Data Showing Releases of Radioisotopes into the Environment from Nuclear Reactors in the US
I have been searching for data regarding radioisotopes in the environment prior to Fukushima and have come across very interesting data found on the U.S.NRC. website (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission).
This data shows that there are regular releases of multiple radioisotopes For example: Iodine-131, Cesium-137, Xenon, Strontium 90 etc. into the environment in the US. The documents are really long but you can search for key words such as Iodine and Cesium etc.
Here are the results from 2009 for Diablo Canyon Reactors 1&2
http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1012/ML101270126.pdf
Scroll down to page 24 and beyond to see what radioisotopes were being released into the environment and at what amounts.
Here are the results from 2009 for San Onofre Reactors 2&3
http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1012/ML101240921.pdf
Here are the results for Oyster Creek Reactor
http://wba.nrc.gov:8080/ves/view_contents.jsp
This reactor had 3 accidental releases on top of the regular releases for 2009.
Here is the website listing all of the nuclear plants in the US. You can look at the annual report for each reactor. Mid-way down the page you can read the Radioactive Effluent Summary Report by Calendar Year: 2008 which gives us a report of all the releases by radioisotopes for all of the reactors in a comparitive graph. The data is for 2008 and they have not released the data for 2009 and 2010 yet but looking at the data for previous years you can tell this is a ongoing thing.
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/tritium/plant-info....
If you do a search of the ADAMS system and type "radioactive" as a search term and then scroll to the end of the documents to get to the most current documents (2009 to present) you will see many effluent release reports for numerous nuclear reactors in the US for 2009.
I can't believe that they have been releasing all this radiation for years and we haven't known about it because they haven't publicly given us the information. Or they have and we just didn't know where to look for it. Now they are saying that all of the radioisotopes that we are finding lately are solely due to Fukushima releases and have nothing to due with the nuclear reactors in the US, previous nuclear accidents and explosions in the US and releases into the water systems from hospitals and medical facilites. I am not so sure now!
Nothing has been hidden.
I can't believe that they have been releasing all this radiation for years and we haven't known about it because they haven't publicly given us the information.
================
Evidently you haven't been looking; because this information has ALWAYS been PUBLIC
The information has been available from the NRC and at Universities....
However, the levels emitted by nuclear power plants are 3000 times less than what Mother Nature gives you. I guess by the same token, you would claim that Mother Nature has hidden the information from you.
Courtesy of the University of Michigan and the Health Physics Society:
http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/radrus.htm
the radiation from nuclear power ( "nuclear fuel cycle" ) is <0.03% of the average person's background exposure. Mother Nature is still your biggest source of radiation exposure by a factor greater than 3000.
Neither the background exposure due to Mother Nature nor from nuclear power has been hidden from anyone that cared enough to look.
Unless you live in Kansas
If you drank milk in Kansas in April wouldn't you had wished that Berkeley had been testing there instead of having to wait until June to find out that the milk you had two months ago exceeded DIL hundreds of times?
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/5883
Because of the immediate risks associated with the ingestion of I 131 in milk, that are very well documented, this lag in reporting means that this information is not always been made public in a timely manor.
Misrepresentation
The above poster misrepresents the DIL level for I-131 in milk. The referenced thread gives the radioactivity of the milk to be approx. 2000 pCi/kg, which the above poster claims exceeds the DIL for I-131 in milk by "hundreds of times".
The actual figure for the DIL for I-131 in milk is given by this report from the FDA:
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/UCM251056.pdf
as about 4600 pCi/kg. or 4700 pCi/L. for milk.
Therefore the above poster is misrepresenting the facts. The milk was actually below the DIL by a factor of 2, and this has been represented to the good readers here as exceeding the DIL by a factor of "hundreds".
The anti-nuclear propaganda machine is still well oiled, it would appear.
Historical perspective
You can't call milk with I 131 at 2000pCi/L safe:
http://books.google.com/books?id=EAgAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=sedan+...
