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

[Karen Medina]

I disagree with Mort, there is more to be concerned about: the BBC is
saying that there is not much to be concerned about and nothing to
worry about 8 days from now. The half life is not the end of the
radioactivity. The BBC is spreading wrong information: The half life
is not the end of the radioactivity.

-karen medina

On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Morton K. Brussel
<brussel at illinois.edu> wrote:
> From your reference:
> But he also stressed there is "no immediate risk to public health," as the
> changing tides will dilute the iodine-131, and its half-life, or the amount
> of time it takes for it to lose half its radioactivity, is only eight days.
> Another note:  No one knows exactly what "acceptable" is: It could be
> multiples of what has been currently set.
> [From Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131.
> The risk of thyroid cancer in later life appears to diminish with increasing
> age at time of exposure. Most risk estimates are based on studies in which
> radiation exposures occurred in children or teenagers. When adults are
> exposed, it has been difficult for epidemiologists to detect a statistically
> significant difference in the rates of thyroid disease above that of a
> similar but otherwise unexposed group. ]
> Your last two paragraphs are most pertinent. The concentration was evidently
> quite localized, and the sea is large. An instance of homeopathy |:=), based
> on the concept of hormesis [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis] ?
> There's nothing very alarming here except that it indicates continued, not
> understood, leakage from the reactor complex. It might have come from the
> wash spilled over the reactors to cool them.
> --mkb
> On Mar 26, 2011, at 10:09 AM, Stuart Levy wrote:
>
> 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
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-- 
-- karen medina
"The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." - Mark Twain