Damage being done to the Pacifics eco-system due to the Fukushima incident

[Ant Sinclair]

Through various media outlets there appears to be a lot of damage to the pacifics eco-system. Are there any on-going studies to marine life including phytoplankton affected by the on-going leakage of radio-active materials?

[Strange]

It is being intensively studied. And, although I haven't been following it recently, I haven't seen anything to suggest it will have any great impact.

 

These seem typical:

 

Initial measurements of Pu isotopes in seawater and marine sediments off the coast from Fukushima indicated no detectable change occurred in Pu inventories in the western Pacific after the disaster. These two most recent studies monitored the activity and isotopic composition of Pu in seawater and marine sediments off of Japan from 2008-2013. Similar to earlier work these studies find that the release of Pu isotopes by the Fukushima accident to the Pacific Ocean has been negligible. The Fukushima signal is not detectable in the ocean off Japan relative to legacy sources from atmospheric weapons testing in the 20^th century. Given these accumulating results ^239+240Pu from Fukushima is unlikely to negatively impact the health of the Pacific Ocean ecosystem and levels in the environment from Fukushima will not pose a danger to the population of North America.

http://fukushimainform.ca/2015/02/23/most-recent-measurements-of-plutonium-in-pacific-fukushima-fallout-undetectable/

 

Although some radionuclides are significantly elevated, dose calculations suggest minimal impact on marine biota or humans due to direct exposure in surrounding ocean waters, though considerations for biological uptake and consumption of seafood are discussed and further study is warranted.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es202816c

 

And a very detailed article here: http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/how-is-fukushimas-fallout-affecting-marine-life

[Moontanman]

I would have to say that there is a lot of hype around the Fukushima accident, very difficult to separate hype from reality sadly...

[Ant Sinclair]

Info/disinfo - no one knows what to believe any more!

Please take a look at this Strange, more to follow.

 

 

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/12/fukushima-radiation-something-else-causing-mass-die-wildlife-pacific-ocean.html

 

Sorry gents, thanks Moontanman and Strange for Your replies!

Edited March 12, 2015 by Ant Sinclair

[swansont]

One issue here is the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. There's a tendency to blame Fukushima for everything that's happened recently. But it's not as if that's the only environmental pressure in the world.

[overtone]

It's possible that the great mass of debris and products of industrial civilization taken into the ocean from the tsunami will have more influence on Pacific ocean ecosystems than the radiation from the nukes. And that is hardly being monitored at all.

 

 

 

I would have to say that there is a lot of hype around the Fukushima accident, very difficult to separate hype from reality sadly...

 

There is a pattern to the development of the hype over time, starting with the initial event: subsequent reports have consistently revealed initial minimization and denial in earlier reports, and the severity of the admitted damage as well as the scale of the risks present at each moment of time has increased with the passing of time and the acquisition of information by the public.

 

This is completely standard and typical of nuclear mishaps, and in other serious mishaps this pattern of slowly emerging piecemeal depictions of significant harms and risks initially denied or left silent has continued for decades. If this pattern continues for Fukushima, questions of significant damage to various Pacific ecosystems will come into reasonable view.

Edited March 13, 2015 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

OK, lets have a look at some data.

Here's a map picked up from the web showing the "plume"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26329323

Scary, isn't it?

Now look at the scale

Almost all of it is less than 100 Bq/m^3

OK, what does that mean?

Well, according to this

http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/potassium-k-in-urine?page=2

human urine typically contains about 50mMol/litre of potassium which is naturally radioactive.

50mMol/litre is 50 moles per m^3

which is roughly 2Kg of potassium in each cubic metre of urine.

Eagh gram of potassium has a natural radioactivity of about 31 Bq

(from here)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium#Isotopes

So the 2kg of the stuff in a cubic metre of urine would be about 60,000Bq

 

So, to be crude, my piss (or yours) is roughly a thousand times more radioactive than that "plume"

 

Why does anyone think it's going to do much damage?

[overtone]

So, to be crude, my piss (or yours) is roughly a thousand times more radioactive than that "plume"

Why does anyone think it's going to do much damage?

Or to ask the question from the other pov: why would anyone presume that level of dilution on that scale in the open ocean was harmless?

