41–50 of 95 posts
It is amazing to me how effective the Earth is becoming at relaying globally-affecting information to (for lack of a better term) stakeholders. Why the month delay?
Does anyone know why there is no data for some countries like Sweden?
Can someone describe the significance/insignificance/context of this?
"Iodine-131 is a radionuclide with a short half-life (T1/2 = 8.04 day)." Short half life, a nuclear event of some sort happened recently and nothing has been reported. I-131 is an isotope of Iodine and the source could be natural gas related, medical diagnostic OR a product of uranium and plutonium used in nuclear fission. [0] Which countries have access to plutonium? "only particulate iodine was reported." What is t…
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2013/03/world/nuclear-weapon-...
Poland has the highest reading - something going awry at Chernobyl or somebody testing low yield nukes? I am also really disappointed this wasn't anywhere in the news, at least people could have taken some iodine. I understand the level is low but there is still non-zero probability of somebody going ill from it.
This is a map of air pollution in Europe. http://www.zzit.pl/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Powietrze.jpg Poland is struggling right now because of huge smog. This makes me believe in this part of an article, which says that higher iodine detection might be caused by accumulation in smog.
The releases of January 2017 are 10,000 times lower than those observed (in France) following the Fukushima incident[0] CRIIRAD[1] believes that the meteorological conditions (and air pollution actually in Europe) and (legal) authorizations of iodine-131 releases by the industry are the cause of this event which could have passed unnoticed[0] It is an unimportant event. [0] http://www.criirad.org/balises/CRIIRAD_1702…
Might not be an important event concerning public health. It is extremely important if there was an accident or anything more serious we haven't been notified about.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same thing happened in 2015.
Same thing with or without known cause?
http://www.irsn.fr/EN/publications/thematic-radiation-protec...
The difference was so small that I had just attributed it to normal fluctuations when I first saw it. Whatever caused this, so far it looks like it was a very small event.
I could probably provide a CSV-file with the raw data if anyone is interested. My Geiger counter stores a value every 5 minutes.
Poland has the highest reading - something going awry at Chernobyl or somebody testing low yield nukes? I am also really disappointed this wasn't anywhere in the news, at least people could have taken some iodine. I understand the level is low but there is still non-zero probability of somebody going ill from it.
Poland has the highest reading I wondered so as well, but the second-highest was from Spain, and I struggle to form a consistent picture from that.
But due to the fact that they have not done so I assume it's harder than it looks.
Poland has the highest reading - something going awry at Chernobyl or somebody testing low yield nukes? I am also really disappointed this wasn't anywhere in the news, at least people could have taken some iodine. I understand the level is low but there is still non-zero probability of somebody going ill from it.
Edit: I know this is harsh, but the OP should realize their post is somewhere on the anti-vaxxer-Facebook-post-scale. It's somewhere around a millipost, but it registers on the scale.
What should the news flash say? "Run from the nearest banana, person, airplane, or mountain."
I'm really disappointed at your disappointment despite an absolute lack of critical thought on your part. What fraction of a banana would you have to eat in order to have the same effect? How many nights would you need to sleep next to someone instead of alone to get the same dose? How many minutes at 30,000 feet does that correspond to?
Back-of-the envelope calculations: the half life is about 8 days, remembering your infinite series from high school, 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 ... = 1. So, the total dose over an infinite time frame is the same as 2 half lives at the initial level, so 16 days = 1,382,400 at 1.5e-6 Bq/m^3 works out to about 2 decays per cubic meter over an infinite time frame.
Even assuming you absorbed any decay from 10 cubic meters of air around you, I'm too lazy to look up the difference in number of Joules between Iodine and Potassium decay and work out what fraction of a banana you'd have to eat to get the same dose, or how many days of sleeping next to someone that works out to, but even assuming at steady state you absorb every radioactive decay from 10 m^3 of air (gigantic over-estimate), this is an absolutely tiny dose.
The danger of someone panicking and accidentally overdosing on iodine, or suffering a heart attack/stroke from the increased stress following such a news announcement is almost certainly higher than the risk of someone getting cancer from this.
I live in Hong Kong, where a fair number of people in finance moved from Tokyo following the Fukushima disaster out of radiation concerns. The natural background radiation levels in Hong Kong are higher in Hong Kong by more than the additional radiation in Tokyo due to Fukushima.
You've done literally over a hundred things in the past 24 hours that pose much more danger to you than 1.5 uBq / m^3 of iodine decay.