Thread: WHY IS'NT MSM REPORTING ON THE escalating DANGERS of Radiation, UPDATED

UK nuclear experts to help decommision Fukushima

Engineers from Sellafield to travel to Japan to advise on shutting down the stricken site

Government officials and nuclear experts inspecting a construction site at Fukushima in August Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

British nuclear experts are being lined up to help decommission the damaged Fukushima power plant in a move that could reboot Japan’s atomic power capabilities.


Lady Judge, the British-American nuclear expert and adviser at Fukushima, is organising for engineers from Sellafield in Cumbria to travel to Japan to advise on decontaminating and shutting down the stricken site.



“At Sellafield and Dounreay we are decommissioning big power plants and we can provide a very good example to the Japanese of how to do it safely,” said Lady Judge in an interview with The Telegraph. “I’ve been talking to Sellafield about sending some engineers to help.”



The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which owns the Fukushima plants, is planning to launch a new subsidiary for decommissioning and decontamination on April 1. The division is expected to be headed by a Japanese nuclear expert who is expected to be advised by British engineers.



On Friday, Sellafield ordered all non-essential staff to stay at home after elevated readings of radiation were detected on site. Later officials at Sellafield – the site of Britain’s worst nuclear accident in 1957 – said naturally occurring radioactive gas that comes from rocks and soil, had triggered the alarm.



will go between Japan and the UK,” said Lady Judge. “Helping the Japanese, will also help the Brits. We will benefit from working in Japan, the nuclear industry will benefit, and R&D will flourish in both countries.” The move would reverse the roles in the UK where Japanese companies, including Toshiba and Hitachi, are leading the plans, alongside France’s EDF Energy, to build the first nuclear power stations in Britain for decades. Three weeks ago Japan’s Toshiba agreed to buy a 60pc stake in NuGeneration, the UK nuclear venture that plans to build three new plants at the Moorside site in West Cumbria.


Lady Judge said that while Britain has lost most of its nuclear building expertise, the country still a world leader in decommissioning. Lady Judge was chairman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) from 2002 to 2010 which at the time was focused on decommissioning.


Almost 18 months ago, she was asked to join a new international oversight board being put together at the Tepco and appointed as deputy chairman of Tepco’s Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee, where she is in charge of safety.
The company is desperate to rebuild trust with the Japanese public which is still highly suspicious of nuclear power. The earthquake and tsunami that struck the Daiichi plant in March 2011 caused the worst nuclear accident since Chernoybl. Most of Japan’s nuclear power plants remain closed in the wake of the disaster, despite the crippling costs of importing oil and gas.


Last week, Japan reported a record trade deficit of 11.5 trillion yen, up 65pc from a year ago, due to soaring energy costs. The country, which recorded trade surpluses every year between 1980 and 2010, relied on its nuclear power plants for most of its supplies. High energy costs also helped Japanese consumer prices rise at their fastest pace for five years, according to data out on Friday.


Tepco, which has been heavily criticised for its handling of Fukushima, is hoping that Lady Judge and the rest of the committee can help safely shut down Fukushima and pave the way for Japan’s nuclear plants to restart.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...Fukushima.html

Study: Fukushima airborne plumes “caused significant deposition of radioactivity over North America” — Especially for West Coast and eastern U.S. — Around 13% of all radioactive iodine released into atmosphere was deposited over USA and Canada (MAP)

Published: February 14th, 2014 at 1:03 pm ET By ENENews

European Commission, Science for Environment Policy News Alert (pdf): The 2011 nuclear accident at Fukushima, Japan, caused the release of large amounts of radionuclides (unstable atoms that produce radioactive emissions) to the atmosphere. Caesium and iodine radionuclides can negatively affect human health through the contamination of air, water, soil and agricultural products. The EU-funded study1 modelled the global spread of radionuclides of caesium and iodine from Fukushima in the atmosphere [...] or iodine radionuclides [...] meteorological conditions and convection promote more long-distance transport. This is because iodine does not dissolve as easily as caesium so it remains in a gaseous form and is redistributed by convection to the troposphere (lowest part of atmosphere) where the wind speed is greater and transports the iodine greater distances. The model results suggest that 12.7% of iodine radionuclides were deposited over the USA and Canada [...] Approximately 50-60% was deposited locally in Japan.
Modelling the global atmospheric transport and deposition of radionuclides from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident (pdf), 2013: [...] meteorological conditions associated with convection and vertical mixing over the Pacific Ocean promote its longdistance transport so that it contributes to radioactivity deposition worldwide. Our model results suggest that the plumes that traversed the Pacific Ocean caused significant deposition of radioactivity over continental North America, in particular western USA, western Canada and eastern USA (>100 Bqm−2). Our model results also show substantial deposition of radionuclides in regions southwest of Japan, e.g., around the Philippines1. Two weeks after the accident, all operational CTBTO stations in the northern hemisphere had reported at least one 131I detection.

http://enenews.com/study-fukushima-a...comment-472854

Radiation Expert: “North America has received quite a large fallout” — “Incredible increase in cancer, leukemia, genetic disease… Not just in Japan but in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly North America” (VIDEO)

Published: December 13th, 2011 at 5:01 am ET By ENENews

Helen Caldicott Interview, The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, Dec. 11, 2011:
NYT: Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician, is founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility. A native of Australia, she left her Harvard Medical School post in 1980 to work full-time on anti-nuclear education.
Transcript Excerpts
At 2:39 in

May I say that North America has received quite a large fallout itself.

