How freaked out should I be about Fukushima? Gimme science.
August 29, 2013 5:28 PM Subscribe
I'm seeing a lot of conspiracy doomsday stuff on the Internet about Fukushima, tainted food in the Pacific, radioactive rain, etc. How much of this is hyperbole, and what are the realities?
The things I'm talking about include articles like this one.
Is there anything to this? Are there any good NGOs monitoring or researching this stuff impartially? Which sources are both credible and skeptical of official claims? How bad is it, really?
The things I'm talking about include articles like this one.
Is there anything to this? Are there any good NGOs monitoring or researching this stuff impartially? Which sources are both credible and skeptical of official claims? How bad is it, really?
Safecast provides a ton of data measurement with none of the hype. Greenpeace has been doing some offshore monitoring, but I haven't heard anything from them lately, and their website has no up-to-date info.
The diagram in your link is pretty sensational, by the way. For one thing, it's a model that was released more than two years ago after the initial accident.
Second, the colours are misleading, because some of them are going to be traces of isotopes. For example, here in Victoria BC about a week after the initial fires (March 2011) we did measure trace results of iodine, notably in kelp (brought over by the Jet Stream, an oscillating high-altitude westerly that follows the coast from NE Asia to North America). But nowhere near enough to affect human health.
On top of that, the "300 ton" figure for the contaminated water refers to the amount of groundwater that leaked into the ground. Several litres may have made it into the Pacific.
The main thing is that, from what I understand, the issue of contamination is a local one. I think there are serious questions that should be asked about the fisheries from Chiba to the Sanriku coast.
But for the time being there is no risk to those of residing on the west coast of North America.
posted by KokuRyu at 5:57 PM on August 29, 2013 [3 favorites]
The diagram in your link is pretty sensational, by the way. For one thing, it's a model that was released more than two years ago after the initial accident.
Second, the colours are misleading, because some of them are going to be traces of isotopes. For example, here in Victoria BC about a week after the initial fires (March 2011) we did measure trace results of iodine, notably in kelp (brought over by the Jet Stream, an oscillating high-altitude westerly that follows the coast from NE Asia to North America). But nowhere near enough to affect human health.
On top of that, the "300 ton" figure for the contaminated water refers to the amount of groundwater that leaked into the ground. Several litres may have made it into the Pacific.
The main thing is that, from what I understand, the issue of contamination is a local one. I think there are serious questions that should be asked about the fisheries from Chiba to the Sanriku coast.
But for the time being there is no risk to those of residing on the west coast of North America.
posted by KokuRyu at 5:57 PM on August 29, 2013 [3 favorites]
At least one of the major email/facebook/tumblr chainletters has a map of tsunami wave heights, rather than anything to do with Fukushima. Which tends to make me doubt a lot of those sources.
posted by geek anachronism at 6:04 PM on August 29, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by geek anachronism at 6:04 PM on August 29, 2013 [2 favorites]
That article seems to be preoccupied with California, so the California Department of Public Health's data is probably a good place to start.
Executive summary: "[The Radiologic Health Branch] has detected only trace amounts of radiation, well below levels of health concern, attributable to the Japanese incident."
posted by pullayup at 6:06 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]
Executive summary: "[The Radiologic Health Branch] has detected only trace amounts of radiation, well below levels of health concern, attributable to the Japanese incident."
posted by pullayup at 6:06 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]
Maybe I'm being naive, but radiation would be pretty far down on my list of concerns regarding food. Radiation is easy to detect and quantify. And the really horrifyingly bad stuff has mostly decayed by now anyway.
What I'd be more worried about is what, if any, toxic metals have gotten into things. I probably wouldn't be eating any top of the food chain fishes unless they are from trustworthy sources.
posted by gjc at 6:46 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]
What I'd be more worried about is what, if any, toxic metals have gotten into things. I probably wouldn't be eating any top of the food chain fishes unless they are from trustworthy sources.
posted by gjc at 6:46 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]
Cesium has not decayed, though; it takes about 250 years.
posted by KokuRyu at 7:00 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by KokuRyu at 7:00 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]
My understanding is that you wouldn't want to eat seafood caught in that general region, but other than that, the ocean dilutes it so much that it doesn't really matter.
posted by empath at 8:27 PM on August 29, 2013
posted by empath at 8:27 PM on August 29, 2013
UC Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering detected substantial spikes in rain-borne iodine-131 during torrential downpours
Radioactive isotopes of the type released from Fukushima have a half-life of 30,000 years.
Iodine-131 has a half life of eight days. This is considerably shorter than the 30,000 years claimed in the article.
That's a considerable amount of hyperbole. The half life of hyperbole is unknown, but you shouldn't drink it.
posted by yohko at 8:39 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]
Radioactive isotopes of the type released from Fukushima have a half-life of 30,000 years.
Iodine-131 has a half life of eight days. This is considerably shorter than the 30,000 years claimed in the article.
