Fukushima Forecast: Radioactive particles concentrated over Northwest U.S. on April 6 (VIDEO)

http://enenews.com/fukushima-forecast-radioactive-particles-concentrated-northwest-april-6-video

Well, I can add a little. The units in the video are Becquerels per SQUARE meter, not cubic meter, so they are considering all altitudes, not just ground level (the website uses the term total column height, which goes from ground on up to space). So if a piece of air containing radioactive xenon went over your head at 10,000 feet, you’d be OK.

Second, the highest concentration looks like 100 Bq/M^2 (again without considering where in altitude that is). Air contains from 30 to 100 Bq/M^3 of radiodactives (it varies by location and altitude and other things) mostly from radon, so an additional amount of a new isotope is not a huge increase. Doubling tiny leaves you with twice tiny, not big.

Xe-133 has a half-life of 5.3 days, and it’s inert, so if you breathe a few atoms in you’ll breathe them back out, it’s not like iodine, that likes to stay in your thyroid. They use Xe-133 in medical imaging, they have you breathe far more than 100 Bq/m^3 while standing in front of a gamma camera.

In summary, the amounts in the videos are very small. The videos don’t show ground-level concentrations, that’s unknown, but the stuff is probably way up near the jet stream.

One of the people posting comments at the linked site said the following -

We survived Chernobyl and here are a few things you can do to keep yourself safe too:

First of all don’t believe everything you hear about “miracle herbs or pills” that gets rid of contamination. If they really work then at least the high ranking people would used them. But where is the big boss from the Fukushima plant? In the hospital in Argentina because of health reasons…..

Second, buy milk powder, canned milk, fruits and vegetables and everything that will keep, that got packaged before March 11. Look at the expiration date and buy as much as you need before it expires. Store open d packages in the fridge or airtight containers. Don’t use water that comes from lakes or rivers or open aquaducts. Water from wells or that comes out of the ground is better. Look to see if you can find Beverages that are imported from countries that are safe. If you want to eat fresh fruits wash them under running water try them with paper towels and then peel them. DON’T eat anything outdoors! If you have a garden build yourself a greenhouse to keep the rain of of your produce. Don’t eat the plant stem from the vegetables. Thats a natural filter and would have more contamination. Don’t eat Mushrooms that grow outside. They like to store Cesium-137.

Chickens that pick outside on the ground, and the eggs should be a problem too. Get frozen chicken and fill your freezer or try to find a place that sells chicken and eggs from farms that keep them inside. Don’t eat anything that has liver or kidney in it. They are a filter and will have higher concentrations of contamination.

Third: Remember that only the strongest will survive. Keep yourself in shape. Eat good food that will give your body everything you need to keep healthy. Avoid everything that will be bad for your immune system.

Good luck!
*****************

I hope this makes you feel better.

I used to work in the nuclear power industry. Frankly, I think this is all overblown.

There is no harm in following the above advice if it makes you feel more secure. Remember that the effects of radioactive particles can be affected by time, distance and shielding. The further this material travels the more it is dispersed; the majority of the radioactive particles are falling into the oceans and water is very effective at shielding. It is mostly radioactive gases that in the upper atmosphere, though some particles may be present. Unless you’re directly breathing those gases there shouldn’t be a problem.

I’m not terribly concerned myself.

I should have added, what’s a Becquerel? It’s a unit of the amount of radioactive material present. It’s not a dose.

The units are disintegrations per second (DPS). A gram of radium has 3.7 x 10^10 DPS or Becquerels per second, the old unit was the Curie, the amount of radiation in one gram of pure radium.

So if I have a bottle of air that has one Bq in it, I can expect that one atom per second in the bottle will undergo radioactive decay. 100 Bq, one hundred atoms per second decaying out of all the atoms in it.

So in the chart in the linked article, if you took a column of air one meter square that went from the ground up to the stratosphere, in that column, there would be 100 atoms disintegrating in one second.

I did a very quick search at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research and I didn’t find this video. It doesn’t mean it isn’t there, but if someone can point me to an actual source from that site for the maps I would appreciate it. I did notice when I Googled the topic I got mostly left wing fear mongering posts about it.

Having said that, it appears these maps on the link you gave are models and not measurements. So, who knows how accurate they are? I would like to know what computer code they used to model it with because computational fluid dynamics is a very difficult problem. There is no way these maps can portray what is actually in the air because it would require a worldwide sensor network that doesn’t exist.

I did read this article in the Seattle Times that reported on very small levels of xenon-133 in Washington:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014537947_dohrad19m.html

It has a link on that page to these radiation reporting sites for the NW:

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/rert/radnet-seattle-bg.html

http://www.doh.wa.gov/Topics/japan/monitor.htm

From the graphs on the EPA page, it appears there has been no significant increase in radiation following the Japan earthquake.

I am no expert in radioactivity, but have worked at Hanford and learned a lot. I am not worried for now.

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