Fukushima-How bad is it?

[red_elk]

But the overall release of radiation into the environment hasn't been too bad, given the scale of the disaster. Radiation scares people about 10,000 times as much as it should for its toxicity: we're talking elevated cancer rates on the order of 5.5% per sievert, and the sievert is an enormous unit of radiation equivalent to 1/4 the median lethal dose if it is taken all at once. It has this perfect combination to freak people out: it's invisible but really easy to detect with a Geiger counter, and Geiger counters near sources freak people out at levels far lower than anything dangerous.

The problem is that some isotopes tend to accumulate in plants and animals. If I remember correctly, in some Belorussian farms level of Strontium-90 in cow milk was exceeding safe level. Iodine is especially dangerous, but luckily short-lived. It's indeed very unlikely that you will ever get dangerously irradiated from external source (unless you are a nuclear plant worker or something), but it's still possible to get some health damage from radiation poisoning.

Also, from what I read, the effect of lower doses on cancer risk is not well established yet. One sievert is a very large dose, which can already cause acute radiation sickness and obviously increases cancer risk, but lower doses (such as the ones from CT scans) possibly increase risk too.

By the way, there are guided tours to Chernobyl, you can visit the plant, see the dead city Pripyat, etc.

Fukushima is likely leaking radioactive isotopes into the ocean which is bad.

It's actually better to release them in the ocean where they just dissolve to negligible concentration, rather than accumulate in soil and plants.
But of course leakage must be stopped ASAP anyway.

 

[Bootstoots]

The problem is that some isotopes tend to accumulate in plants and animals. If I remember correctly, in some Belorussian farms level of Strontium-90 in cow milk was exceeding safe level. Iodine is especially dangerous, but luckily short-lived. It's indeed very unlikely that you will ever get dangerously irradiated from external source (unless you are a nuclear plant worker or something), but it's still possible to get some health damage from radiation poisoning.

Also, from what I read, the effect of lower doses on cancer risk is not well established yet. One sievert is a very large dose, which can already cause acute radiation sickness and obviously increases cancer risk, but lower doses (such as the ones from CT scans) possibly increase risk too.

By the way, there are guided tours to Chernobyl, you can visit the plant, see the dead city Pripyat, etc.

Yeah, it's definitely important to note the difference between ingestion or inhalation and external contact, especially for alpha and soft beta emitters. Radon manages to punch far above its weight in health risk by first decaying in the lungs, then spawning a bunch of short-lived daughter nuclides that also decay in quick succession.

Sr-90 is especially bad compared to other fission nuclides because strontium is an alkaline earth metal, just below calcium on the periodic table. The body treats it the same way and incorporates it into bone, so a sizable fraction of radioactive strontium that is consumed doesn't get excreted for years if ever (or is excreted into milk). According to Wiki, Fukushima released somewhere from 2-20% of the amount of Sr-90 into the environment that Chernobyl did, mostly into the ocean rather than into the atmosphere and surface water. The risk is probably lower although not negligible.

To plug another radioactive youtuber, by far the coolest of them all, here's a brief video of her and the second-coolest radioactive youtuber (not the guy in the previous video, he's a distant third) digging around for radioactive particles just outside the Chernobyl site and showing the new confinement building. She's got a bunch more videos of other trips to Chernobyl for those who like watching people play with radioactive stuff.

The thing I find funniest about the Chernobyl disaster is the wildlife preserve it spawned. For wildlife, the world's worst nuclear disaster followed by very little human disturbance is so much better than normal human activity.

 

[red_elk]

She's got a bunch more videos of other trips to Chernobyl for those who like watching people play with radioactive stuff.

Thank's for the video, it's interesting. I found she's also been in hospital basement with contaminated firefighters clothes - I've seen videos from other users visiting the place.

Looks like radiation levels are safe now for external exposure, but it's better to be careful with radioactive dust...

 

[CavLancer]

Boots, what is this "normal human activity" of which you speak?

 

[Bootstoots]

Mining, chopping down trees, farming, urban sprawl, emitting air pollution and other non-radioactive wastes, etc. From the perspective of local wildlife, it's far better to have a nuclear meltdown followed by human near-abandonment of the area than to have humans just keep doing what they normally do.

 

[emzie]

Mining, chopping down trees, farming, urban sprawl, emitting air pollution and other non-radioactive wastes, etc. From the perspective of local wildlife, it's far better to have a nuclear meltdown followed by human near-abandonment of the area than to have humans just keep doing what they normally do.

...that's a depressing thought.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

However they will have to bear with mutations, immunological issues, cancer and other pretty unpleasant things.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Not that bad on a global scale. Next question.

 

[CavLancer]

What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't know maybe 20 mph.

