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THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby phaster » Thu 23 Nov 2017, 04:13:11

Cog wrote:Doomers love to doom.


hehehehe,...

Tanada wrote:
Newfie wrote:Yes good link.

Yale has this “6 Americas” study on American Climate Change attitudes. If you dig into the demographics it’s easy to see the denialist profile: white, older, well educated, home owner, relatively affluent. These are the folks who have the most invested in the status who, it has done them well.

I’m active on a cruising forum. Many cruisers are of the same cohort. Simply mention climate change and a few deniers will storm the ramparts and cast stones and boiling oil upon your heathen heads. It’s really disheartening.

What’s more disheartening is understanding that congress and business leaders are all of the same cohort.

That article explains a lot.


Kind of puts a lot of holes in the whole 'higher education is vital for future generations' theory doesn't it? When the Plumber and the Roofer can see climate changing around them and grasp it on a gut level the 'educated' folks are sitting in their temperature and humidity controlled high rise office towers and are totally oblivious to the climate changes all around them.


FWIW had an epiphany of sorts awhile back WRT how "educated" people think.

To illustrate, basically in my own "super genius/risk-adverse" case,... I have to confess to a HUGE bias toward seeing the world in terms of "math" while the majority of people do not,... AND therefor am able to see beyond stuff like short sighted thinking toward pensions eventually not working out, because of I ponder the "math" beforehand!

To give ya another example WRT (Short vs Long "term" POV) lets consider how short sighted idiots handle spent nuclear fuel (i.e. putting the stuff in 5/8" stainless welded shut cans) and storing the stuff basically behind a cinder block wall on the beach (seemingly ignoring long term implications of sea level rise) ALL BECAUSE this its the lowest co$t (in the short term)

(SEE THE FOLLOWING LINK) of a PDF was sent to me by a neighbor of sorts who has been very active trying to stop unsafe nuke power (especially after what happened in japan),... as a matter of fact, he organized a conference here in San Diego and played chauffeur to the mayor of fukushima who was here to discuss the "issue"



the other insight I realized is because I studied physics formally, I have a HUGE bias toward trying to understand cause and effect,... while the majority of people do not seek trying to understand what the root cause of the problem is, or the complex relationships present w/ in the system.

also think if the goal is to get people to wake up as to the dangers of the big picture, its best to keep things simple (i.e. use drawings like cave men did long ago to describe their world and perhaps tell a story)

in other words when telling a complex story try the KISS "approach" first,...

http://www.TinyURL.com/DifferentDay


since its now thanksgiving let's all hope TPTB gain the ability of logic and reason this holiday season

thus far it seems more like a real life halloween horror story WRT management of public pension portfolios and other stuff because as long as stupid $hit like this goes on...

SDCERS Board Approves 13th Check and Corbett Benefits for 2017
Nov 3, 2017

The San Diego City Employees’ Retirement System (SDCERS) Board of Administration approved the payment of the “13th Check” supplemental benefit and the Corbett settlement benefit for eligible retirees. Eligible retirees will receive the payment as part of their November 2017 monthly retirement benefit.

The “13th Check” and Corbett settlement benefits are paid in years when the realized investment earnings of the fund are sufficient to pay them
.

https://www.sdcers.org/News/Latest-News ... icles.aspx


THERE WILL BE BUDGET DEFICITS
and the root cause being that a simple (middle school) math concept was ignored

http://www.TinyURL.com/SanDiegoSpikingPension

then there is also the problem of idiots not using common sense or perhaps simple greed!!!

Deficits projected for San Diego city budget, as raises kick in and pension costs rise
Nov 15, 2017

A new analysis shows San Diego is facing significant budget deficits over the next three years that could become much worse if there is an economic downturn.

It’s uncommon for cities to face deficits in a relatively strong economy, but San Diego officials say revenue growth has slowed while expenses have spiked


http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/new ... story.html


so in the grand scheme of things threats to people and the environment like the San Onofre High-Level Nuclear Waste "packaging" issue,... is just another bit of infrastructure that will have to compete for limited funds in a world w/ various BUDGET DEFICITS (not just at the city, county or state level).

Pension Math: Public Pension Spending and Service Crowd Out in California, 2003-2030

As budgets are squeezed, what are state and local governments cutting? Core services, including higher education, social services, public assistance, welfare, recreation and libraries, health, public works, and in some cases, public safety.

https://siepr.stanford.edu/research/pub ... ornia-2003


bottom line,... one big part of the solution is have a healthy attitude toward money and don't give a fuck about status!