Compare to Mother Nature
Compare the radiation exposure due to nuclear testing with background radiation exposure due to Mother Nature, and the radiation exposure due to nuclear testing PALES compared to what we get from Mother Nature. The radiation exposure due to testing is labeled "Fallout" in the following table:
http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/radrus.htm
and we see that it amounts to less than <0.03% of background radiation exposure due to Mother Nature. That is, Mother Nature is giving us 3000 times the exposure that we get from nuclear testing.
Also check out the book "The Instant Physicist" by University of California Physics Professor Richard Muller:
http://www.amazon.com/Instant-Physicist-Illustrated-Guide/dp/0393078264/...
Read the free sample that Amazon offers, and the part about how alcoholic drinks must be radioactive to be legally sold in the USA. The caption of the cartoon gives the minimum allowed level as 450 counts per minute for a 750 ml bottle. That works out to about 271 pCi / L. So the 2000 pCi / L of the milk is less than an order of magnitude more than the minimum radioactivity for alcoholic beverages to be legally sold.
Take facts and misapply them and you'll end up with a big fat...
LIE.
Who the ^&*@ is mother nature ? Oh I get it, you want to infer a collection (group for convenience) while nosily pretending QUALITATIVE EQUIVALENCE in a silly comparison of the residual radiation from nuclear weapon and otherwise testing, misc FUBAR nuke events (some of it resulting truely unique horrible crap) with/to naturally occurring radiological isotopes and then cover this first LIE with a anthropomorphism. Got that. Clever. But still a lie.
And of course Cs-137 and Sr-90 just as good as potassium and calcium, hell they are even BETTER cause they are NEW and many lifeforms SEEM to prefer them, right ?
And the cute bit about wine and milk... do you think the audience and posters here are finally beaten down?
Wine, water, milk ALL HAVE DIFFERENT PATTERNS OF CONSUMPTION so ANY comparison that DOES NOT START from that point is (another) LIE in the making.
I know lets have your family, starting with the youngest, CONSUME and BREATHE as much of that 'less than an order of magnitude more than the minimum radioactivity' and we will check in twenty years.
Nukes are dead. Long live nuclear awareness.
Happy Holidays !!!!
Compare radiation to germs
I think it might be instructive to compare radioactivity to germs. We live in an environment that is filled with both radiation / radioactivity and germs.
If a hospital or sewage treatment plant released some ordinary E. coli bacteria into the water or environment would people think it was the end of the world?
Of course not. The amount that was released, while not "good"; would PALE next to what Mother Nature puts into the environment. The same is true with radioactivity.
Just keep it in perspective.
Moter Nature is the Laws of Physics...
Mother Nature is the Laws of Physics, the natural ways of the Universe...
I know this pains the typical anti-nuke because they can only accept that nuclear radiation has to be someone's fault, usually some greedy corporation; but that is their ignorant delusion. The fact of the matter is that every living person on this planet, living now or has ever lived here, is subject to radiation courtesy of the natural world, i.e. Mother Nature.
The ignorant anti-nukes show their complete lack of scientific knowledge when they attempt to portray some radiation as "natural" and man-made radiation as somehow "unnatural".
The fact of the matter is that their are basically only 3 types of radiation, alpha, beta, and gamma. Most of the radioisotopes that we have been discussing here are beta-emitters which means they emit electrons.
Contrary to the bleatings of your typical anti-nuke; there's nothing special about the electrons from man-made radioisotopes. There aren't "natural electrons" and "man-made electrons". A 5 MeV electron is a 5 MeV electron is a 5 MeV electron.
The only difference is the initial energy, and many natural radioisotopes start with initial energies that are greater than the man-made radioisotopes.
My family and I consume just as much natural radioactivity as anyone else, and as much man-made radioactivity as anyone else, although the latter is orders of magnitude less.
