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

[Sensei]

 

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

 

Potassium-40 is everywhere, including you, not just in Pacific ocean.

0.012% of any Potassium is radioactive.

 

You can build Cloud Chamber and put inside K₂O, KNO₃, K₂CO_{3 ,} KHCO₃ or similar compound, and see their traces.

 

KNO₃ is used as synthetic fertilizer. Ground water washes it out from fields to rivers then to sea.

Edited March 28, 2015 by Sensei

[swansont]

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.

 

 

IOW, you are saying not to believe the data. They are wrong. Massively wrong, by orders magnitude. Assumptions are better than data.

 

 

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.

 

Exactly how much "sedimentary sequestration" does one expect in the middle of 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.

Because the argument is wrong. That's not a blind spot, it's the rejection of a bad argument.

[Ant Sinclair]

 

Potassium-40 is everywhere, including you, not just in Pacific ocean.

0.012% of any Potassium is radioactive.

 

You can build Cloud Chamber and put inside K₂O, KNO₃, K₂CO_{3 ,} KHCO₃ or similar compound.

 

KNO₃ is used as synthetic fertilizer. Ground water washes it out from fields to rivers then to sea.

I was reading a fact sheet from the Argonne National Laboratory that like for like concentrations of Potassium40 and Cesium137, 50% more people will succumb to mortality per 100 000 from Cesium137 than Potassium40, why is this?, is there a difference in how the two isotopes decay?

[John Cuthber]

 

I was reading a fact sheet from the Argonne National Laboratory that like for like concentrations of Potassium40 and Cesium137, 50% more people will succumb to mortality per 100 000 from Cesium137 than Potassium40, why is this?, is there a difference in how the two isotopes decay?

 

Interesting question; can you provide a link to that sheet please?

[Ant Sinclair]

Below is the link to the pdf factsheet, it lists most radioactive isotopes and their properties.

 

http://www.remm.nlm.gov/ANL_ContaminantFactSheets_All_070418.pdf

It states 4 in 100 000 for Potassium40 and 6 in 100 000 for Cesium137.

[swansont]

I was reading a fact sheet from the Argonne National Laboratory that like for like concentrations of Potassium40 and Cesium137, 50% more people will succumb to mortality per 100 000 from Cesium137 than Potassium40, why is this?, is there a difference in how the two isotopes decay?

 

The half life of Cs-137 is 30 years. K-40 is 1.25 billion years. For like concentrations, the activity of Cs-137 is 41 million times higher. Further, about 10% of decays in K-40 are electron capture, which are less damaging because they don't release a charged particle.

 

The biological half life of Cs-137 is about 70 days

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137#Health_risk_of_radioactive_caesium

 

For K-40 it's shorter — about half of that, perhaps less

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1181976

https://books.google.com/books?id=R5ATOuAFRlYC&pg=RA1-PT108&lpg=RA1-PT108&dq="biological+half+life"+of+potassium+40&source=bl&ots=knxw73c3mG&sig=W5N5-P_28izoD_1egQazhjsA3Xo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xKgWVZuzIcLksATlgoH4Dg&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q="biological%20half%20life"%20of%20potassium%2040&f=false

 

 

edit: However, upon reading that fact sheet, the conditions are not equal concentration, but equal initial activity, which is a very different initial condition. The result then is more easily understood: the Cs-137 has a longer biological half-life, but the activity drops faster. The longer biological half-life should naively result in twice the cancer rate, but the activity reduction tempers this.

[Ant Sinclair]

Thanks for Your reply swansont and the explanation of K40 & Cs137. Then as regards post No.68 on this thread We know approximately the Pacific oceans' current pathways and could plot where these "hot" streams "could" be, and the areas they are most likely to affect, is there any other research that has been carried out as to what was quoted in post No.68?

[overtone]

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

Sure. So post some. So far, you have posted nothing but errors in reasoning, and assumptions you cannot legitimately make in this context.

Like this:

 

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.

