Limited? Are you saying that radionuclides don't decay? Also, I don't eat my dog, so even if it was in dog food, it wouldn't progress up the chain to me.Originally Posted by danscope
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Limited? Are you saying that radionuclides don't decay? Also, I don't eat my dog, so even if it was in dog food, it wouldn't progress up the chain to me.
Et tu BAUT? Quantum mutatus ab illo.
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Big highly radioactive fire.
Bad Post-Doc
Dale Carnegie may have said that, but he was quoting Benjamin Franklin.
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It's really simple, if it's there forever it's because it isn't radioactive.
If they're there for almost forever they don't do anything to warrant worrying about.
The isotopes you should worry about aren't the ones with half-lives in the thousands of years, because they aren't very active.
And it isn't the ones that get the Geiger counters ticking madly on TV, because they'll be gone soon.
It's the ones with half lives on the order of decades, which are there long enough to do damage and are active enough that there actually is damage worth worrying about.
An example of high half-life radionuclids that no one worries about is the natural potassium 40 with an abundance of 0.0117(1)%, which means there are about 120 tons of 40K mined and sold every year of which about 100 tons get spread on fields as fertilizer (as part of the megaton of potassium used for that purpose each year).
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But most likely with a more localized spread than Chernobyl as there isn't a huge pile of coal surrounding them fuel rods ready to burn along the metals to help drive the material high up in the atmosphere.
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Reductionist and proud of it.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
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Hear, hear.
and just to add that highly radio-active stuff decays really quickly - that's why it's highly radio-active.You are probably more likely* to receive a bigger dose of radiation by going into your cellar, if you lived in Cornwall or some other place with granite bedrock. Your smoke detectors are a higher risk to you than Fukushima is right now.
(and anybody who thinks that they are at risk from their smoke detector **, after my comment, should just sit in a corner somewhere.)
I don't know what else to say, other than the world is a big place. I don't think any sheep died from chernobyl, let alone people ( talking actual radio-active poisoning from the explosion here - some workers have died since but they were up close and personal at the critical time ), but the folklore persists.
* This is comparing the USA and Fukushima
** You probably shouldn't eat it though !
Last edited by headrush; 2012-Jun-11 at 08:05 PM. Reason: Added second proviso
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Because irregular shaped pieces of plastic are likely to damage your intestines.
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Reductionist and proud of it.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
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Lol
But just in case - http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf57.html
Established Member
Wow, that's pretty hard core. It's not a pleasant thing, so you may have to look around a bit, but they are there and they are real: http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=39213
Then, you may want to check this out and maybe even lend a hand: http://www.chernobyl-international.c...programme.aspx
Twenty-five years after the nuclear meltdown in Chernobyl, the aftermath continues to affect more than a million children in and around the contaminated area. There has been a 250 percent increase in congenital birth deformities since the explosion, a 100 percent increase in the incidence of cancer and leukemia and a staggering 2,400 percent increase in the incidence of thyroid cancer. Other disorders, including congenital heart diseases, have also increased significantly.
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I already knew such claims were ridiculous, so it isn't a relief to me.
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Source http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/americium.pdfAfter ingestion or inhalation, most americium is excreted from the
body within a few days and never enters the bloodstream; only about 0.05% of the amount taken into the
body by ingestion is absorbed into the blood. After leaving the intestine or lung, about 10% clears the body.
The rest of what enters the bloodstream deposits about equally in the liver and skeleton where it remains for
long periods of time, with biological retention half-lives of about 20 and 50 years, respectively (per
simplified models that do not reflect intermediate redistribution).
So after eating a smoke alarm you have about 17 Bq of radioactive material extra in your body.
This is roughly the same you get from eating one banana (about 15 Bq).
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Reductionist and proud of it.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
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They already are, though, mostly potassium 40. Just quoting from Wikipedia:
Potassium-40 is the largest source of natural radioactivity in animals and humans. An adult human body contains about 160 grams of potassium, hence about 0.000117 x 160 = 0.0187 grams of 40K; whose decay produces about 4,400 disintegrations per second (becquerels) continuously throughout the life of the body.
As above, so below
Established Member
Only 10% of the time does a Potassium 40 atom decay with the emission of a gamma ray. The other modes emit electrons, positrons, neutrinos and antineutrinos. The dangerous disintegrations would be about 400 bequerels.
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It only doubled? And have they shown it was due to radiation and not chemical pollutants common then and now?
Et tu BAUT? Quantum mutatus ab illo.
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That would be true if it wasn't for the little fact that electrons (aka beta-particles) and positrons do more damage than gamma-rays. Its just that charged particles are easy to shield against so are far less of a worry, unless of course they do something like start out inside your body.
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The article also acknowledges that about 50% of the deaths are due to inadaquate medical resources.
