Fukushima Disaster Radioactivity found in the Pacific Ocean?

 Radioactivity in the Ocean?

An Analysis by

lim ju boo

Wow!  I received yet another bogus circular inside my smart phone asking people to avoid eating fish because radioactive has been detected millions of times above normal in the Pacific Ocean.

Just remember, Japan and the surrounding water in Japan is over 5,000 km away from Malaysia.

What a joke for me.

Let me clearly put it this in a very simple easy to understand way for my Gentle Readers.

Pu-241 decays into americium-241, with a half-life of 14 years. In short it becomes less and less radioactive over the years.

Plutonium (Pu-239) is a key nuclear material used in modern nuclear reactor like those in Fukushima.

Plutonium-239 is also one of the three main isotopes demonstrated usable as fuel in thermal spectrum nuclear reactors, along with uranium-235 and uranium-233. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,110 years. But I do not know which of the isotopes was implanted into the Fukushima reactors.

But it makes very insignificant difference in our argument here, and I shall explain why.

The fission of one atom of Pu-239 generates 207.1 MeV = 3.318 × 10−11 J, i.e. 19.98 TJ/mol = 83.61 TJ/kg or about 2 322 719 kilowatt hours/kg.

 

Einstein used the CGS system of units (centimetres, grams, seconds, dynes, and ergs), but the formula is independent of the system of units.

Energy Equivalent:

In natural units, the numerical value of the speed of light is set to equal 1, and the formula expresses an equality of numerical values: E = m. In the SI system (expressing the ratio E / m in joules per kilogram using the value of c in meters per second).

E = mc2

E / m =  c2 = (299792458 m/s)2 = 89875517873681764 J/kg (≈ 9.0 × 10¹⁶ joules per kilogram)

So, the energy equivalent of one kilogram of any mass like Plutonium as long as it is totally fissionable able   is equivalent to the above calculation.

Put it another way, 1 kg of Plutonium or 1 kg of any mass, theoretically yields an equivalent of

= 89.9 petajoules

= 25.0 million kilowatt-hours (approx. 25 GW·h)

= 21.5 trillion kilocalories (approx.  21 P cal)

= 85.2 trillion BTUs

= 0.0852 quads or the energy released by combustion of the following:

21 500 kilotons of TNT-equivalent energy (approx. 21 Mt), or

2,630,000,000 litres or 695,000,000 US gallons of car petrol

This amount of energy if put into a car (let’s say) would be able to push the car up to 31,771,200 km or 19, 857,000 miles (assuming the petrol consumption of an average car is 14.87 km per litre or 35 miles per gallon).

Round and Round the Earth Circumference:

This amount of energy from 1 kg of Plutonium is more than sufficient to power a car up to 3.91081 x 10¹⁰ km or 975,873 times round and round the equatorial circumference of Earth

(Earth’s equatorial circumference is = 40,075 km)

(1 US gallon = 3.78541 litres, and 1 mile = 1.60934 km)

That’s a horrendous amount of energy no nation can ever use up even for 10 years or more.

So, I do not think Japan has ever used 1 kg of any form of isotopes of Plutonium.  It was probably just 200 gm. of highly purified fissionable Plutonium, whichever the isotope they selected.

But let us say for academic argument between you and me in this WhatsApp chat group for the sake of stimulating our mind and for fun sake.

 Let us see what happens if all the entire 1 kg of pure fissionable Plutonium were released into all the oceans on this Planet, and not just a small part of the Pacific Ocean near Japan as claimed.

Well, let’s do some simple mathematics and see what happens.

How Much Water in the Oceans

First, we need to know how much water there in all the oceans of the world are, including the ice caps, glaciers, & permanent snow, etc., except inland waters like lakes and river, and water trapped in subterranean layers of the Earth and in the atmosphere, etc.  

Let us make our calculations simple.

The data I got from various sources puts the estimate at 1,362,145,400 cubic kilometres.

That’s equivalent to 10¹²  x 1,362,145,400 cubic km = 1.36 x 10²¹ litres of ocean waters which is an extremely modest estimate I should say.

Let us say, all the 1 kg of pure Plutonium has leaked into all the oceans and seas and thoroughly diluted by ocean currents of various sorts for another 1,000 years to come. What happens?