Just for starters: the beings of the ocean filter the water for nutrients, concentrating in their bodies whatever they find useful. That kind of behavior is how your piss became concentrated - the water you drink is far more dilute.

A lot of the radioactive stuff put out by Fukushima has vanished.

Edited March 14, 2015 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

Or to ask the question from the other pov: why would anyone presume that level of dilution on that scale in the open ocean was harmless?

 

 

Ok, Seawater contains about 400 ppmn of potassium.

So a cubic metre contains about 200 grams.

At 31 Bq per gram that's 6200 Bq/m^3

So the natural radioactivity of seawater (from just the potassium- there are other radioactive materials present) is about a hundred times more than this "plume"

I presume that, since the life in the ocean is used to the radiation present, adding a percent or so to it won't make much difference.

 

Do you think that there's some means by which the biology can cope with 6200 Bq/tonne, but not 6300?

[Ant Sinclair]

 

The link above is to a video of Steven Starr(Director of The Clinical Laboratory Science Program Of The University Of Missouri).

In the video He puts into perspective Potassium40 and Cesium137.

"Comparing Potassium40 to Cesium137 is like comparing a stick of dynamite to an Atomic Bomb"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, lets have a look at some data.

Here's a map picked up from the web showing the "plume"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26329323

Scary, isn't it?

Now look at the scale

Almost all of it is less than 100 Bq/m^3

OK, what does that mean?

Well, according to this

http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/potassium-k-in-urine?page=2

human urine typically contains about 50mMol/litre of potassium which is naturally radioactive.

50mMol/litre is 50 moles per m^3

which is roughly 2Kg of potassium in each cubic metre of urine.

Eagh gram of potassium has a natural radioactivity of about 31 Bq

(from here)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium#Isotopes

So the 2kg of the stuff in a cubic metre of urine would be about 60,000Bq

 

So, to be crude, my piss (or yours) is roughly a thousand times more radioactive than that "plume"

 

Why does anyone think it's going to do much damage?

Edited March 15, 2015 by Ant Sinclair

[John Cuthber]

He does make that assertion (at about 4:10 if anyone wants to look at it)

He doesn't show that it is true.

And he's rather missing the point.

He points out that a gram of potassium is about a zillion* times less radioactive than a gram of caesium- which is true.

But since the comparisons I have made already take account of that difference the point isn't relevant.

 

If I wanted to be sensationalist, I could have said that urine is roughly a thousand zillion times more radioactive than the Fukushima plume (the ratio of the masses of the radioactive materials).

In the same way, I could then go on to say he's talking about the difference between a thousand zillion sticks of dynamite and an atom bomb.

That's roughly 25 million billion tonnes of dynamite vs an atom bomb (The only nukes used in anger have been about 15000 tonne equivalent)

 

What we are talking about are two materials that are chemically fairly similar, tend to get mistaken for one another by biological systems and are both beta emitters.

 

The big difference is that the beta emission from potassium actually carries more energy (1.33 MeV (and sometimes 1.46) as opposed to 1.18 MeV) so it would do (slightly) more damage.

 

* In this case, I'm using the term zillion for the ratio of specific activities of caesium potassium.

It's roughly a tenth of a billion trillion.

3.2TBq/g vs 31 Bq/g

 

[oops, got the prefix wrong]

Edited March 15, 2015 by John Cuthber

[Ant Sinclair]

I said in another post that there seems to be so much info/disinfo on the internet these days, In Your opinion is Steven Starr wrong John in His analogy?

[John Cuthber]

In my opinion, he's dishonest.

In clear point of fact it's wrong.

On a like-for-like basis i.e. the same number of nuclear disintegrations per second, potassium does slightly more damage.

It's true that, on a gram for gram basis caesium is much more dangerous- but that factor was already accounted for in the figures I gave,

If the figure here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster

is right then

"Between 21 March and mid-July around 2.7 × 10¹⁶ Bq of caesium-137 (about 8.4 kg) entered the ocean".

The mass of the ocean is something like 10^20 kg and it holds something like 10^16 kg of potassium.

That's quite a dilution. 8 vs 10,000,000,000,000,000.

 

Incidentally, I just realised, I made a mistake in my calculation earlier- I will correct it.