Precipitate? Inorganic precipitate? We are talking about ecological systems, which (as linked above) have been shown to - in some presumably rare terrestrial ecological circumstances - concentrate cesium in pockets in the dirt (dead fungi, certain minerals in their vicinity, etc) when exposed to transient cesium. The possibility therefore exists, in abstract, in the ocean (it exists without the terrestrial demonstration, of course, but I don't expect that to be recognized here). We look for studies of the relevant ocean ecosystems, to get an idea of how likely this is to have happened - and immediately we face the vast realm of ignorance dominating our evaluation of the sediments of the Pacific Ocean. To a significant extent, over large areas of that ocean involved, we do not know what the exposure regime has been as a consequence of the Fukushima plumes and emissions, and we do not know how these complex ecological systems handled it or might have handled it, because we do not know enough about them.

Assumptions made in such ignorance are not safe.

 

IOW, you are saying not to believe the data.

I am saying your derivation of reassurance from the data is invalid. The data is fine, your reasoning is not.

 

Exactly how much "sedimentary sequestration" does one expect in the middle of the Pacific ocean?

Excellent question.

 

By "middle of the Pacific Ocean" you are - here - referring to the area exposed to Fukushima effluent in all its varied concentrations and transient compositions, and every sedimentary ecosystem involved. So the question is not rhetorical - we would be much safer in our reassurances if we had a solid answer for it.

 

Here's a blog synopsis with an acceptable tone of voice, for example - http://www.cfact.org/2014/01/07/true-facts-about-ocean-radiation-and-the-fukushima-disaster/

 

and a quote from it:

 

CAN I EAT FISH FROM THE PACIFIC?

For the most part the answer is YES. Some fisheries in Japan are still closed because of radioactive contamination. Bottom fish are especially prone to contamination because the fallout collects on the seafloor where they live. - - -

There we see actual reassurance, based on information. But it is not particularly reassuring about ecosystem effects - right? Edited April 1, 2015 by overtone

[swansont]

 

Excellent question.

 

By "middle of the Pacific Ocean" you are - here - referring to the area exposed to Fukushima effluent in all its varied concentrations and transient compositions, and every sedimentary ecosystem involved. So the question is not rhetorical - we would be much safer in our reassurances if we had a solid answer for it.

 

Here's a blog synopsis with an acceptable tone of voice, for example - http://www.cfact.org/2014/01/07/true-facts-about-ocean-radiation-and-the-fukushima-disaster/

 

and a quote from it:

 

 

Are these fisheries coastal, or are they catching bottom feeders 7km deep (i.e. in the middle of the Pacific)?

http://education.oceanobservatories.org/system/files/48/image_resource/Profundidad-del-Océano_0.jpg

 

 

Here's a blog synopsis with an acceptable tone of voice, for example - http://www.cfact.org/2014/01/07/true-facts-about-ocean-radiation-and-the-fukushima-disaster/

 

and a quote from it:

 

There we see actual reassurance, based on information. But it is not particularly reassuring about ecosystem effects - right?

 

 

So why is it that this blog has an acceptable tone of voice, and when it says things like

 

"the West Coast and the Aleutians will see radiation levels anywhere from 1-20 Bq/m3,while Hawaiian Islands could see up to 30 Bq/m3 [beherns et al. 2012, Nakano et al. 2012, Rossi et al. 2013 ]."

 

"Even within 300 km of Fukushima, the additional radiation that was introduced by the Cesium-137 fallout is still well below the background radiation levels from naturally occurring radioisotopes."

 

you seem OK with it, but when John Cuthber says that the plume is about 100 Bq/m3 as a worst case (at least 3x higher than these "acceptable" values), and that this is much smaller than background levels, you vehemently disagree. There's no consistency to your position.

I am saying your derivation of reassurance from the data is invalid. The data is fine, your reasoning is not.

 

What is the flaw in reasoning in pointing out that one number is much larger than another number?

[John Cuthber]

Overtone,

Please note that, as soon as those organisms die they Cs will start to redistribute back into the ocean. Any effect you are looking at is short term.