That's a considerable amount of hyperbole. The half life of hyperbole is unknown, but you shouldn't drink it.
posted by yohko at 8:39 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]
I also was going to note that we humans have set off well over 100 actual, no-kidding nuclear weapons in the Pacific. Right now there's still, ballpark, a quarter of the strontium-90 and cesium-137 from those tests floating around in the Pacific.
Or, if you'd rather, the oceans before Fukushima were already about as irradiated as if we'd just set off 25-30 nuclear weapons of varying sizes up to the multi-megaton range. As KokoRyu noted, Fukushima added (and continues to add) only marginal amounts to the existing total. As in, increasing it by less than 1 part in 100,000 per month.
You would not want to eat fish caught near the site. Otherwise, even a very vigilant person would only need to pay attention to specific warnings from regulatory agencies (which are very unlikely to ever be issued). Even if you don't trust your own regulatory agencies right now (which might not be insane given the Harper government's other fuckwitted ideas), you could also look at recommendations from agencies in the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Latin American countries if you can read Spanish.
Which, again, are very unlikely to ever be issued as we should expect post-Fukushima fish caught distant from the site to have only 1.0001 - 1.00001 times as much radioactive contamination as pre-Fukushima fish did.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:22 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]
Or, if you'd rather, the oceans before Fukushima were already about as irradiated as if we'd just set off 25-30 nuclear weapons of varying sizes up to the multi-megaton range. As KokoRyu noted, Fukushima added (and continues to add) only marginal amounts to the existing total. As in, increasing it by less than 1 part in 100,000 per month.
You would not want to eat fish caught near the site. Otherwise, even a very vigilant person would only need to pay attention to specific warnings from regulatory agencies (which are very unlikely to ever be issued). Even if you don't trust your own regulatory agencies right now (which might not be insane given the Harper government's other fuckwitted ideas), you could also look at recommendations from agencies in the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Latin American countries if you can read Spanish.
Which, again, are very unlikely to ever be issued as we should expect post-Fukushima fish caught distant from the site to have only 1.0001 - 1.00001 times as much radioactive contamination as pre-Fukushima fish did.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:22 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]
yeeeaahhh...that article is pretty hysterical (not in the funny sense)...
still...this image, which has been floating around on tumblr, tends to give me the heebie-jeebies (more out of fear for the locals than any thoughts of the radiation reaching here (U.S.))
posted by sexyrobot at 9:25 PM on August 29, 2013
still...this image, which has been floating around on tumblr, tends to give me the heebie-jeebies (more out of fear for the locals than any thoughts of the radiation reaching here (U.S.))
posted by sexyrobot at 9:25 PM on August 29, 2013
still...this image, which has been floating around on tumblr, tends to give me the heebie-jeebies (more out of fear for the locals than any thoughts of the radiation reaching here (U.S.))
I would say that the odds of that being:
A) Not photoshopped
B) In Japan
C) Actually of a flower exposed to radiation.
D) Actually of a flower exposed to fukushima radiation
are about 0%
posted by empath at 9:32 PM on August 29, 2013 [3 favorites]
I would say that the odds of that being:
A) Not photoshopped
B) In Japan
C) Actually of a flower exposed to radiation.
D) Actually of a flower exposed to fukushima radiation
are about 0%
posted by empath at 9:32 PM on August 29, 2013 [3 favorites]
In fact, here it is illustrating an article from 2009, a full two years before the tsunami.
posted by empath at 9:34 PM on August 29, 2013 [6 favorites]
posted by empath at 9:34 PM on August 29, 2013 [6 favorites]
Mod note: This needs not to become a chatty discussion. Please help to answer the question with links to credible sources, and let's not contribute to passing around any hoaxy stuff.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:45 PM on August 29, 2013
posted by taz (staff) at 11:45 PM on August 29, 2013
Response by poster: Thanks folks. I wasn't really buying it, but I also wasn't sure where to find better info, so thanks.
posted by hamandcheese at 1:30 AM on August 30, 2013
posted by hamandcheese at 1:30 AM on August 30, 2013
There's a bunch of amusing stuff on reddit comparing the dose for eating Pacific fish (assuming some things about a fairly even distribution) that have accumulated radioactives from Fukushima. A kind of banana index has emerged, because bananas contain an amount of a radioactive potassium isotope. This is a little disingenuous to compare to strontium, because when your body has enough potassium and gets more, it sends out some potassium to restore the preferred level, whereas it probably doesn't have a preferred level of strontium. But the radiation from fish is comparable to the radiation of, at most, a couple dozen bananas. If you think the banana table at your supermarket is a radioactive hazard, then you should avoid fish. Otherwise, enjoy them sustainably.
posted by Sunburnt at 8:20 AM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Sunburnt at 8:20 AM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]
I absolutely love the Banana equivalent dose for talking about radiation. People think that radiation means instant death and don't realise just how sensitive the instruments used to measure radiation are in detecting very small amounts of radiation and just how ubiquitous radiation is in the environment.
