Damage being done to the Pacifics eco-system due to the Fukushima incident

[pavelcherepan]

 

I'm arguing with anyone who thinks they can assert a lack of ecological consequences, including damages, from ecosystem exposure to the contamination plume from Fukushima,

 

based on the lack of consequences from ambient concentrations of potassium etc,

 

without having made significant and debatable assumptions that those points cast into question.

 

Please stop implying, inferring or otherwise assuming I said there'd be no ecological consequences.

 

Just in the previous post I said that bioaccumulation and biomagnification of radiocaesium is very likely. How is that not an ecological consequence?

[John Cuthber]

Nobody except you knows how uneven the concentration within the plume has been, could have been, or is.

 

Assuming such small variation for the "worst case" is assuming quite even concentration, throughout the extent of the plume in both time and space. I and the others considering this matter do not know enough to do that.

 

Nobody except you knows whether the small variation you describe would have consequences in some of the ecosystems involved, because nobody except you has the done the research on the many and largely unstudied ecosystems involved, in particular their response to such exposures.

 

And so forth. Just repeating myself - except not claiming ignorance on your part, per instruction.

You are, indeed, just repeating yourself and that's not going to get you very far.

Perhaps you would like to explain why you think that my comparing the typical disintegration rate for potassium in sea water (about 6200 Bq/m^3) with the highest levels in the plume (about 100 Bq/m^3) is in some way saying that the whole of the plume has the same concentration of contaminants?

 

It's like saying that the highest point in Norfolk is Beacon hill at 103 metres above sea level

People don't usually get altitude sickness in Johannesburg which is roughly 1500 metres above sea level, so nobody in Norfolk is likely to get altitude sickness.

And they you turn up and say that I claim to know the altitude of every part of Norfolk and that it's all the same altitude.

 

It's utter nonsense. If it was all the same height then I couldn't have cited a highest point could I?

Stop repeating it.

 

The whole point of a "worst case" is that it actually has no variation; only the highest bit is "worst"

 

So, once again

OK, prove what you did say.

This seems to be a pretty clear claim

" 2) Why are you assuming the concentration is even throughout the plume? "

prove it.

Show that I have made that assumption.

Edited March 19, 2015 by John Cuthber

[overtone]

Perhaps you would like to explain why you think that my comparing the typical disintegration rate for potassium in sea water (about 6200 Bq/m^3) with the highest levels in the plume (about 100 Bq/m^3) is in some way saying that the whole of the plume has the same concentration of contaminants?

That's not the issue. The issue is you don't know what the highest levels in the plume have been, or are. You are making assumptions to get that number, and among them is an assumption of even concentration, within reason, in the plume.

 

 

It's like saying that the highest point in Norfolk is Beacon hill at 103 metres above sea level

Not quite. It's like saying the highest point of some hill you don't know anything about, in terrain you know only the average height of, is 103 meters above sea level.

Edited March 19, 2015 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

Ho Hum

The plume I'm talking about is (obviously) the one in the picture I cited which was produced at a point in time.

That picture isn't changing is it?

So I'm not making an assumption that the plume is even.

So your point was an attack on a position that nobody was taking.

It was a strawman.

 

You may remember that the point I was making was about the misleading propaganda that people put out about this sort of issue- things like the picture I described as "scary" then pointed out that it was a misrepresentation because the levels it pictured were at worst, tiny.

 

So, once again...

OK, prove what you did say.

This seems to be a pretty clear claim

" 2) Why are you assuming the concentration is even throughout the plume? "

prove it.

Show that I have made that assumption.

Incidentally,, s there anyone else out there who thinks that by saying that Everest is the highest mountain, I am assuming that the world is flat, or do you have to be Overtone to take that viewpoint?

Edited March 20, 2015 by John Cuthber

[overtone]

Incidentally, is there anyone else out there who thinks that by saying that Everest is the highest mountain, I am assuming that the world is flat, or do you have to be Overtone to take that viewpoint?

You are not claiming that there is a highest mountain, or that the highest mountain is Everest - you are claiming knowledge of the height of Everest throughout its unusually varying lifespan, as estimated from no information except the average height of the world's dry terrain now.

 

For that, you need to make assumptions about the evenness of that terrain, and in this case over time as well as 3D volume. They are implicit in the calculation. If you claim knowledge of the exposure regime of the ecosystems involved by pointing to the change in concentration - as you do here:

 

 

Ok, Seawater contains about 400 ppmn of potassium.

