TEPCO Rose

[PamW]

15. WRONG!!! WRONG!!! WRONG!!! Everything you said was 100% WRONG!!!

Octafish,

100% WRONG on all counts.

Your last paragraph is all wrong. When you calculate DOSE, you take into account any effects due to shielding. There are actually two "doses"; dose and dose effective. The dose is the amount of energy per unit mass actually deposited in tissue and is measured in "Grays" ( old unit was "rads" ). Because dose is the amount actually deposited, the calculation of dose has to account for any shielding. Then there is "dose effective". Dose effective is just like dose, with the exception that one takes into account the actual biological damage done; and that alpha particles cause more damage per unit energy deposited than gammas or electrons, i.e. beta particles. Dose effective is in units called "Sieverts" ( old unit was "rems" ). Because all the points you raise about shielding and the greater damage due to alpha radiation is taken into account when dose is calculated in Sieverts; there is nothing misleading at all in the University of Michigan table. Contrary to your ill-founded and ill-considered statements above; the issues you raise are actually taken into account when dose effective in Sieverts is calculated.

Evidently you are NOT familiar with the design of the General Electric Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) and its containment system. You are in ERROR in saying that the containment exploded. The building you see exploding is NOT the reactor containment building. The GE BWR Mark I containment has a "light-bulb" shaped building INSIDE the boxy building, and that light-bulb shaped building is the containment.

In the explosion, hydrogen was vented into the outer building, and mixed with air in this outer building. That's where the explosion took place; inside the boxy outer building. but OUTSIDE of the containment. The containment building was not blown up in the explosion. Additionally, any plutonium would be inside the reactor pressure vessel which is inside the containment. Therefore, there were TWO VERY STRONG boundaries between the plutonium in the core and that explosion.

The figures cited by the University of California - Berkeley are correct. The scientific consensus of the Universities and National Labs that were tasked to evaluate the consequences agree that 2 grams is the proper figure for the amount of plutonium released.

Your first point is also 100% in ERROR Almost ALL of the plutonium in the environment is due to atmospheric nuclear tests carried on during the years 1945 to 1962. In 1962, the nations of the world signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty which OUTLAWED atmospheric nuclear tests. The tests that you've heard about during the last 50 years are carried out underground. In those tests, the bomb melts the rock surrounding the explosion, and the plutonium and radioactive fission products are entrained or dissolved in the molten rock. The molten rock then cools, and traps the plutonium and radioactive fission products inside the solid rock.

PamW