I love it when the anti-nukes demonstrate how appalling ignorant they are of the laws of physics. Why anyone would want to be an anti-nuke and throw their lot in with a bunch of idiots is beyond me.
Learn what the laws of physics say so that you can put this into perspective.
It's not a good thing, but it's not a terrible cataclysm and it is not the end of the world.
The 'oil' of truth
pour it on....
Seems to me there is a lot
Seems to me there is a lot of misinformation going on here. Unless I completely screwed up the math, the releases from the US reactors, while worrying, are NOTHING compared to releases from Fukushima, even if they are closer nearby. Fukushima has released 10^{18} Becquerels of activity in the form of radioisotopes, while the numbers that are being bounced around here are 10 orders of magnitude lower. I live in the bay area and the closest reactor is about 300 miles away. Fukushima is about 15 times further away but its release was 10 orders of magnitude (1 one with ten zeros) greater than the emissions from that average US reactor. Assuming the radioisotopes spread as 1/r^2, I'm still getting 8 orders of magnitude (i.e. 100 million times) more radioactivity from Fukushima than from CA's power plants.
Of course that's as long as the local ones don't blow up, for which there is obviously a very real risk.
(mis ?) information
Fukushima equates to a LARGE radiological avalanche and long ensuing corrosive sand storm... With a lot of population in the way.
Domestic emissions equate to the never ending stench of a manure pit of hydrocarbons and radiological corrosive rain, dust and some flying gravel that, BTW, cross continents also.
The use of DU has got to stop. There are other ways. We need to bring Army radiobiology studies into the light of current research and achieve broad publication and benefit. Early diagnoses always yields better outcomes. All radiological research work should be without boundaries.
Industry (workers) and bankers could sign on... every change (and these are BIG changes) brings possible profit.
As a world we need to, at least in the short term, strive for the radiological high ground. It is either that or factor in increasing radiological pollution. Not a pretty thought.
In the very short term we need to come to grips with our atmospheric balances AND a common pursuit of radiological materials controls.
The epoch shift event of ice cap loss worldwide and methane geysers says that ship has sailed.
Weather chaos, land loss will screw things up. Increased radiological pollution to a level of say 50Bq/Kg Cs-137 body weight will slowly kill Most of the species.
It is a mess.
Radioactivity from COAL
In order to put the radioactivity into perspective, consider that a much larger source of radioactivity in our environment is the coal power plants that nuclear plants seek to displace. Coal contains trace amounts of uranium and thorium; but we burn billions of tons of coal, so we end up spewing tens of thousands of tons of uranium and thorium into the environment because of coal.
In fact, the coal power plants emit more radioactivity than nuclear plants. Courtesy of scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory:
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
...Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants that meet government regulations.
and
Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants.
dated.....
...."Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants."
What's the Cs-137 and I-131 from the coal ? That's What I Thought.
Thorium and Uranium from coal you say ?
Oh you mean like the water and air near the uranium mines...and oh the fuel cycle altogether... I almost forgot.
yeah dat stuff just lay'n roud......whata dat cost to kinda look after.... hmmm
Yup nothing like a wee little industrial accident (OR FIVE PLUS !!!) to change that equation ....Oh you want a new calculus... What ? all the benefits of Nuke in da military?
That's rich.
What a sad direction for so much great intellectual energy, resources.... I am afraid the tax payer will turn away form all things nuclear if the industry beats the dead horse.
Nuclear Fission Energy ?
No Thanks :)
Typical ill-informed anti-nuke rant...when facing FACTS.
What's the Cs-137 and I-131 from the coal ? That's What I Thought.
Thorium and Uranium from coal you say ?
===============================
Coal doesn't emit Cs-137 or I-131, but Uranium and Thorium which are really WORSE
That I-131 has an 8 day half life, and it is GONE in a few months. The Uranium and Thorium are actinides; they are "cousins" of Plutonium and have long lives.
