. Thats obviously the case with the dose rates from the water in the trenches or the gamma measurements in the prefectures around Fukushima.
But in this case with dose from eating fish due to pollution of the sea, then I have no complaints.
If I where in a lab and a radionuclide escaped into the air then there are models on how to calculate the external exposure based on what radionuclide it is, how the air flows in the lab and so on and based on that one could estimate how much dose I would have gotten due to inhalation. You grossly underestimate how health physicist work.
Brian I both agree and disagree, of course one takes into account the effect of internal exposure with the Q factor and organ weighting etc(and it is of course baked into the ingestion dose conversion coefficient). But it is very blunt tools and internal dose has some gray areas. Its not exactly my field(I am a reactor physicist not a health physicist) but I have at least studied the topic enough to understand the difficulties inherent in the internal dose discussions.
It’s not even straightforward to define internal absorbed dose in a way that makes perfect physical sense.
Of course one can easily see that the gray areas are mostly of academic interest since cancer statistics doesn’t show any dramatic deviations from what is known today. The blabbering of the likes of Caldicott and Busby is just unsupported nonsense and they are taking advantage of gray areas to insert their scaremongering.
Johan – As ZAIMatte points out, the heavy work is done in converting curies or becquerels from specific isotopes to sieverts. That’s where you take into account the type of exposure (external, internal through inhalation, internal through ingestion), biological half-life, etc.
For analysis of an accident such as this, you are correct. The values that are determined are rough estimates, and only the order of magnitude is significant. This is sufficient, however, to estimate public health effects and to provide data for follow-up epidemiological studies. Certainly, the exposure given by a radiation monitor on site is only going to be a very rough estimate.
When the sources and amounts of radiation are better known, however — e.g., for medical procedures or for exposure of nuclear workers — then the values that are calculated are much more precise.