Also, at the risk of looking like an intellectual snob, have a look at what it says directly under the video on TY.

"Steven Starr is a medical laboratory technician [MT ( ASCP) ] , scientific program director of the clinical laboratory at the University of Columbia, Missouri. He obtained his degree at the School of Health Professions in 1985 and has worked in many hospitals for 27 years."

 

The guy is a lab technician; fair enough- but it's no reason to suppose that he knows anything about nuclear physics.

If you search for his name and the word Fukushima, google gives you this warning

"Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe. Learn more"

 

Why has he asked Google to remove records of what he has said in the past?

Edited March 15, 2015 by John Cuthber

[Ant Sinclair]

It is because of statements like the one Steven Starr made the public(including Myself) gets "worried" and needs to be put into context.

 

In trying to put things into perspective, exactly what mass of Cesium137 would render 1000 square km of dry-land Inhabitable?

Is the below statement incorrect, because if it is correct 8.4Kg/2g seems a large amount of contamination!

 

 

Less than two grams of Cesium-137, a piece smaller than an American dime, if made into microparticles and evenly distributed as a radioactive gas over an area of one square mile, will turn that square mile into an uninhabitable radioactive exclusion zone. Central Park in New York City can be made uninhabitable by 2 grams of microparticles of Cesium-137.

Edited March 15, 2015 by Ant Sinclair

[John Cuthber]

It's very difficult to make assessments like that- after all, it doesn't matter much how radioactive the ground is if the material is an alpha emitter and the range of those particles is only an inch or so in the air; the radiation will never get past your ankles- but if you breathe thee material in, it's suddenly a whole lot more of a problem.

 

Lets make a comparison and, once again I will use potassium.

About 2.5% of the earth's crust is potassium.

It's reasonable to guess that Central park is near to that average.

 

Let's also assume that, simply because the ground isn't mirror smooth, the caesium they spread gets mixed into about the top 1 cm of soil. (The first shower of rain will probably pretty much ensure that anyway).

 

So there's something like 1600 by 1600 square metres in a square mile.

That's 2.56 million square metres. A 1 cm depth of soil is 0.01 metres so the volume of the top layer is 25600 cubic metres.

Typical soil density is about 1.2 tonnes per metre cubed so that's about 30,000 tonnes of soil.

At 2.5% potassium that's 770 tonnes of potassium or so.

Which means it has an activity of 770 times a million to convert to grams times 31 to get Bq

That's 24 G Bq or so of potassium.

And they are talking of adding 2 grams of Caesium which is about 6 T Bq.

So, the additional radiation from the added Cs would raise the background from potassium by a factor of 250 or so.

That's clearly not good.

Of course, potassium isn't the only source of background radiation.

 

Now we need some idea of how bad that radiation is for you.

This has lots of figures.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Radiation-and-Health/Radiation-and-Life/

For example they say the typical gamma ray dose from "terrestrial an house" is of the order of 600 µSv per year

Now that includes the effects of the potassium in the environment; there are other contributors.

So the effect of the Cs cloud would be about 250 times bigger than that.

That's about 0.15 Sv per year.

Undoubtedly, that's quite a lot; roughly twice as much a the upper bound for radiation therapy or about half as much as the workers at Fukushima were exposed to (though that was a short term dose so it's not strictly comparable).

 

There are a lot of assumptions and uncertainties about all those calculations but it seems to be the right ballpark.

A couple of grams of Caesium would make a square mile or so of land pretty undesirable as a place to live (though I'd not worry much about walking across it).

 

However Fukushima lost most of its material to the sea rather than the land surface,so it got mixed not just into the top cm or so, but into the whole depth of the ocean.

That's a big factor.

Also, even if it were spread across land 8 kilograms could contaminate about 4000 square miles- an area about 60 miles square.

By an amusing coincidence it seems that we live about 60 miles apart.

have a look at google maps, zoom out as far as you can (I don't think it will let you see the whole earth).

60 miles square isn't very big.

There's a lot to be said for not contaminating 4000 square miles, but we do have about 60 million to choose from.

[Ant Sinclair]

"Between 21 March and mid-July around 2.7 × 1016 Bq of caesium-137 (about 8.4 kg) entered the ocean".