The worship of the golden calf of old has found
a new and heartless image in the cult of money
and the dictatorship of an economy which is
faceless and lacking any truly human goal.
Money has to serve, not to rule.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/ ... cult-money
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 23 Nov 2017, 11:12:18

Look, a prolonged discussion of nuclear waste would be off topic for this thread, and we have had the same in other threads. I suggest you start with this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#5b328281709b
...where you would find that nuclear energy, particularly in the USA, is by far the safest form of power production.

Secondly, spent fuel can and should be re-processed, concentrating the longer half-life radioactive elements in new fuel pellets, and removing the shorter-lived elements that can and should be safely buried, as they rapidly become harmless.

You display an irrational prejudice against the safest form of energy production we have, a form of power that is relatively carbon-free (some petroleum fuels to mine uranium, some grid electricity to enrich uranium) and a form of power which is suitable for baseline power generation (24X7 for years on end).

In fact, the main problem with nuclear energy is the irrational fear produced by years of Grade B to Grade F science fiction movies. The giant ants never happened, nor did Godzilla. However people are still scared of these imaginary hazards.

Respond to this post in an appropriate nuclear energy thread, and I'll discuss further.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 23 Nov 2017, 11:19:15

"a prolonged discussion of nuclear waste would be off topic for this thread"

Thanks for pointing that out, KJ, so let's do drop it!
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Newfie » Thu 23 Nov 2017, 12:20:42

Amen
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby GHung » Thu 23 Nov 2017, 12:33:29

Since climate change is largely about the long-term effects of the wastes from burning fossil fuels, how is a discussion of the long-term effects of other energy sources off-topic? I don't think we can honestly discuss the consequences of burning fossil fuels without pointing out possible consequences of using alternatives that so may of you promote.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby phaster » Thu 23 Nov 2017, 15:02:43

huh,

dammed if ya do and dammed if ya don’t

the reason I brought up that specific topic is, an eMail on the topic just happened to cross my desk so to speak AND I know for a fact that the waste result of a nuclear reactor is far more dangerous than the input fuel or said another way “bad” byproducts as a result of power generation produce decay elements which are not as easily controlled as the purified uranium fuel (for a reactor)

or said another yet another way, “ignoring the problem and/or dilution is NOT the solution to pollution”

the point being,... seems “idiotic” to store nuke waste on a beach in 5/8" thick cans behind a concrete wall,... in other words its not considering how murphy's law most likely will come into play over the long run

nuf said?

PS FWIW I’m not against nuke power if well though out and from a dollars and $ense stand point think nuke power is needed FOR BASELINE LOAD (i.e. when wind does not blow or sun does not shine)

A forgotten war technology could safely power Earth for millions of years. Here's why we aren't using it

Nuclear reactors,... They're dense, reliable, emit no carbon, and — contrary to bitter popular sentiment — are among the safest energy sources on earth.

...a molten-salt reactor, the technology was conceived during the Cold War and forgoes solid nuclear fuel for a liquid one, which it can "burn" with far greater efficiency than any power technology in existence. It also generates a small fraction of the radioactive waste compared to today's commercial reactors, which all rely on solid fuel.

And, in theory, molten-salt reactors can never melt down.


http://www.businessinsider.com/thorium- ... ftr-2017-2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 23 Nov 2017, 23:58:41

I wish you had picked one of the nuclear threads as I asked, the natives are restless.

Nuclear power production involves mining/refining uranium, which does not produce radioactivity, it concentrates natural radioactives, which otherwise would decay in the ground, leach radon gas into your basement, where you would inhale it. The uranium is then heated and combined with flourine gas, and then spun in hundreds of electric centrifuges to seperate the UF-235 from the UF-238. The U-235 is used in reactors as fuel, the U-238 or "depleted" uranium (DU) is used in heavy armor-penetrating bullets that kill tanks from A-10 attack jets.

The U-235 radioactive stuff generates power over a period of years, plus a whole bunch of short lived isotopes that decay rapidly away (high level wastes) and contaminated suits/gloves/etc. (low level wastes) and spent fuel including plutonium 239, which could either be used as fuel after re-processing, or as weapons material. US law forbids selling weapons material, either U-235 or P-239.

