Posted on 05/30/2010 4:39:50 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Radioactive fish near Vt. nuke plant deemed common
MONTPELIER, Vt. When a fish taken from the Connecticut River recently tested positive for radioactive strontium-90, suspicion focused on the nearby Vermont Yankee nuclear plant as the likely source.
Operators of the troubled 38-year-old nuclear plant on the banks of the river, where work is under way to clean up leaking radioactive tritium, revealed this month that it also found soil contaminated with strontium-90, an isotope linked to bone cancer and leukemia.
Three days later, officials said a fish caught four miles upstream from the reactor in February had tested positive for strontium-90 in its bones. State officials say they don't believe the contamination came from Vermont Yankee.
Tritium was reported leaking from the plant in January, and since then has turned up in monitoring wells at levels 100 times the federal Environmental Protection Agency's safety limit for that substance in drinking water. Other radioactive isotopes have been found as well, including cesium-137, zinc-65 and cobalt-60.
Officials have said tritium has been flowing downhill from the plant to the adjacent river, though it is diluted quickly in the fast-flowing stream. Tests on river water have not produced measurable tritium readings. Now the question is whether strontium-90, generally considered a more dangerous isotope than tritium, may also have found its way to the river.
State health officials say Vermont Yankee most likely was not the source of the radioactivity in the fish, a yellow perch. Fish and other living things including humans around the world have been absorbing tiny amounts of strontium-90 since the United States, Russia and China tested nuclear weapons in the atmosphere in the 1950s and 1960s. A fresher dose was released by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.
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I wonder if these fish have that fishy mackeral taste or if they taste something like a swordfish?
Dang, I wuz going to point out that the fish are safe to eat unless they have three eyes. Pic’s already there.
If it’s a plant,
would it be a ‘red herring’?
Cesium 137 = Chernobyl.
Here comes the moratorium un nuclear power.
This is what they served to the Mexican President, Calderone!!!!!!!!LOL!
Bullcrap.
Uranium is mined and is a naturally occurring element. Also, Rock of Ages granite mine can certainly open up fissures for U-238. Nothing like MSM-based emotion-based logic.
Strontium 90 has a half-life of about 30 years, so if you can see it, it was made within the last 300 years (it takes about 10 half-lives for an isotope to become very, very hard to detect). if you detect Sr90 it is not natural, it had to have been made by us, somewhen. Same with Cs137, it’s not natural. Most likely source is Chernobyl.
Modern gear can detect a few atoms of a radioactive substance.
Strontium 90 has a half-life of about 30 years, so if you can see it, it was made within the last 300 years (it takes about 10 half-lives for an isotope to become very, very hard to detect). if you detect Sr90 it is not natural, it had to have been made by us, somewhen. Same with Cs137, its not natural. Most likely source is Chernobyl.
Modern gear can detect a few atoms of a radioactive substance.
You are suggesting a different half life for Sr90?
It is true that EPA will lower their “standards” for a chemical if the analytical gear improves and you can “see” lower quantities.
The article says “100 times some limit” for H3, but I did not see where they mentioned Sr levels at all, just that they detected it.
No, I’m suggesting don’t believe what you read when it is from MSM.
I’m with you!
How do you get tritium out of the fission of uranium?
From lots of neutrons hitting water. Regular water yields some, heavy water (like the CANDU units) generate more.
It is a very rare fission product coming directly from U fission, but the quantity is negligible.
I think the US used to make it by bombarding lithium in reactors, we don’t any more.
Good, I like fresh doses in my fish.
Apparently, by going fission in the Connecticut River.
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