It's very difficult to pin any increase on the disaster itself, so people just take any increase and apply it to the one cause.
Did it have an effect? Sure, but it's not the numbers that some of these sources quote.
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Well, that's a very good question and one which is apparently not without controversy. I ran across this today from March of this year: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cherno...175021511.html
Chernobyl's Real Horror Show Isn't the Radiation, It's the Economics
Who cares about radiation? If you want to measure the real impact of Chernobyl, Fukushima, and whatever nuclear disasters are in our future, tally the cost... if anything, my time in Chernobyl, which included long conversations with public health specialists who have studied the disaster, taught me that the direct effects of the radiation from even the world's worst nuclear disaster almost certainly aren't as bad as you'd think. Four thousand cases of relatively treatable thyroid cancer, for sure, and the rest is just guesswork, given the difficulty of differentiating the influence of radiation exposure from the already high background rates of cancer. Here's the thing they don't tell you, though, and it doesn't hit you until you're standing in an empty field in the heart of Ukraine -- "the breadbasket of Europe" -- looking around at what could be some of the most productive farmland on a planet desperate for all the calories it can get: The economic cost of Chernobyl is incalculably huge.
Here's the question to answer: Would you live there? Or if you were a business, would you invest there? And if you were raising crops, do you really think someone is going to buy grain "made in Chernobyl"?
Living near Chernobyl or Fukushima is probably safer than a long list of other activities (including, for example, living in places with high levels of air pollution). The thing is, that doesn't matter. In both cases, through negligence and poor planning, two of the most technologically advanced civilizations on the planet -- the USSR and Japan -- effectively dirty-bombed huge swaths of their own territory. The astronomical cleanup costs are just the beginning -- the real impact is the fact that key productive areas (grain near Chernobyl, fisheries and rice in Japan) are rendered completely non-productive for decades, even centuries. Having a reactor explode is a disaster on par with a small-scale war...
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It's no surprise that the people who profit from some dangerous activity downplay the risk, and after it's impossible to downplay it, they say it's a very small problem, and even insist the number of people effected is very tiny. Then they tell us the natural background radiation is worse, or that bananas contain more radioactivity. That way they can keep spreading radioactive material into the ecosystem, and into people, with out feeling bad about it. Or settling lawsuits from damage from radioactive material they put into your food, water, air, and eventually into your body itself.
There is no doubt at all that this is going on. But the effort to convince us that it isn't really dangerous is very effective. They might even argue that if they stopped the consequences would be worse. So radioactive material continues to enter our air and food everyday.
Be it potassium from fertilizer, or uranium from burning coal.
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Show that is it anything more than 'radioactivity scares me, so it must be stopped'.It's no surprise that the people who profit from some dangerous activity downplay the risk, and after it's impossible to downplay it, they say it's a very small problem, and even insist the number of people effected is very tiny. Then they tell us the natural background radiation is worse, or that bananas contain more radioactivity. That way they can keep spreading radioactive material into the ecosystem, and into people, with out feeling bad about it. Or settling lawsuits from damage from radioactive material they put into your food, water, air, and eventually into your body itself.
There is no doubt at all that this is going on. But the effort to convince us that it isn't really dangerous is very effective. They might even argue that if they stopped the consequences would be worse. So radioactive material continues to enter our air and food everyday.
Be it potassium from fertilizer, or uranium from burning coal.
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Gigabyte,It's no surprise that the people who profit from some dangerous activity downplay the risk, and after it's impossible to downplay it, they say it's a very small problem, and even insist the number of people effected is very tiny. Then they tell us the natural background radiation is worse, or that bananas contain more radioactivity. That way they can keep spreading radioactive material into the ecosystem, and into people, with out feeling bad about it. Or settling lawsuits from damage from radioactive material they put into your food, water, air, and eventually into your body itself.
There is no doubt at all that this is going on. But the effort to convince us that it isn't really dangerous is very effective. They might even argue that if they stopped the consequences would be worse. So radioactive material continues to enter our air and food everyday.
Be it potassium from fertilizer, or uranium from burning coal.
That post is actually pretty close to calling several other members who have posted in this thread liars or stooges of the nuclear industry.
If you have actual evidence or references that what you say is correct, or others are in error, great, present it. Merely stating "there is no doubt" is not evidence.
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Did you actually read the numbers I used?Be it potassium from fertilizer, or uranium from burning coal.
That potassium 40 I mentioned being spread as fertilizer is the naturally occurring concentration, it's the concentration in every sample of naturally occurring potassium, including the bits that are in your body even if you'd eaten nothing but organic food for your entire life.
This isn't really having more radioactive material enter our food, since without the fertilizer potassium 40 would enter the food in exactly the same proportion, there would just be less food.
I do agree with you that radioactive pollution from burning coal is real and is adding radioactivity to the system, the reason for talking about it is that it has over the years added more radioactivity that nuclear power has even if you include all accidents.