So here is the secret. After the entire fuel cycle, and after the short-lived radioactives have decayed away, you could take all of the stuff left over, grind it up, mix it with the original uranium mine tailings, and put it back in the uranium mine, and it would be safer than it was before, because the power generation consumed some of the radioactives. Nuclear power does not make radiation, it removes it from the environment, if you do the math carefully. The missing radiation became electricity.

Now go back to the original Forbes article I linked you to. Nuclear energy is safer than any other form of power. The original deathprint was increased from 0.004 deaths/trillionkWhr to 0.1 deaths/trillionkWhr when the highway accident deathrates from mining, refining, transporting fuel, and transporting wastes and spent fuel were added. Not that highway deaths were added to the other forms of energy - the records don't exist for anything but carefully managed nuclear materials - but the point is even the 0.1 deaths/trillionkWhr is higher than the actual figure in an apples/apples comparison.

The commonest form of energy production is still coal, at 100,000 deaths/trillionkWhr. That is one million times as dangerous as nuclear energy. If you know of a better way of measuring safety other than actual deaths/trillionkWhr, can we please discuss it in the correct thread?
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby jedrider » Fri 24 Nov 2017, 20:00:35

If nuclear energy is so safe, why did they have to evacuate Fukushima?

I always wonder why a all-out nuclear war is not preferable to climate change 'in the long run'? I don't understand the consequences of nuclear fallout, but climate change I've figured out.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Subjectivist » Fri 24 Nov 2017, 21:43:48

jedrider wrote:If nuclear energy is so safe, why did they have to evacuate Fukushima?

I always wonder why a all-out nuclear war is not preferable to climate change 'in the long run'? I don't understand the consequences of nuclear fallout, but climate change I've figured out.


They didn't have to for scientific reasons, most of it was done purely for political reasons. Nobody got so much as a tenth of a lifetime dose from Fukushima, but politicians always wish to appear as if they are offering solutions and fixing problems. Just because the problem is mostly imaginary doesn't change the politicians need to look concerned and busy.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby phaster » Sat 02 Dec 2017, 19:52:36

jedrider wrote:If nuclear energy is so safe, why did they have to evacuate Fukushima?

I always wonder why a all-out nuclear war is not preferable to climate change 'in the long run'? I don't understand the consequences of nuclear fallout, but climate change I've figured out.


to understand why there is danger w/ nuclear fall out first requires understanding what radiation is,... and a good place to start is to think about a heat lamp

(heat_radiation_lamp).jpg


(the bulb) is an example of something the produces an emission of energy, in this case heat from a source

what makes nuclear power so attractive is the ability to extract lots of "energy" from a vary, vary, vary tiny source!

so imagine dry talc powder as an analog for radio active material, in other words picture each tiny grain of talc powder as having the ability to give off the same amount of energy as a heat lamp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba79P5Qzfrs

what makes nuclear fall out dangerous is ponder inhaling an individual grain of talc powder which then gets stuck in your lungs,... basically the key idea is to ponder what would happen if ya had your skin exposed to a close by 250 watt heat lamp (i.e. skin on human body gets a "radiation" burn)

http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/vid ... /502266422

nuclear fallout is what sort of inspired the character godzilla, as well as made the USA and USSR to rethink the wisdom of exploding bombs above ground

now back to your question,... if you think about what happened in chernobyl and fukushima, here lots of "energetic" particles like dry talc powder was scattered in the environment (and dispersed by wind/ocean-currents) when the pressure vessel of the nuclear reactor exploded

now do you grasp the bad consequences of nuclear fallout?

anyway looking at todays paper, just read something interesting about a self proclaimed environmentalist

Pro-nuclear activist running for governor on pledge to reform utilities commission

Shellenberger listed eight key pledges he said would lower energy costs, reduce poverty, improve education and promote cleaner sources of power. His first pledge is: “Break up the corrupt California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), release secret emails and prosecute the criminals.”

