Based on the latest radiation measures by Prof. Hayakawa[jp], I estimated the following "no go" zones in Japan based on the radioactive cesium found in the "black dust" (dirt in the roadside, often hotspots of radiation):
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| My opinion: the red areas are a no-go zone (but many millions live in them) |
No specifics strict terminology can be applied because there is no absolute rule on how radiation affects you considering only on becquerels per kilogram. But based on the notion that Japan considered, prior to the accident, that 100 Bq/kg to be radioactive waste, then I would say that the colors could mean:
- Fukushima: don't go at all: killer zone. The westernmost part of the department would be however in the red zone (still very bad).
- Red Zone: avoid it all you can, bring food and water from the outside, try not to live there, very specially not children nor pregnant women. Roadside hotspots here typically have 1000-10,000 Bq/kg, 10x to 100x what used to be considered nuclear waste, sometimes even much more. In some cases, specially in Greater Tokyo, the measures are almost as high as in Fukushima.
- Orange Zone: less dangerous, with roadside hotspots often above the 100 Bq/kg "nuclear waste" measure but nothing >1000 Bq/kg.
- Yellow areas: some >100 Bq/kg hotspots and often >30 Bq/kg ones but generally within safety levels.
- Not colored: either unknown of clearly low radioactivity.
Special acknowledgement to Ex-SKF (I don't speak Japanese so I could have missed a lot of information without his explanations in English).
Note: at the time of writing this note, I could not open the first map (radiation fallout contours for April 2011), which gave me a 404 error, but here there is another link (3.3 MB, jpg format).
Special warning on Japanese food: while these maps reflect environmental radioactive risk, the Japanese government is applying a criminal policy of forcing people to eat radioactive food, apparently because they just do not want to evacuate Fukushima so they pretend it's all alright (when it's obviously not), and often the origin of products is criminally mislabeled. Hence all Japanese food and products are suspect and potentially dangerous and you may well be unlucky enough to eat the wrong sushi snack and get radiation poisoning, while another dish may be perfectly edible. Personally, in the current conditions of lack of control, I would not eat anything Japanese if I can help it, nor seafood nor mushrooms from anywhere in all the North Pacific basin.
You're mskign serveral mistakes:
ReplyDelete---Overlooking the real interesting map (the micro Sv/h that provides Prof. Hayakawa), compare it with natural radiation and make predictions on human health using the LNT hypothesis.
---Compare Bq/m2 with Bq/m3. Some calculations are to be made before converting them into Sv/year (go back to the previous point).
---You don't mind to figure what the 100 Bq/kg really means. By comparison:
* You yourself have a 70 Bq/kg.
* "Low level waste" starts at 100 Bq/kg.
* Coffee has 1,000 Bq/kg.
* Fertilizer has 2,000-5,000 Bq/kg.
* "Low level waste" can be up to 1,000,000 Bq/kg.
* Uranium is 25,000,000 Bq/kg.
* High level nuclear waste (50 years old) is 10,000,000,000,000 Bq/kg.
The 100 Bq/kg limit is an extremely conservative figure for considering something as "nuclear waste" and ONLY applies to nuclear industry and nuclear medicine. For all the other human activities no limit is set, with the sole exception of radon in houses. Per example, if the limit was applied to coal, its ash would be considered as "nuclear waste".
Greetings
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Your opinion is too benevolent, based not on facts nor the principle of precaution but on the propaganda of the nuclear industry.
Delete"You yourself have a 70 Bq/kg."
Based on the content of potassium in the body, which has a radioactivity of c. 31 Bq/g.
Fair enough. However if you more than double this figure in the environment (which means the air you breath, the water you drink and quite probably the food you eat), the effects grow exponentially. And that's why "low-level" nuclear waste is tolerable only if your exposure to it is minimized.
Remember that children particularly incorporate much more materials to their growing body than adults, so their risk is maximal. And we all love our kids, even most of the time other peoples' kids, right? We don't want them to face the nefarious destiny of Chernobyl's children (search for a documentary on them: it's absolutely depressing!) This is not about adult workers semi-voluntarily specialized in the nuclear industry, this is about the children first and foremost. You should never raise children in a nuclear waste yard, as is half of Japan today. If you do that willingly, it's extremely evil, and if you force others to do it, it's also criminally evil.
"Coffee has 1,000 Bq/kg."
I presume you're referring to this pay-per-view "study": http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10967-012-2101-7
I'm utterly surprised and suspicious of their findings of such a most rare element as Polonium in coffee, my bet is that they have surveyed only some very specific plantation which is contaminated, otherwise there should be no polonium. Sadly I can't afford to pay to read the paper and therefore analyze critically the "materials and methods" section.