At 3:15 in

We’re going to see an incredible increase in cancer, leukemia, and — down the time track — genetic disease. Not just in Japan but in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly North America.

At 5:00 in

There have been three actual melt-throughs [...]
There could be massive hydrogen explosions still or steam explosions [...]
Building 4 is very unstable and its got a very hot cooling pool on top of it. If there’s another earthquake that building could collapse and who knows how much radiation could escape

After Fukushima – Enough Is Enough, New York Times By HELEN CALDICOTT, December 2, 2011:

[...] Many thousands of people continue to inhabit areas that are highly contaminated, particularly northwest of Fukushima. Radioactive elements have been deposited throughout northern Japan, found in tap water in Tokyo and concentrated in tea, beef, rice and other food. In one of the few studies on human contamination in the months following the accident, over half of the more than 1,000 children whose thyroids were monitored in Fukushima City were found to be contaminated with iodine 131 — condemning many to thyroid cancer years from now.
Children are innately sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of radiation, fetuses even more so. Like Chernobyl, the accident at Fukushima is of global proportions. Unusual levels of radiation have been discovered in British Columbia, along the West Coast and East Coast of the United States and in Europe, and heavy contamination has been found in oceanic waters. [...]

http://enenews.com/radiation-expert-...misphere-video

Americans and Canadians may have been eating radioactive fish filled with bloody, cancerous tumors as a result of fish being contaminated with huge amounts of radiation in the Pacific ocean from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

In March, 2011 an earthquake off the coast of Japan caused a Tsunami which hit the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, causing three reactors to melt down. Not only has that disaster site been spewing 400 tons of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean every single day since the earthquake, the radiation has reached the US West Coast and the fish you’ve been eating from the Pacific ocean are full of it! The radiation in the fish is so terrible that wild-caught Alaskan Salmon and Canadian white fish are being found to have bloody, cancerous, tumors throughout their bodies.

The government and the nuclear power industry claim we have nothing to worry about.

http://mr-absentia.soup.io/

US Sailors’ Attorney: Fukushima has left an entire generation of young people crippled physically, mentally, and genetically — Nuclear radiation is threatening entire planet (AUDIO)

Published: February 13th, 2014 at 12:12 pm ET By ENENews Feb. 11, 2014 (at 39:00 in):

Charles Bonner, attorney representing US sailors exposed to Fukushima radioactive releases during Operation Tomodachi: We intend to put the nuclear industry on trial here, because it is the misrepresentation from the nuclear industry that nuclear energy is safe that has allowed this particular incident to occur. There’s this false sense of security that these for-profit energy companies such as Tepco, created in the public. The public believes that these power plants are totally safe; in fact Tepco guaranteed the Japanese public that this particular power plant was safe. […] These nuclear power plants threaten the world, the entire planet is threatened.
Bonner: [Radiation-contaminated water] undoubtedly is going to hit the northern coast of California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska — probably by the end of this year or the beginning of next year. This kind of contamination threatens the entire planet and it has left an entire generation of young people now crippled, genetically as well as mentally, as well physically. As you well know radiation doesn’t just affect the person, it causes genetic mutations so it affects the offspring of an irradiated person. So the harm and damage here to the human beings is far reaching, let alone considering the damage to the environment which is ongoing. Tepco is still releasing 300 tons of radiation-contaminated water every day and it’s been going on every day, as it is stated in the lawsuit, since March 11, 2011 — since the earthquake happened. This is a very serious problem. So yes, this lawsuit indicts not only Tepco, but indicts the entire nuclear industry and it requires that citizens of the world demand that these power plants actually be shut down because it is impossible to make them completely safe.

Full interview available here

Fukushima Cancer Rates Spike Despite Nuclear Industry Denial

Published on February 14, 2014

Graham Bates/ Wake Up World
There’s been a spike of thyroid cancer cases in the Fukushima, like there was in Chernobyl after its nuclear disaster. And like Chernobyl, the nuclear industry is trying to deny the events are related.
On 11 March 2011, the world witnessed another Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) disaster, this time involving the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. An earthquake, followed by a tsunami, created the worst nuclear disaster on Earth.

The mainstream media has been relatively quiescent about the continuing Fukushima disaster. This is about to change.
Massive amounts of toxic radionuclides and water continue leaking from the reactors and the Spent Fuel Storage Pools (SFSP) into the Pacific Ocean. Scientific studies prove that radiation-induced insect mutations, high radiation levels in fish and alarmingly, rates of human cancers are increasing.