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/new ... story.html


https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shell ... nvironment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciStnd9Y2ak

IMHO if we as a people wish to continue having all the consumer goods and life style stuff associated the so called "american way of life" we'll need "clean" base line power like nuclear because the weather changes (i.e. the sun does not always shine AND the wind does not always blow)

also FWIW,... the reason high pressure reactors (like Diablo Canyon or San Onofre here in california) were built is because the military paid for the R&D AND the fuel for pressurized water reactors could be re-packaged for military applications (i.e. things that make a BIG BANG!)

as it stands we "humans" are @ an interesting cross road, its going to be interesting to see what path we take
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby dohboi » Sun 03 Dec 2017, 01:09:02

This is all pretty far out from the main topic of this thread, but as civilization collapses, every single nuke will go Fuku or worse, spreading massive amounts of radiation across large swaths of the globe, much of it the most heavily populated parts. Then I'm sure those dying of radiation poisoning will get much comfort from all those here and elsewhere assuring all of us that nukes are forever safe and wonderful.


Sleep tight, boys, for tomorrow, we die horrible deaths. :-D :-D
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sun 03 Dec 2017, 01:23:49

dohboi wrote:This is all pretty far out from the main topic of this thread, but as civilization collapses, every single nuke will go Fuku or worse, spreading massive amounts of radiation across large swaths of the globe, much of it the most heavily populated parts. Then I'm sure those dying of radiation poisoning will get much comfort from all those here and elsewhere assuring all of us that nukes are forever safe and wonderful.


Sleep tight, boys, for tomorrow, we die horrible deaths. :-D :-D

I highly doubt that. They are already shutting down and decommissioning some of the older reactors, VT Yankee for example, and I expect that operators would shut them all down safely before they walked away even if a shooting revolution was going on outside the gates.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Cog » Sun 03 Dec 2017, 10:41:57

You can't shut them down overnight. For a year or so you have to circulate water through the core to keep the fuel rods from melting. Even used fuel rods have to have constant water circulation for an extended period of time to stop them from melting. Shutting active reactors down is more than just inserting the control rods in. Fukushima is a good example of what happens when you lose the ability to circulate water through the fuel rods.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby GHung » Sun 03 Dec 2017, 11:04:11

Phaster's comparison of nuclear radiation (alpha, beta, gamma) to light bulbs and talcum powder is like comparing Ebola to the common cold.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Tanada » Sun 03 Dec 2017, 11:24:33

phaster wrote:To understand why there is danger w/ nuclear fall out first requires understanding what radiation is,... and a good place to start is to think about a heat lamp

(heat_radiation_lamp).jpg


(the bulb) is an example of something the produces an emission of energy, in this case heat from a source

what makes nuclear power so attractive is the ability to extract lots of "energy" from a vary, vary, vary tiny source!

so imagine dry talc powder as an analog for radio active material, in other words picture each tiny grain of talc powder as having the ability to give off the same amount of energy as a heat lamp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba79P5Qzfrs

what makes nuclear fall out dangerous is ponder inhaling an individual grain of talc powder which then gets stuck in your lungs,... basically the key idea is to ponder what would happen if ya had your skin exposed to a close by 250 watt heat lamp (i.e. skin on human body gets a "radiation" burn)

http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/vid ... /502266422

nuclear fallout is what sort of inspired the character godzilla, as well as made the USA and USSR to rethink the wisdom of exploding bombs above ground

now back to your question,... if you think about what happened in chernobyl and fukushima, here lots of "energetic" particles like dry talc powder was scattered in the environment (and dispersed by wind/ocean-currents) when the pressure vessel of the nuclear reactor exploded

now do you grasp the bad consequences of nuclear fallout?

anyway looking at todays paper, just read something interesting about a self proclaimed environmentalist

Pro-nuclear activist running for governor on pledge to reform utilities commission

Shellenberger listed eight key pledges he said would lower energy costs, reduce poverty, improve education and promote cleaner sources of power. His first pledge is: “Break up the corrupt California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), release secret emails and prosecute the criminals.”

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/new ... story.html


https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shell ... nvironment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciStnd9Y2ak

IMHO if we as a people wish to continue having all the consumer goods and life style stuff associated the so called "american way of life" we'll need "clean" base line power like nuclear because the weather changes (i.e. the sun does not always shine AND the wind does not always blow)

also FWIW,... the reason high pressure reactors (like Diablo Canyon or San Onofre here in california) were built is because the military paid for the R&D AND the fuel for pressurized water reactors could be re-packaged for military applications (i.e. things that make a BIG BANG!)

as it stands we "humans" are @ an interesting cross road, its going to be interesting to see what path we take


Your heat lamp analogy is a false analogy in the extreme.

