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A guide to radiation for the clueless...
Comments
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Does anyone know what the radioactive element coming from the plant actually is? In Chernobyl it was ceasium I believe. Radioactivity's not my area of expertise but it all depends on the length of the half life of whatever's decaying as well as the dose emitted. If the media could give us these facts this could be an intelligent debate rather than panic and scare mongering.
It will be all sorts of things. Nuclear fission is essentially bashing unstable atoms of uranium or plutonium with neutrons so that they split into two pieces, releasing lots of energy. These two parts are not equal in size, and the U (and Pu) atoms don't always split into the same proportions, so while iodine-131 is one possible fission product, and caesium-137 is another, there are loads of other possibilities, and nuclear reactors produce mixtures of all of them.
Most fission products remain very radioactive for a long time. They are very highly unstable, so each element decays to something else radioactive, which decays to something else radioactive, and so on down a long chain that goes through many stages before it arrives at something that's not radioactive.
Radioactive substances may emit three different kinds of radiation:
Alpha radiation does a lot of damage but can't travel very far - a mm or two in air at the most. This is why it's safe to have alpha-emitters in smoke detectors, because the alpha-particles can't get to you from the ceiling. Alpha-emitters are very dangerous if you inhale or ingest them, though, because then the alpha-particles are produced inside you.
Gamma radiation, on the other hand, travels much further (some reaches ground level having come from space) but they're much less ionising and therefore much less dangerous.
Beta radiation is intermediate - travels further than alpha but does more damage than gamma.10. Avoiding foods that have high radioactive content. For example, soy milk might be substituted for dairy or mother's milk for children.
Soy milk is a very poor substitute for breast milk, and the proven health risks to infants of doing this would almost certainly outweigh the radiation risks. If I were a breastfeeding mother in the affected area, I would try to get myself and my baby out of the area, but I would certainly not stop breastfeeding.
ETA Thanks for the OP, Generali. That diagram has been circulating round the physics department at my school for a while, so we can use it to answer the questions the kids are inevitably answering and put the radiation risks in context.Do you know anyone who's bereaved? Point them to https://www.AtaLoss.org which does for bereavement support what MSE does for financial services, providing links to support organisations relevant to the circumstances of the loss & the local area. (Link permitted by forum team)
Tyre performance in the wet deteriorates rapidly below about 3mm tread - change yours when they get dangerous, not just when they are nearly illegal (1.6mm).
Oh, and wear your seatbelt. My kids are only alive because they were wearing theirs when somebody else was driving in wet weather with worn tyres.
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I liked the 'Laid in Wales' spoof ad they did.
That was a spoof of the Welsh Development Agency "Made in Wales" ads, intended to tempt companies to open in or relocate to Wales.
As well as "Failed in Wales" they also did "Made from Whales", listing all the products that were sourced from the marine mammals, still to the same music though. Bit sick, but still both clever and funny.0 -
yes but gen that's assuming contaminated water is your only source of radioactive dosing. however there will be cumulative dosing from food, air etc. if the children are being breastfed it's likely to be even higher as breastmilk concentrates radioactive isotopes.
You're just assuming all of that though. You seem to have no more idea than I do about the levels of radiation to which people are being exposed.
The key point to me is that if it is this sort of iodine being discussed that is doing most of the contaminating and it has a half life of 8 days, in just 2.5 weeks, radiation levels fall by 75%. In a year they fall by 99.9999999999999%, ie just 0.0000000000001% of original output of radiation is still being given off from the original isotope.
I don't know whether what that iodine is decaying to is particularly radioactive but I bet that you and 99% of the journalists writing about this stuff don't know either. How many newspapers have a nuclear physicist on the staff do you think?0 -
You're just assuming all of that though. You seem to have no more idea than I do about the levels of radiation to which people are being exposed.
The key point to me is that if it is this sort of iodine being discussed that is doing most of the contaminating and it has a half life of 8 days, in just 2.5 weeks, radiation levels fall by 75%. In a year they fall by 99.9999999999999%, ie just 0.0000000000001% of original output of radiation is still being given off from the original isotope.
I don't know whether what that iodine is decaying to is particularly radioactive but I bet that you and 99% of the journalists writing about this stuff don't know either. How many newspapers have a nuclear physicist on the staff do you think?
It isn't. Unlike most fission products, I-131 has quite a short chain. It decays by beta emission to Xe-131, which is stable, I think, or possibly I-131 decays to Xe-131m which decays by gamma emission to the stable Xe-131.
I-131 isn't more radioactive than other fission products, but the reason people concentrate on it is because the body absorbs it and then hangs onto it, which makes it more dangerous than things that either don't enter the body well or just get excreted if they do.
NB The reason for taking non-radioactive iodine is so that your thyroid (which is where the body puts iodine that you ingest) will have an oversupply of the stuff so that the body won't absorb more and any more iodine (whether radioactive or otherwise) that you ingest will therefore go straight through.Do you know anyone who's bereaved? Point them to https://www.AtaLoss.org which does for bereavement support what MSE does for financial services, providing links to support organisations relevant to the circumstances of the loss & the local area. (Link permitted by forum team)
Tyre performance in the wet deteriorates rapidly below about 3mm tread - change yours when they get dangerous, not just when they are nearly illegal (1.6mm).
Oh, and wear your seatbelt. My kids are only alive because they were wearing theirs when somebody else was driving in wet weather with worn tyres.0 -
cesium 137 levels "surprisingly" high in soil samples. http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/03/japan-soil-measurements-surprisingly.htmlThose who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves. - Lord Byron0
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Thats the sea life done in then.Not Again0
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Xenon is inert isn't it?
Yes, it's a noble gas, so it's chemically inert, and the Xe-131 isotope is also stable from a nuclear point of view, so not radioactive. It's usually the nuclear stability of fission products that we have to worry about rather than the chemical nature of whatever elements things decay into, because the nature of radioactive decay is to form the new element one atom at a time, mixed in with a whole lot of other stuff, which hugely reduces the chemical hazard.Do you know anyone who's bereaved? Point them to https://www.AtaLoss.org which does for bereavement support what MSE does for financial services, providing links to support organisations relevant to the circumstances of the loss & the local area. (Link permitted by forum team)
Tyre performance in the wet deteriorates rapidly below about 3mm tread - change yours when they get dangerous, not just when they are nearly illegal (1.6mm).
Oh, and wear your seatbelt. My kids are only alive because they were wearing theirs when somebody else was driving in wet weather with worn tyres.0
) Iodine-131, which is the stuff they are concerned about, decays to Xenon-131 which is stable and non-radioactive. This discussion has been closed.
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