Tiny amounts of radiation reach Berkeley from Japan (Very Tiny!)

SFGate.com ^ | 3/31/11 | Lance Knobel - Bezerkely Blog

[justa-hairyape]

Berkeley is a nuke free zone!

Was talking to a Bay Area resident down here in So Cal during the period when Radioactive Iodine had first arrived in So Cal over the US. It apparently missed the Bay Area and landed here. The Bay Area resident stated that they had Nuclear Free Zone signs all over the place. Apparently the fallout obeyed the signs. Darn. We should have put those signs up in So Cal and Washington State.

[justa-hairyape]

Incorrect. We had Cesium-137 fallout from those nuclear tests enter the food chain. And some of it is still active. Half life 30 years. So slightly more then 25 % of the fallout is theoretically still radioactive. Look, we were in a Nuclear Arms race with the Russians. Lots of safety protocols were ignored or yet to be established.

[RummyChick]

The federal drinking water standard for Iodine-131 is 3 pCi/L.

on 3/23 they measured 20.1 Bq/L

that is 543.243243243243 pCI/L

if this site is correct in conversion
http://www.radprocalculator.com/Conversion.aspx

Now,doesn’t the rainwater feed into California’s water supply???

1.56 measurement they show is equal to

42.1621621621622 pCI/L

[D-fendr]

Just don't fly. :)

on Monday’s data, you’d need to drink 1,734 liters of water to equal the radiation dose from a single round-trip flight to Washington, D.C, and back.

[PA Engineer]

Worse. If they get completely irradiated then they won’t decay. I learned that in Day by Day Armageddon! They will be like the governor. FOREVER HIPPIES!

[justa-hairyape]

The Iodine can be dealt with (potassium iodine tablets, tincture of iodine, Atlantic sea weed, etc..). It is the Cesium-137 that will be the first real serious problem, as you have pointed out. The Iodine is currently showing where the Cesium could physically end up. At any rate, they have executed the drown and cement reactor option. Just gonna take weeks to execute. The whole world is chipping in now. We needed to know their predicament immediately, although they have performed fairly well under the circumstances. Atmospheric release could be tons worse. The Pacific Ocean now that will have to deal with the majority of the current fallout (discharge).

BTW - They are also gonna have problems cementing the spent fuel pools.

[palmer]

Now,doesn't the rainwater feed into California's water supply???

Think about the dilution. How many gallons of rainwater into how many gallons of lake water. In Mass. they measured the rainwater and found I-131, then measured the reservoir it was falling into and found nothing. The peak of 543 pCi/L in rainwater in Calif. that you mentioned is likely due to the fire a week or so before that in Japan. It takes fire to get that I-131 into the air to get it over to us. Now that the measurement is much lower, it is an indication that the fire has been out (for over a week now).

OTOH, they measured 19 pCi/L of I-131 in milk two days ago. That clearly puts this accident a notch or two above TMI. Still many orders of magnitude below Chernobyl and nuclear testing, but bears watching. Also, it's not over yet.

[samtheman]

Maybe they should all evacuate to Kenya. Obama should be able to help with that.