People have this nonsense idea that when a highly radioactive particle falls to the ground it remains highly radioactive for eons, or at least generational human lifetimes.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Presume your scenario of breathing in a contaminated dust mote is correct in all its initial parameters, you breathe in the dust and for some bad luck reason in lodges in your lung tissue instead of being expelled by mucus secretion as normally happens.

Okay now what you have this tiny radioactive source in your lung. Two main short lived isotopes exist that could be on that dust mote lodged in your lung if the fallout comes from a recently running reactor or a nuclear explosive device. These are Iodine 131 with a half life of 8 days and Cesium 137 with a half life of just over 30 years. The iodine decays away to effectively stable isotopes in 5 half lives or 45 days and ceases to be radioactive rapidly over that time frame. The Cesium does the same thing but because its half life is a human generation you will still have 25% of the radioactivity trapped in your lung 60 years later which makes you elderly in every culture and if you were 30 when the event happened you are very elderly or died of something else already by the 60 year mark.

For a dust mote trapped in your lung tissue just about any isotope with a half life longer than 30 years is irrelevant from a radiation point of view. In simplest terms if something has a 200 year to 2 billion year half life and you are eating a spoonful every day from the time your parents start you on solid food you will never notice the radioactivity because it will decay little to very very little within your human lifespan.

So for your heat lamp analogy, to get that much energy release from a particle the size of a lodged dust mote the half life has to be very short, like a pure sample of Iodine 131 instead of the little bit that would coat a dust mote. So lets say the evil luck of your cursed life caused the particle to be somehow pure short lived isotopes all with half lives of a few weeks at most. Say 6 weeks or less because any longer on such a point source and the energy release becomes nothing like your heat lamp, it is more like moonlight.

So in five half lives or 5*6 = 30 weeks your dust mote is effectively inert. Yes that is less than a year and in point of fact radioactivity studies at Fukushima completely confirm this fact of physics.

The emissions immediately after the accident were around 220 billion becquerel; readings declined after that, and in November and December 2011 they dropped to 17 thousand becquerel, about one-13 millionth the initial level.


IOW in just 9 months the fallout radioactivity radiated away so much that only 1/13,000,000 particles remaining were radioactive. Now a dust mote, tiny as it is contains trillions of atoms and I specified your dust mote was a pure sample. So for easy math say it had 13 Trillion atoms in the mote. 13 Trillion/13 Million reduces the radioactivity particle count to just 1 Million radioactive atoms remaining out of the original 13 Trillion. In a pure sample with a six week half life that becomes 500 thousand in six weeks, then 250 thousand after another six weeks and 125 thousand after another rapidly winding all the way down to 2, 1 and 0. I didn't bother to run the entire progression but you can easily do so by putting your assumed number of atoms in a calculator program and just keep dividing by 2 until you get to less than 1. Count how many steps that took and multiply it by the half life of the sample, in this case six weeks. At the expiration of that period the radioactive material is no longer radioactive, it is inert.

But WAIT you say, all the fear mongers and MSM are always going on and on about Plutonium with its 24,900 year half life! Yes, yes indeed they are. But stop and reflect for a moment, if that dust mote were a sample of pure Plutonium 239 and it was permanently lodged in your lung tissue for 100 years after you inhaled it how much radiation damage would it do to you?

Math again darn it! 100/24,900 = 0.004 or 4 out of every 1000 atoms will have decayed in 100 years. Okay so say for easy math the sample was that same 13 Trillion atoms we used for our earlier sample of short lived material.
13 Trillion/1000 is 13 Billion atoms. Multiply by 4 to get 52 Billion decay actions over 100 years. Sounds like a lot when said that way doesn't it? But the math isn't finished at that point. 100 years times 365.248 days times 24 hours times 60 minutes times 60 seconds is 3,155,742,720 seconds in 100 years unless I dropped something somewhere. 52 Billion/3.155 Billion = 16 atoms decay every second for that 100 year span. Holy cow how are you still alive? Oh wait, your own body is vastly more radioactive than Plutonium 239!
The amount of the radioactive isotope 40K in a 70-kg person is about 5,000 Bq, which represents 5,000 atoms undergoing radioactive decay each second. Second, 40K emits gamma rays in a little over 10 percent of its decays and most of these gamma rays escape the body.


IOW your natural radioactivity even back when Gargle was thumping Screechy on the head with a club and your next cave neighbors were Neanderthals was 5000/16 = 312 times more radioactive than if they had breathed in a dust mote of pure Plutonium 239 and it became lodged in their lung tissue as you analogized.

