Radioactive water continues to leak into the ocean

[Chris]

The operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said Saturday that highly radioactive water was leaking from a pit near a reactor into the ocean, which may partially explain the high levels of radioactivity that have been found in seawater off the coast.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it had detected an 8-inch crack in the concrete pit holding power cables near reactor No. 2 and was working to seal the fracture. Tepco said the water was coming directly from the reactor and the radiation level was 1,000 millisieverts an hour. The annual limit of radiation exposure allowed for Fukushima workers is 250 millisieverts.

Workers pumped concrete into the shaft Saturday, but by the end of the day, the flow of water into the ocean had not diminished. Engineers speculated that the water was preventing the concrete from setting, allowing it to all be washed away.

Tepco officials said that on Sunday morning they would explore using a polymer -- a type of quick-setting plastic -- in an attempt to plug the leak.

After spraying thousands of tons of water on the reactors at Fukushima over the last three weeks to keep the facility from overheating and releasing dangerous amounts of radiation over a wide area, the utility is faced with the problem of great volumes of contaminated water.

With storage tanks at the facility nearing capacity, Tepco is contemplating storing the water in a giant artificial floating island offshore, Kyodo news reported.

Japan radiation leak: Concrete fails to plug leak at Fukushima nuclear plant - latimes.com

 

[Valerie]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di3CLFj6_Ag]YouTube - The Firm - Radioactive[/ame]






[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPBbMbKSZrQ]YouTube - Kings Of Leon - Radioactive[/ame]

 

[uscitizen]

Godzilla will be pissed!

 

[Valerie]

Godzilla will be pissed!

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvRpuWuIukE&NR=1&feature=fvwp]YouTube - Godzilla Laugh[/ame]

 

[Chris]

Godzilla will be pissed!

Not to mention Gamera!

 

[HUGGY]

What is truly insidious is that radiation is accumulative. The testing just after the reactors leaking showed radiation reaching our West coast. It has been added to every second to the environment since then and now you hear NOTHING about it. People are fucking fools to believe that what happened was a one time event that will now go away. They claim this will go on for months. I wonder how the American public will feel about this as the radiation levels steadily grow from insignificant to dangerous. The Japanese current goes North from Japan and down the coast to California. You won't want to eat Crab or Salmon in about a year. Or maybe NEVER after that.

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right...

... an it gonna kill a third of the fish inna oceans...

... just like it says in Revelation inna Bible...

... an' den Jesus gonna come an' remove all dem lefty lib'rals...

... an' throw `em inna lake o' fire."

 

[Ravi]

Don't worry, Chris, it's just media hype.

 

[Mini 14]

And now they are giving up on trying to contain the water, and they're just going to go ahead and dump it in the ocean.

 

[zzzz]

And radioactivity causes mutations in living things. What kind of monsters can we expect to come forth from these radioactive seas? You talk about Godzilla and the future may include something like it. Maybe not so giant and all that but there will be mutation of the sea life.

 

[skookerasbil]

Next.......Chris will be posting up vis of Rodan!!!

 

[Ravi]

Even as the government asserted that the release of the radioactive water into the sea would not pose an immediate threat to humans, health ministry official Taku Ohara said the ministry was considering drawing up radioactivity food-safety standards for fish after high radiation levels were detected in a sand lance, a bottom-feeding fish, caught off the coast of Ibaraki prefecture.

Nuclear experts have assumed that radioactive iodine, which has a brief half-life, would become diluted in the ocean and decay too quickly to be detected in fish, but Monday's finding has raised doubts about that, said Ohara.

According to the health ministry, the sand lance had 4,080 bequerels per kilogram of radioactive iodine. "We think the level found poses no immediate risk to people's health but the point is moot anyway because all sand lance caught in Ibaraki were disposed of," said Ohara. By comparison, the level of radioactive iodine in the fish was twice as high as the limit for vegetables. Currently there are no standards for radioactivity in meat, eggs, fish and grains.

Japan reactor: Japanese nuclear plant dumps radioactive water into sea - latimes.com

 

[Valerie]

Even as the government asserted that the release of the radioactive water into the sea would not pose an immediate threat to humans, health ministry official Taku Ohara said the ministry was considering drawing up radioactivity food-safety standards for fish after high radiation levels were detected in a sand lance, a bottom-feeding fish, caught off the coast of Ibaraki prefecture.

Nuclear experts have assumed that radioactive iodine, which has a brief half-life, would become diluted in the ocean and decay too quickly to be detected in fish, but Monday's finding has raised doubts about that, said Ohara.

According to the health ministry, the sand lance had 4,080 bequerels per kilogram of radioactive iodine. "We think the level found poses no immediate risk to people's health but the point is moot anyway because all sand lance caught in Ibaraki were disposed of," said Ohara. By comparison, the level of radioactive iodine in the fish was twice as high as the limit for vegetables. Currently there are no standards for radioactivity in meat, eggs, fish and grains.

Japan reactor: Japanese nuclear plant dumps radioactive water into sea - latimes.com

Well, at least the effects are not "immediate", phew!

What kinds of health effects does exposure to radiation cause?

In general, the amount and duration of radiation exposure affects the severity or type of health effect. There are two broad categories of health effects: stochastic and non-stochastic.

Stochastic Health Effects

Stochastic effects are associated with long-term, low-level (chronic) exposure to radiation. ("Stochastic" refers to the likelihood that something will happen.) Increased levels of exposure make these health effects more likely to occur, but do not influence the type or severity of the effect.

