– Study: Up to 47 quadrillion becquerels of cesium-137 released into Pacific from Fukushima — Nearly 50 times original Tepco estimate (ENENews, March 12, 2013):
Title: Does the Fukushima NPP disaster affect the caesium activity of North Atlantic Ocean fish?
Source: Biogeosciences Discussions
Authors: G. Kanisch and M.-O. Aust; Thünen Institute of Fisheries Ecology, Hamburg, Germany
Date Published: March 5, 2013
Emphasis Added[…] On 11 March 2011, a Tsunami hit the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant (FDNPP), which caused the loss of cooling capacity in four of its six nuclear reactors and 25 led to the release a radionuclides into the environment. It is expected that between 6 and 47 PBq (1 PBq= 1015 Bq) of 137Cs (half-live 30.17 yr) was directly discharged into the Pacific Ocean (e.g. Bailly du Bois et al., 2012) in the aftermath of the tragedy. Due to the determined 134Cs : 137Cs ratio of around one, about the same amount of 134Cs (half-live 2.07 yr) was discharged into the Pacific. Initially, discharge was assumed to represent the larger fraction of total Cs-releases. Therefore, many researchers and TEPCO focussed [sic] on the determination and estimation of the behaviour of Cs in Pacific waters and its behaviour in the environment, especially the uptake by biota (e.g. Buesseler et al., 2011, 2012; Honda et al., 2012; Madigan et al., 2012; Behrens et al., 2012).
The explosions of units 1 to 4 of FD-NPP also released radionuclides into the atmosphere which were detectable around the world (e.g. Hsu et al., 2012; Stohl et al., 2012; Jakobs, 2011). From these investigations the wet and dry deposition of caesium isotopes in marine areas where German monitoring was carried out after the accident at FD-NPP occurred, which are the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the coastal West and East Greenland currents, were estimated to be between 0.1 and 100 Bqm?2. […]
See also: 27 quadrillion becquerels of cesium-137 flowed into sea — Doesn’t include first week of crisis — 30 times what Tepco claimed
Nearly all reports on this matter to date have used the 27.1 PBq (quadrillion) figure as the maximum direct cesium-137 release into ocean. Even yesterday’s informative report from Enformable comparing Chernobyl’s releases to Fukushima used the 27.1 PBq figure, rather than the 47 PBq mentioned above.
suppose 47 p Bq on all the oceans.. That is still very dilute. Peta =10E15 . Cs is very soluble so it will not settle out in muds and stay in watery solution. There will be equilibrium in exchange of ions of clay minerals and the seawater.
The volume of all water in oceans is 1.3 billion cubic km =1.3 E21 kg and litre. so the average contribution in Bq by Cs of Fukoshima accident, would be 3.6 E-5 Bq/l.. That is in the MICRO Bq range. Even local higher concentration of factor 10.000 means it is much lower that the natural background radiation of 12 Bq/l in that seawater, mainly caused by Kalium and Rubidium.
In fact it is unmeasurable with a Geigercounter in the background noise, and can only be traced and only be measured by specific isotope measurements. This means that average radioactivity will not change in seawater notably, by contribution by RA Cs. Further: Cs has a very short biological half-time in a human body as it is rinsed by the kidneys, Cs is not used in a human body as spore metal. Biological half-life of CS is 80 days. It means that Cs is mostly eliminated by urine and faeces before it radiates. Even short exposures by seafood intake or inhalation of moist with Cs or whatever is not so relevant according to the total amount of exposure. So one time Cesium exposures may be reduced by a factor 2E2.
half-time Cs 30 Years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137
ocean-water : http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm
Cesium-137’s half-life means roughly 300 years of radioactivity. There’s no point to minimizing the dangers by guesswork; you don’t want to gamble with people’s lives, I’m sure. We need to take all possible precautions; now is the time to abandon all the type of presumptions that got us into this mess.
Wishing you and yours a safe and healthy future.
“The volume of all water in oceans is 1.3 billion cubic km =1.3 E21 kg and litre. so the average contribution in Bq by Cs of Fukoshima accident, would be 3.6 E-5 Bq/l.”
The entire Pacific Ocean is 714 million cubic kilometers. The near surface water radiation studies out there have a consensus involvement of about 1 million cubic kilometers of the ocean, where the plume and water down to 200 meters are the area and water volume of concern. Estimates range from 10-30 Bq/m3 hitting the U.S. and Canada, with a lowball input of radiation 10 PBq to the ocean to derive the 10 Bq/m3 figure in one German study. If there’s, for instance, the real likelihood the problem is 5 times as large, numbers like 50-150 Bq/m3, or 25-75 times pre-Fukushima radiation in the Pacific, this could have massive impact on life in the Pacific Ocean that bio-accumulates radiation. The problem is serious. Credible reports of 27.1 PBq (French study) to 47 PBq going into the Pacific are surfacing, so 5 times the radiation of previous models no exaggeration. And what about plutonium and other isotopes than cesium which fell into the ocean disaster days ande have been leaking into the ocean from groundwater since? What about iodine-129? What if the numbers are even higher, since it’s been reported 79% of the atmospheric release of radiation wound up in the ocean?
Just some food for thought, and maybe not food, as in Pacific Ocean fish. Also keep in mind man made radionuclides don’t appear in nature, are not like K-40 your body knows what to do with, this bananas argument, well, bananas!