Another wonderful fact to throw out is that coal fired powerplants emit three to ten times the amount of radiation that nuclear powerplants do. Source
posted by koolkat at 9:17 AM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]
Another wonderful fact to throw out is that coal fired powerplants emit three to ten times the amount of radiation that nuclear powerplants do. Source
posted by koolkat at 9:17 AM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]
Okay, so can someone please tell me if this "the ocean is boiling" post I've been getting on FB today is real or exaggerated or what?
posted by RedEmma at 10:02 AM on August 30, 2013
posted by RedEmma at 10:02 AM on August 30, 2013
The typical explanation is "fog".
posted by KokuRyu at 11:28 AM on August 30, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by KokuRyu at 11:28 AM on August 30, 2013 [2 favorites]
So, the photo is real, but the jury is out on whether it's fog or steam?
posted by RedEmma at 1:22 PM on August 30, 2013
posted by RedEmma at 1:22 PM on August 30, 2013
Well, if you stop and think about it, it's hard to imagine any reasonable way that could be steam from the ocean boiling.
The cores are up here
The ocean is down here
So how are the cores going to cause the ocean to boil?
It's unlikely that some miscreant extracted and moved a core, since that would be spectacularly fatal and also he would have to be the Hulk.
It's unlikely that a core just fell over into the sea, because we'd see the building having fallen down and the entire world would know if there was an unshielded core just sitting there.
And it's unlikely that the cores are emitting a stream of something hot enough to cause the ocean to boil, since (a) that would probably be glowing, and (b) it would probably also be radioactive to the point of immediate and unavoidable detection. I can't find anything to suggest that the water that leaked was thermally hot.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:41 PM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]
The cores are up here
The ocean is down here
So how are the cores going to cause the ocean to boil?
It's unlikely that some miscreant extracted and moved a core, since that would be spectacularly fatal and also he would have to be the Hulk.
It's unlikely that a core just fell over into the sea, because we'd see the building having fallen down and the entire world would know if there was an unshielded core just sitting there.
And it's unlikely that the cores are emitting a stream of something hot enough to cause the ocean to boil, since (a) that would probably be glowing, and (b) it would probably also be radioactive to the point of immediate and unavoidable detection. I can't find anything to suggest that the water that leaked was thermally hot.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:41 PM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]
It's not steam. The cores sit (nominally) in a containment facility about 300 meters from the ocean. To be clear, the nuclear power plants (as are all plants in Japan with the exception of the last remaining fast breeder, Monju), used seawater as a secondary coolant. So, even when the plants were operational and the fuel pile was "hot", providing megawatts of power (the amount of power needed to power a city, and cycling seawater through the system, the sea never boiled.
However, because of leaks in the primary coolant system (and because the primary coolant is highly radioactive), the secondary coolant (aka "water") is being recycled, instead of being dumped back into the ocean (under normal circumstances secondary coolant is not radioactive). It's not an efficient process, this recycling, so they have to store the secondary coolant in hundreds of large tanks. Some of it (it's a slow process) is filtered to be recycled. It's these tanks that are leaking.
Anyway, even if secondary coolant were to get into the ocean (and some of it is), the remains of the fuel bundles are no longer so hot (well under 100 degrees Celsius), so how could the water be boiling?
This is fog. Probably not a recent photo. Sea is warm. Air is cold. End of story.
posted by KokuRyu at 4:32 PM on August 30, 2013
However, because of leaks in the primary coolant system (and because the primary coolant is highly radioactive), the secondary coolant (aka "water") is being recycled, instead of being dumped back into the ocean (under normal circumstances secondary coolant is not radioactive). It's not an efficient process, this recycling, so they have to store the secondary coolant in hundreds of large tanks. Some of it (it's a slow process) is filtered to be recycled. It's these tanks that are leaking.
Anyway, even if secondary coolant were to get into the ocean (and some of it is), the remains of the fuel bundles are no longer so hot (well under 100 degrees Celsius), so how could the water be boiling?
This is fog. Probably not a recent photo. Sea is warm. Air is cold. End of story.
posted by KokuRyu at 4:32 PM on August 30, 2013
An MD of my acquaintance spends much of his time online battling rumours about Fukushima. He pointed out just a day or two ago that while an alarmist site told us that there were now eighteen children (out of 210,000) who had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer (and 25 more suspected), in the US a sample of 200,000 children would typically be expected to show 500 cases of thyroid cancer.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:08 AM on August 31, 2013
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:08 AM on August 31, 2013
« Older how do i rent or make money from my email list... | How to set up a wireless router as an access point... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
Anyway, this provocative article from New Scientist (alright, it's "science light", but a lot more evidence-based than the link you provided) asks
Should Fukushima's radioactive water be dumped at sea?
Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts says the Kanda estimate is probably the best he is aware of, and closely matches figures released on 21 August by Tepco, of 0.1 to 0.6 TBq per month for caesium-137 and 0.1 to 0.3 for strontium.
He points out that the north Pacific contains an estimated 100,000 TBq of caesium-137 from H-bomb testing in the 1960s, so the fallout from Fukushima is adding only a fraction of that. Total discharges from the Sellafield nuclear plant in the UK released 39,000 TBq over 40 years, he says.
posted by KokuRyu at 5:50 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]