Fukushima released 13,000,000,000 times more neutrons than initially estimated — “Obvious implication for human health” — Gov’t: “Neutron radiation is the most severe and dangerous radiation” known to mankind; Can travel great distances
Fukushima radiation nears California coast, judged harmless
By Courtney Sherwood 11 November 2014 12:00 pm
After a two-and-a-half year ocean journey, radioactive contamination from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan has drifted to within 160 kilometers of the California coast, according to a new study. But the radiation levels are minuscule and do not pose a threat, researchers say....
[M]arine chemist Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts convinced an eclectic group of organizations to collect water samples up and down the west coast of North America. Following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, Buesseler had tracked radioactive contaminants in the Black Sea, the closest major water body to the accident site. To pay for similar research in the much larger Pacific Ocean, he turned to crowdfunding—the increasingly popular method of using the Internet to bring multiple people together to fund costly endeavors. Government bodies such as the Umpqua Soil and Water Conservation District, universities, and conservation groups joined in, offering both to collect water from more than 50 sites in the Pacific Ocean near U.S. shores and to pay to ship and test those samples in Buesseler’s lab.
The findings are reassuring, Buesseler says. He measured a high of just 8 becquerels of radiation per cubic meter in the samples. Of that, he says, less than 2 becquerels came from cesium-134 traced to Fukushima. The remainder is largely from strontium-90 and cesium-137: Some of that is fallout from mid-20th century atomic bomb tests in the Pacific, and some may have come from Fukushima—these isotopes lack the half-life fingerprint that ties cesium-134 to the Japanese disaster. The total level of radiation is hardly worth worrying about, Buesseler says: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for drinking water allow up to 7400 becquerels per cubic meter. Buesseler is presenting his latest findings Thursday at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry North America’s annual meeting.
http://news.sciencemag.org/asiapacif...udged-harmless
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I know this is really shitty to think or say but I'm so grateful I moved from Tokyo in 2005. I would be a basketcase worrying about this stuff. I still have friends there though and we don't talk about it. They are higher ups in the Armed Forces with families there with them. It's just something they take in stride and with dignity. Like good Americans do. Same with the Japanese. Those people over there are so much better than I could ever hope to be. I hope this is more pop-science and most will be okay. I hate to think of some of my dearest friends being fucked in the long run. I guess maybe that's not so shitty then...
Stop hyperventilating. What does it take to stop a neutron (the basis of neutron radiation)? The answer is about two meters of less of water. Reactors used attenuated Teflon to stop neutrons. You know, that 13 million or billion is real scary for some but when you understand that normal radiation is measured in thousandths of REMs you begin to realize...what am I saying. Most of you can't realize and don't want to. You just want to scare people or be scared.