"The 100 Bq/kg limit is an extremely conservative figure for considering something as "nuclear waste" and ONLY applies to nuclear industry and nuclear medicine."
We're talking nuclear industry here: it is the nuclear industry which has contaminated the play yards of the children of Japan, their water sources, their rice fields. Or are specialist nuclear workers owed greater protection than innocent children? Who are you trying to fool?
Also notice the mention to "hotspots": the average is not the only things that matter. We are talking of the dangerous presence of materials at even 100x the nuclear waste level.
DeleteBack to coffee's alleged polonium: "Polonium is a very rare element in nature because of the short half-life of all its isotopes" (Wikipedia). It's obvious that the crops studied in that paper must have been somehow polluted. IRL polonium is almost always a product of uranium decay and therefore of the nuclear industry, it is NOT natural.
Delete"if you more than double this figure in the environment (which means the air you breath, the water you drink and quite probably the food you eat), the effects grow exponentially"
ReplyDeleteScientific community adopts the LNT hypothesis as the most reasonable (both by pleausibility and principle of precaution) approach to predict the health effects of radiation. LNT means Linear No Threshold. Linear, not "exponential". And all the antinuclear NGOs accept it.
I have to repeat. Please, check:
---the micro Sv/h that provides Prof. Hayakawa.
---compare it with natural background radiation (exclusion zone is set for up 20 mSv/year, while Erath's average is 2 mSv/year altohugh there are places with 10 mSv/year as Helsinki and Castilla y León with no more cancer incidences observed).
---do the math with LNT.
The calculation of internal exposures is not very difficult. And isn't has high as you think.
I also have to insist:
Is granite "nuclear waste"? Because it has 10 times more radiation than the treshold for classifying it as nuclear waste. Do you consider than permit children living in a granite environment "it's extremely evil, and if you force others to do it, it's also criminally evil"?
Finally, the Polonium detected in coffee isn't excepctional. Tobacco has also quite a high rate of Polonium (the radiation absorved by a smoker is surprisingly high).
For what I read there is indeed some "concern" about the possible radioactive dangers of some granites, particularly those variants that include some uranium and thorium (New Hampshire granite), although these vary a lot and most should not be considered radioactive beyond the usual and unavoidable background levels.
DeleteThe polonium thing is still clearly anti-natural and MUST be the byproduct of persistent nuclear industry contamination: there's practically no natural polonium because it decays quickly. However you may be explaining why tobacco is bad for health and may cause lung and other cancers.
You're basically espousing the "radiation is good for you" kamikaze argument of the Japanese authorities. If you can't fight against it, then join it, right? Well, not a good idea in the case of such a destructor force, really.
Yes, there's few natural polonium because it decays quickly.
ReplyDeleteBut, because it decays quickly, it's extremely radioactive.
So, tiny amounts of Polonium, although undetectable chemically, can be detected because of the radiation they produce.
The Polonium in the tobacco comes from the uranium in the ground. The use of fertilizers increases the concentration of uranium in the ground (fertilizers include phosphate and phosphate has quite a big concentration of uranium, check my previous point when I told that fertilizers had 2,000-5,000 Bq/kg). That's the reason why fertilizer plants of Huelva and Flix have radiation contamination.
Yes, as I've told, smokers receive quite a lot of radiation for tobacco. It certainly increases the cancer risk, specially for lung cancer. It's not fresh news and I've seen public campaings listing Po-210 as a cancer generator.
No, I'm not saying that "radiation is good for you". Neither are Japanese authorities saying it. You're commiting the strawman fallacy. What I've tried to explain is that the 20 mSv/year that Japan has set as the limit for the evacuation zone is not far above the 10 mSv/year that some zones of the Earth have naturally.
Greetings
Bleh, my comment failed to post1 :(
Delete"The use of fertilizers increases the concentration of uranium in the ground (fertilizers include phosphate and phosphate has quite a big concentration of uranium, check my previous point when I told that fertilizers had 2,000-5,000 Bq/kg)."
Wow! I didn't know that. More reason to avoid as much as possible agro-industrial products.
And that should also apply to tobacco, however with the laws we suffer, we just don't have a choice.
"No, I'm not saying that "radiation is good for you". Neither are Japanese authorities saying it."
You may not have said that but some Japanese authorities have in the past indeed, what was an insult to intelligence and very especially to the victims.
Anyway: Chernobyl children, who have a horrible health because of radiation in their growth, were not raised in the exclusion zone (obviously), but in other "low contamination" areas. The same applies to Japan.