URGENT. Possible nuclear disaster ongoing
Pages: 1 2
Xavier Louis Tardy (359) 27 posts |
Hi all. I prefer to play ‘Doctor Doom’ and bring this info, even if not that serious, than keeping it for myself and hear later on that you have suffered from my keeping it for myself, so please read this : I do not think I need to tell you not to eat anything fresh growing in the air, and no mushrooms, sage, thym, whatever and no milk … It appears location of the incident or accident is near a Russian nuclear plant which already had had an accident in 1957. That is a nasty radio nucleide, stable enough to have a half life of over a year. And today we do not have the list of all possible radio nucleides brought to Western Europe. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3276 posts |
If it’s just Ru106, no, it’s not a nasty radionuclide. It’s got a bad half-life – long enough to last a while, and short enough that a lot of them are decaying at any moment – but it’s a very weak beta emitter, just 212eV. Compare that with K40, also a beta emitter, but with an energy of 1.3Mev, which forms 0.012% of natural potassium so that despite its long half-life (1.25 billion years) there are thousands of decays every second in your body. So unless you get an awful lot of Ru106 in you, it’s going to do absolutely nothing to you. It’s not quite so simple, in that the decay product (Rhodium 106) is also radioactive, with a very short half-life, but that’s also a weak beta emitter [correction: not all that weak, see later post]. The next product (Palladium 106) is also a very weak beta emitter, but with a half-life of billions of years, so not really relevant at all. I’m not a pro-nuclear wonk (quite the opposite, see http://clive.semmens.org.uk/Nuclear.html ) but scaremongering doesn’t help the cause. |
Xavier Louis Tardy (359) 27 posts |
As I wrote, it is not scaremongering. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3276 posts |
If it’s only Ru106, then it certainly IS scaremongering. The article you linked mentions “upticks” in Cs134, Cs137 and I131, which if present in large quantities would matter, but it doesn’t mention them as being the main issue, so presumably the quantities are so small that the Ru106 is more important. No, sorry, I don’t say “Thanks, Xavier” when you spread scare stories. I don’t blame you in the slightest – easy mistake to make, not your fault – but I expect you to say “thanks for the correction, Clive.” Your first para in the original post is very fair, but the rest – yes, scaremongering. |
Xavier Louis Tardy (359) 27 posts |
What is wrong with you ? Do not expect any kind of me thanking you after reading you. No way. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3276 posts |
And for what it’s worth, I DO do my own research. I’ve been an anti-nuclear activist for the last 48 years, since having seen the light while studying Nuclear Engineering. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3276 posts |
Xavier: no, the very first sentence is, as I say, very fair. But you then go overboard in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th paragraphs of your original post. |
Xavier Louis Tardy (359) 27 posts |
‘to go overboard’=‘to go extremes’ I used the dictionary to be sure. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3276 posts |
Indeed.
That’s going to extremes.
That’s not going to extremes, but it’s just wrong. Cs134, Cs137 and I131 – they are nasty radioisotopes. But Ru106 really isn’t. Any of them can be nasty if the quantities are large enough, of course – but you’d have to be exposed to an awful lot of Ru106 for it to have any appreciable effect. Those near the source might have justifiable concerns. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3276 posts |
Correction, and an apology: Ru106 is nastier than I’ve been saying. Its own decay is indeed weak (212eV is correct) but its daughter isotope, Rh106 is less weak, and with a half-life of just minutes is effectively simply a second beta emission (whereas the next one, Pd106, is extremely unlikely to decay in your, or anyone else’s, lifetime). It’s still very weak compared to K40, but it’s 5.3KeV, which IS stronger than Cs135, Cs137 or I131. So if you’re being exposed to significant amounts it could be an issue. But unless you’re close to the source, there’s really no cause for alarm or taking any avoiding action. Your linked source mentioned Cs134, which is indeed a radioactive isotope, but not one that occurs to any measurable extent in fission products. Cs135 & Cs137 do – they’re the ones usually of most concern, together with I131 & Sr90. |
Xavier Louis Tardy (359) 27 posts |
OK thanks. Also I believe this forum is consulted by adults, with a rather high intelligence, and we are not prone to being panic stricken. |
Steffen Huber (91) 1953 posts |
Can you actually see any Chernobyl effect in French health statistics? There is nothing like that in Germany to be seen, and we had very different contamination levels in certain parts of Bavaria compared to the rest of the country, so it should be easy to see a “signal”. Conclusion: the contamination levels were low enough to not do any harm in Western Europe. We saw a similar problem when the Japanese government decided about evacuation of the Fukushima region. Most of it was just wrong and not based on facts, but on LNT hypothesis and the world-famous precautionary principle instead of sensible risk analysis. Personally, I blame it on the radiation hysteria most of the public seems to suffer from. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3276 posts |
I’m pretty sure the truth lies somewhere between that and the hysteria, Steffen. Signals that would be easy to see if those in a position to do the seeing wanted to see them can easily be missed if they don’t. There’s a very clear correlation between incidences of leukaemia and nuclear sites, but the authorities go to great lengths to find alternative explanations. Equally, it’s awfully easy to find signals that aren’t really there if you’re paranoid. Finding the truth is very difficult between authorities you really can’t trust, and activists who don’t have access to either the know-how or the measuring equipment. This makes sensible risk analysis very hard. |
