Radioactivity in sea up 7.5 million times; Marine life contamination well beyond Japan feared

[enough]

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110405x1.html

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Radioactivity in sea up 7.5 million times
Marine life contamination well beyond Japan feared

By KANAKO TAKAHARA
Staff writer

Radioactive iodine-131 readings taken from seawater near the water intake of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant's No. 2 reactor reached 7.5 million times the legal limit, Tokyo Electric Power Co. admitted Tuesday.

The sample that yielded the high reading was taken Saturday, before Tepco announced Monday it would start releasing radioactive water into the sea, and experts fear the contamination may spread well beyond Japan's shores to affect seafood overseas.

The unstoppable radioactive discharge into the Pacific has prompted experts to sound the alarm, as cesium, which has a much longer half-life than iodine, is expected to concentrate in the upper food chain.

According to Tepco, some 300,000 becquerels per sq. centimeter of radioactive iodine-131 was detected Saturday, while the amount of cesium-134 was 2 million times the maximum amount permitted and cesium-137 was 1.3 million times the amount allowable.

MORE>

[tekisui]

1. knr.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. There goes the seafood all over .

There goes fish oil, too.


On edit: there is a poll on that page, stating
"In an effort to speed up work on crippled Fukushima No. 1 plant, Tepco's latest plan involves dumping 10,000 tons of radioactive water in the Pacific.
What is your opinion?"

10 thousand tons of radioactive water PLUS all the water that has been leaking.

[shraby]

4. If you want it, buy it now and store it because once the

existing stocks are gone, I doubt there will be more.

[lonestarnot]

8. Had some stuff in the freezer after BP ruined the gulf. Cooked it and

when it came to eating it, I did not enjoy it. No more sea food for us. :(

[eowyn_of_rohan]

18. same here...

I bought gulf shrimp for the freezer, while I still could. I can barely eat shellfish, fish or even meat anymore, thinking of the poor creatures of this planet, and what mankind has done to them.

[GameOn]

3. what can they do to fix it? nt

[shraby]

5. Maybe wait around 60 years? The half life of some of that

stuff is a few years, some 30 years and some of it more.

[GameOn]

6. we're screwed then? This might contaminate the entire ocean. NT

[Mnemosyne]

11. It already has,Game. Too late. No more safe seafood. Period.

Welcome to DU, GameOn.

[Poll_Blind]

19. Mnemosyne, I think I agree completely with that assessment. I've been thinking this over for...

...a few days now. This is the conclusion I'm coming to.

PB

[Mnemosyne]

35. Between radiation and the Gulf, we may end up screwed much sooner than

even some of the most cynical among us have predicted. I'm going to go get a nice seafood dinner in the next couple weeks, and then no more.

Damn...

[TNLib]

38. I became a vegetarian and plan on growing my own vegetables

Hopefully we won't have any majors issues with fallout in East TN

[Mnemosyne]

48. I picked up a vegetarian cookbook the other day. Maybe we should learn to grow underground; who

knows what they haven't told us about over the last few decades?

We grew our own last year, bad year here for it, except for beans, peppers, onions and potatoes.

[dixiegrrrrl]

21. But wait!!!! Japan has helpfully set new radiation levels in seafood!!!

Isn't that special.


Japan sets new radiation safety level for seafood
By AP News Apr 05, 2011 6:07PM UTC

"TOKYO (AP) — The government set its first radiation safety standards for fish Tuesday after Japan’s tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant reported radioactive contamination in nearby seawater measuring at several million times the legal limit.

The plant operator insisted that the radiation will rapidly disperse and that it poses no immediate danger, but an expert said exposure to the highly concentrated levels near the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant could cause immediate injury and that the leaks could result in residual contamination of the sea in the area.

The new levels coupled with reports that radiation was building up in fish led the government to create an acceptable radiation standard for fish for the first time. Some fish caught Friday off Japan’s coastal waters would have exceeded the new provisional limit."

http://asiancorrespondent.com/51883/japan-sets-new-radiation-safety-level-for-seafood/

Imagine that....seafood now has radiation levels.
And here in the Gulf of Mexico, oil and Corexit levels.

Do they not get that even HAVING to set levels for these poisons is the problem?????