In the aftermath of the Fukushima NPP explosions, the extent of the massive damage is almost beyond belief.
Radioactive Isotopes Created by Fission
Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) operate when the neutron decay of Uranium-238 (238U) and Uranium-235 (235U) undergoes a fission reaction where atoms are split within the fuel rods contained inside the reactor.
Thus begins the fission chain reaction used to create energy ⇒ heat water to steam ⇒ drive turbines ⇒ create electricity ⇒ distribute to the electrical grid:

A single neutron strikes the fissile atom (nucleus), splitting the 235U and 238U atoms into fragments and the fission reaction starts. The fuel type used in Units 1,2,4,5 and 6 at Fukushima was Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) that contains approx 3-4% 235U mixed in with 238U.
Read More HERE

Why the Obama Administration Will Not Admit that Fukushima Radiation is Poisoning Americans

Why isn’t GE being held accountable?

By Chris Carrington
Global Research, February 15, 2014



We all know that the radiation from the stricken Fukushima plant has spread around the globe and is poisoning people worldwide. We all know that the West Coast of the United States is being polluted with radioactive debris and that the oceans, the beaches that border them, and even the air is becoming more polluted by radioactivity as time goes on.
You have to ask yourself why the government won’t admit this. It’s not like a disaster half a world away is their fault, is it?
Or is it? Could the United States government have done something to prevent the situation getting to this point?
Nothing in this article is a state secret, everything is in the public domain, but the information is so disseminated that it appears disconnected.

• the US government knows only too well that the West Coast is polluted with radiation and that the situation is getting worse by the day.
• the US government and General Electric knew that Fukushima was a disaster waiting to happen, and they did nothing to prevent it.
• they also know that the many nuclear reactors in the United States are also prone to catastrophic meltdown, and they are doing nothing about it.
• research by doctors and scientists is being suppressed, and research by private citizens is being written off purely because they have no scientific background.

All the warnings were ignored
The narrative that leads us to the state we are in today starts in 1972.
Stephen Hanauer, an official at the atomic Energy Commission recommended that General Electric’s Mark 1 design be discontinued as it presented unacceptable safety risks.
The New York Times reported:

In 1972, Stephen H. Hanauer, then a safety official with the Atomic Energy Commission, recommended that the Mark 1 system be discontinued because it presented unacceptable safety risks. Among the concerns cited was the smaller containment design, which was more susceptible to explosion and rupture from a buildup in hydrogen — a situation that may have unfolded at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Later that same year, Joseph Hendrie, who would later become chairman of theNuclear Regulatory Commission, a successor agency to the atomic commission, said the idea of a ban on such systems was attractive. But the technology had been so widely accepted by the industry and regulatory officials, he said, that “reversal of this hallowed policy, particularly at this time, could well be the end of nuclear power.” (source)

Then, three years later in 1975, Dale Bridenbaugh and two colleagues were asked to review the GE Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor (BWR). They were convinced that the reactor was inherently unsafe and so flawed in its design that it could catastrophically fail under certain circumstances. There were two main issues. First was the possible failure of the Mark 1 to deal with the huge pressures created if the unit lost cooling power. Secondly, the spent fuel ponds were situated 100 feet in the air near the top of the reactor.
They voiced their opinions, which were promptly pushed aside, and after realizing that they were not going to be allowed to make their opinions public all three resigned.
Over the years numerous other experts voiced concerns over the GE Mark 1 BWR. All have gone unheeded.
Five of the six reactors at Fukushima were GE Mark 1 BWR. The first reactor, unit one, was commissioned in 1971, prior to the first concerns about the design being raised. The other reactors came on line in 1973, 1974, 1977, 1978 and 1979 respectively. Although all six reactors were the GE Mark 1 design only three were built and supplied by GE. Units 1, 2 and 6 were supplied by GE, 3 and 5 by Toshiba and unit 4 by Hitachi. (Now Hitachi-GE)
Why isn’t GE being held accountable?
Why wouldn’t GE be held accountable? Here’s one possibility: Jeffery Immelt is the head of GE. He is also the head of the United States Economic Advisory Board. He was invited to join the board personally by President Obama in 2009 and took over as head in 2011 when Paul Volcker stepped down in February 2011, just a month before the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Fukushima.
Paul Volcker was often seen as being at odds with the administration, and many of his ideas were not embraced by the government. The appointment of Immelt, a self-described Republican, was seen as a move to give Obama a leg up when dealing with the Republican majority in the House.
There have been calls from many organizations for GE to be held accountable for the design faults in the reactors that powered the Fukushima plant. The fact that they had been known for so long does seem to indicate that the company ignored and over-ruled advice from nuclear experts.
GE ran Fukushima alongside TEPCO, but it isn’t liable for the clean-up costs.

A year after the disaster, Tepco was taken over by the Japanese government because it couldn’t afford the costs to get the damaged reactors under control. By June of 2012, Tepco had received nearly 50 billion dollars from the government.

