[Peace-discuss] BBC nuclear gibberish - not 8 days, more like 3 months

[Stuart Levy]

Heard last night a BBC report of very high (> 1000 times acceptable)
levels of radioactive iodine in the ocean, a few hundred meters
from the Fukushima plants.

This is alarming.  But more alarming is the completely *false* comment
made twice during the report, once by the commentator introducing
the story and again by correspondent Chris Hogg, that
"after 8 days the levels of iodine will no longer be of human concern".

That sounds comforting.  Stay clear of the water for a week or two
and everything will be fine, right?

That figure seems to be taken from the half-life of the longest-lived
radioactive isotope of iodine, which is indeed 8 days.  But that is
*not* the time at which it will cease to be of concern.

Given that the sampled water's iodine level was over 1000 (actually 1250)
times higher than the amount considered acceptable, it would take over
ten times iodine's half-life -- around *three months* --
before radioactive decay would reduce it to 'acceptable' levels.

Of course other things would happen to the water in that time too --
mixing with more ocean water, perhaps takeup by marine organisms.
Decay isn't the only factor affecting environmental exposure.
But this kind of misstatement is unconscionable.  And it's not hard
to get it right, as in this Japan Times story:

    http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110326x1.html