Xavier Louis Tardy (359) 27 posts |
In France here is what you can read Basically, it is : ‘oh yes there are more thyroid cancers, but hey, not at all because of Chernobyl, but because our tools to diagnose them are much more efficient’. Then you have dozens of other sites clearly stating that yes this high raising is due to Chernobyl. As far as Fukushima is concerned, well I just do not know what to add when there are infos all over the web, and not from weirdos, but with testimonies from Japanese doctors, Japanese victims and so on. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3276 posts |
Yup. Very much the same sort of thing going on here in the UK. |
Xavier Louis Tardy (359) 27 posts |
I’ll add I don’t believe Arnie Gundersen from Fairewinds is a complete idiot. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
That’s one point of view, but then when you look from the point of view of someone working in the health service and that worked in an adjacent room to someone doing research work on thyroid conditions including cancer you tend to know how much better the diagnostic techniques have become since that specific research started in 1984. All things considered the typical French1 resident having frequented cafe or bars in their lifetime will have inhaled enough tobacco originated carcinogen that a microspec of a radio-active isotope will change their cancer chances by a minute fraction. 1 Belgium and Netherlands too. I’ve seen cafe/bar where the atmosphere could be sliced with a trowel at 07:30. Meanwhile pubs in the UK came with standard nicotine coloured paintwork, except for a few weeks after a repaint with brilliant white. |
Steffen Huber (91) 1953 posts |
I know the history of Arnie Gundersen being very economic with the truth. His anti-nuclear propaganda group “Fairewinds Energy Education” makes Greenpeace look like truth-seekers. He is obviously not a complete idiot, because he manages to keep quite a following in anti-nuclear circles. E.g. much of the mainstream press. He is good at propaganda, that’s for sure. I followed much of his “reporting” wrt Fukushima, and he really played it well. And that’s quite an accomplishment if the facts are not on your side. |
Steffen Huber (91) 1953 posts |
I only know the German studies about that topic in detail, and you can conclude from their results that there is no significant correlation. Amusingly, there is a correlation if you arbitrarily define a specific radius around nuclear sites and if you include nuclear sites as well as sites that were once planned to be nuclear sites, but then most educated people know how to fool you with statistics. So, I would say “citation needed”. Since it is “very clear”, this should be easy, no? |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3276 posts |
No, it’s not easy. I’d have to do a literature search, because I don’t have a record of it. I recall reading explanations of why the clusters existed. There was never any attempt to deny the existence of the clusters – as I recall, particularly around Sellafield and Dounreay but also a few other places. I recall finding the explanations very unconvincing. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
Among the explanations for some is what might be deemed "natural causes. I think you might find clusters in parts of Cornwall are one set. Often depends on housing location matching an interesting location |
Steffen Huber (91) 1953 posts |
I don’t think anyone knows why there are leukemia clusters. They can be seen worldwide, and there is neither a meaningful correlation to nuclear sites nor to high natural radiation (Colorado, Black Forest, Ramsar, Guarapari…). There are many things in discussion that might be responsible for leukemia. Genetics, benzene/benzol, viruses…many potential causes in combination with comparatively few cases makes it very hard to find causation by looking at correlation. Concerning radiation, it is known that high doses of Sr-90 might lead to leukemia. It is extremely unlikely that those high doses ever existed around nuclear sites. To sum it up, very little is known about the reasons for leukemia – so it is no wonder that most explanations are unconvincing! However, jumping to the conclusion that if such a leukemia cluster happens to exist near a nuclear site that the causation for it is the nuclear site is unconvincing as well. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 8172 posts |
It’s a regular complaint I have that people tend to see a problem and then a cause for problems of that type and assume that the two are linked in a one-to-one relationship whereas there may actually be a one-to-many (one problem to many linked causes) or even a many-to-many (one perceived problem is many real problems with many causes with or without link). |
Steve Fryatt (216) 2105 posts |
As a half-Cumbrian, my recollection is that it was widely stated locally (back in the 1980s) that the clusters of similar-sounding illness existed in the areas around Calder Bridge long before the Windscale site was built. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3276 posts |
Indeed. And there’s a clear (possible) cause: high levels of radon in domestic properties, due to the local geology. There’s another one near the old Smiths Instruments factory site near Bristol, where they used radium in painting instrument dials.
That is odder, since the local geology is not a notable generator of radon, unlike that in Cornwall. Nor is the local geology around Dounreay. Whether people in Cumbria in the 1980s were saying that because they, or people they knew, worked in the nuclear industry and were desperate not to blame it for the problems, who knows? It’s funny, isn’t it? Radiation is a well-known cause of cancer; Sellafield and Dounreay are both known to leak significant quantities of radioisotopes, some of them with the medium half-lives than mean they’re quite persistent in the environment yet very radioactive. But somehow the presence of clusters of cancer cases near these two sites couldn’t possibly be caused by that. Very odd. |
Pages: 1 2