The six reactors were designed by the U.S. company General Electric (GE). GE supplied the actual reactors for units one, two and six, while two Japanese companies Toshiba provided units three and five, and Hitachi unit four. These companies as well as other suppliers are exempted from liability or costs under Japanese law.

Many of them, including GE, Toshiba and Hitachi, are actually making money on the disaster by being involved in the decontamination and decommissioning, according to a report by Greenpeace International.

“The nuclear industry and governments have designed a nuclear liability system that protects the industry, and forces people to pick up the bill for its mistakes and disasters,” says the report, “Fukushima Fallout.”

“If nuclear power is as safe as the industry always claims, then why do they insist on liability limits and exemptions?” asked Shawn-Patrick Stensil, a nuclear analyst with Greenpeace Canada.

Nuclear plant owner/operators in many countries have liability caps on how much they would be forced to pay in case of an accident. In Canada, this liability cap is only 75 million dollars. In the United Kingdom, it is 220 million dollars. In the U.S., each reactor owner puts around 100 million dollars into a no-fault insurance pool. This pool is worth about 10 billion dollars.

“Suppliers are indemnified even if they are negligent,” Stensil told IPS. (source)

GE will not have put anything into this ‘pot’ to cover Fukushima, as it is not in the United States. They have walked away, even though they knew their reactors have design faults.
Wait! There’s more!
It’s not that simple, though; and here’s where keeping quiet and denying what’s happening comes into its own.
So far I have not explained why Obama is keeping quiet about the radiation contamination. Well, that’s the easy part.

There are 23 nuclear plants in the United States that use the GE Mark 1 BWR.23.

There are 23 nuclear plants in the United States where the used fuel rods are suspended, in a pond, 100 feet above the ground. (source)
Any admission that radiation has spread across the Pacific Ocean and contaminated American soil is an admission that the technology was flawed, and that same flawed technology is being used in the United States. The government does not want anyone looking closer at the situation. They don’t want people poking around asking questions about why the radiation got out in the first place…it’s too close to home.
Better to say that the radiation is within safe levels, and then if such a disaster happens here they can mourn those in the immediate fallout zone and maintain that the rest of the country is okay, just as it was after Fukushima.
The fact that the CEO of GE works for Obama just highlights the facts. There is no way that Immelt doesn’t know about all the warning his company was given about the design flaws of the Mark 1; and if he knows, the government knows.
Ask yourself this, why after such a monumental event are all the scientific papers regarding the disaster singing the same song?
It is impossible to have so many scientists and doctors agreeing to this level. Nothing has been published regarding the increased rates of miscarriage and childhood thyroid cancers. Why is that?
After Chernobyl there was a plethora of papers announcing to the world the increased cancer risks, the risks to pregnant women and young children. I suggest that because Chernobyl was in Russia, a place where no American technology was used, that there was no suppression of the facts.
GE cannot afford a corporate law suit, and neither can the Obama administration. It wouldn’t be pretty if a senior advisor to the president was hauled through the courts. There’s a chance it would not just be GE that went down in the wake of such a case.
The President of the United States knows that the radiation from Fukushima is worse than it would have been had the reactors used at the plant been of a different design.
Know to the US government, the delicate and hazardous task of removing and storing the spent fuel rods is going to take years, and that one mistake can exacerbate the problems ten-fold.
23 sites in America are using the same flawed reactors and the government is doing nothing about it.
The President of the United States is holding the lives of tens of millions of Americans in his hands and he refuses to even admit there is a problem. He needs to understand that the people of the West Coast are not just pawns in his political game. Moreover he should be explaining what is causing all the fish die-offs if it is unconnected to radiation.
Obama knows that millions of American citizens are being poisoned due, in part, to a failure of American technology. I recognize that the earthquake and tsunami were forces of nature, but the damage sustained could have been reduced considerably by not using the Mark 1.
I understand that these reactors were not installed on his watch, but he’s there now. He’s the one that can make the difference now. It is he who can look into the nuclear power stations on American soil in the hope of preventing a meltdown here.
Our nuclear power stations are old, past their sell by date in some cases. It’s not just the reactors that are the problem either. Hanford, right on the Columbia River in Washington state, as one example, constantly leaks radioactive liquid into the ground, and possibly the groundwater.
The situation at Fukushima is still far from stable, and it will be years before stability is even on the horizon.
Something has to be done before one of our aging power stations starts Fukushima Part ll.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-the...ricans/5365626

Yuliyan Velchev/Shutterstock




Fukushima's Legacy: Understanding the Difference Between Nuclear Radiation & Contamination