Cancer is considered by most people the primary health effect from radiation exposure. Simply put, cancer is the uncontrolled growth of cells. Ordinarily, natural processes control the rate at which cells grow and replace themselves. They also control the body's processes for repairing or replacing damaged tissue. Damage occurring at the cellular or molecular level, can disrupt the control processes, permitting the uncontrolled growth of cells--cancer. This is why ionizing radiation's ability to break chemical bonds in atoms and molecules makes it such a potent carcinogen.

Other stochastic effects also occur. Radiation can cause changes in DNA, the "blueprints" that ensure cell repair and replacement produces a perfect copy of the original cell. Changes in DNA are called mutations.

Sometimes the body fails to repair these mutations or even creates mutations during repair. The mutations can be teratogenic or genetic. Teratogenic mutations are caused by exposure of the fetus in the uterus and affect only the individual who was exposed. Genetic mutations are passed on to offspring.

Non-Stochastic Health Effects

Non-stochastic effects appear in cases of exposure to high levels of radiation, and become more severe as the exposure increases. Short-term, high-level exposure is referred to as 'acute' exposure.

Many non-cancerous health effects of radiation are non-stochastic. Unlike cancer, health effects from 'acute' exposure to radiation usually appear quickly. Acute health effects include burns and radiation sickness. Radiation sickness is also called 'radiation poisoning.' It can cause premature aging or even death. If the dose is fatal, death usually occurs within two months. The symptoms of radiation sickness include: nausea, weakness, hair loss, skin burns or diminished organ function.

Medical patients receiving radiation treatments often experience acute effects, because they are receiving relatively high "bursts" of radiation during treatment.

Is any amount of radiation safe?

There is no firm basis for setting a "safe" level of exposure above background for stochastic effects. Many sources emit radiation that is well below natural background levels. This makes it extremely difficult to isolate its stochastic effects. In setting limits, EPA makes the conservative (cautious) assumption that any increase in radiation exposure is accompanied by an increased risk of stochastic effects.



Effects of Radiation Type and Exposure Pathway

Both the type of radiation to which the person is exposed and the pathway by which they are exposed influence health effects. Different types of radiation vary in their ability to damage different kinds of tissue. Radiation and radiation emitters (radionuclides) can expose the whole body (direct exposure) or expose tissues inside the body when inhaled or ingested.

All kinds of ionizing radiation can cause cancer and other health effects. The main difference in the ability of alpha and beta particles and gamma and x-rays to cause health effects is the amount of energy they can deposit in a given space. Their energy determines how far they can penetrate into tissue. It also determines how much energy they are able to transmit directly or indirectly to tissues and the resulting damage.

Although an alpha particle and a gamma ray may have the same amount of energy, inside the body the alpha particle will deposit all of its energy in a very small volume of tissue. The gamma radiation will spread energy over a much larger volume. This occurs because alpha particles have a mass that carries the energy, while gamma rays do not.



Do chemical properties of radionuclides contribute to radiation health effects?

The chemical properties of a radionuclide can determine where health effects occur. To function properly many organs require certain elements. They cannot distinguish between radioactive and non-radioactive forms of the element and accumulate one as quickly as the other.

* Radioactive iodine concentrates in the thyroid. The thyroid needs iodine to function normally, and cannot tell the difference between stable and radioactive isotopes. As a result, radioactive iodine contributes to thyroid cancer more than other types of cancer.

* Calcium, strontium-90 and radium-226 have similar chemical properties. The result is that strontium and radium in the body tend to collect in calcium rich areas, such as bones and teeth. They contribute to bone cancer.


Health Effects | Radiation Protection | US EPA

 

[xsited1]

 

[Valerie]

Yep!



What are the risks of other long-term health effects?

Other than cancer, the most prominent long-term health effects are teratogenic and genetic mutations.

Teratogenic mutations result from the exposure of fetuses (unborn children) to radiation. They can include smaller head or brain size, poorly formed eyes, abnormally slow growth, and mental retardation. Studies indicate that fetuses are most sensitive between about eight to fifteen weeks after conception. They remain somewhat less sensitive between six and twenty-five weeks old.

The relationship between dose and mental retardation is not known exactly. However, scientists estimate that if 1,000 fetuses that were between eight and fifteen weeks old were exposed to one rem, four fetuses would become mentally retarded. If the fetuses were between sixteen and twenty-five weeks old, it is estimated that one of them would be mentally retarded.

Genetic effects are those that can be passed from parent to child. Health physicists estimate that about fifty severe hereditary effects will occur in a group of one million live-born children whose parents were both exposed to one rem. About one hundred twenty severe hereditary effects would occur in all descendants.

In comparison, all other causes of genetic effects result in as many as 100,000 severe hereditary effects in one million live-born children. These genetic effects include those that occur spontaneously ("just happen") as well as those that have non-radioactive causes.

 

[Valerie]

"No immediate threat" = Nothing to see here!

Fukushima complex begins releasing 11,500 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific to make room in storage tanks for even more highly contaminated water. The government says the release does not pose an immediate threat to humans.


Although the water being released had levels of radioactive iodine 131 more than 100 times the legal limit allowed for sea discharge, the government approved the release as an "emergency" measure so that water with 100,000 times more radiation than the water found in a normally functioning reactor can be removed from the basement of the turbine building at reactor No. 2 and stored somewhere on the site.

Japan reactor: Japanese nuclear plant dumps radioactive water into sea - latimes.com

 

[Old Rocks]

Well, they are choosing between bad and worse. No good choices in this debacle.