How Serious Radiation from Japan?

[gnadfly]

Again, I have to ask TAE where he gets his information.

[BigTee]

Radiation Dose Chart

http://4.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploa...ation-xkcd.png

Gives a lot of examples of where and how much radiation you get from each source.

[theaustinescorts]

Originally Posted by GneissGuy

People in the US inhaled radioactive materials from US, Russian, French, and Russian bomb tests and from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We inhaled radioactive material from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. We will inhale radioactive material from the Japanese reactor problems. We inhale radioactive material in dust from the naturally occurring radioisotopes in the earth's crust. Our bodies require potassium to live. The potassium in our food has a certain natural level of radioactivity.

Different isotopes have different risks when ingested or inhaled. Radiation from outside our bodies has its own risks. These risks are pretty well understood, but they are a probability thing. X amount of material Y gives you a 1 in XXX chance of getting cancer or other disease. It's like buying a lottery ticket where the prize is cancer.

The risks of inhaled/ingested radioisotopes are well known. The people making the calculations are considering the risks of the fallout based on both inhaled/ingested material as well as the effects of any radioactive material outside our bodies. We've been through radioactive fallout before. We know what happens.

The numbers aren't that precise, but that means you don't know whether you have a 1 in a million chance or a 1 in 2 million chance. Radioactivity releases have happened before. We know about the possible risks of releasing certain amounts of certain radioactive materials.

The Japanese reactor failures are a bad thing, especially for the Japanese. Here in the US, thousands or tens of thousands of people will get cancer from other radiation sources for everyone who gets cancer from the Japanese reactors, even if the cores explode.

Texas is so far from point of origin I'm guessing these materials will be very dispersed when they arrive. I'm not suggesting that anyone in Texas should be alarmed [California maybe]. But I'm critical of the sloppy way the media has reported on the nature of the risks. It's being portrayed that the risk is distributed evenly, and is derived from the general level of ambient radiation increase, which is tiny. That's not the risk. The risk is that enough isotopes of a particular kind will migrate which will find their way into some poor soul's lettuce salad, or inhaled in his lungs, and that's all it will take for that guy. My deceased friend was a meteorologist at the Nevada test center in the 1950s, and his cancer finally killed him a year ago. I doubt whether the cause of his cancer was ever formally recorded in any statistics anywhere. I think there is actually little accurate data about long-term effects, but I could be wrong. Prompt and acute effects are of course well known. When I was in school two of my Professors were weapons designers, and one worked extensively with G. Kistiakowski [RIP], and I was required to read the DOE huge book, "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons," and had to read a great deal about prompt and acute effects on health, but nothing on long-term chronic effects. Thank God they never brought any Plutonium into the classroom.

[GneissGuy]

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

The risk is that enough isotopes of a particular kind will migrate which will find their way into some poor soul's lettuce salad, or inhaled in his lungs, and that's all it will take for that guy.

Assume there's a 1 in 10 million chance that you'll die from the increased amount of radioactive iodine vapor in the air. That's 30 people dead in the US.

Now assume there's a 1 in 10 million chance that a particle of plutonium will somehow drift 10,000 miles from the source, and land on a lettuce in California that you're going to eat some day. That's still 30 people dead in the US.

Do you think the dead people or their relatives care whether it was a particle or gas?

This kind of drifting particle is taken into consideration in the calculations.

Now, if someone is shipping us contaminated lettuce or other food from the fallout area near Japan, that could be a big deal.

I'm not saying no one here in the US will die from the Japanese reactor accident. I'm just saying that the risk for us as individuals in the US is a drop in the bucket compared to our other risks.

By the way, luckily, radioactive iodine has a half life of 8 days or so, so at least it won't hang around for a long time as long as it stops spewing from the reactor site. Some of the other nasty stuff is more persistent.

[theaustinescorts]

Radioactive iodine is the LEAST of my concerns.

There's many other isotopes that have been released by the EXPLOSIONS of these reactors, and most of those isotopes have half-lifes of 30 years or more.

Anyone who saw the explosion last week [in which huge parts and equipment of the reactor were clearly seen blasted up hundreds of feet into the air] can see that what's happened is a catastrophy.

