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reply to post by Human0815
Home > Latest News Oct. 3, 2013 - Updated 00:47 UTC NEWSLINE Top Stories Japan Asia World Biz/Tech Contaminated water detected in Fukushima Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have detected highly-radioactive substances in water within a barrier surrounding contaminated water storage tanks. The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, says it found 200,000 becquerels per liter of beta-ray emitting substances, including strontium, in the water. The safety limit is 30 becquerels per liter. TEPCO says its workers have found water leaking from the upper part of one of the tanks within the barrier. The utility says it is investigating whether the contaminated water has leaked into the surrounding ground. It says some of the water may have reached the ocean by way of a drainage system. The tank is located near the Number-4 reactor. More than 300 tons of tainted water was found to have leaked from a tank in a different area in August. Oct. 2, 2013 - Updated 16:52 UTC Top Stories Japan Asia World Biz/Tech
90Sr is a product of nuclear fission. It is present in significant amount in spent nuclear fuel and in radioactive waste from nuclear reactors and in nuclear fallout from nuclear tests. For thermal neutron fission as in today's nuclear power plants, the fission product yield from U-235 is 5.8%, from U-233 6.8%, but from Pu-239 only 2.1%. Biological effects Biological activity Strontium-90 is a "bone seeker" that exhibits biochemical behavior similar to calcium, the next lighter group 2 element. After entering the organism, most often by ingestion with contaminated food or water, about 70–80% of the dose gets excreted. Virtually all remaining strontium-90 is deposited in bones and bone marrow, with the remaining 1% remaining in blood and soft tissues. Its presence in bones can cause bone cancer, cancer of nearby tissues, and leukemia. Exposure to 90Sr can be tested by a bioassay, most commonly by urinalysis. Strontium-90 is probably the most dangerous component of the radioactive fallout from a nuclear weapon. The biological half life of strontium-90 in humans has variously been reported as from 14 to 600 days,[4][5] 1000 days,[6] 18 years,[7] 30 years[8] and finally at an upper limit, 49 years.[9] The wide ranging published biological half life figures are explained by the isotope's complex metabolism within the body, but by averaging over all excretion paths the biological half life is about 18 years.[10] Together with the caesium isotopes 134Cs, 137Cs, and iodine isotope 131I it was among the most important isotopes regarding health impacts after the Chernobyl disaster. As strontium has an affinity to the calcium-sensing receptor of parathyroid cells that is similar to that of calcium, the increased risk of liquidators of the Chernobyl power plant to suffer from primary hyperparathyroidism could be explained by binding of strontium-90.[11]
notyourtypicalfalsefront
How many days do you think it will take for the fuel rods to be removed?
Better yet: How many days into the fuel rods being removed until a huge nuclear event?
wiser3
reply to post by happykat39
Hey HappyKat! How do?
You are right about the paid members I am sure but be warned not to use the "s" word when refering to them as you stand the chance of being banned or having threads closed!
By the way does anyone know if our question to "Human" regarding how many people were posting under that ONE user name was ever answered? I know I never read an answer but maybe I just missed it somehow!
...you stand the chance of being banned or having threads closed!
No decision yet on disposal sites for contaminated waste in 5 prefectures
Tens of thousands of tons of contaminated waste resulting from the Fukushima nuclear disaster still remain in fields and elsewhere in the affected region, with no final disposal sites found yet.
A panel of experts set up by the central government is expected to meet on Oct. 4 to determine a common rule for selecting candidate sites for final disposal facilities in five heavily affected prefectures.
For some, the decision cannot come quick enough, given that two and a half years have passed since the crisis unfolded. In Tome, Miyagi Prefecture, one of the five prefectures with a huge accumulation of waste, a cattle farmer is near the end of his tether.
He has 30 tons of contaminated rice straw in his field.
“In our community, I am treated like a troublemaker,” said the farmer, 29. The prefectural government and the Tome municipal government instructed farmers in the city to hold contaminated waste such as rice straw and other plants for two years until they could be transferred to a final dumping yard.
However, the storage period for farmers expires soon, starting from Oct. 25, and final dumping sites have yet to be selected.
In August, the results of a joint study by the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (IFISC) in Spain and the Climate Change Research Centre and the Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science in Australia made international headlines, reporting that a plume of Cesium-137-contaminated seawater will reach, via natural currents, the West Coast of the United States in 2014.
That’s the bad news. Now the good:
That plume began significant dilution in July 2011, and it isn’t expected to be dangerous when it hits our shores. IFISC’s Victor Rossi, one of the co-authors of the study, told the Sun via e-mail that researchers essentially found through simulations that by the time the plume hits American shores, concentrations of Cesium-137 are expected to be just 0.003 percent of the amount considered harmful, according to World Health Organization standards.
“In brief, considering the information presently available about the total amount of radioactive materials released into the ocean right after the accident, we found that the turbulent Kurushio current, the Kurushio extension, and the numerous eddies in the Pacific Ocean would have diluted substantially the plume,” Rossi wrote.
“So there are no major worries to be had.” That being said, Rossi added that there remain “small uncertainties” and that researchers should continue monitoring the ocean and looking for solutions to minimize potential impacts for such events in the future.
News of the study made international headlines, including some from government-controlled news sources in China and Russia. Voice of Russia, for example, claimed, “U.S. West Coast to be hard-hit by Fukushima radiation.”
The Russians base this claim on a study by the Science China Earth Sciences Journal, which found that Fukushima pollution is actually becoming more concentrated as it travels across the Pacific, showing little dispersion.
GuiJun Han, an author of the Science China study, didn’t respond to an e-mail the Sun requesting comment.