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Registered Member #2529
Joined: Thu Dec 10 2009, 02:43AM
Location:
Posts: 600
Bored Chemist wrote ...
I'm betting that 222Rn is part of the story, and it's an alpha emitter. 133 Xe is a beta source 131I (beta and gamma) isn't a noble gas, so they shouldn't be counting that. However as you say, the data isn't well documented on that page. 85Kr is indeed a beta & gamma source. If the range is 100 m rather than 1 km that means that the rays from 1000 times more particles can reach you since the number scales as the volume. I will need to sit + think about how that affects the actual dose received because most of the more distant ones would "miss" you anyway. Then there's the fact that many or most people are usually inside buildings which may offer significant screening.
How about tritium? It's not a noble gas, and if you inhaled that, in the oxidised form, T2O, if any of that condensed inside you, it might not be very good at all, and it's produced in the reactors, it's a beta emitter with an awkwardly low half life.
Registered Member #33
Joined: Sat Feb 04 2006, 01:31PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 971
BigBad wrote ...
Bored Chemist wrote ...
I'm betting that 222Rn is part of the story, and it's an alpha emitter. 133 Xe is a beta source 131I (beta and gamma) isn't a noble gas, so they shouldn't be counting that. However as you say, the data isn't well documented on that page. 85Kr is indeed a beta & gamma source. If the range is 100 m rather than 1 km that means that the rays from 1000 times more particles can reach you since the number scales as the volume. I will need to sit + think about how that affects the actual dose received because most of the more distant ones would "miss" you anyway. Then there's the fact that many or most people are usually inside buildings which may offer significant screening.
How about tritium? It's not a noble gas, and if you inhaled that, in the oxidised form, T2O, if any of that condensed inside you, it might not be very good at all, and it's produced in the reactors, it's a beta emitter with an awkwardly low half life.
Tritium is very light, so it should leave the atmosphere before it gets any time to react with air to form any significant amount of T2O. Tritium is also not very dangerous compared to other radioisotopes, that's why they are allowed to put tens of curies of it into self-luminous exit signs that are used everywhere. For comparison, this is in the order of terabequerels.
Registered Member #193
Joined: Fri Feb 17 2006, 07:04AM
Location: sheffield
Posts: 1022
BigBad wrote ...
Bored Chemist wrote ...
I'm betting that 222Rn is part of the story, and it's an alpha emitter. 133 Xe is a beta source 131I (beta and gamma) isn't a noble gas, so they shouldn't be counting that. However as you say, the data isn't well documented on that page. 85Kr is indeed a beta & gamma source. If the range is 100 m rather than 1 km that means that the rays from 1000 times more particles can reach you since the number scales as the volume. I will need to sit + think about how that affects the actual dose received because most of the more distant ones would "miss" you anyway. Then there's the fact that many or most people are usually inside buildings which may offer significant screening.
How about tritium? It's not a noble gas, and if you inhaled that, in the oxidised form, T2O, if any of that condensed inside you, it might not be very good at all, and it's produced in the reactors, it's a beta emitter with an awkwardly low half life.
Well, one answer is that we simply don't know because they didn't measure it.
Also it's true that tritiated water can be taken up by the body very easily, but it's also excreted very quickly. The biological half life of tritium is very short indeed- about a week or two. That's why it's not thought of as so dangerous as many other radioisotopes.
Registered Member #2529
Joined: Thu Dec 10 2009, 02:43AM
Location:
Posts: 600
I neither believe nor disbelieve this at the moment.
A graph of leukemia incidence versus the radioactive spikes during pregnancy might be instructive however. If there was a temporal relationship it should leap up right out of the noise.
Registered Member #11591
Joined: Wed Mar 20 2013, 08:20PM
Location: UK
Posts: 556
A better title would be "Radioactive spikes from nuclear plants could increase the likelihood of childhood leukaemia" but then most people could tell you that!
Registered Member #193
Joined: Fri Feb 17 2006, 07:04AM
Location: sheffield
Posts: 1022
A still better title would be "Radioactive spikes from nuclear plants could increase the likelihood of childhood leukaemia but there's no real evidence for it" However, that's not going to sell a lot of newspapers.
Ash, Calcium doesn't (usually) get into the air so it'd not going to get into the local people in the same way that things like Rn and Kr do.
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Radioactive spikes from nuclear plants - a likely cause of childhood leukemia