So a cubic metre contains about 200 grams.

At 31 Bq per gram that's 6200 Bq/m^3

So the natural radioactivity of seawater (from just the potassium- there are other radioactive materials present) is about a hundred times more than this "plume"

I presume that, since the life in the ocean is used to the radiation present, adding a percent or so to it won't make much difference.

Do you think that there's some means by which the biology can cope with 6200 Bq/tonne, but not 6300?

these assumptions become important.

 

Again: "If it varies too much, your dismissal by dilution comparison is invalidated. Do you know how much it varied, at given odds and spatial scale? Nobody else seems to."

Edited March 22, 2015 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

Ho Hum

The plume I'm talking about is (obviously) the one in the picture I cited which was produced at a point in time.

That picture isn't changing is it?

So I'm not making an assumption that the plume is even.

So your point was an attack on a position that nobody was taking.

It was a strawman.

This seems to be a pretty clear claim

" 2) Why are you assuming the concentration is even throughout the plume? "

prove it.

Show that I have made that assumption.

Incidentally,, s there anyone else out there who thinks that by saying that Everest is the highest mountain, I am assuming that the world is flat, or do you have to be Overtone to take that viewpoint?

Edited March 22, 2015 by John Cuthber

[overtone]

Show that I have made that assumption.

You have been shown to be making that assumption in several posts now. Every time you estimate lifespan ecosystem exposure by using one time changes in average concentrations of "radioactivity" throughout large volumes of seawater. That's what an average concentration is, that's what extending these concentrations back through time involves, and so forth.

 

So - - -

 

 

 

 

 

 

Incidentally,, s there anyone else out there who thinks that by saying that Everest is the highest mountain, I am assuming that the world is flat,

If you insist on that analogy:

 

You are saying the highest mountain is 103 meters tall and always has been. And yes, that would mean the world was flat, for the purpose of this discussion.

 

Meanwhile, you still have matter of assuming equivalences between cesium and potassium, and the matter of Pacific Ccean close to Japan vs far away, and bioaccumulation issues, and sediment accumulation issues, and so forth and so on - this piss in the ocean that Fukushima took is going to be a long time shaking out.

Edited March 22, 2015 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

Every time you estimate lifespan ecosystem exposure by using one time changes in average concentrations of "radioactivity".

 

 

Except that I never did that.

I was just pointing out the propagandist nature of the image.

 

So, once again...

This seems to be a pretty clear claim

" 2) Why are you assuming the concentration is even throughout the plume? "

prove it.

Show that I have made that assumption.

[overtone]

" Every time you estimate lifespan ecosystem exposure by using one time changes in average concentrations of "radioactivity". "

Except that I never did that.

In post 52:

 

Perhaps you would like to explain why you think that my comparing the typical disintegration rate for potassium in sea water (about 6200 Bq/m^3) with the highest levels in the plume (about 100 Bq/m^3)

 

In post 43:

 

 

Nope, I can make a meaningful comparison between the background and an upper bound to the contamination level. If the highest levels of contamination are a lot less than the background it is reasonable to say that any effect is small.

I remind you that what I said at the outset was "Almost all of it is less than 100 Bq/m^3"

 

 

In post 41:

 

Unless you can show that I did assume the concentration was even.

In reality I made no such assumption.

What I actually said was "Almost all of it is less than 100 Bq/m^3"

Which implies that I knew the concentration varied.

 

The original, in post 7:

 

OK, lets have a look at some data.

Here's a map picked up from the web showing the "plume"

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-26329323

Scary, isn't it?

Now look at the scale

Almost all of it is less than 100 Bq/m^3

- - - - -

So the 2kg of the stuff in a cubic metre of urine would be about 60,000Bq

- - - -

So, to be crude, my piss (or yours) is roughly a thousand times more radioactive than that "plume"

 

In post 9:

 

So the natural radioactivity of seawater (from just the potassium- there are other radioactive materials present) is about a hundred times more than this "plume"

I presume that, since the life in the ocean is used to the radiation present, adding a percent or so to it won't make much difference.

Do you think that there's some means by which the biology can cope with 6200 Bq/tonne, but not 6300?

 

In post 13:

 

"Between 21 March and mid-July around 2.7 × 10¹⁶ Bq of caesium-137 (about 8.4 kg) entered the ocean".

