Posted on 04/05/2011 6:48:10 AM PDT by blam
My son ( PhD physics) told me that the level of radiation we can expect in the US can be compared to standing in a room with one person (before) compared to standing in a room full of people (after).
No the sky isn't falling. yldstrk, you're an idiot.
It is getting awfully dry but we do have all this wonderful golden oak pollen to be thankful for. /s
(I'm just up the road from you in Kerrville)
No.
Not even close.
The activity level here is 20 Bq per liter. The Becquerel is a measure of radioactive activity that translates to a dose.
A banana’s activity level is 15 Bq.
Potassium decaying naturally in your body is about 4400 Bq.
Twenty Bq per liter may be 181 times some government standard, but it 181 times jack squat. There is no danger here, only media hype.
Ban the rain! Ban clouds! Ban rooftops! Ban gutters! Ban everything in sight, San Fransisco!
[Tips hat]
I think that the fine folks out there in cookie land need to immediately shut down all of the nuclear, coal and gas power plants in Kalifornia to save the Earth from Gorbal Warming. Then they need to close all roads and freeways and ban the use of the internal combustion engine. Once that’s done they need to return all farm land back to natural habitat. Finally, they need to seize all the money from the evil rich and divide it evenly amongst the parasites, sorry, I mean the downtrodden poor people. Only then will their state become the Utopian Nirvana that the libtard fools yearn for.
A radioactive isotope, such as iodine-131, is supposed to have a half-life of eight days. This is inferred to mean that it breaks down quickly, and it quickly dissipates in the environment. However, the 8 day half-life can be a misnomer because radioactive iodine can really persist in the environment for many months and has a 100 day biological half-life once inside the human body.I'm seeing a lot of mixing of apples, oranges, and zebras here.
A radioactive isotope, such as iodine-131, is supposed to have a half-life of eight days.No, this particular isotope has a half-life of eight days. (Actually 8.3, but who's counting?) It's been measured countless times. The burden of proof now lies with whoever wants to argue differently.
This is inferred to mean that it breaks down quickly, and it quickly dissipates in the environment.Breaking down is one thing; dissipating in the environment is another. Iodine-131 breaks down into Xenon-131, which is a stable, nonreactive isotope. This has nothing to do with whether it disperses in the environment or falls to the ground in one concentrated slug.
However, the 8 day half-life can be a misnomer because radioactive iodine can really persist in the environment for many months...OK, now you're shifting goal posts. Some radioactive iodine does persist in the environment for a long time. Iodine-125 has a half-life of 60.2 days; Iodine-129 has a half-life of 17 million years. But you started out talking about Iodine-131, which still has a half-life of 8.3 days.
...and has a 100 day biological half-life once inside the human body.The biological half-life refers to the residence time time in the body of any chemical, regardless of whether it's radioactive or not. Iodine has a biological half-life of 70 days in the thyroid gland, and a couple of weeks in the rest of the body. (Treating the thyroid gland and the rest of the body as separate compartments.) But this applies to all iodine in those compartments. All that addresses is whether iodine is excreted before or after it decays. Other than that, there's nothing wrong with that paragraph.
Poetic justice?
Maybe the California liberals will be genetically altered and turn them into Conservatives. :)
http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/index.cfm#Radionuclides This does not mention I-131 but has standards for activity in general.Been to that one. I-131 is a beta emitter, so it would be covered under "gross beta" where the limit is 4 mrem/year. Notice, this is not given in pCi or Bq, and the dose rate depends on the specific isotope involved. So where does the 3 pCu/L come from?
Is that Klingon in your tagline?
I’m west of you so I get it first. One tenth of an inch moisture since last Oct.
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Are you in the habit of drinking unpurified rainwater straight out of the gutter downspout?
Didn't think so...
Comparing dirty rainwater to a drinking water standard is absurd. It takes (at least) months for rain water to make it to your faucet -- and, by then it has been diluted millions of times by water already here in lakes or aquifers.
Notice that the radioactivity is measured in Becquerels per liter . If you dilute the rainwater by a factor of a million, the radiation is one millionth of its present (constantly declining) level.
Iodine-131 has a half-life of a little over eight (8) days. In a little over a week, that rainwater will be half as radioactive; in 16 days, half of that...ad infinitum... By the time it reaches your faucet, it will have decayed to the point that it is radioactively indistinguishable from the water you drank a month ago -- or yesterday -- or today.
Iodine-131 decays by beta-decay -- it gives off low-energy electrons and positrons. Beta particles are stopped by aluminum foil -- or the roof of your house.
As a teen, I built a cloud chamber to view the tracks of particles released by an alpha/beta particle-emiting radionuclide source. The alpha particles (helium nuclei) traveled only a couple of inches through the air and "died". The few Beta particles that made it to the walls of the chamber were stopped by the glass flask that formed the chamber. The alpha particles could be stopped in less than two inches by a sheet of cigarette paper. I never was able to find aluminum foil thin enough that the beta partcles could penetrate it. At no time, was I able to measure any radiation from the source -- outside the chamber.
Oh -- I'm now 73 -- with no ill effects, three normal kids, eight normal grandkids -- and no sign of cancer.
That rainwater "washed" the I-131 out of the air, and will soak into the soil, which will block the beta radiation, and the I-131 will decay to background levels long before it becomes drinking water -- or milk in your fridge.
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Enjoy your milk -- but not too much -- it's fattening... ;-)
Is that Klingon in your tagline?Yup.
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Excellent way to out this in perspective!
On Google Earth, go to "Sedan Crater, NV". Zoom out a bit, and pan southward down that valley until you reach the dry lake at the southern end.
Try to count all the craters in that valley. You can't -- there are too many... Here's a small sample:
Every one of those craters is the result of a nuclear (or thermonuclear) bomb explosion -- right here on the soil of the good ol' US of A.
If your "entire food supply" is not already "radioactively contaminated indefinitely" from all the radioactivity released from the Nevada Test Site, do you really think that a nuclear powerplant on the other side of the Pacific is going to do so?
All I meant to say was (0.5)^(60/8.05) < 181.
What that has to do with the real world is not my concern.
No, you gave the correct -- and accurate -- explanation for the Bolivian patterns/structures here.
Aside from the fact that both views are of human-modified desert terrain -- viewed from a high altitude -- I see little similarity...
The specific section of Yucca Flats that I "grabbed" shows an uncommonly "orthogonal" layout -- indicative of systematic, planned test sequences designed to measure the effects of a series of development experiments. Other areas of the NTS show much more random layouts - and some areas have very distinctive circular layouts.
The Bolivian irrigation patterns obviously follow natural land (elevation) contours to take advantage of gravity flow for water transport / control purposes. Nary a crater or blast cavity-collapse pit anywhere in sight...
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