So, my posting that the Cs ends up in solution because there are no insoluble compounds is actually reasonable.

Your labelling it as " nothing but errors in reasoning" says more about your understanding than about mine.

[overtone]

So why is it that this blog has an acceptable tone of voice, - - -

you seem OK with it, but when John Cuthber says that the plume is about 100 Bq/m3 as a worst case (at least 3x higher than these "acceptable" values), and that this is much smaller than background levels, you vehemently disagree. There's no consistency to your position.

So you find the tone of voice acceptable, right? So my prediction of its acceptability, here, was accurate.

So it's reasonable of me to expect you will pay some small amount of attention to the evidence and argument thereby supported, as in the quoted post #83 among all the others, and respond accordingly.

Instead:

 

Are these fisheries coastal, or are they catching bottom feeders 7km deep (i.e. in the middle of the Pacific)?

- - - - - - -

Please note that, as soon as those organisms die they Cs will start to redistribute back into the ocean. Any effect you are looking at is short term.

Am I actually supposed to take this seriously, or are you guys just all together playing stupid to see how far you can push me?

Edited April 6, 2015 by overtone

[swansont]

So you find the tone of voice acceptable, right? So my prediction of its acceptability, here, was accurate.

YOU called it acceptable. I was questioning that, considering they make basically the same arguments as have been posted here.

 

 

So it's reasonable of me to expect you will pay some small amount of attention to the evidence and argument thereby supported, as in the quoted post #83 among all the others, and respond accordingly.

First of all, post #83 in my timeline isn't by you (I see dead posts), but if it's the post that I think it is, there really isn't any evidence in it to discuss. All I see are unsupported assertions. Do you want to talk about that?

 

You speak of "errors in reasoning, and assumptions you cannot legitimately make in this context" but explain nothing about why they are errors or bad assumptions, or any substantiation of what the correct information would be.

 

You say the data are fine — does that mean you acknowledge that the released activity is much, much smaller than the background radiation level throughout the vast majority of the affected ocean? That's what the data show. What you need to do is explain why this poses such a danger. You can't just assert it and leave it at that.

 

Am I actually supposed to take this seriously, or are you guys just all together playing stupid to see how far you can push me?

You talk of issues with bottom feeders in a plume that stretches from Japan to the US, but the vast majority of that is deep ocean. In that post, you conformed you were talking about all sediment, i.e. the entire stretch of ocean, not the coasts. Unless there are bottom feeders we are catching in the deep ocean, the majority of the contamination isn't a problem. But instead of answering, or making an actual argument, you insult people.

 

 

Don't blame others because you weren't clear in making a point.

[overtone]

 

 

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.

So you know stuff that allows you to dismiss ecological concerns about Fukushima emission,

and you are keeping it all a secret?

Or you are presuming other people do, and we just can't find any of that stuff for some reason? I can provide some reasons for why the requisite information and expertise is invisible, if you like.

 

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

It's not reasonable for you to dismiss concerns about the ecological effects of the Fukushima emissions because you don't know whether or not somebody, somewhere, knows enough to do so.

The claim that somebody, somewhere, might have been

1) researching the ecosystems of the Pacific Ocean in the necessary detail (a huge project, on the wish list for the distant future of marine biology), and

2) tracking the exposure regimes or these emissions in the necessary detail (which would bring up the question of how they lost track of so much of it) ,

to dismiss ecological concerns in general, is an extraordinary claim. There are people who claim the US and Russia have collaborated on a dark side moon base for diplomatic dealings with the aliens we encountered there - that is more plausible.

Our ignorance of the ecosystems of the northern Pacific Ocean is profound. We have lost track of much of the ocean-deposited emissions from Fukushima. Surely everyone knows these two obvious facts?

 

Exactly how much "sedimentary sequestration" does one expect in the middle of the Pacific ocean?

Depends. That's a large and very complex ecological area, largely unresearched, ecologically coupled to the very highest concentrations emitted by the plant. I don't think anyone knows, and I'm absolutely sure you don't.