The mass of the ocean is something like 10^20 kg and it holds something like 10^16 kg of potassium.

That's quite a dilution. 8 vs 10,000,000,000,000,000.

 

In post 15:

 

However Fukushima lost most of its material to the sea rather than the land surface,so it got mixed not just into the top cm or so, but into the whole depth of the ocean.

 

In post 23:

 

The background (natural) level of radiocaesium is pretty much zero.

10,000 times pretty near zero is still, fairly literally, piss in the ocean.

 

And so forth.

And that's just the water: still to be considered are the organisms in it, and the sediments under it.

 

 

I was just pointing out the propagandist nature of the image.

You were attempting to dismiss the potential for serious Pacific Ocean ecosystem damage - the thread topic - by claiming that the Fukushima emissions were so diluted in the ocean's volume as to be presumably harmless.

 

You have made, also, several other bunkum reassurance claims in this thread (that potassium and cesium are not ecologically distinguished, say).

Edited March 23, 2015 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

Still nonsense.

I pointed out that the contamination in the worst of the big scary blob was, in fact less radioactive than ordinary sea water (and by a fairly large margin).
That's not the same as saying it was all the same concentration, is it?

So, once again...

This seems to be a pretty clear claim

" 2) Why are you assuming the concentration is even throughout the plume? "

prove it.

Show that I have made that assumption.

Edited March 23, 2015 by John Cuthber

[swansont]

You were attempting to dismiss the potential for serious Pacific Ocean ecosystem damage - the thread topic - by claiming that the Fukushima emissions were so diluted in the ocean's volume as to be presumably harmless.

 

It looks to me that he was comparing the peak of the plume from the reactor (i.e. the worst-case) with the natural background. If the rest of the plume is at a lower activity, it's even less of a problem. It's not a dilution argument. It's a small signal in a large background argument.

[John Cuthber]

 

 

You have made, also, several other bunkum reassurance claims in this thread (that potassium and cesium are not ecologically distinguished, say).

Stop strawmanning.

What I said was "Both will bioaccumulate to a similar extent ) because they have fairly similar chemistries."

and

"What we are talking about are two materials that are chemically fairly similar, tend to get mistaken for one another by biological systems and are both beta emitters."

And you were kind enough to provide a reference that says " Radiocaesium follows potassium and tends to accumulate in plant tissues, "

 

OK so your own reference says "Radiocaesium follows potassium".

So, while I'm saying they are quite similar, your reference shows that they are quite similar.

Saying that "potassium and cesium are not ecologically distinguished"

is your invention, not mine.

But don't get too tied up in that strawman to remember to look at answering this one.

This seems to be a pretty clear claim

" 2) Why are you assuming the concentration is even throughout the plume? "

prove it.

Show that I have made that assumption.

Edited March 23, 2015 by John Cuthber

[overtone]

It looks to me that he was comparing the peak of the plume from the reactor (i.e. the worst-case) with the natural background

Yes. And he was deriving his estimate of the "peak of the plume" over time and space by making assumptions about the evenness of the concentration in the plume in time and space. A fact which he refuses to acknowledge, and persists in trolling my posts over. Perhaps a moderator could step in?

 

 

 

 

What I said was "Both will bioaccumulate to a similar extent ) because they have fairly similar chemistries."

and

"What we are talking about are two materials that are chemically fairly similar, tend to get mistaken for one another by biological systems and are both beta emitters."

And you were kind enough to provide a reference that says " Radiocaesium follows potassium and tends to accumulate in plant tissues, "

 

My references, multiple, included specific examples of differences in bioaccumulation (and other matters) between cesium and potassium - in some fungi, and a couple of other organisms. They are not biochemically identical. Organisms do sometimes distinguish between them, as do sediments and other ecologically significant features present in the Pacific Ocean that may be exposed to Fukushima's emissions.

Accordingly, your presumption of identity in bioaccumulation was not safe even as an extrapolation from land ecosystem and land organism and land sediment research, without the obvious consideration that the oceanic organisms and ecosystems involved are so poorly known.

In addition, your calculations of bioaccumulation percentages involved assumptions about the evenness of exposure concentration in time and space.

Which brings us to this, again:

 

Show that I have made that assumption.

After four such showings, this has become trolling.

Edited March 26, 2015 by overtone

[swansont]

Yes. And he was deriving his estimate of the "peak of the plume" over time and space by making assumptions about the evenness of the concentration in the plume in time and space.