If all the authorities are going to offer us is assurances based on the tiny increase in ambient radioactivity then we should be alarmed at their motives because that's not where the risk lies [and they know it].

Until this event I've been comfortable about nuclear power, based on the records of operation in such places as France.

But if it's proving this impossible to circulate something as simple as water around in these things following a crisis, then there's something wrong.

Either the power industry isn't up to designing these things so that they can be cooled under all circumstances, or it cannot be done. In either case we'll have to throw in the towel.

I went to a graduate school taught by nuclear physicists and weapons designers who all did government work at various times, and none of them were advocates of commercial nuclear power. At the time I thought they were just overly-cautious because they were politically liberal. However now I think they just knew more about the irreducibility of the risks than what I would accept.

[Codybeast]

I do find it interesting how the potential and actual consequences of these manmade catastrophes are always invariably downplayed not only by the powers at be but by large percentages of the public as well.

Whether it be nuclear reactor meltdowns or oil rig explosions you will always see sections of the population throwing out stats supporting their claims that it is no big deal.

Unfortunately time usually reveals the actual extent of danger and damage to be far worse than previously thought by even those genuinely concerned.

I think it is safe to say that concern about oil rig explosions releasing millions of gallons at one time in the ecosystem and nuclear plant meltdowns don't quite fall under the category of "Chicken Little" syndrome.

Same as with politicians we should only heed what the commanders do and Not what they say. While at the same time claiming there are no unsafe increases in radiation levels outside of the immediate area there is a very clear reason our ships are being pulled out.

[theaustinescorts]

Originally Posted by Codybeast

I do find it interesting how the potential and actual consequences of these manmade catastrophes are always invariably downplayed not only by the powers at be but by large percentages of the public as well.

Whether it be nuclear reactor meltdowns or oil rig explosions you will always see sections of the population throwing out stats supporting their claims that it is no big deal.

Unfortunately time usually reveals the actual extent of danger and damage to be far worse than previously thought by even those genuinely concerned.

I think it is safe to say that concern about oil rig explosions releasing millions of gallons at one time in the ecosystem and nuclear plant meltdowns don't quite fall under the category of "Chicken Little" syndrome.

Same as with politicians we should only heed what the commanders do and Not what they say. While at the same time claiming there are no unsafe increases in radiation levels outside of the immediate area there is a very clear reason our ships are being pulled out.

They love to pull our legs, and why shouldn't they? There is no "truth police," and people love a comforting story.

Only today the Japanese government is admitting what was visually manifest two weeks ago - that the massive explosion we all saw which blew the entire reactor 3 complex hundreds of feet into the air "may have breached the reactor core."

Finally this week papers like the LA Times and others are observing that the Japanese government has been "downplaying" the extent of the damage and risk.

Most people don't have enough confidence in themselves to believe what they see, instead of what they're told.

Every corporation and institution I ever worked for lied to the public -- every one. I saw it happen every time. They do it because doing so benefits them, and there's no consequences for lying. From their point of view they'd be stupid to do anything else.

Most people will bend the truth in favor of whatever comforts them. Also, most people have never been a part of anything at a high enough level to witness the contempt for truth with which organizations conduct themselves.

[DRorchia]

If you're interested in long term effects study of atomic radiation...you may want to check out this book:
http://www.solarstorms.org/Hiroshima.html

[theaustinescorts]

The data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki are informative, however the amount of radiation there was so large that it doesn't speak to the risks at lower levels.

Chemical physicist Christopher Busby and others have attributed as many as one million additional cancers to the Chernobyl event.

These matters are very hard to sort out because it's impossible to know if what a particular cancer was caused by, or if someone was unlucky enough to have inhaled a radioactive particle from some release thousands of miles away.

[DRorchia]

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

The data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki are informative, however the amount of radiation there was so large that it doesn't speak to the risks at lower levels.

Chemical physicist Christopher Busby and others have attributed as many as one million additional cancers to the Chernobyl event.

These matters are very hard to sort out because it's impossible to know if what a particular cancer was caused by, or if someone was unlucky enough to have inhaled a radioactive particle from some release thousands of miles away.

On this, we agree!