Like Plutonium, Uranium and Thorium are alpha radiation emitters. Alpha emitters when ingested or inhaled are the worst in terms of radiation damage. Cs-137 and I-131 are beta ( i.e. electron ) emitters.
Evidently the above poster didn't read the article, because the Uranium and Thorium is not released at the mines. The coal itself has Uranium and Thorium in it and the Uranium and Thorium go up in the flue gases for us to breathe.
Nuclear power releases PALE compared to Mother Nature
The average person's radiation exposure due to nuclear power PALES compared with what one receives from Mother Nature.
Courtesy of the Health Physics Society chapter at the University of Michigan:
http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/radrus.htm
One can see that the radiation exposure due to the use of nuclear power and its associated fuel cycle, labeled "Nuclear Fuel Cycle" in the table; accounts for less than <0.03% of one's background radiation exposure. That is, Mother Nature gives the average person about 3000 times what nuclear power does.
BTW, I also live in the Bay Area, and although the nearest power reactor Diablo Canyon is 300 miles away; there is a small reactor used for radiography in San Ramon.
You can call me insane, but I
You can call me insane, but I don't consider radiation to be a huge hazard. Two years ago I had a trip to Chernobyl', the place of the huge nuclear catastrophe in late 80th. I was shocked to know that pretty large number of people have been living there for all this time and their health is almost as good as other people of their age have (mostly those Chernobyl' citizens are of 60+ age) Human body can accommodate to lots of harmful things in our lives.
Alex White
http://www.jammer-store.com
Here are some of the results
Here are some of the results from the Radioactive Effluents from Nuclear Power Plants for 2008. The results for 2009 and 2010 have not yet been posted. You can see that the radioisotopes that we are currently finding in our water, air and food samples are also being released from nuclear reactors on a continuous basis.
http://adamswebsearch2.nrc.gov/idmws/DocContent.dll?library=PU_ADAMS^pbntad01&LogonID=a16091b8be040eb1adb224a93b9499ba&id=103620135
Sorry. Hopefully this
Sorry. Hopefully this works.
JESUS, JOSEPH AND MARY, BATMAN!
Holey, moley!
I just read the comments you psted on the Forbes blog and clicked this link to see this truly frightening sh*t. Holy F*ckazoid, really.
I tried reading through the data logs you linked to but damn they are unwieldy and a pain to read through.
But what I want to know is this - a picocurie is a trillionth of a curie, right?
so, for example, the gaseous (vapor) releases of iodine 131 in figure 4.2 for BWR (Boiling water reactor) in the chart above for Brunswick I and II is nearly 1E-1 CURIES meaning .1 (or is it .01) CURIES.
So basically at those two reactors they have each released in gaseous emissions 1/10 (or is it 1/100) of a CURIE which means they have release
100 BILLION Picocuries (or is it 10 Billion Picocuries) into the air near that community.
Could I POSSIBLY be RIGHT?
Who needs Auschwitzes when you have nuclear power plants gassing your families in their homes?
Someone PLEASE check the math for me and tell me I am wrong. PLEASE tell me all these plants are NOT releasing BILLIONS and BILLIONS or TENS or HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of Picocuries of Radionuclides like cesium 137 and iodine 131 all over our country and into our mother Earth's fragile ecosystem.
Then I will comment further.
I attempted to convert a
I attempted to convert a value from the tables above from Curies into Picocuries. Hopefully I am correct. I used table 4.11 above and I used the value for I-131 at the Diablo Cannon I reactor.
The value I used is 3.72E-05.
So the conversions I did above state that 3.72E-05 curies is equal to 37200000 picocuries!
Yikes! One reactor released 37200000 picocuries of I-131 into the water/onto the land in 2009. That does not take into account the gaseous releases.
For the same reactor 1.13E-06 curies of Cs-137 was released in 2009 in liquid form which converts to 1130000 pci.
How can all of these releases not have a determental effect on the environment and ultimately the people?