Since one kg = 1,000,000 mg of Fukushima Plutonium

Then the dilution factor is:

1.000,000 / 1.36 x 10²¹ litres = 7.35 X 10 – 16 mg = 

0.000,000,000,000,000735 mg per litre only diluted into all the ocean and sea water by ocean drifts, convection and currents

Level of Detection in Analytical Chemistry:

As an analytical chemist it is possible for us to detect any chemical substance down to the tune of several parts per billion or ppb (1 billion = 1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or 10⁹). We use highly sophisticated instrumental and state-of-art i analytical procedure to bring it down to this analytical level.

But to ask me or any well-trained analytical chemist,  even with the most advanced and classy analytical instrumentation and procedure available to my disposal  to detect any chemical substance down to the level of just 0.000,000,000,000,0007 mg per litre,  is like asking me to detect 30 – 40  molecules  inside the biggest lake in the world, let alone detect any radioactivity from a few million  molecules  of a radioactive substance thrown into the Amazon or Yangtze River.

Well mathematics does it and has shown me the way to argue for argument’s sake.

Localized Area:

 Of course, if we are only talking about a small area in the Pacific Ocean near, and around where the Fukushima earthquake catastrophe took place, then there may be a small concentration of radioactivity concentrated around that area only where the discharge flowed. Maybe a small strip of the North Pacific Ocean was affected.

Even then over time, water currents will wash away all contaminations well away from coastal regions where there is human habitation. By then any radioactive wastes from spent nuclear fuel will also be so diluted by the enormous volumes of the Pacific Ocean, that nothing can be detected chemically, or its radioactivity shown by the Geiger-Mueller (GM) tube. 

Furthermore, there is no need for fishing boats to go so near the coast or strip of waters where the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster took place, or where the radioactive waters was found.  It is a normal practice for fishing boats to go far out at sea for deep sea fishing.  The fishing yield may not be big enough near coastal region to be commercially viable.

Tritium: 

Most of the radioactivity in the Fukushima wastewater is from tritium, a type of hydrogen found naturally in far higher quantities in the ocean than from the Fukushima disaster. The rest of the radioactivity is so minimal that even eating fish in extreme amounts laced with them would even be less than the radiation received in a dental x-ray.  Even that, the natural tritium present in the ocean pales compared to other radioactive substances such as 91 % are from potassium-40, 8.6 % are from rubidium-40, and 0.3 % from uranium which were already present in the ocean since Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago.

Most of the radioactivity in the Fukushima wastewater is from tritium, a type of hydrogen found naturally in far higher quantities in the ocean than from the Fukushima disaster. The rest of the radioactivity is so minimal that even eating fish in extreme amounts laced with them would even be less than the radiation received in a dental x-ray.  

Tritium  is a radioisotope of hydrogen (with a half-life of about 12.3 years) and emits weak radiation (β-particles) n nature, about seventy quadrillion (7 × 10¹⁶) Bq of tritium is produced annually by cosmic rays, etc. on earth. In the past nuclear testing (1945 to 1963), tritium of 1.8 to 2.4 × 10²⁰ Bq was released. In addition, tritium is discharged daily from facilities such as nuclear power stations around the world and the annual amount of tritium released from nuclear power stations around the world is 2 × 10¹⁶ Bq. 

Before the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)'s Fukushima Daiichi NPS Accident, the annual amount of tritium released from nuclear power stations all over Japan was 380 × 10¹² Bq (which is the average annual amount discharged into the ocean during the five years before the accident). The total amount of tritium existing in nature is estimated to be 1 to 1.3 × 10¹⁸ Bq. 

The released tritium exists mostly as hydrogen that makes up water molecules and it is also contained in water vapor in the atmosphere, rainwater, sea water and tap water. The annual amount of tritium contained in the precipitation in Japan is estimated to be about 223 × 10¹² Bq.

In the International System of units (SI), becquerel (Bq) stands for  the unit of radioactivity. 

One Bq is   1 disintegration per second (dps). 

Even that, the natural tritium present in the ocean pales compared to other radioactive substances such as 91 % are from potassium-40, 8.6 % are from rubidium-40, and 0.3 % from uranium which were already present in the ocean since Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago.