 

[CavLancer]

Being an old fart I figure radiation exposure in food and drink wouldn't be so bad for me. My kids are 6 and 7, while they likely won't get to the US for a couple, they might end up living on the Oregon coast. If you follow the Fukushima radiation plume pics they end up right about there where we live. That's the ocean plumes but I'd imagine the atmospheric currents did about the same. So, there are people who go to the supermarket in Oregon with Geiger counters, trying to get stuff that isn't too hot I presume. If our kids are there they would, I'd imagine, be picking up, ingesting, small amounts of radioactive particles over their lives from Fukushima that are in the environment. I'd hate to take a chance of increasing their risk for cancer... How much of a risk would you estimate there is?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Zero risk. Not exaggerating - there is effectively zero risk of cancer in the US from Fukushima. Even in the direct path (if you could even use that word given how diffuse it gets) of the fallout, by the time it gets here it's in the parts per billion range. Your kids get far higher doses of rads from eating bananas.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

There are US cities where most of the construction done before the mid twentieth century unknowingly used radioactive ores for the aggregate in the concrete. In those cities background radiation can be as much as 100 times what it is in other cities. A hundred times negligible is still negligible, so no one cares...just like no one cares about the negligible added dose from the tiny traces of Fukushima fallout.

 

[CavLancer]

Well thanks guys.

 

[red_elk]

Being an old fart I figure radiation exposure in food and drink wouldn't be so bad for me. My kids are 6 and 7, while they likely won't get to the US for a couple, they might end up living on the Oregon coast. If you follow the Fukushima radiation plume pics they end up right about there where we live. That's the ocean plumes but I'd imagine the atmospheric currents did about the same. So, there are people who go to the supermarket in Oregon with Geiger counters, trying to get stuff that isn't too hot I presume. If our kids are there they would, I'd imagine, be picking up, ingesting, small amounts of radioactive particles over their lives from Fukushima that are in the environment. I'd hate to take a chance of increasing their risk for cancer... How much of a risk would you estimate there is?

The only risk of exposure to Fukushima radiation for them would be somehow getting in contact with contaminated goods brought from Japan. And I don't think it is something to worry about either.

 

[Silurian]

The radioactivity released into the environment should be compared with other large industrial process or even the motor vehicle.

Civ don't you have a cement works across the bay from you. When they make cement they burn powdered stone in a big tube so a fair bit of polution will be released unless there are expensive control measures.

I assume that you do not live near a major road so you are benefitting there.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The radioactivity released into the environment should be compared with other large industrial process or even the motor vehicle.

Civ don't you have a cement works across the bay from you. When they make cement they burn powdered stone in a big tube so a fair bit of polution will be released unless there are expensive control measures.

I assume that you do not live near a major road so you are benefitting there.

And some cements (if I'm not mistaken) are made with coal ash as a filler/binder. In addition to being toxic, that stuff is also fairly radioactive. People who complain about radiation from nuclear power plants don't often realize how much more radioactive coal power plants are - and the poorer the country you live in, the more radiation the plants are likely to spew thanks to lower grade coals being used and far fewer environmental controls on the plants.

 

[red_elk]

Nuclear plants are usually very clean for the environment. Except for a couple of notable cases when they were not.

 

[Bootstoots]

Yeah, coal ash contains lots of naturally occurring thorium and uranium, along with other fun heavy metals like arsenic and cadmium. When coal gets burned, everything that isn't combustible, including the heavy metals, remains in the ash ash and can escape as fly ash. Whatever doesn't escape remans and has to be dumped into ash ponds or just regular landfills, or reused by incorporating it into concrete.

Under normal conditions, coal power plants release more radioactive stuff into the environment than do nuclear plants, by quite a bit. It's just that this is routine and nobody thinks about it, whereas nuclear disasters are extremely rare but spectacular and release enormous amounts of radioactive materials, mostly fission products like I-131, Cs-137, and Sr-90. Those can be really nasty around the affected area, but nobody needs to worry unless an accident happens within a couple hundred km of you.

But the fact that radiation is easy to detect at levels far smaller than anything dangerous, and that Geiger counters make loud and frequent clicks, mean that it's easy to create a panic around nuclear power while very few people care about the everyday environmental damage of coal.

 

[FriendlyFire]

By the way, there are guided tours to Chernobyl, you can visit the plant, see the dead city Pripyat, etc.

I guess Ukraine is desperate for monies. For many whom were drafted to work in Chernobyl for their allocated time, are new screwed, most are awaiting soviet housing, health and pensions that will never arrive
For the Tourist I imagine a short dose of radiation will not be harmful, the risk is for those living near.

Short of Ukraine doing something insane like blowing up the shielding contain some 200 tons of urainium in some I dont know Doomsday explosion revenge against Russian invasion
I would say the reactor is relatively contained and will have to remain contained for at least 100 years. Its no worse then the Soviet era dirty industrialization which came at environmental and citizens health cost.