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.
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/
3 comments:
Dear Sifu Dr Lim Ju Boo,
FYI - July 4 2018 - "Radiation levels across the Pacific Ocean are rapidly returning to normal five years after a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant spewed gases and liquids into the sea, a study showed Monday.
Japan shut down dozens of reactors after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake-generated tsunami on March 11, 2011 triggered one of the largest ever dumps of nuclear material into the world's oceans..." -
http://phys.org/news/2016-07-pacific-ocean-fukushima.html#jCp
Cheers.
Lokman Sardon
Correct version...
Dear Sifu Dr Lim Ju Boo,
FYI - July 4 2017 - "Radiation levels across the Pacific Ocean are rapidly returning to normal five years after a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant spewed gases and liquids into the sea, a study showed Monday.
Japan shut down dozens of reactors after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake-generated tsunami on March 11, 2011 triggered one of the largest ever dumps of nuclear material into the world's oceans..." -
http://phys.org/news/2016-07-pacific-ocean-fukushima.html#jCp
Cheers.
Lokman Sardon
Correct version...
Dear Sifu Dr Lim Ju Boo,
Apologies, finger problem...!
FYI - July 4 2016 - "Radiation levels across the Pacific Ocean are rapidly returning to normal five years after a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant spewed gases and liquids into the sea, a study showed Monday.
Japan shut down dozens of reactors after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake-generated tsunami on March 11, 2011 triggered one of the largest ever dumps of nuclear material into the world's oceans..." -
http://phys.org/news/2016-07-pacific-ocean-fukushima.html#jCp
Cheers.
Lokman Sardon
Post a Comment