[Mnemosyne]

37. And those numbers are simply to try to lull us to believe that it's just fine. Profit. Period.

Crimes against humanity and all of the creatures we share this place with; encompassing the entire planet.

It seems that in the grand scheme of our current catastrophes; we need to focus on preserving whatever we can, as quickly as we can. Did those assholes really not understand our connection to the Earth?!

There really are no words...

[TNLib]

40. And I'm waiting on the meteorologist to start giving us Fall out Weather reports

along with the devastating tornadoes and extreme weather conditions. As a human race we are totally fucking ourselves.

[PVnRT]

12. Half-lives are- Cesium-137 30.2 years, Iodine-131 8.02 days

This means that 99.61% of Cs-137 will be gone in 240 years and the same amount of I-131 after 64.2 days. Once the reactors stop leaking, both will be down to trace amounts fairly quickly.

Based on the definition of Becquerel, that means that, per 100,000 Bq, there are 1.46x10^-11 grams of I-131 and 2.10x10^-8 grams of CS-137. Some of the contribution to the Cs-137 is also from all of the nuclear tests that have been done over the years, although the bulk of it is coming from the reactors.

EDIT: Looked up the wrong isotope of Cesium for original post.

[highplainsdem]

14. Cesium-137 has a half life of 30 YEARS. Link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137

The "2.55 minutes" figure you posted refers to the barium isomer it eventually decays to:

Caesium-137 (137
55Cs, Cs-137) is a radioactive isotope of caesium which is formed as a fission product by nuclear fission.

It has a half-life of about 30.17 years, and decays by beta emission to a metastable nuclear isomer of barium-137: barium-137m (137mBa, Ba-137m). (About 95 percent of the nuclear decay leads to this isomer. The other 5.0 percent directly populates the ground state, which is stable.) Ba-137m has a half-life of about 2.55 minutes, and it is responsible for all of the emissions of gamma rays. One gram of caesium-137 has an activity of 3.215 terabecquerel (TBq).<2>

[girl gone mad]

15. You might want to check your numbers again.

[thewiseguy]

16. Your numbers are wrong

Half life of Iodine 131 is 8 days and the half life of Cesium 137 is 30 years.

[davepdx]

27. Half-life calculations aren't that simple unfortunately.

After one half-life of Cesium-137 (30 year half-life) you have 50% of the amount of radioactivity you started with. After another 30 years you have 1/4 of what you started with. The rule of thumb is that after 7 half-lives you end up with roughly 1% of the amount of radioactivity that you started with.

[slackmaster]

13. The solution to pollution...

...is dilution.

The ocean will take care of the problem.

[dixiegrrrrl]

32. What part of "is expected to concentrate in the upper food chain."

applies to dilution?

[lutefisk]

7. Waiting for the first "the ocean can handle it" response... Bueller...Beuller...n/t

[Mnemosyne]

34. Took almost 17 minutes,

see post #13.

:hi:

[90-percent]

9. Wow!

7,500,000 TIMES the legal limit?

That's not good. But I'm an optimist. I hope the TEPCO execs responsible for this get their 6 figure SAFETY RECORD BONUSES! Why not, Transocean gave it to their highly deserving managers for their safety record of the last year!



-90% Jimmy

[closeupready]

24. Seems to me, record bonuses are the least we can do.

:sarcasm:

[theglammistress]

10. Another link - very scary

One again, Zero Hedge has the best coverage of this disaster:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tepco-knew-radiation-seawater-75-million-above-normal-it-started-dumping-radioactivity-sea-m

<snip>


"All of Japan's sea products will probably be labeled unsafe and other nations will blame Japan if radiation is detected in their marine products," Yamamoto said.

<snip>

And the bottom line is that after almost a month, Japan is nowhere near closer to fixing this whole goddamned mess:

'Tepco initially believed the leak was somewhere in the cable trench that connects the No. 2 turbine building and the pit. But after using milky white bath salt to trace the flow, which appeared to prove that was not the case, the utility began to think it may be seeping through a layer of small stones below the cable trench.'

When all is said and done, the lies are removed, and the truth is finally revealed, this will end up being far, far worse than Chernobyl.

<end snip>

[Mnemosyne]

44. Welcome to DU, theglammistress.

Mad world...