How do they allow this to continue?
Why do people allow nuclear pollution to continue?
Because a lot of people have trusted and believed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Government, when told that nuclear power plants are clean, safe sources of energy. Most people do not realize what a 'devil' of a deal has been mad, a deal made with Faust. The same appears true for the people of Japan (and of France for that matter, and in...). I was hoping people would wake up now that Fukushima has blown a couple of its roofs and is so horribly polluting Japan; and additionally is vomiting nuclear pollution into the Pacific Ocean and up into the transcontinental Pacific jet air streams, and then ultimately over the entire North American Hemisphere. Yet, most people I know simply do not want to talk about nuclear pollution. If they don't talk about it, it won't exist. Even in Japan, Tepco stocks a few days ago just went up by several points. Main media sources report very little. People forget quickly.
On the positive side, one survey found the number of people in Japan, who are unhappy with how their own government is currently handling the nuclear power crisis at Fukushima has gone well up to over 70%. And now, we have the Japanese government's own chief nuclear expert actually quit over the inept, harmful way Japan has been handling the Fukushima crisis. Maybe some more people will take notice. Maybe.
Jeff McMahon of Forbes
just did an article touching on this subject. Very interesting. Read it here:
http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffmcmahon/2011/04/28/nuclear-power-radioactive...
Here is an interesting
Here is an interesting powerpoint presentation from the USNRC on the nuclear accident in Japan and their protective action recommendations. Although I can't seem to find much in the way of recommendations. :(
http://wba.nrc.gov:8080/ves/view_contents.jsp
If this is true...
...Some highly-placed people in the nuclear power industry need to be strung up by their balls.
Rick.
Rick, I believe the
Rick, I believe the documents that I have found to be real. This all comes from the U.S. NRC is the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission website. If you search the ADAMS site portion of their website you can look for documents about any topic that interests you. I did a search for "radioactive" and then looked for most recent documents. You can find all sorts of e-mails from Greenpeace and other agencies requesting levels of radioisotopes found in Japan and other very interesting documents.
USNRC website:
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/tritium/plant-info....
ADAMS search:
http://wba.nrc.gov:8080/ves/
If you do a search for the term "Japan" and then sort the documents by document date and then scroll through to the most recent date you will see many documents from the NRC regarding the issues in Japan. There is some interesting reading if you have the time to look at the documents.
Here is a blurb about the USNRC.
About NRCNRC MissionTo regulate the nation's civilian use of byproduct, source, and special nuclear materials to ensure adequate protection of public health and safety, to promote the common defense and security, and to protect the environment.
NRC's regulatory mission covers three main areas:
Reactors - Commercial reactors for generating electric power and research and test reactors used for research, testing, and training
Materials - Uses of nuclear materials in medical, industrial, and academic settings and facilities that produce nuclear fuel
Waste - Transportation, storage, and disposal of nuclear materials and waste, and decommissioning of nuclear facilities from service
Related InformationStrategic Plan
Information Digest
NRC: Regulator of Nuclear Safety
Radiation Protection and the NRC
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission Fact SheetThe U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was created as an independent agency by Congress in 1974 to enable the nation to safely use radioactive materials for beneficial civilian purposes while ensuring that people and the environment are protected. The NRC regulates commercial nuclear power plants and other uses of nuclear materials, such as in nuclear medicine, through licensing, inspection and enforcement of its requirements.
