Radioactive iodine
Even as engineers tried to pump puddles of radioactive water from the power plant 150 miles north of Tokyo, the nuclear safety agency said tests on Friday showed radioactive iodine had spiked 1,250 times higher than normal in the seawater just offshore the plant.
Sounds terribly scary, doesn\’t it?
And in 8 days it will be, without any dilution at all, 625 times. And 8 days after that, 312.5 times, another 8 days, 156.25, then 78, 39 and so on.
For the radioactive iodine has a half life of 8 days. At 80 days, we\’re back to normal levels. After 120 we won\’t be able to measure it.
And recall, this is assuming that there\’s no dilution in the water (which of course there will be, we\’re talking about the Pacific Ocean here). Even if we assume that it\’s all eaten up by greedy little shellfish and it just sits in one place, it\’s a three month problem.
Remind me, aren\’t some of those shellfish in Prince William sound still not edible after Exxon Valdez, after a decade or whatever it is?
Everything we get told keeps reminding us quite how safe nuclear power is.
Radioactive water was found in buildings housing three of the six reactors at the crippled plant. On Thursday, three workers sustained burns at reactor No. 3 after being exposed to radiation levels 10,000 times higher than usually found in a reactor.
That\’s just fatuously stupid. It\’s levels higher than normally found *outside* a reactor, not inside one.
Jeebus.