Posted on 03/28/2011 9:10:33 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Plutonium detected in soil at Fukushima nuke plant
TOKYO, March 29, Kyodo
Plutonium has been detected in soil at five locations at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Monday.
The operator of the nuclear complex said that the plutonium is believed to have been discharged from nuclear fuel at the plant, which was damaged by the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
While noting that the concentration level does not pose a risk to human health, the utility firm said it will strengthen monitoring on the environment in and around the nuclear plant.
Meanwhile, high levels of radiation exceeding 1,000 millisieverts per hour have been detected in water in a trench outside the No. 2 reactor's building at the nuclear plant, with the contaminated water suspected to have come from the reactor's core, where fuel rods have partially melted, authorities said Monday.
(Excerpt) Read more at english.kyodonews.jp ...
What a coincidence.
Who would have figured that they would have built a nuke plant on top of a plutonium deposit?
Radioactive Properties, Internal Distribution and Risk Coefficients
Things to NB:
1. The amount released into the environment during nuke weapons testing:
"Atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, which ceased worldwide by 1980, generated most environmental plutonium. About 10,000 kg were released to the atmosphere during these tests. Average plutonium levels in surface soil from fallout range from about 0.01 to 0.1 picocurie per gram (pCi/g). "
10,000 kg is a lot of Plutonium already spread in the environment.
2. Above-ground weapons tests consisted of either popping off a nuke at ground level (eg, on a tower), or an air drop from a plane, usually retarded by a chute.
In either case, the resulting fallout was more widely distributed because the nuclides resulting from the explosion were pushed into the jet stream by the vertical thermal column resulting from the bomb.
3. The low specific activity of plutonium isotopes, coupled with the alpha emission as the typical activity, means that ingestion of Pu particles is the greatest danger to humans.
OK, so what's the health outcomes of Plutonium ingestion (which is the most severe form of exposure to Pu, since the longest-lived isotopes give off alpha radiation)?
Well, we have 37 Los Almos workers from the Manhattan Project who have been studied:
From Google Docs:
"Manhattan Project Plutonium Workers at Los Alamos," George L. Voelz.
Google the title in quotes, and you should find the doc. I tried to include a URL and ended up with the solid mess of text above, so I removed the URL.
What's the bottom line?
"Data on 26 workers exposed to plutonium-239 in 1944 to 1945 and observed for a period of more than 50 years have consistently shown that the mortality rates for all causes of deaths and for all cancers are not elevated compared with either U.S. white males or unexposed Los Alamos male workers with comparable hire dates. This finding differs from some popular misperceptions that large health risks occur after any exposure to plutonium. The median effective dose to these men is 1.3 Sv (mean dose = 2.1 Sv). The incidence of specific cancers, especially lung cancer (4) and osteogenic sarcoma (1), is interesting, but additional data are needed to draw conclusions about the relationship between plutonium doses comparable to those in this study and the induction of excess cancers."
Now, look at the median effective dose to those men: 1.3 Sv. Not "milli," not "micro." Full-on Sieverts of exposure over their lifetimes since Los Almos. That comes from Pu lodged in their tissues from inhalation, ingestion, deposits into the flesh from cuts/wounds, etc.
As I keep telling people: Go do your own homework. There is plenty of data out there. I've read it, and that's why I'm not running in circles, screaming and shouting. The data show that, at the *very* least, that the widely-perceived lethality of radionuclides isn't as high or certain as the popular press would like to portray.
But some of you want to panic about something, so I guess that this is as good as any reason to panic. Go ahead, get it out of your system.
<P>aragraphs are our friends...
Is it really all that complicated to begin each <p>aragraph with an html <p>aragraph tag?
No, but then I’m lazy when posting. I’ve put up a formatted version which works.
Thank you.
Fair enough. I'm lazy when it comes to reading others' posts. Large blocks of text are hard to read, so when I see them, I simply skip on down the page.
Yes, I understand. It was formatted with para’s in the plain text, but some character sequence caused the default posting sw to just jam it together into a solid block.
I don’t ordinarily task people with solid lumps of text.
“This is exactly what happens when they won’t let anyone safely contain nuke waste deep underground in a secure facility and re-process it and they have to “store” it onsite.
Instead you have an accident at a nuke power plant and it makes it 100X worse than it could have been.
Most of the spewing from the Fukashima plants has been from spent fuel.”