It's very important




by Chris Martenson
Tuesday, February 11, 2014, 9:55 AM

Are fish from the Pacific safe to eat? What about the elevated background radiation readings detected in Japan, and recently, in California? Are these harmful levels?
Should we be worried? And if so, what should be done about these potential health threats? What steps should we take to protect ourselves?
As many of you know, I'm a scientist by training. In this report, I'll lay out the facts and data that explain the actual risks. I'll start by pointing out that Fukushima-related fears have been overblown as well as heavily downplayed by parties on each side of the discussion.
Much of this stems from ignorance of the underlying science. But some of it, sadly, seems to be purposefully misleading. Again, on both sides.
To assess the true risks accurately, you need to know about the difference between radiation and contamination. The distinction is vital, and, unfortunately, one of the most glossed-over and misused facets of the reporting on nuclear energy.
Starting with the Bottom Line

All of my research and understanding of the risks of radiation at this point indicate that people living on the West Coast of the U.S. or in Hawaii are currently not in danger from the radiation released in the wake of the Fukushima tragedy.
While the background levels are elevated somewhat, those detected so far remain well within what I consider to be a safe zone. However, should there be another accident at the damaged facility leading to the release of another large plume of radioactive matter, then this assessment could, understandably, change.
The exception to this assessment is for those living within a hundred kilometers of Fukushima. For those people, my analysis points to serious risks, especially for those living with a kilometer or two of the coast, extending 100 kilometers in either direction. The details behind my assessment are contained in the full report below.
The intent of this report is to help readers understand the likely implications of the Fukushima situation with more clarity, as well as to provide a useful framework for identifying the risks posed by any future nuclear incidents and what your response to them should be.
The most important takeaway from this analysis should be this: Radiation, itself, is less a threat than most people imagine. But radioactive contamination is an entirely different and far more dangerous beast.
While both deliver a ‘dose’ of radiation, it's contamination – especially ingested contamination – that has the greatest odds of delivering a concentrated dose to human tissue in a way that can lead to serious acute and/or chronic damage.
The difference between these two will be explained in detail. For those who chose not to read the full report and just want the punchline, it's this: Contamination is the process of acquiring radioactive particles that then become lodged on, or more dangerously in, your body. Do all you can to protect yourself against it.
Should you find yourself nearby during a nuclear accident, your first order of business is to avoid breathing or ingesting any contaminated particulate matter. This usually involves sheltering in place and is when duct tape and plastic sheeting become your best friends. While it may sound silly to use such a dime-store defense against a nuclear hazard, it is in fact both remarkably effective and entirely necessary. Merely keeping you and your family away from the fallout for a matter of 2-3 days, possibly a bit longer depending on conditions, can make an enormous difference in your survival odds.
For now, the levels of radiation that have been detected and reported outside of Japan are between two and three orders of magnitude below what I would personally consider to be worrisome. And there’s no concrete evidence that the bigger concern, contamination, has traveled to countries outside of Japan.
And within Japan, the story takes on its own complexity (just as happened in the areas surrounding Chernobyl), where local wind patterns in the days after the accident created a complex quilt of danger and (relative) safety.
For those who wish to engage with the context and details of the post-Fukushima world, the journey begins by understanding what ‘radiation’ actually is.
Radiation Types

What do we mean when we say 'radiation'? As it turns out, that word can mean any number of things.
You are bathed in radiation every day: from sunlight, radio waves, wi-fi, etc. Some radiation is electromagnetic (in the case of light), and some is composed of particles (matter).
When we hear about ‘radiation’ in the press, what’s typically being referred to are potentially harmful forms of energetic emissions, both electromagnetic and particulate, that can damage biological organisms.
The main distinction between harmful and benign radiation lies in the ability of the radioactive wave or particle to ionize a molecule in your body. Technically, 'ionizing' means "to create an ion," which involves forcibly stripping an electron off a molecule or atom. This leaves the molecule or atom in a charged state (referred to as 'ionic form'), which thus can cause the affected particle to break apart or otherwise not work as it did before.
For example, the hemoglobin in your blood is a very complex molecule. Breaking even one of its internal bonds can completely destroy its ability to carry oxygen.
Every cell in your body is an enormously complex machine with thousands of different molecules each with a crucial function. Wreck enough of these molecules through the process of ionization and the cell dies. Destroy or disrupt the DNA at the center of the cell, and malfunction will result, one dramatic form being the loss of the ability to self-regulate its growth, which we call cancer.
Radioactive substances emit various forms of energy. Some of the energetic releases are in the form of photon waves (such as gamma or X-rays) while some are in the form of actual fast-moving particles (such as alpha and beta particles, and neutrons).
We lump them all together and call them ‘radiation’. But when it comes to their impact on living organisms, not all forms of radiation are created equally. Some are far more effective 'disrupters of life' than others.
The basic types of radiation you would encounter as a consequence of a nuclear accident like Fukushima are:

• Alpha particles. These are fast moving nuclei of helium, meaning that they consist of two protons and two neutrons. The electron shell is missing, so these are charged particles in search of electrons to strip from some other hapless molecule or atom. In the subatomic world, these are very large particles and so are the most easily stopped. They cannot penetrate even a single sheet of paper or the layer of dead skin cells on the outside of your body. As a result, they are quite easy to protect against with minimal effort. However, we shouldn't take total comfort in this fact. The deadly toxin polonium-210, the one used to kill various enemies of the Russians over the years, emits alpha particles and is quite effective as a poison. The reason for this lies in the fact that, once ingested, it works its damage in close proximity to a person's cells. On the outside of a body, alpha particles bump into already-dead skin cells, so no harmful damage results. On the inside, they careen straight into living cells and are quite damaging.

