FYI: How Does Nuclear Radiation Do Its Damage?

Remind me to continue building my fallout shelter.

I live 250 miles away from the reactors in japan. No one seems to care. My girlfriend went to college in Hiroshima and she knows people today that have to get regular tested for the averse effects from the bomb. Children from survivors. People were scared for years to have kids after surviving the bomb. I don't want to go the rest of my life worrying about the after effects of being exposed. caner is already my biggest fear and is already the number 1 killer in japan!!!!! the usa says 20 km is not enough. us military personal is not allowed within 50 miles of the reactor. the thing is this stuff gets in ground, in the grass and water that animals eat and drink then we eat them. i dont want to leave. where would i go? for how long. my future in laws live here. this is my home for years now and years to to come. its snowing now....

Thank you Molika Ashford and PopSci for a helpful explanation.

@inaka_rob, if you read the article you would know that radiation levels just a few miles from the reactors are miniscule. Even for the overly cautious, 250 miles is well outside the danger zone. FYI, the leading cause of death in Japan is cerebrovascular disease (strokes) and heart disease, not cancer.

Hopefully the emergency crews will get the reactors cooled soon.

@laurenra7, in the article it says radiation ray dissipates like light. It seems radioactive particle in the air is another story. I wish the article can clarify more.

I live in Shanghai, China. Here they worry about the radioactive particle and overreact to current situation, which i think is not necessary.

Could the gas air bomb be altered to drop concrete over the open reactor, and cover it back up again? It’s the biggest shell in the arsenal, and could hold a lot of cement in one drop. With GPS accuracy dropped from a safe height. It should be a safer approach than a helicopter.

Anyone else realize how messed up this picture is? The woman/man doing the scans are fully covered as they should be, but her arm is showing for about 2 inches to me that would seem like it can be exposed to radiation so why have the suit in the first place.

Here are some ideas... (and yes they will probably lead to far greater problems - but what the hey, they are crazy ideas)

Start constructing a 40ft coffer dam around the perimeter of the plant. This way, if by the time they complete the work and if they are still battling the blazes, they can then flood the entire site with sea water and turn it into a giant swimming pool.

An other idea is to detonate a nuke ~1 mile below the plant... then when the ground below depresses due to the newly created airspace the ocean rushes in to fill the void where the nuke plant used to be.

@Splus03 The suit is really only for protection against radioactive /particles/. That suit doesn't have any of the proper linings to be effective against radiation. Unless the scanner is rubbing that exposed skin against the child, nothing's wrong with that picture.

@igotforya

great idea for the "big swimming pool" terrible for the nuke, figure the time to dig a "1 mile" deep tunnel for the bomb, then plus the fact that nukes don't vaporize material. just super heat, may melt the bedrock and surrounding material and lift up the groudn and have it settle back down but thats it. Also ading more nuclear contamination probably isn't a good idea.

Radiation dissipates exponentially in area and in time - making it dangerous for a short time in a small area, but lingers for a very long time in a large area at miniscule levels.

Radiation, however, comes from particles, so if the particles are spread, the source spreads. This is why fall-out is so dangerous. It is also why keeping the plants cool enough to prevent a meltdown is critical.

The odds of the plant reigniting into a mushroom cloud are virtually non existant at this point. The real risk is a conventinal exsplosion spreading about radioactive particles. (In other words, the plant is more at risk for being a "dirty bomb" than a nuclear bomb).

@laurenra7 I am sorry. you are DEAD wrong. no pun intended. Cancer is the number 1 cause of death in Japan. not strokes. please show me your information. I live in Japan, I got mine from the Ministry of Health in Japan. even if you go to the WHO website it lists strokes as the # 1 cause of death at 14%. but then it lists stomach, lung, pancreas, liver cancer, etc, etc, as separate conditions. so cancer comes in around 20+%. I get the need for people to try to find any information that is wrong and point that out for the world, but try to be correct next time.

as for radiation levels. that isnt or wast the point AT ALL. becuase the true news was not and still has not come out. we dont know acutal levels. I understand what we are told the levels are low and the possibility of it reaching 250 miles away is very small. but the radiation from Chernobyl was detected in level high enough to cause effect 1000 miles away. The Russians lied about that accident. why where to believe the Japanese government any more.