The point is that it's silly to argue against nuclear power because of the radioactive pollution when there are other power sources that produce more radioactive pollution but aren't being argued against.
Or to say it another way, the point is that if you want to reduce radioactive pollution, you should aim at replacing the coal fired power plants first because that would result in the largest reduction.
Replacing them with nuclear plants will result in a lower reduction but still a reduction, replacing them with anything else it technically not feasible at the moment, but would be a long term goal.
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Reductionist and proud of it.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
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That quote makes it sound like it's a PR problem based on irrational fear, not a radiation problem.
On the contrary, the general public appears to be inordinately frightened of radiation. The members of BAUT are unusual in that they tend to be more highly educated on radiation than the general public, hence the lower fear factor among us.
Et tu BAUT? Quantum mutatus ab illo.
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That burning coal puts radioactive material into the ecosystem, almost nobody doubts.As for fertilizers,http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/sources/tobacco.html (more information at link)phosphate fertilizers, favored by the tobacco industry, contain radium and its decay products (including lead-210 and polonium-210). When phosphate fertilizer is spread on tobacco fields year after year, the concentration of lead-210 and polonium-210 in the soil rises.
The radioactive particles lodge in lung tissue and over time contribute a huge radiation dose.
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I did not know that!
I knew that fast and heavy particles were bad news but I did not know that fast electrons did a lot of damage.
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Alpha and beta particles have little penetration, and tend to dump most of their energy into the first thing they hit. Starting from outside the body, they're likely to get absorbed by the air (alpha particles generally only managing a few centimeters, beta particles a few meters), clothing, or dead skin cells. They're bad news if isotopes that produce them get inside the body, though.
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In measuring radiation absorbed in the body you can look at two different things, Energy absorbed, and damage done.
The first one is (SI units) measured in Grays (1 joule of energy in the form of ionizing radiation absorbed per kg.) and is straightforward to measure.
The second one is measured in Sieverts and is derived from the first by taking the dose in Grays and multiplying by a different factor depending ion the type or ionizing radiation, for example alpha radiation has a conversion factor of 20 because for the same energy it does 20 times more damage.
For gamma and beta radiation this factor is 1, for neutrons it's really between 3 and 10 depending on their velocity and is normally conservatively assumed to be10.
Note incidentally that Grashel's post from yesterday was wrong about electrons, alpha particles (and neutrons) do more damage for the same energy, not electrons (beta particles).
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Reductionist and proud of it.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn. Benjamin Franklin
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails. Clarence Darrow
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. Mark Twain
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I don't think that was the thesis of the article at all. Rather, it was if the total costs of a reactor failure are considered, for example, the loss of arable land, then nuclear power turns out to be not a very attractive energy source. It's an old risk analysis problem that simply weighs the likelihood of an accident against the consequences, which is only valid if one considers all of the consequences.
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I think it is worthwhile to include such potential costs in calculating the true costs of any power source, even if the loss of such arable lands is from only fear or perceived hazard (I'm not saying that the losses are only from fear, but in the world of real estate, fear is still going to decrease the value of the land).
But, if you are going to do that for nuclear power, then you should do it for all power sources. For petroleum, for example, you should include not only the costs associated with climate change, but the costs of oil spills, refinery pollution and accidents, transportation spills, etc., etc. I'm sure there are similar costs for any source of power.
I'd guess there is a doctoral dissertation in economics in such an analysis. By the way, I searched the web for such an analysis and a quick search didn't find an easy answer; there are a lot of such analysises, but they tend to be biases by whoever did the study. This wikipedia article might be a place to start.
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You had me right up to here. While there are certainly costs associated with any power generation scheme, I think I would argue that those associated with a nuclear accident represent a difference of "kind" rather than "degree". Acid rain, spills, etc. most associated with fossil fuels may temporarily shut down a fishery, for example, whereas those associated with Fukishima or Chernobyl take resources out of production in perpetuity.
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And I would argue with "perpetuity".
For example, Chernobyl may have taken an area out of production for 20 years (I'm just pulling numbers out of my ear, for sake of discussion) and the BP oil spill might have taken an area out of production for 5 years. But you can't just look at time - you also have to look at size of the area, economic value of the production from that area, etc.
Second, you have to look at the probability of such events. In 30 years, globally, we've had two large nuclear disasters. How many major oil spills have we had in the same period of time (wikipedia list of spills)?
Third, I notice you didn't include climate change. I would argue that the effects of climate change last for a similar time scale (and possibly longer) than the effects of nuclear disasters. Even the effects of acid rain, which you do mention, last on the order of decades (forests take long times to recover from this).
Now, it is possible, if one calculated all of this, that Chernobyl or Fukishima would still be more costly. But that isn't an obvious conclusion to me.
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