• Beta particles. These are electrons that have been ejected through a radioactive decay process (technically, it's when a neutron decays, yielding both a proton and an electron). Beta radiation can penetrate a sheet of paper easily, and it requires something along the lines of an aluminum plate a few millimeters thick to stop it. Beta particles have medium ionizing power and medium penetrating power, but there is a very wide spectrum of potential power intensities, depending on exactly which radioactive substance is emitting the beta particle. One very common radioactive substance found in nuclear plants, tritium, is a beta emitter.

• Gamma rays. These are high-energy photons with strong penetrating power and high ionizing potential. In the past, they were distinguished from x-rays on the basis of their energy potential, but they are really the same thing (they are both high-energy photons). Although, what we call an x-ray generally carries a lot less energy than a gamma ray. That is, an x-ray is at the low end of the energetic spectrum, while a gamma ray is at the higher end. This is exactly analogous to the difference between visible sunlight and UV rays, which are the radiation (composed of high-energy photons) that burns your skin. Just place gamma rays a lot further along that same spectrum all the way at the point where, instead of being stopped by your underlay of skin, the gamma rays can create an equivalent ‘sunburn’ on tissues all the way through your body. Gamma rays vary in strength and actually occupy a spectrum of energies (not unlike how white light includes the spectrum of all the colors of the rainbow), so we need to know more about the specific gamma rays in question to know how damaging they might be.

• Neutrons. Neutrons are the bad boys of the radiation story, and are only found as a consequence of a nuclear reaction (controlled or uncontrolled). Their penetrating power is extraordinary, requiring several meters of solid substance to stop them. They work their harm by indirect ionization, which is not unlike a pool ball smashing into a lamp. A typical example would be the capture of a neutron by a hydrogen nucleus consisting of a single proton, which is then ripped away from its position by the kinetic energy contained by the neutron, and then, like our billiard ball, careens about breaking things, ionizing some atoms/molecules, or shattering the bonds between atoms. In terms of biological damage, neutrons are horrific – roughly ten times more damaging than beta or gamma radiation on a per-unit-of-energy basis.

Of course, there's a lot of complexity buried within each of these 'buckets' of radiation types, especially given the uncertainty that each bucket has a range of energies associated with it.
To help clarify this, imagine that we're talking about radiation as if it were vehicles traveling on a highway. It's not really possible to predict how destructive it would be to collide with 'a vehicle,' because that answer depends on knowing factors like the vehicle’s size, weight, and speed.
Bumping into a small car traveling slowly in your same direction will be far less damaging than slamming head-on into a large fully-loaded Mack truck going 80 mph.
The way this is technically measured is by the energy that each type of radiation carries, measured in units called 'electron volts' (eV). Think of the eV rating as combining both the speed and the mass of the vehicle we are trying to rank.
To the eV designation, we'll add the scientific shorthand of K for 'kilo' signifying 1,000 and M for Mega signifying 1,000,000. So 1 KeV = 1,000 eV, and 1 MeV = 1,000,000 eV
Along our radiation 'highway,' we find that x-rays carry the least energy and are in the vicinity of 1.2 KeV. They are small, light cars. Think Fiat.
Gamma rays are not a single vehicle type, because they can have energies anywhere from a few KeV all the way up to 25 MeV. They are everything and anything from tiny TR-6s to massive, fully loaded, Peterbilt double trailer trucks traveling 80 mph. For reference, the gamma rays emitted by gesium-137, a very common byproduct of nuclear reactors and a main component of the Fukushima releases, is 700 KeV, hundreds of times more energetic than your typical dentist x-ray, but not nearly the most potent gamma ray you could encounter.
Some common gamma emitters are cesium-137, cobalt-60 and technetium-99. Also, about 10% of the radioactivity of iodine-131 is gamma, the rest is beta (making this is a mixed radioelement).
Alpha particles have very high kinetic energies standing at about 5 MeV. However, they have exceptionally poor penetrating power, so we might think of them as very large steamrollers that can lurch forwards violently, but only for a few feet. If you are right next to it, you're in big trouble, but otherwise you're safe.
In recent years, a potent alpha emitter, polonium-210, was used to assassinate both Yasser Arafat and Russian critic Alexander Litvinenko. Because polonium-210 only emits alpha particles, you could carry it in a glass vial in your pocket and slip though radiation detectors at any facility because none of the alpha particles would make it through the vial wall (and even if they somehow did, they’d be stopped by the fabric of your pants pocket). In fact, you could merrily rub it on your skin and suffer no ill effects.
But if ingested? Just a few milligrams, a speck the size of a small grain of salt, would be sufficient to kill. All those gigantic lurching steamrollers would be positioned right next to your living cells, crashing into them and destroying your tissues one cell at a time.
Common alpha emitters include radium, radon, polonium, uranium, and thorium.
Beta particles are electrons ejected during proton decay, and they travel at high speed. They can range anywhere between 5 KeV and 20 MeV. For our purposes, the isotopes most commonly associated with nuclear reactions are in the range of 19 KeV (tritium) to 600 KeV (iodine-131 and strontium-90) to 2.3 MeV (yttrium-90). So these range from medium-sized cars to tractor-trailers, in our analogy.
Beta particles have medium penetrating power and they can easily get through your skin to the living tissues beneath. Think of them as being able to give you a very harsh sunburn from the outside inwards if you were exposed long enough. Again, their worst effects come if ingested, where they can cause lots of damage.
Some common beta emitters are strontium-90, yttrium-90, iodine-131, carbon-14, and tritium.
Neutrons are a very wide topic, so we'll just talk about them in terms of a nuclear reactor. The moderate to fast neutrons emitted as a product of fission are extraordinarily dangerous and can penetrate lead shields and many meters of concrete. They are most readily stopped by interacting with hydrogen, so water and wax (and human bodies) – which contain lots of hydrogen atoms – are better at stopping neutrons than concrete.
Neutrons are not part of the radioactive release from Fukushima. They really aren't ever an issue unless you somehow find yourself near an open, uncontained source of fission – like inside the containment shell of an operating reactor, or in the vicinity of an exploding nuclear bomb. Then neutrons are a BIG problem.
Of note: In the early stages of the Fukushima meltdown, neutron 'beams' were detected 13 times from outside the reactors. This understandably caused the TEPCO workers a lot of worry and slowed their response efforts. This was a certain indication that there was spontaneous fission happening outside of a sealed containment vessel, something that TEPCO was busily assuring the world had not happened. They were still claiming that the vessels were intact and full of pumped cooling water.
The bottom line is that the topic of radioactivity is complex. If we want to make intelligent decisions, then we need to know which type of radiation we are talking about.
For example, there are folks walking about with mail-order radiation detectors and reporting ‘counts per minute’ readings. But counts of what, exactly? Is each ‘count’ a low-energy beta particle or a high-energy gamma ray? There’s a world of difference between the two.
So we owe it to ourselves to dig into the context before coming to conclusions. To determine how concerned we should be about any new data, we have to translate ‘counts’ of any particle into their potential health effects.
Radiation's Effect on Our Health