The nr 1 cause of dead in Japan is age.
The danger is not radiation, but radioaktivity. Radioaktiv material will decay, in the decay proces there will be radioaktiv radiation, alpha, beta and gamma. Alpha radiation is partikel radiation, helium nucleis. Beta radiation is an elektron or an positron. Gamma radiation is like X-ray with a shorter wawelength. The danger is comsuming radioaktive dust, example, Iodine 131, it will be taken up in the thyroid. Iodine 131 is an unstable nucleus, in the decay process it will stabilise by spreading alpha radiation and the half life is 8,2 days (after 8,2 days half of the iodine 131 has stabilise). If the iodine 131 is taken up by the thyroid the decay proces will be in the thyroid, and maybe cause injury.

Sten Christensen

Of course the demand for power for the cell phone, wireless home network and microwave in my home are just background radiation.
I grew up during the MAD era and my junior and senior high school papers were on the effects of short and long term survival after nuclear conflict.
I support nuclear power but am fully aware of the hype the news media has made and the downplay the goverments will strive for.
We have no Idea of the effects of any of the things we are pouring into ourselves and the earth. Nearby the chemical industry has the same chemical as bhopol,india. The effects are still coming to light.
But I still love my microwave.

Radioactive water found leaking into sea from pat at Japan nuclear plant. This can be devastating to say the least to all humankind! The effects of radiation sickness and poisoning include cancer, genetic and reproductive damage, hormonal damage, and thyroid blockage (that's why they want you to take potassium iodine, another dangerous toxin) but I wouldn't. There are much safer substances like Zeolites.

A couple good articles on radiation sickness protection that shows what you need do to test radiation levels, treat water, and what to take internally to not get sick:

Radiation Sickness

http://thehealingfrequency.com/japan-reactor-fukushima-nuclear-radiation-protection/

Water Purification

http://thehealingfrequency.com/nuclear-radiation-and-water-purification-tablet-adya-clarity-minerals/

This is a very serious problem, one being down played by the US and Japanese government.
These Fukashima reactors have melted down. They are releasing more radiation then Chernobyl ever did.
This is per Arnie Gundersen at www.fairewinds.com. Over 2000 open air nuclear bombs were detonated. Bigboy used 22 lbs of U235 material. Fukashima has over 428000 bombs worth of material. If only 10% of this is released into the environment, that's 215 times more then this estimated amount of fall out radiation of those bombs. Ya my numbers probably can be scrubbed by a nuk expert. But this is a major catastrophe. And quoting Arnie, this is Chernobyl on steroids.
ignator

On top of the devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami we now have at least 3 reactors in various states of breach and an open, uncooled 'cooling pond' containing hundreds of tons of fuel rods.

Here are two sites (from Europe) that accurately track the plume of cesium (C-137) and iodine (I-131) that are continuing to spew from the open reactors/pools.

Here is the projection from the French (you can translate using Google Chrome):
www.irsn.fr

Here are the maps from the Austrians (you can translate using Google Chrome):
www.zamg.ac.at

There are maps along the left hand side by date.)

Some key facts are that I-131 is readily absorbed by your thyroid and C-137 is absorbed into your bones (as calcium)where they continue to radiate into your body.

The other important point is that while it is now dispersing through the atmosphere, it will accumulate in the water/soil and then again in the plants and then in the animals that eat the plants finally ending in a concentrated form in the meat and milk.

The effect known as the Petkau effect indicates that worse damage is done through low level radiation that accumulates over time. Most commonly used to illustrate this point is glass, which can withstand one or two 'shocks' better than it can withstand constant frequencies that cause it to vibrate within.
One effect is external, the other arises when the radiactivity is expressed from within tissues where radioactive particles took up residency.
Worrisome are the comparisons between Chernobyl and Fukishima. The amount of nuclear fuel on site. As a practicing toxicologist, I am most concerned by the complete lack of attention, the lack of mention, the lack of consideration, let alone the lack of monitoring - fluoride release and exposure. The potential for damage done by this electron-scavenger are immeasurable - from shutting down mitochondrial function to forming insoluble bonds with calcium and/or fluorine's ability to replace hydrogen wherever it is found, none of these destructive vectors, nor fluoride's cancer-causing mechanism, are being considered. Which is another tragic mistake in a long train of events leading to continued disaster.
I ask you to join me in appreciation for the 300 workers at Fukishima, who soberly aware of the consequences, continued to work on endeavoring to save their fellows, at their own ultimate expense. They honor mankind with their spirits, may we honor them.

what is this i'm hearing about life being able to be sustained from direct gama radiation?
www.globalnuclearcontaminationwatch.com/news.html