 

The above, is this approximate 4 month period of this year? If so what is the total mass of Cesium137 released from Fukushima since the accident/incident occurred, and also what are the total masses of other radioactive nuclides released including Strontium?

[John Cuthber]

I think that's the period during which most of the stuff was lost. Check google.

 

I don't think they will change the fact that

1 it was a monumental cockup

2 the ecosystem will survive- it will probably hardly "notice"

[Strange]

[Response made in this thread to avoid derailing the other thread]

 

Why would I assume it?, because it has been branded all over the internet as a reply to challenges on the seriousness of the ongoing damage being done by the Fukushima incident thats why!

 

Where "it" is the suggestion that the "post hoc ergo proptor hoc" argument has just been copied from the Internet.

 

The other possibility is that multiple people have independently identified the same fallacy. As this is a very common fallacy in people's assessment of risk and cause and effect, it isn't surprising that many commentators would highlight it was occurring.

 

Especially when there is little evidence of the Fukushima incident causing significant damage.

 

(I am more than a little upset that so many people obsess over minute amounts of radiation while the thousands killed and displaced by a bloody big wave were almost instantly forgotten.)

[Ant Sinclair]

Do We know where the Coriums of Reactors 1,2 &3 are at, at the present time? Is it possible these could have "broken" containment? Looking at pictures/drawings of the strata under Fukushima it appears the strata are inclined downwards towards the ocean. If water is flowing down these inclined strata and these Coriums meet with this water what could be the consequences?

[Moontanman]

There are naturally radioactive places on the earth 250 mSv per year compared to the safe limit of 20 mSv per set by the nuclear regulatory commission.

 

http://webecoist.momtastic.com/2013/01/22/hot-spots-earths-5-most-naturally-radioactive-places/

[John Cuthber]

 

 

(I am more than a little upset that so many people obsess over minute amounts of radiation while the thousands killed and displaced by a bloody big wave were almost instantly forgotten.)

Well said.

There are naturally radioactive places on the earth 250 mSv per year compared to the safe limit of 20 mSv per set by the nuclear regulatory commission.

 

http://webecoist.momtastic.com/2013/01/22/hot-spots-earths-5-most-naturally-radioactive-places/

Thanks for that. I was wondering where to go on my holidays.

[overtone]

 

 

I presume that, since the life in the ocean is used to the radiation present, adding a percent or so to it won't make much difference.

Do you think that there's some means by which the biology can cope with 6200 Bq/tonne, but not 6300?

1) Why are you assuming the extra radiation is in the form of potassium isotopes? Or are we just supposed to assume it doesn't matter what the carrier element and isotope is - even with the prospect of oceanic bioaccumulation? 2) Why are you assuming the concentration is even throughout the plume? 3) Here is a link from earlier in the thread: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es202816c Note the varying concentrations in the plume, the assertions of the text that for a time levels of radioactive isotopes of Cesium were 10,000 times higher than background in some ocean areas, and so forth.

 

There are naturally radioactive places on the earth 250 mSv per year compared to the safe limit of 20 mSv per set by the nuclear regulatory commission

Those are on land, not in the water. And even on land the human residents suffer ill effects. The effects on ecosystems are not known, although studies around Chernobyl have established no limit below which radioactivity in the isotopes and kinds released by Chernobyl is harmless to plants and animals.

[John Cuthber]

1) Why are you assuming the extra radiation is in the form of potassium isotopes? Or are we just supposed to assume it doesn't matter what the carrier element and isotope is - even with the prospect of oceanic bioaccumulation? 2) Why are you assuming the concentration is even throughout the plume? 3) Here is a link from earlier in the thread: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es202816c Note the varying concentrations in the plume, the assertions of the text that for a time levels of radioactive isotopes of Cesium were 10,000 times higher than background in some ocean areas, and so forth.

 

Those are on land, not in the water. And even on land the human residents suffer ill effects. The effects on ecosystems are not known, although studies around Chernobyl have established no limit below which radioactivity in the isotopes and kinds released by Chernobyl is harmless to plants and animals.

 

1) Why are you assuming the extra radiation is in the form of potassium isotopes?

nobody did.

Why are you posting a strawman?