Okay, here's the thing most people don't know about radiation: We are surrounded by it and have evolved with it over billions of years. The body can deal with exposure to a certain amount of ionizing radiation without any difficulty at all. Naturally occurring radioactive elements, such as uranium and radon and carbon-14, have been a part of life since the very beginning. Gamma rays rain down from the celestial heavens every day.
So radiation alone is not a cause for concern for me. Even temporary radiation levels that are significantly above my normal background baseline, as much as ten or twenty times, are not a concern of mine as a healthy adult.
But as our vehicle analogy above showed, first we have to know what kind of radiation we are talking about. Is it alpha, beta, or gamma? How much energy is it carrying?
We also need to know about the person being exposed to the radiation. Tolerance levels for what's "safe" will be lower for kids, the old, and the frail.
For these reasons, science has struggled to come up with a universal measurement for the health impact caused by radiation. As a result, we have several different measurement methodologies parked into a few slightly different, but essentially related, scales. Each attempts to combine the acute effects of radiation exposure into a single 'dose' that is a measure of both the intensity and the duration of the exposure.
As mentioned previously, some radiation has the ability to travel right through our bodies entirely without being absorbed. So, the ‘dose’ reading needs to focus on the amount of any specific radiation type that will be absorbed (or stopped) by the body and thereby have opportunity to impact the molecules in that body.
The radiation absorbed dose is measured in Gray, rad, rem, and Sievert.
Rads and Grays are related to each other. One Gray is a huge dose, and the rad just breaks the Grays down into finer units. One Gray = 100 rads (rad stands for Radiation Absorbed Dose). These measure the amount of energy that ionizing radiation imparts to matter. This matter could be anything: a block of cement, or a human.
Sieverts and rems are likewise related. One Sievert = 100 rems, but these are adjusted to provide a measure of the impact of the absorbed dose of ionizing radiation on biological tissue. To equate the two systems, the absorbed dose in Grays or rads is multiplied by a 'quality factor' that is specific to each type of radiation to account for their different biological impacts: the result is Sieverts or rems. Thus, using our vehicle analogy from before, our small sedans get an adjustment factor of 1, while heavier vehicles get an adjustment factor as high as 10-20 times greater.