You can’t permanently store used fuel rods until they’ve quit producing heat from residual reaction. As best I can tell, this takes several years of temporary storage in cooling pools.
2.) My Japanese is a little less than rudimentary, but it appears that the dates and times are when the samples were taken. If so, the turnaround of a week to do the analysis is not unreasonable.
What is your opinion?
Actually, that's not true.
U-235, which is the "enriched" in "enriched uranium," will split promptly when hit by a neutron, and thus add a bit of heat to the reactor's core.
U-238, on the other hand, which makes up over 90% of the uranium in ordinary nuclear fuel, turns into plutonium when it's hit by a neutron of the proper energy.
This newly-created plutonium can then subsequently be split by another neutron, adding another bit of heat to the nuclear reactor's core. In fact the fission of new plutonium contributes a significant amount of heat to the total produced by the core by the time the fuel is swapped out.
So in other words, every nuclear reactor that's been running for any amount of time has a considerable amount of plutonium in its core, which is created and then "burned up" as the fuel ages.
The trouble is that radiation is so easy to detect. If we could see, smell, and taste all the toxic and alarming contaminants in our water and food, we'd probably all starve to death.
Radiation is everywhere, all the time, and always has been.
When it comes to radiation, folks out there are starting to sound like the "homeopathic medicine" adherents, who try to pass off a bottle of water with a few molecules (if any) of "active" ingredients in it as a "remedy."
As I pointed out on another thread last week, the “fallout” or whatever contamination from Fukushima doesn’t concern me in the least. Really.
But that doesn’t mean that I ignore all risks from radiation. Our house has a radon venting system under the concrete pad. It runs all the time. And, after examining the lung cancer stats on non-smokers who live in houses in states with elevated levels of radon in the soil, it is clear to me that absent a nuke weapon being popped off within two miles of me, the radon risk outweighs all other radioactivity risks in my life.
By *far*.
This has not only NOT been done, these subtopics in the discussion have been uniformly either ignored or distorted by the sensationalist cretins in the alleged "media".
My opinion? My opinion is that anyone who lacks both a degree in nuclear physics or nuclear chemistry and a US Navy certification in nuclear operation should be barred -- by law -- from "journalising" on the subject. Most of the (very few) qualified commentators I've seen/read in the past two weeks are VERY clear in their explanations and VERY deliberate in their comparisons and evaluations.
FReegards!
Well why don’t you ask why Tepco hasn’t release all of that ...
NEI: UPDATE AS OF 1:30 P.M. EDT, MONDAY, MARCH 28:
Tokyo Electric Power Co. has detected isolated, low concentrations of plutonium in the soil at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. The density of plutonium is equivalent to the fallout that reached Japan from nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War, the company said.
TEPCO conducted analysis of plutonium contained in the soil collected on March 21 and 22 at five locations at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Plutonium 238, 239 and 240 were detected, however just two of the samples may be the direct result of the recent incident, considering the ratio of the plutonium isotopes.
“The density detected in the plutonium is equivalent to the density in the soil under normal environmental conditions and therefore poses no major impact on human health,” TEPCO said. The company said it plans to strengthen environmental monitoring inside the station and surrounding areas.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110328e14.pdf
In english.
and locations
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110328e15.pdf
And in the physics forum here is what one poster said
At sampling spots 1 and 5 the ratio of Pu-238 to total Pu activity is of the order of 1..2, which means the Pu originates from fuel with burnups > 10 MWd/kgU, i.e. reactor fuel. So, even though the absolute value of the Pu activity is not significantly higher than that resulting from the atmospheric nuclear testing, its composition implies that some fuel damages have occurred in such a way that small amounts of fuel have been dispersed to the vicinity of the plant.
man found dead
did radiation kill him or did he die from something else and is now too “hot” to remove
5 kilometers from the plant
Nuclear Seaweed
A research team has detected an increased level of radiation in seaweed and rainwater samples gathered in B.C., and attribute the rise to the crippled Fukushima nuclear complex in Japan.
Nuclear physicist Kris Starosta of Simon Fraser University said… “As of now, the levels we’re seeing are not harmful to humans. … [W]e have not reached levels of elevated risk [of cancer].”
Thanks for that video link. Wonder if those trenches got filled by the Tsunami ? At any rate, it doesn’t matter how thick the concrete is around a nuclear reactor. A chain is unfortunately only as strong as its weakest link.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.