 

 

No, he was getting it from a map/graph that was referenced. Using the peak values in it. The map/graph you linked to has no scale to it, so it can't be used as a point of reference. Further, the article was published in 2011. You are arguing about data that are almost 4 years old.

[imatfaal]

!

Moderator Note

 

 

Perhaps a moderator could step in?

 

OK.

 

overtone - it is quite clear that you failed to properly read John Cuthber's posts - he made it evident he was working from a map on the BBC website. That map gives the variation of the concentration across the area of the plume. John then used the worse case scenario. This is not assuming that the concentration is the same across the plume - it is using a worst case scenario; it is completely valid. This is standard procedure if you are arguing against a factor having an influence - you do not take a best case, nor an average, you take a worst case. Please take a look at John's map - you will see that the highest concentration is at the 100 Beq per cubic metre mark; if there were higher concentrations the map would have red bits. You will also note that the actual sampling found concentrations an order of magnitude less. Please bear in mind this was a point made specifically and explicitly about the pacific spanning plume and not the efflux at source (the levels at Dai Ichi were around 3 orders higher) .

 

Please try to stick to the topic and avoid getting bogged down in meaningless and very tedious arguments that provide no edification and detract from case being made. As ever please do not respond to this moderation within this thread.

 

[overtone]

No, he was getting it from a map/graph that was referenced. Using the peak values in it

Using the peak values in his reference, which were all measured samples, -> plus an assumption of evenness in plume concentration <- -( such assumptions are necessary to "calculate the variance" withiin the plume, for starters, and doubly necessary to take any result of that calculation as a "worst case" scenario for an ecosystem's exposure to concentrations within a drifitng, moving plume) .

 

Then he used these number to compare the increase in exposure with the background level using volume averages . Hello?

 

This seems to be strangely difficult.

 

Look, try this: try to estimate the probability that a bed of filter feeding organisms the plume has drifted over in the past few months was exposed for ten hours to cesium concentrations in excess of 10,000 times the "worst case" you have accepted from the trolling Cuthber,

 

from any source (sediment drift, concentrated in their filtered food and debris, rained down in feces or debris from surface concentrations, hot pockets of effluent water still concentrated for some reason of salinity or temperature or topography or chance, etc).

 

What numbers do you need? Where are you going to find them, if you are forbidden to assume limits on the variance within the plume, including a lack of sedimentary or biological concentration of any kind?

Edited March 26, 2015 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

FFS!

Are we actually looking at the same posts?

Because, what I wrote was a comment on how a picture grossly exaggerated the appearance of what is a tiny increase in radioactivity, but you are seeing is something about probability density functions.

There just isn't a reasonable path from one of those to the other.

Nor is there any way that "Look, try this: try to estimate the probability that a bed of filter feeding organisms the plume has drifted over in the past few months was exposed for ten hours to cesium concentrations in excess of 10,000 times the "worst case" you have accepted from the trolling Cuthber, from any source (sediment drift, concentrated in their filtered food and debris, rained down in feces or debris from surface concentrations, hot pockets of effluent water still concentrated for some reason of salinity or temperature, etc). "

is anything but a strawman, because nobody suggested anything like that.

 

 

 

Though I will, in passing point out a couple of things.

Imagine that for some reason (and you pretty much have to invoke Maxwell's demon to do it) some small patch of ocean was so heavily contaminated that it fried all the life in it.

What would happen next is that diffusion would dilute down the local radiation, and life would drift back into that area. that's just the sort of thing life does- it exploits opportunities.

 

The other point is that any such "hot spot" would necessarily be small compared to the plume as a whole- because there's only so much caesium there to radiate. You can concentrate it into a small area- and then the area is small so the overall damage isn't great (unless you are really unlucky) or you can spread it out and then the concentration is small- so the overall damage isn't great.

Even if I had made the assumption that you claim I did (but were unable to show where I made it),it's not that bad an assumption, in terms of predicting overall damage.

The ecosystem is huge, so it doesn't matter much whether you damage a tiny part of it a lot or a huge part of it by a tiny amount. It's likely to survive.