(Source)
Based on this table, it's no wonder that polonium-210 is such a devastating radiological poison, because alpha particle get an adjustment factor of 20 (!), making them twice as deadly as fast neutrons, even. But, again, the alpha particles have to be ingested to have that impact, whereas neutrons can travel through ten feet of concrete and still be dangerous.
Keep in mind this table is a huge simplification of a very complicated field of study. For example, it also matters which tissues are being exposed, as they have very different sensitivities to radiation.
However, if we are talking about an episode of external exposure to radiation, like a worker at Fukushima might get, then we care about the Sievert or rem scale:

• 1 Sievert (or 1 Sv), or 100 rem, will induce nausea and reduce the white blood cell count
• 5 Sv, or 500 rems, would cause death for 50% of those exposed in a matter of months
• 10 Sv, or 1,000 rems, is 100% fatal within weeks

The above table leaves out the element of time, so if you are standing near a source of ionizing radiation that is hitting you at the rate of 1 SV per hour, after ten hours you will have received 10 Sv, a fatal dose. If you stand next to that source for an hour you will get nauseous, and destroy some of your white blood cells. If you only stand there for ten minutes, you'll receive something like 100 mS (the maximum yearly allowed dose for U.S. nuclear workers) and likely not feel any adverse effects.
Thus, dose is a function of intensity and time. You may recall seeing the grainy footage of Chernobyl ‘workers’ ducking out from behind cover and racing to move a single wheelbarrow of rubble from point A to point B. In those few seconds, they may have received a lifetime maximum dose of radiation and were (hopefully) sent home after accomplishing that one task.
The average global background radiation is 0.27 microS/hour (that's millionths of a Sievert). If we multiply that number by 24x365, it yields an average yearly dose of 2.4 mS/yr. TEPCO workers are permitted to receive 250 mS/yr, while U.S. nuclear worker standards are 100 mS/yr, which is roughly 25 times greater than background.
The average airport security screening device delivers a dose of 0.25 microS, or the equivalent of a full day's background radiation. If that alarms you, just know that during the actual flight you take, the average exposure is ten times higher than that – providing 2.7 microS per hour of flight at cruising altitude, or ten times normal background. So a 5-hour flight at cruising altitude will provide you with a dose of gamma radiation that measures 54 times more than you get at the airport screening itself, or two full days worth of background radiation.
Again, at these levels, I am not even remotely concerned. If there were something to worry about, then the epidemiological data from flight attendants and pilots would have long ago revealed a health concern. That's one reason why I'm not worried about periodic episodes of 10x normal background radiation.
Of course, the Sievert is a very crude scale, developed a long time ago. One might argue that the biological impact of airport screeners and whole-body gamma irradiation might be more subtle and complex due to differences in tissue responses and how the radiation is concentrated on the surface of the skin by airport scanners. All of that remains an open question to me, but not enough of one to concern me.
Still, the point here is that we are surrounded by radiation all the time, and we absorb a yearly dose no matter where we live – but Denver-ites get a lot more than people living in Miami due to the altitude (less atmospheric protection from extra planetary gamma arrays).
Here's a link to a super useful graphic that visually shows the Sievert doses of both ordinary life and the Fukushima accident in relation to each other.
Based on this chart, plus all of the information above, even if your background radiation goes up by a factor of ten or twenty, I wouldn't be concerned.
Contamination Is the Real Danger

But radioactive contamination? That's a whole different beast.
By "contamination," I mean ingesting some radioactive isotopes or particles that become lodged in the body somehow. Perhaps it's a small speck of radioactive dust that gets lodged in the lung where it will persist (like coal dust and asbestos do), or perhaps it's a substance that our bodies try to accumulate because it resembles a biologically useful element (as is the case with iodine or strontium).
In Part II: The Contamination Threat, we examine in depth the threats posed by radioactive contamination, including the most prevalent contaminants to be wary of, and the compounding effects of bioaccumulation and biomagnification. One of the most nefarious aspects of contamination is how it uses Nature's processes against itself.
For the record, we are aware of no imminent public health threat from nuclear contamination outside of already-identified "hot zones." But for those who wish to better understand the risks and prudent protection measures related to the real dangers of a similar Fukushima-type event in the future (or an unfortunate escalation of the current Fukushima situation), being forewarned is forearmed.
Click here to access Part II of this report (free executive summary; enrollment required for full access).

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So changing the term to "Contamination" instead of "Radiation" is supposed to make a difference...semantics is all it is!!!! It still means

I believe that the media stopped reporting on this because it is indeed a major catostrophic event. I think they don't want people to freak out. Truth is....I don't think there is anything they can do about it now that it has happened. We were warned by many that this could happen and it has. The reality is that we are going to have to live out (or die out) the consequences of this event. Please remember that this happened almost at the same time that the oil companies blew up the Gulf of Mexico and then saturated it with chemicals. If the media was reporting on this they would just be telling us lies anyway. Like all the very large fish and bird kills that happened around that time....they said is "natural." LOL. When flocks of birds fell from the sky they said they committed suicide due to fireworks. Give me an effing break. If the media was reporting on this then that is the kind of bs they would be telling us, instead of the actual TRUTH. And the truth is a very hard pill to swallow.

It's better than the lie about flocks of birds commiting suicide and diving to the ground due to fear of fireworks. At least on the face of it.