Oh, sorry: did you mean that as a rhetorical question?

 

IOW, you are saying not to believe the data.

And absolutely nothing I can post will ever disabuse you of that terminally stupid, discussion ending presumption. You simply can't, for some reason, follow this argument.

[swansont]

And absolutely nothing I can post will ever disabuse you of that terminally stupid, discussion ending presumption. You simply can't, for some reason, follow this argument.

 

On the contrary, you could post evidence. But you haven't done so. All you've done is make assertions based on … nothing. There's nothing to "follow".

[overtone]

On the contrary, you could post evidence.

Evidence that you can't follow this argument? There it is. In yet another thread.

 

Evidence of what? What do you think you are talking about?

Edited April 11, 2015 by overtone

[swansont]

Evidence that you can't follow this argument? There it is. In yet another thread.

 

Evidence of what? What do you think you are talking about?

 

I think I'm talking about your nonsensical arguments. What are you talking about?

[John Cuthber]

Evidence that you can't follow this argument? There it is. In yet another thread.

 

Evidence of what? What do you think you are talking about?

No, The point he made was that you have not provided any evidence to back up your position that there is a significant risk of harm from the radioactive material released by the Fukushima accident.

What you did instead of that was to ascribe beliefs to me that I never had and post a whole bunch of strawmen.

1) Why are you assuming the extra radiation is in the form of potassium isotopes? Or are we just supposed to assume it doesn't matter what the carrier element and isotope is - even with the prospect of oceanic bioaccumulation? 2) Why are you assuming the concentration is even throughout the plume? 3) Here is a link from earlier in the thread: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es202816c Note the varying concentrations in the plume, the assertions of the text that for a time levels of radioactive isotopes of Cesium were 10,000 times higher than background in some ocean areas, and so forth.

 

Those are on land, not in the water. And even on land the human residents suffer ill effects. The effects on ecosystems are not known, although studies around Chernobyl have established no limit below which radioactivity in the isotopes and kinds released by Chernobyl is harmless to plants and animals.

 

You have not yet explained why you did that.

Did you think it somehow helped advance your cause?

Edited April 11, 2015 by John Cuthber

[overtone]

 

 

No, The point he made was that you have not provided any evidence to back up your position that there is a significant risk of harm from the radioactive material released by the Fukushima accident.

And that point is nonsense, a complete missing of the entire argument. There is no valid source for such "evidence". Null set. That's my point.

 

Either that, or all the tangential evidence I presented for context - say, the links to examples of biological concentration of cesium, the observation of the poor state of knowledge of Pacific Ocean ecosystems, the observation that exposure regime along the plume is a key and unknown factor, the loss of tracking contact with much of the Fukushima effluent, the well established dishonesty of the official sources of even the rudimentary information we can obtain, and so forth -

 

which is not only substantial, btw, but the only evidence presented by anyone here relevant to my argument, as you have provided nothing relevant to it but innuendo based on ignorant presumptions of ecological reality in said Ocean,

 

is for some reason not registering as "evidence". The simplest explanation for that is that you have not bothered to follow the argument. You don't know why I posted the links, made the observations, etc. When you don't know what the argument is, you can't recognize evidence. That's my current take, the most benign of the possible situations obtaining.

[swansont]

And that point is nonsense, a complete missing of the entire argument. There is no valid source for such "evidence". Null set. That's my point.

 

So you have no evidence of high levels of radiation or damage, and on that basis, we are supposed to conclude that there are high radiation levels and damage?

When you don't know what the argument is, you can't recognize evidence.

Evidence that you haven't presented, and doesn't exist.

[overtone]

 

 

So you have no evidence of high levels of radiation or damage, and on that basis, we are supposed to conclude that there are high radiation levels and damage?

No.

 

For the fifth or sixth time: No. None of that. That is all garbage, invented by you. Nothing of the kind appears in my posting here.