[Ant Sinclair]

Iam no expert in this field but found this tonight and thought it may have some bearing on previously discussed matters or I may be wrong;

Indeed, nuclear expert Robert Alvarez – senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999 – wroteyesterday:

According to a previously secret 1955 memo from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission regarding concerns of the British government over contaminated tuna,

“dissipation of radioactive fall-out in ocean waters is not a gradual spreading out of the activity from the region with the highest concentration to uncontaminated regions

, but that in all probability the process results in scattered

pockets and streams of higher radioactive materials in the Pacific

. We can speculate that tuna which now show radioactivity from ingested materials [this is in 1955,

not today

] have been living, in or have passed through, such pockets; or have been feeding on plant and animal life which has been exposed in those areas.”

 

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/06/why-the-ocean-may-not-adequately-dilute-the-radiation-from-fukushima.html

[overtone]

Because, what I wrote was a comment on how a picture grossly exaggerated the appearance of what is a tiny increase in radioactivity, but you are seeing is something about probability density functions.

There just isn't a reasonable path from one of those to the other.

 

Ok, then everybody is in agreement: the dilution factors in these plumes cannot be used to dismiss concerns about ecosystem effects of the Fukushima emissions. Ecosystem exposures, as well as sensitivities, and consequent consequences in the Pacific Ocean, are as of now, to a significant degree, unknown.

Nobody has been trying to say otherwise. We have been told that, and we take it for granted from now on.

We hope for the best. We have reason to hope, even. But we don't know. We dump that much concentrated bad stuff into an ocean largely unstudied, lose track of most of it, and end up resting our reassurances on dilution factors wishfully estimated from a few thousand samples of what we can find and get at, we wont be surprised if things go wrong somewhere, somehow. If twenty years from now we turn up a disaster in some critical organism's critical larvae nursery, say, it's going to be sad and disappointing, but it's not going to be a shock from the blue. Right?

Edited March 27, 2015 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

 

Ok, then everybody is in agreement: the dilution factors in these plumes cannot be used to dismiss concerns about ecosystem effects of the Fukushima emissions.

Or maybe it can.

We don't know.

So, once again, in saying " we take it for granted from now on. " you are still straw manning.

Also, in doing that we would be ignoring the data I cited about the relative effects of different radiation types.

[swansont]

Using the peak values in his reference, which were all measured samples, -> plus an assumption of evenness in plume concentration <- -( such assumptions are necessary to "calculate the variance" withiin the plume, for starters, and doubly necessary to take any result of that calculation as a "worst case" scenario for an ecosystem's exposure to concentrations within a drifitng, moving plume) .

By inspection, one can see that the plume is not presented as even: the colors change. And you can't talk of a "variance within the plume" if evenness has been assumed. The very phrase contradicts it! Variance. It varies.

 

 

Then he used these number to compare the increase in exposure with the background level using volume averages . Hello?

 

This seems to be strangely difficult.

 

You have not presented ANY evidence that the ocean background level varies, which would invalidate the calculation. Otherwise, what is the problem? It's just a unit conversion.

 

You seem strangely befuddled by this.

[overtone]

 

 

Ok, then everybody is in agreement: the dilution factors in these plumes cannot be used to dismiss concerns about ecosystem effects of the Fukushima emissions.

Or maybe it can.

We don't know.

This is the problem, this simple refusal to follow a simple argument.

If you don't know, it can't. There's no "maybe" about it. There is demonstrated risk, not presumable safety, in ignorance. Possibilities exist until excluded, and it takes information to exclude them. That's the argument: you can't dismiss the matter of possible ecosystem damage from Fukushima's emissions, until you have the necessary information about the ecosystems involved and the exposure regime they faced.

 

By inspection, one can see that the plume is not presented as even: the colors change

You cannot calculate a "worst case" exposure or peak concentration in the plume without making assumptions about the distribution of the concentration - these are assumptions of evenness; smoothness, constrained variation, an absence of small hot pockets of any kind or layers likely to have been missed by the sampling protocols. You have to assume they don't exist, or your calculated "peak" concentration is meaningless for estimating exposure. You have to assume that they never existed, or your average calculations are meaningless for estimating exposure in a moving plume.

In the case of ecosystem damage, arguing safety like that is particularly wrongheaded because it amounts to assuming the consequent - assuming an absence of the bioaccumulation or sedimentary sequestration or other ecologically mediated concentrations in the environment that are directly at issue.

 

You have not presented ANY evidence that the ocean background level varies, which would invalidate the calculation. Otherwise, what is the problem?

? I made no claims of ignorance regarding potassium or other background concentrations in the Pacific Ocean.