Cold in Ohio? It is in NW PA, brr. :hi:

I agree with zerohedge; it will end up worse than Chernobyl. It already is, imho.

[90-percent]

17. the conclusion the entire world must draw from this

FOR PROFIT MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS would torture their own grandmother to death if there was money in it for them!

There are just too many commons in societies all over the world that should NEVER EVER EVER be privatized! The entire world wide for profit nuclear industry should simply be taken by their respective governments. Same exact thing should happen for oil companies and water companies.

In a manner similar to what FDR did to the auto companies at the start of WW2. No more cars, fellas. You all are building tanks and planes and ships for the duration.


-90% Jimmy

[TNLib]

42. I think this goes beyond a government vs Privatization

I don't think the Japanese government could have controlled this situation and honestly I don't know that the US government could have either. As a human race it's pretty obvious we are dealing with something we have no control over when it comes to Nuclear energy. When it goes bad it goes really bad!!!

[Poll_Blind]

20. Also reported by LA Times: Japan's ocean radiation hits 7.5 MILLION times legal limit

LINK

PB

[AsahinaKimi]

22. South Korea expresses concern about toxic water dump

Kyodo News

South Korea has expressed concern to Japan over the release of radioactive water by Tokyo Electric Power Co. into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Yonhap News Agency reported Tuesday, citing South Korean foreign ministry officials.

The nuclear plant has been leaking radiation since the massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled it last month and Tepco released contaminated water into the sea on Monday.

"It's the proximity between the two countries that makes Japan's release of water a pressing issue for us," an unnamed ministry official was quoted as saying.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110405x6.html

[Angry Dragon]

23. The last one left please turn off the lights.............

[ladjf]

25. Are there no International controls of contaminating the Oceans?

[Duer 157099]

26. "We take the stock price decline very seriously," Fujimoto told reporters.

This really sums up the whole problem.

[dixiegrrrrl]

30. Oh noes! Won't someone please think of the poor stocks?????

How horrible.....poor falling stocks....:cry: :cry: :cry:

[Warren DeMontague]

43. That's why the media has drastically scaled back their coverage.

The minute the markets started getting spooked, this became a 2nd tier story.

[girl gone mad]

49. Bingo.

Political actors fear a short term loss of revenue much more than they fear long term damage to the ecosystem and loss of life.

Priorities.

[hedgetrimmer]

28. Yeah that was some leak! Looked like they were dumping it in the ocean.

[L0oniX]

29. It'll disappear ...just like the oil in the Gulf did.

:mad:

[Peace Patriot]

31. Fish swim, right? nt

[StarburstClock]

33. Where are all the people saying "radiation ain't bad fer ya"?

I guess this piece of real news is too much for their propaganda to overcome.

[hayu_lol]

39. Many of our leading physicists...

have been advocating dumping of these gallons of radioactive water into the ocean so that the business of shutting down these reactors can be accomplished.

Dilution is the solution for much of the contaminants since the oceans contain:

1 Quintillion, 450 Quadrillion tons of water(total weight of the world's ocean water)

(1,450,000,000,000,000,000 tons)

Amount being dumped: 11,500 tons

http://www.northern-stars.com/oceans.pdf

This link is a teacher's guide to oceans--if you get 'page not found'...

google weight of ocean water and scroll down about 8 when you reach the section on oceans

[TNLib]

36. so much mixed info on this right now

Today I read that it was allot lower and they were shoring up the reactor leak with some silicone based material. I wish there was one really strong reliable news source to get information from.

[Warren DeMontague]

41. Nah. It's no worse than dumping a bunch of bananas into the sea.

Really. Radiation is good for ya.

Really.

:eyes:

[walldude]

45. Especially at 7 million times the legal limit...

The article I read said 7 million times the limit, but there is nothing to worry about... :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: I can't believe they said that with a straight face...

[Uncle Joe]

46. So now you have a choice either the Pacific Radiated shrimp or the Gulf Oiled variety.

Can you say mutants boys and girls?... I knew you could.





Thanks for the thread, enough.

[Canuckistanian]

50. Look on the bright side

We can find the seafood in the fridge even if the light bulb goes out.

[rucky]

47. If everybody else's shellfish makes them sick...

don't blame us Jews this time, m'kay