WHAT DO THE MAPS OF FUKUSHIMA RADIATION IN THE PACIFIC REALLY TELL US? But then we started blowing stuff up with nuclear bombs and VOILA!, there are now detectable, but safe, levels of Cesium-137 in all the world oceans. Before us humans, there was no Cesium-137 on earth. WHAT’S CESIUM-137?Ĭesium-137 is product of nuclear fission. And kids, Sieverts and Seavers are both dangerous to your health but please don’t confuse them. Even if you absorbed the same number of Grays from Cesium or Polonium, you would still effectively receive more damaging radiation from Polonium because the number of Sieverts is higher for Polonium than Cesium. For example alpha radiation from naturally occurring Polonium-210 is more damaging to biological tissues than gamma radiation from Cesium-137. You can convert from Grays and Rads to Rem and Sieverts, but you have to know what kind of radiation it is. Sieverts* or “roentgen equivalent in man”: how badly radiation will damage biological tissue (1 Sv = 100 rem) Gray or Rad: radiation absorbed by another material (1Gy = 100 rad) But fear not, I’ve listed them below and what they mean (SI units first).īecquerel or Curie: radiation emitted from a radioactive material (1 Ci = 3.7 × 10 10 Bq) When you start reading the news/literature/blogs, there are what seems like a billion different units to explain radiation. And as it turns out, they recently found contaminated groundwater has also started leaking into the sea. There aren’t great estimates of how much of each of these isotopes were released into the ocean since TEPCO, the company that owns the power plant hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with information, but the current estimates are around 538,100 terabecquerels (TBq) which is above Three-Mile Island levels, but below Chernobyl levels. These two pathways introduced mostly Iodine-131, Cesium-137, and Cesium-134, but also a sprinkling of Tellurium, Uranium and Strontium to the area surrounding the power plant. Radioactive isotopes were also released into the air and were absorbed by the ocean when they rained down upon it. The double whammy of an earthquake and a tsunami pretty much released a s**tstorm of badness: the power went out, meltdown started and eventually the radioactive cooling seawater started leaking (and was also intentionally released) into the ocean.
The radioactive rods in the Fukushima power plant are usually cooled by seawater. WHAT WAS RELEASED INTO THE OCEAN AT FUKUSHIMA? Which is why I am here to give you the facts, and nothing but the facts. They did just that, but there is a severe lack of facts in these posts. These posts were meant to scare people (and possibly written by terrified authors). While there are terrible things that happened around the Fukushima Power Plant in Japan Alaska, Hawaii and the West Coast aren’t in any danger. I’m here to tell you that these posts are just plain garbage. Posts with titles like “ Holy Fukushima – Radiation From Japan Is Already Killing North Americans” and “ 28 Signs That The West Coast Is Being Absolutely Fried With Nuclear Radiation From Fukushima” (which Southern Fried Science has already throughly debunked ) keep popping up on my facebook feed from well-meaning friends. Rather unfortunately, it has also led to some wild speculation on the widespread dangers of Fukushima radiation on the internet. Radioactive particles were released into the atmosphere and ocean, contaminating groundwater, soil and seawater which effectively closed local Japanese fisheries.
It also resulted in the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl when the tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. On March 11th, 2011 the Tōhoku earthquake and resulting tsunami wreaked havoc on Japan.
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