Yes lung tissue is sensitive to radioactivity. However your body has natural repair mechanisms to deal with the fact that you are naturally radioactive, and not just from the Potassium 40 (K-40) in every cell of your body. You also have a lot of Carbon 14 in your body because it is part of all growing plants and you either eat plants or eat animals who have eaten plants or other animals that eat plants. The Carbon 14 load in your body gives you another 3,000 disintegration a second to deal with and repair.

In the real world where the laws of physics apply and the biological repair mechanisms of your body are not impaired you can fix several times over your natural radioactivity level of theoretical damage to your cells in your lungs or anywhere else. That does not mean the theoretical 6 week half life dust mote used in the example earlier is totally harmless, it simply means that because its danger period lasts less than a year your body is highly likely to repair whatever damage it does rather than those damages accumulating to the point of causing a malignancy and killing you prematurely from cancer.

To know if radiation is dangerous you have to know how energetic it is, how much you are exposed to, and how long that exposure lasts. For fallout the MSM and fear mongers hype to the rafters the bulk of the activity by a huge margin is less than a year, and in the event of a nuclear explosion of pure material is measured from hundreds of tests to be about 14 days. That is reality. The famous boat full of Japanese fishermen exposed accidentally during the pacific testing program were injured because they were exposed to fresh fallout that had only been decaying a few hours when the weather deposited it on their boat. If the weather had done the same thing even as little as a day later their exposure would have been much less, and by the time the weather deposited the fallout on land the activity level was relatively low and decreasing rapidly.

Last point before I finish. Your premise is based on a dust mote of radioactive material lodging in your lung tissue. The thing is your lungs are very very good at dislodging dust and transferring it by mucous excretion up your trachea to the point where it is expelled at the esophagus opening and swallowed. From there it gets processed through stomach acid so your body can absorb any minerals deemed useful for cell biology. That is where the real 'threat' from bio-accumulators like Cesium 137 and Iodine 131 comes from because your stomach and intestinal tract are optimized to absorb Sodium & Potassium which makes absorbing Cesium highly likely and Iodine is absorbed by direct intent because it is a necessary chemical and not common in most food. The Cesium flows through your system for a few days just like the Sodium and Potassium you get in food until you sweat or urinate it out. This makes the 30 year half life crucially important because it rarely stays in your system more than a very few days and rarely undergoes decay while inside your body before being excreted.

Iodine on the other hand accumulates mostly in the thyroid gland which does a pretty good job of retaining iodine in its tissues because it is not common in food and you need it for proper function. If your diet is low in stable iodine this can cause you to absorb and retain enough Iodine 131 to do severe damage to your thyroid gland. If you eat an American diet with iodized salt your thyroid is well supplied with stable iodine and doesn't have a lot of extra space for Iodine 131, or if you take an Iodine supplement when a fallout threat is known or as part of a multi-vitamin/mineral regimen the same thing happens. The biggest tragedy after Chernobyl was the government of the USSR failed to give everyone an Iodine supplement immediately. Many of these people were below the iodine needs of the body so their thyroids absorbed a lot of Iodine 131 and as a result many of them developed thyroid disease or even cancer. The fact of the matter is those injuries were 100% preventable, but the bureaucracy was too slow to respond to the crisis to prevent them. Iodine not needed by the thyroid is excreted so if those people had been supplied with stable iodine they would never have absorbed the Iodine 131 that caused them later health problems.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sun 03 Dec 2017, 11:33:59

Cog wrote:You can't shut them down overnight. For a year or so you have to circulate water through the core to keep the fuel rods from melting. Even used fuel rods have to have constant water circulation for an extended period of time to stop them from melting. Shutting active reactors down is more than just inserting the control rods in. Fukushima is a good example of what happens when you lose the ability to circulate water through the fuel rods.
Yes of course but that requires only a water supply and a working pump. Vt Yankee is moving towards dry storage with all the rods to be in casks on site by 2020. at a cost of $145 million needed because the Federal government failed to open a long term National storage facility. Those cost include a new 200KW backup generator with a 1200 gallon fuel tank. That is to insure the pumps keep going until 2020 whenever grid power fails.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby GHung » Sun 03 Dec 2017, 11:54:16

Plutonium has a half-life of about 24,000 years. And scientists have known for decades that even in small doses, it is highly toxic, leading to radiation illness, cancer and often to death. After the March nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, people the world over worried that plutonium poisoning might affect those near the compromised plant—and beyond.