[John Cuthber]

And that point is nonsense, a complete missing of the entire argument. There is no valid source for such "evidence". Null set. That's my point.

OK, so no evidence that it's doing any harm.

Some (albeit inconclusive) evidence that it's unlikely to do much harm simply because it's so much less than the background.

And you use that as the basis for

 

An awful lot of straw manning.

 

I'm labelling it as a set of straw men because;

I never assumed it was all in the form of potassium isotopes

I never assumed it doesn't matter what the carrier element and isotope is

I never assumed the concentration is even throughout the plume

nobody even got close to saying that the levels of radiation in those places was anything but unhealthy.

Nobody said there was a dose that was harmless.

And yet you implied that I had done all of those things.

 

Would you like to show why you think I did?

And a whole lot of ad hom attacks etc

 

 

"The assumption is that such similarity implies a relevant identity"

No it does not.

"One can then make risk assessments, estimations of the safety of that assumption, at variance with those who dismiss risk from positions of obvious ignorance,"

Ad hom

"without being harassed "

Unsupported slanderous allegation.

"by the careless or illiterate "

Another ad hom

"Which means "Yes", not "No", if you quote the complete post and context."

Ok, lets have a look at that context.

Someone asked (explicitly) about the effect of Cs dispersal on dry land.

I gave an estimate of the dose that someone might get there in Sv.

Someone cited some places, also on land where the background levels were high and they cited doses in Sv.

And your context was "(are millisieverts, which are cslibrated for particular biological setups, good units to use in measuring oceanic ecosystem rediation exposure, for example)"

which is plainly , at best, irrelevant

 

"As you can read in, for example, post 21, people are posting dismissals of risk in this thread,"

As pointed out; no they are not.

 

"based on calculations in milliseiverts."

Nope, the only calculation I did in mSv (rather roughly- but I did point that out) was for a scenario that was explicitly stated to be on land- Central park to be exact.

 

"Your claim that "nobody did that" is in error,"

Prove it.

Show where someone did.

 

" That is a hint, or clue, to the sheer size of the information void and arena of ignorance involved. "

Another ad hom.

 

Incidentally, you seem to be upset that I'm treating all beta and gamma emitters the same.

Are you aware that I'm in good company?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert#Radiation_type_weighting_factor_WR

And you seem to ignore the fact that lots of claims made are actually based on evidence.

For example you say that you can't assume that Cs and K act similarly just because they are in the same group of the periodic table.

Well, you can, because that's why they are in the same group.

 

You say we can't tear beta emitters as being similar- well the people who have looked into it say that the evidence shows that you can.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert#Radiation_type_weighting_factor_WR

 

You are saying there's no evidence to support the idea that small increases in dose will only produce small increases in harm.

Yet we know that people actually live in areas where the background level is huge.

 

And you belittle the suffering of those harmed by the root cause- the tsunami- while banging on about a purely hypothetical risk that flies in the face of the evidence.

Edited April 13, 2015 by John Cuthber

[overtone]

And you seem to ignore the fact that lots of claims made are actually based on evidence.

For example you say that you can't assume that Cs and K act similarly just because they are in the same group of the periodic table.

And I am supposed to take you guys seriously when you talk about the ecological possibilities of the Fukushima plume, when you are so fundamentally ignorant about even basic biology, and so ludicrously arrogant in your repeated assertions based on that fundamental ignorance.

Look: the very common, universally observed, often dramatically amplified differential treatment of different chemical elements within given groups in the periodic table by complex biological systems is one of those things I ought to be able to assume everyone here knows. Potassium is not handled the same as sodium, for example, which is also in that group and in fact is quite a bit closer in mass and size than cesium (often a key factor in biochemical systems - they are touchy). Barium plays different roles than calcium.

But even more directly: Did I not link, for you, examples of differential biological concentration of cesium as opposed to potassium in relevant organisms? (yes, I did, above) Y'know, evidence posted by me, of something one should expect everyone with a basic, high school education in the physical sciences to accept the possibility of, automatically. Why did I post that evidence? Because you guys were making troll demands for it, claiming that without such evidence there was no reason for concern about the exposure regime from the Fukushima emissions. I actually went along with that nonsense, and you showed me why my initial take - that it was bullshit in the first place - was correct.

