John_Taverner wrote on Feb 27^th, 2016 at 4:37pm:


The government of Japan and TEPCO are responsible for the suicides not Arnie Gundersen.

Do you remember the Government official who said on national Japanese TV that if one smiles the effects of radiation cannot harm thee?

Doctors in Japan are instructed not to panic their patients by not telling them they are suffering from radiation sickness etc.

How many Thyroid cancer cases in Children who lived in the Fukushima prefecture have been diagnosed? Do you know?

Why is there a booming business in Medical Tourism out of Japan? Do you know how many Japanese people visit other countries which included Australia, just to have a reliable ultrasound check of their thyroid gland or a blood test???

Why did TEPCO refuse to acknowledge the melt downs when they occurred very early in the disaster?

Where are coriums John?

How hot are they? what are their shapes? have they left the building?

Why has there been over 400,000 L of contaminate ground water entering the Pacific ocean as it passes from the hills underneath the plant?

What information can you extract from the IAEA or the Japanese nuclear energy regulators?

but dont worry John, a mere 250,000 years and the Plutonium will decay away to near background levels. And its only 300 years for Cs137 and Sr90.

Cesium is a nasty one John - its a Potassium analog and so likes the areas of the body that Potassium lingers in - like muscles etc.

Strontium, if you check you periodic table, is a calcium analog - can you guess what part of the body Sr90 will like to settle down in?

Japan is one big radiological mess, and the monkey turds can attest to that fact John.

Well done on trying to dismiss the situation as alarmist though

Well done mate

John_Taverner wrote on Feb 27^th, 2016 at 5:08pm:


Your respect for what TEPCO and the Japanese authorities has done and concealed is touching John. I suppose the people of Japan should continue smiling to counter the effects of radiation exposure

Well done mate

I think its clear who the vultures are and who have profited from this nuclear disaster

well done John, well done mate

Chimp_Logic wrote on Feb 27^th, 2016 at 1:30pm:

I often wondered if there could be some traces of naturally occuring Plutonium somewhere,.. simply just not in mineable, or even discoverable, amounts.

.. are you telling me it's not even worth trying to build a detector?

John_Taverner wrote on Feb 27^th, 2016 at 5:36pm:

...really!

Hmnn, I suppose I imagined it half lived itself away eons ago but then like continuously shrinking the square I also imagined that some atomos must have remained !

...but I will stop that line of thinking now and get on with other things !!

Cheers 

According to my handy Isotope App on my Ipad, Plutonium has about 20 different isotopes all of which are not-naturally found on Earth. Most of the Plutonium isotopes have small half lifes, and some of them are unknown.

the range of Plutonium isotopes is from Pu228 to Pu247

The dangerous long lived Plutonium isotopes are

Pu238 (half life = 88 years)
Pu239 (half life = 24,094 years)
Pu240 (half life = 6,559 years)
Pu242 (half Life = 373,300 years)

And we must remember that between 10 and 20 half lifes are needed before the isotope can decay away into safe background radiation levels.

It is the Pu239 isotope which is primarily used in Plutonium based Nuclear Weapons.

It's an alpha emitting radioisotope so, when it decays it releases an alpha particle which is a Helium nucleus (two protons and two neutrons - no electrons, just the Helium nucleus)
Alpha particles struggle to penetrate a piece of paper, and will not go through your skin. The danger with Plutonium and most alpha emitters is when Plutonium particles are ingested, absorbed through the skin pores or lesions or inhaled directly into the lungs.

Internal radiation is where a lot of the cancers originate. The high half life means that the Alpha emitting particle lodged in the lung for example will continue to irradiate and damage cells and DNA around it throughout the life of the person who has been contaminated.

The IAEA and other regulatory bodies refer to external radiation exposure when it assesses health risks. Very convenient approach isnt it ladies and gentlemen.

And the external radiation risk model is based upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki data, and applied to a healthy 26 years old male, weighing about 70kg.

We know that children are up to 100 times more sensitive to radiation exposure than adults due to their inherently higher cell division rates as they growth. Also females are more sensitive to males. And the fetus in a pregnant woman is the most sensitive - many orders of magnitude more sensitive than adults.

After the Fukushima meltdowns The Japanese authorities increased the acceptable levels of radiation exposure for the general public by a factor of 20 (ie from 1mSv per year to 20 mSv per year)

Likewise, Nuclear power workers had their acceptable limits increased from 20 mSv/year to 200 mSv/year so that they could work longer at the Fukushima Daichi plant.

NB: the manager of the Daichi plant recently died of cancer - he worked in terribly dangerous conditions and it is said that he often shielded his radiation badge with a strip of lead so that he could continue working. Nobody really knows how much radiation he was exposed to.

yes - dont worry about a thing - the ace up the sleeve of the Nuclear power industry is the long latency period of cancer attributable to radiation exposure in the environment. People will suffer and die in the future. There will be genetic damage for a very long time.

TEPCO and Japanese government have a lot to answer for.

Indeed. With respect to Cesium isotopes though, detection centers around the Cs137 and Cs134 isotopes. Cs134 has a half life of about 2 years, so after about 20 years Cs134 levels are close to background levels.

Nuclear surface tests have ceased for many decades now, so the post March 2011 Cesium levels detected in Japan and in the northern Hemisphere in general, have been sourced to the Fukushima Daichi meltdowns and explosions because of the coupled detection of Cs137 and Cs134.

radiological surveys post Hiroshima and Nagasaki are well documented and in the scientific literature.

Well done John on your support for the TEPCO - as you may well know, TEPCO is a major corporate owner of the Victorian BRown Coal power facilities in Latrobe Valley.

Well done on supporting TEPCO as they keep your power bills to a reasonable level.

Well done John, you are personally paying for the radioactive cover up...sorry I mean clean up in Fukushima and the pacific/ Well done on that front John - well done mate

John_Taverner wrote on Feb 27^th, 2016 at 8:23pm:


Congratulations John on responding to my post. Well done mate.

It's not that you "suggested" support for TEPCO but rather that you identified Arnie Gundersen as a person that should be blamed for the suicide rate in Japan post Fukushima. You did not identify TEPCO and/or the Government for similar blame for the suicide rate.

I believe any reasonable person would assume that you rank Arnie much higher on the suicide blame list than either TEPCO or the Japanese government.

You have a serious decision to make John. Do you respond with a full list of "suicide blamers" or do you flee into the hills?

I know what I would do John

I really like the sky diving monkey John - how on earth did you think of that? Well done mate

Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Feb 27^th, 2016 at 10:03pm:


well Bq, like Sieverts and Grays is SI units

or do you prefer Roentgens?

Congratulations by the way on contributing to this very important thread theme.

Well done mate