(San Francisco) Widely known Physicist Dr Paolo Scampa, the publisher of the EU AIPRI Blog and an eminent chemical physicist, announced today his latest calculations of deadly radioactivity in Tokyo itself. Both the nuclear regulatory and media responses have been missing in action.
The IRSN said the main radioactivity leaks occurred between March 12-25 in about 15 incidents, “of which the biggest probably took place before March 15.”
It gave a provisional estimate that 408 peta-becquerels, or 408 million billion becquerels, of radioactive iodine had been emitted into the air. This was 10 times lower than in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, the world's worst nuclear accident.
The iodine releases posed a sharp but temporary hazard as the element quickly decays. A bigger problem, the IRSN said, was caesium-137, a long-lasting element which takes around 30 years to decay to half its level of radioactivity.
Cesium of all kinds released at Fukushima was estimated by the agency at 58 peta-becquerels, or three times less than Chernobyl. Cesium 137 accounted for 21 peta-becquerels.
Of around 24,000 square kilometers (9,200 square miles) of land contaminated by cesium 137, only 600 sq km (230 sq miles) breached a safety threshold of 600,000 becquerels per square meter, the IRSN said.
This, again, was only a fraction of the territory contaminated by cesium after Chernobyl.
A mind-boggling 40,000 trillion becquerels of radioactive cesium, or twice the amount previously thought, may have spewed from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after the March 11 disaster, scientists say.
Michio Aoyama, a senior researcher at the Meteorological Research Institute, released the finding at a scientific symposium in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Feb. 28. [...]
It was calculated on the basis of radioactive content of seawater sampled at 79 locations in the north Pacific and is thought to more accurately reflect reality than previous simulation results. [...]
While the latest study said 15-20 quadrillion becquerels of cesium-137 was released into the atmosphere, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency estimated the amount at 8.8 quadrillion becquerels. [...]
Originally posted by McC556
can anybody tell me what has happend to the workers who where at the plant when they where pumping water into it for months on end are they still alive or are they walking glow sticks i cant find anything when i google it i am over flowing with curiosity
Originally posted by Unity_99
My sons are sick nonstop. Stomach upsets, diarrheas, sore throats, they have missed more than half a year school,and the teachers are mad at me, doctors are useless,
[SNIP]
And we do take iodine drops much of the time.
An iodine overdose can bring a number of different symptoms.
•Abdominal pain
•Delirium
•Coughing
•Diarrhea
•Metallic taste
•Fever
•Throat pain
•Mouth pain
•No urine output
•Shock seizures
•Stupor
•Shortness of breath
•Vomiting
•Thirst