excellent post, thank you
excellent post, thank you for sharing this info everyone
Thanks! I thought it was
Thanks! I thought it was important to post what I had found. I am very upset about this. The first few weeks after the Fukushima reactors were having issues I was in a state of panic. I was in disbelief that this was happening to us and I felt so helpless. After I read more on Chernobyl and compared it to the releases from Fukushima I became more and more skeptical that the high levels that they were finding in the US were entirely due to Fukushima. I know that it has been labelled a level 7 and there are 4 reactors in various states of meltdown but I don't believe that the explosions that we have seen so far were enough to bring such a high level of radioisotopes over 5000 km across the pacific ocean and produce the results that we are finding here.Especially with finding radiation in the milk etc. I don't know if the particles from the explosions even made it into the jet stream and if they had they should have been diluted a lot by the time they reached the west coast. Now we are told that the west coast of the US has noticeable levels but so do other states throughout the US. Some of the states have higher levels of radiation than the west coast which doesn't make sense to me as shouldn't it be more concentrated the closer we are to Japan? We are also told that the radiation plumes have also travelled to Europe. If the radiation has travelled this far, why is it that Japan is showing lower levels of radiation outside of the 30 km evacuation zone than we are finding in the US? I know some people will argue that the wind has been blowing eastward and not towards the rest of Japan but then you would think that the radiation clouds from the hydrogen explosions would have also spread the plumes outwards and we would be seeing more contamination in Japan than we are seeing so far.
I do not want to downplay
I do not want to downplay your theory, it is quite plausible, but do not discount Fukushima's effects on North America.
Firstly, the explosions from Fukushima ejected spend fuel rod pools high into the atmosphere.
Secondly, as you have stated that you have studied Chernobyl, you may have missed the relevant and well documented dispersion models which show how some areas around, and very close to Chernobyl, like in the Ukraine, experienced very little fallout, whereas areas thousands of miles away, like in Austria, Norway, Finland and Sweden, had extremely high levels of fallout. The dispersion models show that the fallout is like patchwork, and the effects of the fallout are comparatively displayed specifically to the historical wind and rainfall patterns.
Here is the URL to the Chernobyl Dispersion Model...
http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/the-continental-scale-of-the-chernobyl-a...
Similarly, you could assume the same fallout patterns to North America from Fukushima, and quite possibly throughout the entire globe. When you hypothesise that the explosions should send the plumes all over Japan, think of it like a campfire on a windy day, on one side of the campfire you would experience heat but no smoke, as you move further away for the campfire, you would experience no heat at all and still no smoke. Yet when you are close on the other side of the campfire you would experience high levels of smoke and very high levels of heat, as you move away from the campfire you would experience less heat but still lots of smoke. Also, campsites that are further downwind may experience high levels of smoke and others would experience nothing, then as the wind changed other campsites that were not previously affected could become highly contaminated by the campfire's smoke, depending on the wind patterns. Then picture the scenario if it started to rain, and the rain could drawn the smoke out of the air, wherever the smoke may be at the time it starts to rain, and the ground, grass, streams, rivers, livestock and people below would be contaminated by the heavily concentrated fallout below.
Thirdly, Radionuclides such as Cesium, Iodine and Xenon can travel great distances in the wind currents, whereas Strontium, Plutonium and Uranium are much "heavier" and will not travel as far. So it would seem plausible that if we see the heavier stuff, it could very well be caused locally, so it could very well be, and likely is, from a combination of all the sources, and Fukushima is likely a high contributor right now. Let's hope to God is slows down, and a more collaborative national scrutiny by all citizens is put on all current nuclear sites on this once glorious planet of OURS.
JFP
Agreed.
Ditto!
Angusmerlin.
The "take away" from this info
I would like to hear comments from others about this info regarding "business as usual" at the nuclear plants, based upon this contributor's information (and thank you).
For me, the take away is this:
1. Nuclear power is clearly just an accident either waiting to happen, or actively happening.
2. We cannot trust those to whom we have entrusted with our safety!
3. Citizens living near a nuclear reactor should designate a neighborhood group of scientifically minded people and provide them with geiger counters (placed strategically down wind). These should be monitored daily--maybe even have them publicly displayed (see comment below)on a website such as what is now being done on the Santa Monica based website www.EnviroReporter.com
Then, they should set up a protocol with a reliable lab to have their local grass and food periodically tested.
Finally, this info should then be posted on a website visible to EVERYONE.