I don't have clue what you guys's problem is with this very simple argument. This is the third or fourth time I have run into this same blind spot on this supposedly "scientific" forum, and it is baffling.

[John Cuthber]

This is the problem, this simple refusal to follow a simple argument.

If you don't know, it can't. There's no "maybe" about it.

You don't know if I can't drink a pint of beer ; therefore I can't.

That's not a "simple argument" its just obviously wrong.

 

Seriously, there may be evidence that you are not aware of that makes it clear that we can " dismiss concerns about ecosystem effects of the Fukushima emissions. "

Your lack of understanding r knowledge doesn't stop the rest of us.

So it's simply not tenable to assert that we can't reject that idea - just because you are ignorant.

And, of course, it's reasonable enough for me to say that maybe we can; we simply don't know.

 

Maybe we know something that makes it clear that, in some regard, you are talking bollocks.

For example, here's a list of the caesium compounds that are insoluble at the concentrations concerned (radio-caesium in seawater) and would therefore precipitate out and form part of the "sediment drift" that you imagine.

 

 

 

 

 

it's not a long list, is it?

 

re.

"I don't have clue what you guys's problem is with this very simple argument. This is the third or fourth time I have run into this same blind spot on this supposedly "scientific" forum, and it is baffling"

 

Have you considered this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Edited March 28, 2015 by John Cuthber

[Sensei]

 

The link above is to a video of Steven Starr(Director of The Clinical Laboratory Science Program Of The University Of Missouri).

In the video He puts into perspective Potassium40 and Cesium137.

"Comparing Potassium40 to Cesium137 is like comparing a stick of dynamite to an Atomic Bomb"

 

Decay energy released by K-40:

 

Isotope Potassium-40

Protons 19 Neutrons 21

Mass 39.964

Nucleus Energy 37216.5 [MeV]

Alpha decay prohibited (-6.43826 MeV)

Proton emission prohibited (-7.58196 MeV)

Neutron emission prohibited (-7.79913 MeV)

Potassium-40 -> Calcium-40 + e- + Ve + 1.31108 MeV

Potassium-40 -> Argon-40 + e+ + Ve + 0.482698 MeV

Potassium-40 + e- -> Argon-40 + Ve + 1.5047 MeV

(all products stable)

 

Decay energy released by Cs-137

 

Isotope Caesium-137

Protons 55 Neutrons 82

Mass 136.907

Nucleus Energy 127500 [MeV]

Alpha decay prohibited (-3.08395 MeV)

Proton emission prohibited (-7.40961 MeV)

Neutron emission prohibited (-8.27782 MeV)

Caesium-137 -> Barium-137 + e- + Ve + 1.17564 MeV

Beta decay+ prohibited (-5.1881 MeV)

Electron capture prohibited (-4.16611 MeV)

(Ba-137m isomer quick decay, then Ba-137 stable)

 

As you can see energy released by decay of K-40 releases slightly more energy than Cs-137.

Edited March 28, 2015 by Sensei

[Ant Sinclair]

 

Decay energy released by K-40:

 

Isotope Potassium-40

Protons 19 Neutrons 21

Mass 39.964

Nucleus Energy 37216.5 [MeV]

Alpha decay prohibited (-6.43826 MeV)

Proton emission prohibited (-7.58196 MeV)

Neutron emission prohibited (-7.79913 MeV)

Potassium-40 -> Calcium-40 + e- + Ve + 1.31108 MeV

Potassium-40 -> Argon-40 + e+ + Ve + 0.482698 MeV

Potassium-40 + e- -> Argon-40 + Ve + 1.5047 MeV

(all products stable)

 

Decay energy released by Cs-137

 

Isotope Caesium-137

Protons 55 Neutrons 82

Mass 136.907

Nucleus Energy 127500 [MeV]

Alpha decay prohibited (-3.08395 MeV)

Proton emission prohibited (-7.40961 MeV)

Neutron emission prohibited (-8.27782 MeV)

Caesium-137 -> Barium-137 + e- + Ve + 1.17564 MeV

Beta decay+ prohibited (-5.1881 MeV)

Electron capture prohibited (-4.16611 MeV)

(Ba-137m isomer quick decay, then Ba-137 stable)

 

As you can see energy released by decay of K-40 releases slightly more energy than Cs-137.

What is the source of Potassium40 in the Pacific and how long has it been there?

Edited March 28, 2015 by Ant Sinclair