Minamata Disease

The Minamata disease due to the continuous industrial discharge of methyl mercury into the Minamata Bay of Japan between 1932 – 1868 by the Chissa Corporation, a chemical company is an example of localized chemical pollution that lead to severe neurological disorders such as   ataxia, paraesthesia (sensation of ‘pins and needles’), muscular weakness, loss of vision, hearing and speech impairment, deformity, birth anomaly, insanity, coma, and other clinical presentations, and eventual death.

It is one example how poisonous discharge into the rivers and seas can affect the health of a fishing community living around that area due to consumption of fish and shellfish that have accumulated mercury in their tissues.

The disease first recognized in 1956 has since disappeared. The reason is obvious. All the mercurial toxic waste has since disappeared around Minamata Bay and the Shiranui Sea due to enormous dilution by ocean waters that drifted them far out into the North Pacific Ocean. I believe not a trace of mercurial complex can be detected there now.

Dilution Factors

 The amount of toxic or radioactive molecules or any atoms, molecules or particles present in a volume will depend upon the concentration of a substance present.

In Chemistry, this is called Avogadro number or Avogadro constant (named after the Amedeo Avogadro) which is the number of molecular particles, or atoms present in the amount of substance given by one mole. It is related to the molar mass of a compound.

Avogadro's constant or (NA or L), has the value 6.022140857(74) × 10²³ mol−1

What would the Avogadro number of radioactive waste now in the localized part of sea near Fukushima disaster area? 

I believe it would be much less than 6.022140857(74) × 10²³ mol−1 due to its much less concentration - number of molecules per mole as defined by Avogadro constant.

Uranium and Plutonium

Plutonium (Pu) is a transuranic radioactive chemical element and an atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal that is silvery-grey in colour that tarnishes when exposed to air.  Plutonium is the heaviest element known in nature but in trace amounts.  
Its trace presence in Nature is similar to its small amounts of production from the neutron capture of natural uranium-238.

 

Plutonium is much more common on Earth since 1945 as a product of neutron capture and beta decay, where some of the neutrons released by the fission process convert uranium-238 nuclei into plutonium-239.

Since it is derived from uranium, and since uranium is a more common elements in the Earth's crust, than silver by 40 times and silver is 500 times more common than gold, uranium can be found almost everywhere in rock, soil, rivers, and oceans.

If uranium is quite a common ore on the Earth’s crust, and since it is already present naturally on this Planet with or with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors what then is the problem. 
The Fukushima reactors did not add more radioactive elements into the seas and environment.  Japan did not bring them from outer space. It came only from Planet Earth, and they merely put them inside their reactors.  

The total amount of radioactive substances on the entire surface of this Earth, whether inside reactors or outside in the natural environment is exactly the same.  Nothing extra was added by Man or Nature. 

They were already there 4.543 thousand million years ago even long before the beginning of any life form creeping on the surface of this Earth. What then is the problem?

In fact, the reactors subtracted the amount by spending it to yield nuclear energy, except it left behind unspent fuel as wastes, which is the issue. Spent plutonium fuels are no longer fissionable. That at least is my understanding how nuclear reactors work.

Total Amount is the Same Within and Without

Because the total amount of radioactive substances on Earth are the same, be they inside reactors or outside in the natural environment, what then is the fuss if the same natural uranium from outside which plutonium is derived decides to leak into the environment through rain,  storm,  dust winds  and the elements causing  natural erosion.

Would environmental and health activists make a fuss as though the disaster came from the damaged reactors at Fukushima?

Now this rubbish thing about radioactivity in the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima disaster and asking everyone not to eat fish which to me as a food scientist and research nutritionist, is one of most laughable jokes of 2016 when fish is one of the best sources of excellent protein quality, and nourishment for the protein-hungry world.

In my opinion there is hardly any health risk consuming any fish or any seafood caught anywhere around Japan or elsewhere as there is hardly any trace of radioactivity in them due to the huge diluation by ocean waters mixed into the wastewater  

Whom do you believe? Those health quacks who ask others not to eat fish, and makes all sorts of health and toxicological claims or some one who showed us clearly the amounts of radioactivity in the ocean waters is so minimal.

 

Please go to this update on the Fukushima scare about radioactive seafood from Japan. 

There I explain in simpler language about trillium in the water waste where Japan is currently discharging into the Pacific Ocean. It is placed just before another article entitled here as:

“Why is the Ocean Waters Salty? Is it getting Saltier? 

 

https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2023/