 

You say we can't tear beta emitters as being similar

- - -

You are saying there's no evidence to support the idea that small increases in dose will only produce small increases in harm.

If you can't deal with my actual posting, silence is a better option than that.

 

Yet we know that people actually live in areas where the background level is huge.

Irrelevant two ways: 1) we aren't talking about direct harms to people in this thread, and 2) the fact that people can live amid high background radiation means little. People live in malaria zones, iodine deficient landscapes, bad water aquifers, lead poisoned air, all kinds of places.

 

And you belittle the suffering of those harmed by the root cause- the tsunami-

By now, nothing about that post surprises me.

The main lesson of the plume pictures for this thread was that the initial emission zone is in ecological contact with the entire northern Pacific. The water, with everything living in it and so forth, connects the entire region.

Edited April 15, 2015 by overtone

[pavelcherepan]

 

 

And I am supposed to take you guys seriously when you talk about the ecological possibilities of the Fukushima plume, when you are so fundamentally ignorant about even basic biology, and so ludicrously arrogant in your repeated assertions based on that fundamental ignorance.

 

Of course, everyone in this thread is ignorant and it's just you who is a shining beacon of truth and righteousness.

 

 

 

But even more directly: Did I not link, for you, examples of differential biological concentration of cesium as opposed to potassium in relevant organisms? (yes, I did, above) Y'know, evidence posted by me, of something one should expect everyone with a basic, high school education in the physical sciences to accept the possibility of, automatically.

 

One of the studies you linked was centered on caesium accumulation by benthic plants and macro-invertebrates which is not exactly relevant to the discussion of a plume in pelagic zone and the second article was regarding accumulation of Cs from Chernobyl fallout by a land fungi. By the way, this is the quote from the abstract of the second paper:

 

 

 

it is well known that fungal sporocarps efficiently accumulate radiocaesium ((137)Cs), as well as the alkali metals potassium (K), rubidium (Rb) and caesium (Cs).

 

And yet you keep claiming that K and Cs behave wildly differently in organisms. Your own resources contradict that notion. And again:

 

 

 

The levels of K, Rb, and Cs found in sporocarps were at least one order of magnitude higher than those in fungal mycelium.

 

So all three of those seem to have been biomagnified in a similar manner.

 

Here is another quote for you from <How Is Fukushima Fallout affecting Marine Life>

 

 

The chemical properties of radioactive cesium are similar to those of non-radioactive cesium and naturally occurring potassium and sodium, which are abundant in seawater. So all these end up in the same tissues, particularly muscle, of fish and other marine organisms. But potassium and sodium are much less abundant in fresh water, so cesium uptake is much higher in freshwater organisms than in sea life.

Fish also excrete cesium fairly efficiently, losing a few percent per day. So if fish are no longer exposed to new contamination sources, the levels in their tissue should decrease fairly quickly.

Of particular concern for top-level consumers is the potential that these radioisotopes will be concentrated as they make their way up the food chain—what ecologists call biomagnification. Fortunately, cesium shows only modest biomagnification in marine food chains

 

Throughout this thread you keep proclaiming ignorance on the side of those who oppose your idea and yet you keep ignoring all the information and links to various studies that you are being presented.

[StringJunky]

 

Of course, everyone in this thread is ignorant and it's just you who is a shining beacon of truth and righteousness.

 

<.................>

 

Throughout this thread you keep proclaiming ignorance on the side of those who oppose your idea and yet you keep ignoring all the information and links to various studies that you are being presented.

O Galileo, Galileo! Wherefore art thou Galileo? :

[pavelcherepan]

O Galileo, Galileo! Wherefore art thou Galileo? :

 

StringJunky, would you care to explain what that one means? Sorry, if that's a stupid question.