URGENT. Possible nuclear disaster ongoing

It’s funny, isn’t it? Radiation is a well-known cause of cancer;

You say “cause”, others say “trigger”.

Tobacco smoking is a known trigger for cancer where people with the right genetic set are triggered to develop active cancer. Some people smoke for decades without problem.
Certain viruses are know to trigger certain cancers.Some people carry the virus without problem.
In both of those cases there is no one-to-one relationship (of smoking or viral infection) to the development of active cancer.

There’s the problem – no proper correlation of cause and effect. Particularly awkward where the effect appears without the known “cause” because an unknown (genetic cluster, apparently harmless virus, excess of some mineral in diet) has actually done the deed.

You say “cause”, others say “trigger”.

Fair enough. I stand corrected. My expertise is in nuclear physics, not medicine. But I did write “a known cause” not “the known cause.” I’m well aware there are other causes – I mean triggers.

There’s the problem – no proper correlation of cause and effect.

Possibly because those with access to the information don’t allow others to see it. That was the case with tobacco for a very long time, but of course that’s history now. There are indeed a number of known triggers, of which radiation (or, more particularly, ingestion or inhalation of radioactive contaminants, particularly those with medium half-lives and which are not rapidly excreted or exhaled) is indeed but one. As long as the levels in the environment are small, incidences are obviously only going to be comparable, or less than, the incidences done by other triggers.

Which is why I’m not much concerned about the current Ru106 scare – at least not for those of us a considerable distance from the presumed source; and why it’s still possible to argue about whether Sellafield and Dounreay are responsible for the local clusters, which are not enormous. Every case, whatever its trigger, is a big deal for the families of those affected, but the numbers are not concerning for the population at large.

But it’s why I am concerned at the prospect of any massive increase in the use of nuclear power.

We’ve been capable of measuring radioactive contamination levels for a long time now, and we (in this country at least) have pretty good knowledge of incidence of disease. There are complications with people moving from place to place, and spending time in particular environments even within their home area, but it ought to be possible to get a good correlation (as with tobacco smoke). Yet somehow the radioactive contamination data is not available – and very probably hasn’t been collected. One has to wonder why.

Oh, and I must have been pretty tired when I was looking up the beta emission energies of the various isotopes. They are actually as follows:

Ru106: 39.4 keV → Rh106: 3.55 MeV → Pd106: (stable)
Cs135: 269 keV → Ba135: (stable)
Cs137: 1.18 MeV → Ba137: (stable)
I131: 971 keV → Xe131: (stable)
K40: 1.31 Mev → Ca40: (stable)

The Rh106 has a half-life of 30s, so its decay is essentially just a second emission from the Ruthenium.

So the effective energy of the Ruthenium decay is a lot more than that of the other isotopes usually talked about. Against that there’s the fact that there’s a fair bit less of it produced in reactors, but with a half-life longer than I131 although it’s initially producing fewer decays it’s around for longer, but while it lasts it’s producing a lot more decays than Cs137 (which has a considerably longer half-life and is therefore a longer-term concern).

My excuse, apart from tiredness, is that http://atom.kaeri.re.kr:8080/ton/index.html is no longer working, and I’m less familiar with the new improved version, http://atom.kaeri.re.kr/nuchart/# …

. There are complications with people moving from place to place, and spending time in particular environments even within their home area, but it ought to be possible to get a good correlation (as with tobacco smoke).

Vested interests and suppression/distortion of data (on both sides).

As an example despite secondary smoking having been established as similarly bad as primary and the known smoke problem in public houses a large study of alcohol related mortality was doing fine and being well funded until the question was asked about eliminating the effects of secondary smoking. The study data was re-run with the lung cancer element (and other smaller factors) removed and the famous J-curve then showed that the health benefits of alcohol consumption became apparent. The funding, from an anti-alcohol group, was withdrawn and the project shut down

Yet somehow the radioactive contamination data is not available – and very probably hasn’t been collected. One has to wonder why.

I’m sure it has been collected. The problem is nuclear —> weapons —> Official Secrets.

Meanwhile nuclear —> bombs and cancer stuff —> ban it all. That’s why the physical chemistry technique NMR which with wider scan area and lots of Fourier analysis becomes MRI (with a strong please don’t mention nuclear resonance to the patients) rather than NMRI.

Bear in mind that it was the toxicity of Polonium that killed Alexander Litvinenko, although the radioactivity might not have taken much longer to cause enough health problems to kill him at the dose he had. The thing is everyone knows from the news that Polonium is radioactive and it killed him so it absolutely must have been the radioactivity that killed him and sweep the toxicity under the carpet as not fitting the scare story.

Vested interests and suppression/distortion of data (on both sides).

Exactly! A point I’ve made repeatedly.

I’m sure it has been collected.

I’m not. There’s lots of data been collected on dose-response, if that’s what you mean, then yes. But environmental contamination? Bits and pieces, yes – some of that is even public – but systematically, all over the place? I don’t think so.

Meanwhile nuclear —> bombs and cancer stuff —> ban it all.

Oh, indeed. It drives me mad. It makes it damned difficult to talk about the very real concerns when one is swamped with paranoid exaggerations and misunderstandings.

Bear in mind that it was the toxicity of Polonium that killed Alexander Litvinenko

Hmm. That’s an interesting example of a misunderstanding – one which I’m sure is assiduously promoted by the nuclear industry. Po210 (the isotope Litvinenko was poisoned with) is an alpha emitter. Externally, alpha is almost completely harmless: alpha particles are stopped by skin. The external radiation hazard from it is almost non-existent. Once it’s ingested or inhaled, the situation is completely different: alpha particles are able to penetrate cell walls and cause mayhem, with a lot of energy deposited in a short distance. The industry love to call this radiotoxicity, or even, when they can get away with it, just plain toxicity – because it only happens once it’s in the body, whereas radiation is normally thought of as something that goes right through you from outside.
But Po210 (which they love to call toxic, rather than radiotoxic) is so radioactive that any chemical toxicity is irrelevant. The fact that it’s the radioactivity that gets you is evidenced by the different toxicity of the different isotopes of polonium – inversely proportional to their half-lives (approximately: the alpha energies are slightly different).
Anything with a half-life in days (or even a few years) and alpha energy in MeV is radiotoxic – and deadly at far lower concentrations than could possibly cause chemical poisoning.
Polonium doesn’t have any long half-life isotopes, so any chemical toxicity would be impossible to establish, although its chemical similarity to other elements allows one to make intelligent guesses. But there is no element at all that is detectably toxic at the concentrations that killed Litvinenko. Even Pu239, with a half-life 50,000 times that of Po210, is so radiotoxic that any non-radio toxicity is impossible to determine.

Bear in mind that it was the toxicity of Polonium that killed Alexander Litvinenko

missing bit: although the radioactivity might not have taken much longer to cause enough health problems to kill him at the dose he had

Deliberately missing: the radiation (internally) is what killed him. Any chemical toxicity polonium might have is completely irrelevant. There is no substance on Earth (or anywhere else) that is detectably chemically toxic at the concentration that Po210 is lethal at. Not by several orders of magnitude.

The confusion between radiation, radioactive contamination, (radio)toxicity and (chemical) toxicity is a fine example of the distortion by that particular side.

And yes, absolutely, there’s lots of distortion on the other side, too – see http://clive.semmens.org.uk/Nuclear.php?Cs137Enviro (Fukushima: catastrophe, but don’t exaggerate)