Inhaled plutonium can land in the lungs, where it can lead to cancer, but it—and any that is ingested—can also find its way into the blood stream where it is slowly absorbed into the body.


New details about this toxic process are now emerging. "Plutonium is a toxic synthetic element with no natural biological functions," Mark Jensen, of the Argonne National Laboratory, and his colleagues wrote in a new paper, published online June 26 in Nature Chemical Biology (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group). Not only is it useless to the body, "it is strongly retained by humans when ingested," primarily lodging in bone and liver cells, where it can release harmful alpha radiation.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ob ... -the-body/
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby Tanada » Sun 03 Dec 2017, 12:08:24

GHung wrote:
Plutonium has a half-life of about 24,000 years. And scientists have known for decades that even in small doses, it is highly toxic, leading to radiation illness, cancer and often to death. After the March nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, people the world over worried that plutonium poisoning might affect those near the compromised plant—and beyond.


Inhaled plutonium can land in the lungs, where it can lead to cancer, but it—and any that is ingested—can also find its way into the blood stream where it is slowly absorbed into the body.


New details about this toxic process are now emerging. "Plutonium is a toxic synthetic element with no natural biological functions," Mark Jensen, of the Argonne National Laboratory, and his colleagues wrote in a new paper, published online June 26 in Nature Chemical Biology (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group). Not only is it useless to the body, "it is strongly retained by humans when ingested," primarily lodging in bone and liver cells, where it can release harmful alpha radiation.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ob ... -the-body/


Also a perfect stranger Can buy a winning lotto ticket and mail it to me so I can be a Lotto Winner. But the odds are very low and I am not going to base my life decisions on such low probability events. Your bones and liver are already saturated with naturally radioactive materials with a far higher emission rate than Plutonium 239. You don't have to love that fact, but it is a scientifically verified fact and wishing it away won't change it a single iota from being true.
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Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sun 03 Dec 2017, 12:24:42

GHung, get real. The reactor accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima did not release Plutonium. Plutonium is present in minute quantities at the end of a years-long nuclear fuel cycle, and it is even more valuable as fuel than is uranium, and is re-processed and re-used, unless some government diverts it into weapons production.

The only Plutonium present in our environment came from nuclear weapons, which is a whole different topic from nuclear energy producing commercial electrical power. There simply is no basis for hysteria and fear from nuclear energy.

Lastly, allow me to remind you of the deathprint statistics. Burning coal for energy kills one million times as many people as nuclear power, mostly from hydrocarbon air pollution. It is also true that burning coal spews far more radioactive isotopes into our environment than do nuclear reactors. Various coals contain varying amounts of radioactive isotopes, depending upon where they are mined. Burning these coals has a cumulative release of radiation over the decades that dwarfs nuclear power plants. Petroleum also contains radioactives and these are also released by burning. If you want to curtail the release of radioactivity, you need to ban the burning of coal and oil. Meanwhile, if you use grid electricity (still largely generated from coal) or put gasoline or diesel fuel in a vehicle, you are doing your personal part to pollute our environment with radiation.
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Re: THE Radiation / Radioactive Thread Pt. 2

Unread postby GHung » Sun 03 Dec 2017, 12:38:43

Tanada wrote:.....

Also a perfect stranger Can buy a winning lotto ticket and mail it to me so I can be a Lotto Winner. But the odds are very low and I am not going to base my life decisions on such low probability events. Your bones and liver are already saturated with naturally radioactive materials with a far higher emission rate than Plutonium 239. You don't have to love that fact, but it is a scientifically verified fact and wishing it away won't change it a single iota from being true.


"Your bones and liver are already saturated with naturally radioactive materials", that, as naturally-occurring materials, our bodies have adapted to dealing with over eons of evolution. As the article states, plutonium is a non-naturally-occurring element that has been in our environment for just a few generations. The same is true of many substances we've developed in our recent history. I neither claim these substances are damaging or relatively benign, but refuse to flippantly dismiss them as well, especially the ones which remain in our environment for millennia. But maybe you think things like the Superfund, spending billions to sequester these substances, and the many other things we do to try and protect future generations from the consequences of growth, are silly, reactionary responses. Either way, the lawyers love it.

I expect that, as is often the case, the consequences will be cumulative. Just another factor in our 'death by a thousand cuts' path.
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