 

"Or are we just supposed to assume it doesn't matter what the carrier element and isotope is "

It's not a assumption, it's based on the actual facts. Potassium and caesium behave in a very similar manner in cells Potassium emits slightly more energetic radiation.

I already posted the numbers for the energies. Why didn't you realise that's what they were?

 

Both will bioaccumulate to a similar extent ) because they have fairly similar chemistries. So, it's true that the Cs levels in a fish might be x times higher than those in the water. But the potassium levels will also be roughly x times higher. The ratio of the radiation damage is pretty much independent of x.

 

"2) Why are you assuming the concentration is even throughout the plume? "

I didn't assume it. I actually implied that it varied.

Why is your post full of straw men?

 

"Note the varying concentrations in the plume, the assertions of the text that for a time levels of radioactive isotopes of Cesium were 10,000 times higher than background in some ocean areas, and so forth. "

The background (natural) level of radiocaesium is pretty much zero.

10,000 times pretty near zero is still, fairly literally, piss in the ocean.

 

"Those are on land, not in the water. And even on land the human residents suffer ill effects."

Yep, and those are roughly the sort of levels that we all agreed were unacceptable (though I's not object to walking through from time to time.)

Did you think you had a point.

 

"studies around Chernobyl have established no limit below which radioactivity in the isotopes and kinds released by Chernobyl is harmless to plants and animals. "

And, once again, nobody said otherwise so it's yet another straw man.

 

 

Are you not able to back up your point of view without all those logical fallacies?

Can you think of a possible reason for that?

Edited March 17, 2015 by John Cuthber

[overtone]

1) Why are you assuming the extra radiation is in the form of potassium isotopes?

nobody did.

Uh, ok, just like potassium isotopes, then. Indistinguishable in all relevant properties. You assumed that.

 

 

It's not a assumption, it's based on the actual facts. Potassium and caesium behave in a very similar manner in cells Potassium emits slightly more energetic radiation.

I already posted the numbers for the energies. Why didn't you realise that's what they were?

So it is, in fact, an assumption. You have some reasons ("actual facts") for making it (you think whatever the carrier element or isotope, we are safe in assuming it will behave in all the relevant organisms and ecosystems about as potassium behaves), and I have some reasons for casting doubt on it (the ocean, she is a complicated and poorly understood collection of beings, and this quite complex matter is a blank spot on the information map).

 

"2) Why are you assuming the concentration is even throughout the plume? "

I didn't assume it. I actually implied that it varied.

If it varies too much, your dismissal by dilution comparison is invalidated. Do you know how much it varied, at given odds and spatial scale? Nobody else seems to.

One question that overlooks is the probability a significant ecological extent or factor would be exposed to considerably higher concentrations for some period of time, a matter which depends critically on the evenness of the dilution.

 

The background (natural) level of radiocaesium is pretty much zero.

10,000 times pretty near zero is still, fairly literally, piss in the ocean.

Which we are to assume is safe, for the reasons given (it's going to behave in all significant respects and situations like potassium, the dilution does not vary too much, etc). Also all the corollary possibilities (the stuff that tends to ride along with cesium, be indicated to have occurred where cesium is found, etc).

 

Are you not able to back up your point of view without all those logical fallacies?

I/'m not sure why you are labeling all that stuff "straw man" and "fallacy", but if you are unable to follow it then of course it would not back up my point in your view. I confess to indifference in that matter - except to note this kind of glib incomprehension of the risks of ignorance is completely typical of the self-congratulatory "scientific" community faced with technological mishap and risk. The pattern noted above - that later official reports of nuclear disasters always end up detailing worse, rather than better, consequences than what the earlier reports presented as reasonably likely - has an obvious possible (and benign, non-conspiratorial) explanation in this feature of the technocrat's reflexive reaction.

Edited March 17, 2015 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

 

 

I/'m not sure why you are labeling all that stuff "straw man" and "fallacy",

I'm labelling it as a set of straw men because;

I never assumed it was all in the form of potassium isotopes

I never assumed it doesn't matter what the carrier element and isotope is

I never assumed the concentration is even throughout the plume

nobody even got close to saying that the levels of radiation in those places was anything but unhealthy.

Nobody said there was a dose that was harmless.

And yet you implied that I had done all of those things.

 

Would you like to show why you think I did?