I am almost embarrassed to admit that this has been a wake-up call to middle-aged me. We can no longer justify putting our heads in the sand and depending upon "others" to look after our safety and spoon feed us the info that they want to dish up.
This is great info. I had no
This is great info. I had no idea! I bet lots of others didn't either. Maybe we can get this info out "to the people" a little better via social media?? Just this post will inform a ton of people.
Early in the Fukushima
Early in the Fukushima disaster, I remember reading somewhere that nuclear power plants in the U.S. would use this nuclear accident as a cover in order to do a release of radioactive gases into the air. They also do these releases routinely. If you look at the EPA data since the accident, you will see that some of the highest numbers for cesium are coming from places where there are major government nuclear facilities such as Oakridge, and Idaho Falls, ID. - and also near nuclear power plants. For ex. the milk sample from Montpelier, VT. had 1.9 pCi/L of cesium. This sample was reported once and then no more tests. Interesting that no I131 was found. It would seem if this was from Fukushima, then I131 would have been in the sample - maybe it was from Vermont Yankee, and the plume hadn't reached Vermont yet. The reason I say this, is that on March 31st when the sample was taken, there was a foot of snow around Montpelier and so the cows would still be in the barn eating hay grown the summer before. The cows could have ingested the cesium in the water, or perhaps they acquired it from eating the hay that was grown the year before. In any case, I agree, that we are already being contaminated with plenty, and this is the real cover-up, because if we knew the numbers before Fukushima, we may not agree to the building of more nuclear power plants, which have been planned for years.
That's a question you should
That's a question you should pose to Arnie Gundersen. He's from that area.
I was in Vermont at the time
I was in Vermont at the time in question. I saw snow come and go. Cows were out grazing some of the time on Rt 100 near Mad River. Some horses were out. If anything there was a lot of rain and snow that could have been caught in catchment used for livestock drinking water.
You know, you are dead on.
You know, you are dead on. I actually was thining about this yesterday how nuclear power plants all over the world were using this crisis to do a release of crap into the environment and hoping to blame it on Japan. When that reading on vermont milk came out I thought the exact same thing - how can those cows in vermont be eating any grass or even be outside! And why would cesium be found in vermont milk before it was found in milk in California where the cows are all out on pasture? And i think it's criminal that the EPA decided not to test the vermont milk after that. WTF???
I'm pissed. Really pissed.
I now have an entirely new
I now have an entirely new insight into the declining health of the American (and the world's) population. Not saying it's ALL due to radiation, but some of it has to be. How to be hopeful in the wake of all of this? (rhetorical...sigh)
**BUMP**
**BUMP**
One weay to be hopeful is to eat right, stay fit, stay aware
do good things for those you love and say your prayers/meditations/reflections knowing that, right now, the levels from Fukushima are going down and that people's awarenss about all these dangers is making a nuclear-reliant future a near impossibility.
Work in your communities to eliminate nuclear power from the grid totally and to make spent fuel pools safer and unnecessary in the future (ALL technology should be focussed on resolving the waste/spent fuel problems and renewables/natural gas transition/conversion.
This is an opportunity for a renewal of reneables and economies ONLY if we grab this oportunity for major change. That is where there is hope. People are learning and the options for renewables will become the most desireable.
Hmm
I've totally had the same thought but the real problem is that, despite having an actual graph WITH NUMBERS; realistically, how many people do you think are going to care enough to actually do something about it? It's the same complacency we've seen all along. "If I don't see you, you don't see me."
It's all due to obesity. And
It's all due to obesity. And ugly people.
I just thought about this
I just thought about this after reading the data from NC. My county has the highest air levels of radioiodine in NC despite being one of the most easternmost. We also have a nuclear power plant.
Aafter the media black out
Aafter the media black out and the denial of information, I have lost all confidence.
Rape, molest, torture, total
Rape, molest, torture, total the common planet for private gain. I'm lovin' it.