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Re: [Phys-l] radioactivity in the news -- actual measurements



I just 'learned' on NPR this afternoon the Plutonium is a fission product - from the splitting of Uranium in the reactor. (ouch!!!)


At 10:26 AM -0700 3/28/11, John Denker wrote:
On 03/28/2011 09:06 AM, Kyle Forinash wrote:
does anyone have a link or information
about the actual radiation counts in Japan? The New York times mentioned
a 1000 milli Sievert measurement of leaking water yesterday but I
haven't seen many actual numbers. They have said things like 1/88 th of
a chest x-ray etc. but actual measurements? How "hot" is the food that
is being taken off the market?

That's a good question. Getting reliable (let alone timely)
information about such things is quite a challenge.

The US media mostly just quote other media. It's pathetic.

One possibility is to look for official government data:
http://www.google.com/search?q=spinach+site:go.jp
http://www.google.com/search?q=bq/kg+site:go.jp

that leads to things like
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/topics/2011eq/level_m23.html

where one finds an actual data table, with numbers and with SI units.

Note that the sievert is a unit of dose, when someone is exposed to
radiation. In contrast, if you want to quantify the amount of radiation
*in* something (such as food), the becquerel is a more appropriate unit.
Therefore it is advantageous to search for terms like becquerel and bq/kg.

One can also look at the press releases from the Nuclear and Industrial
Safety Agency
http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/
although not everything you find there is reliable; I suspect they
sometimes just repeat what they've been told by TEPCO, and TEPCO has
a long track record of putting out bogus information.

============

If you want better media reports, read the Japanese media. Many of
them publish English translations.
http://www.google.com/search?q=spinach+becquerel&tbs=nws,nws:1

The coverage at asahi.com, nikkei.com, or nhk.or.jp is likely to be
(in relative terms) more complete, more reliable, and more timely than
anything you find in the US media.
(In absolute terms, I don't believe everything I read, and I certainly
don't believe much of what I read in the media. In my experience,
whenever I have reliable and/or first-hand information about something,
the published stories bear little or no relationship to the facts.)
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