Three types of plutonium have turned up amid the radioactive contamination on the grounds of the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, its owner reported Monday.
The plutonium is a byproduct of nuclear reactions that is also part of the fuel mix at the damaged No. 3 reactor.
It was found in soil at five different points inside the plant grounds, the Tokyo Electric Power Company said late Monday.
Plutonium can be a serious health hazard if inhaled or ingested, but external exposure poses little health risk, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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Wow, just when one thinks it could not get any worse, it does.
Oh, it could still get much, much worse. It was already bad enough to begin with though.
We are no where NEAR the bottom of the barrel on this one. All things considered, the situation is pretty good. They have been able to restore power. They are pumping fresh water again. The spend fuel pools are dropping in temp. Pressure and temp are dropping in most of the reactors. Radiation in the surrounding areas is steady or declining and not at dangerous levels. All in all, this is going really well. It is no where near the nightmare situation the media portrays. Yes, it is still very bad, but it could be a million times worse. Very literally.
tell me about it. just when you think people couldn't be stupider and greedier, they prove you wrong again.
Adam.. you have to be pretty ignorant to make a statement like that.
@JLB: No. He doesn't. Based on my own reading and understanding, he's right on the money.
Which only makes your own comments about ignorance highly ironic at best.
@LMD
Please fill me with wisdom how radiation reports keep climbing in the area and the statement "Radiation in the surrounding areas is steady or declining and not at dangerous levels." is somehow true?
Talk about brain dead
@LMD, NYTimes reports "Sunday...alarmingly high radiation levels were discovered" Try reading more credible sources.
"'The good news is that the bad news isn't quite as bad as it first looked,' Jim Walsh says. 'Things are happening and they look very bad in the beginning. Maybe not as bad as it first looked, but the situation is deteriorating.'"
See, it's not really so bad, is it?
@Adam & LMD, CNN currently reports "Nishiyama noted Monday that the temperature is rising inside the No. 1 reactor - a sign that the nuclear fuel rods in that unit remain in danger of overheating."
LMD, better expand that reading list and spend more time on it and less discussing the irony of ignorance!
Fact: One SINGLE Atom of Plutonium inhaled WILL and DOES CAUSE LUNG CANCER ON CONTACT WITH LUNG TISSUE. PERIOD. It is the most Toxic material known, because it was created by Man and does not occurre in Nature on Earth. If anybody says differently, they are mistaken. I was told this FIRST HAND at a Conference of Scientists of Nuclear Studies in the 1970's. It is easily released into an airborne state and may travel around the entire Planet. But as long as somebody can make $$$$ on it..... Not Good, eh?
Plutonium is 10x more deadly than uranium.. Get ready.
http://Www.infowars.com
Factually, it is just the contrary. Plutonium poses little health risk, as long as not entering in direct contact or eaten!!
Google Plutonium Health Risks, before posting such nonsense
The concerning part of this iis that reactor No.3 is leaking, unfortunately not only Plutonium!!
Plutonium is chemically toxic just like any heavy metals. When you breathe them, they are almost exactly the same as lead. Don't eat lead, don't lick it, don't ingest it.Same with Plutonium. I've been reading the reports on nei.org and the levels found in the soil are roughly the same as what you will find when you walk out of your house and walk on a dirt road.
my snales are dowing fine!
.. whole plutonium , 2% plutonium , and scim plutonium...
scim plutonium is probably the safest i think..
nice way to turn that meltdown frown upsidedown..
it's plutonium .. not an order for a starbucks latte..
there is no such thing as a soy non fat plutonium latte than is less dangerious
some of you people are crazy as hell.
Plutonium...it's what's for dinner!!
Safe plutonium?! I am not a scientist, but I have heard there is no safe amount of plutonium, and no safe plutonium. Then again, I am not a scientist… still… I'm staying far as I can away from any plutonium! ;-D
all very good for you, according to the global financial elites and their hired guns.
Plutonium – its what gives Ann Coulter
her radiant glow...
I assume they mean 3 ISOTOPES of plutonium. Some are more radioactive than others, but they're all at least PRETTY radioactive.
Maria,
The safety depends entirely on the isotope of Plutonium you have. Some of it mainly emits Alpha particles, which are very easy to stop (piece of paper, skin, etc. will all stop it).
Plutonium 239 is often a by product of nuclearfission in nuclear power plants. It has a half life 24, 100 years and is highly radioactive. Studies on laboratory rats, baboons,and on workers infected by plutonium have indicated that plutonium intake leads to lung,bone, and liver cancer. It is one of the most highly radioactive by products of fission in MOX plants like reactor 3.
That means that the Fukushima area should be declared off limits for 24100 years at least.
CNN, why don't you at least educate the public about the dangers of plutonium?
Right ON Comment.
Why is CNN playing softball with this?
Your knowledge is based on what? Where did you get your training in radioisotope handling? It depends on how much. I don't think a handful of Plutonium atoms are harmful. Think before you write. Please!!
Knee-jerk over reaction as usual...
It also depends on which isotope of Plutinium was found. The level of radioactivity and half-life varies greatly depending on which isotope. You got your material from Wikipedia? Right!
CNN is in the business of fear mongering, not educating.
Why don't they educate us? Because histeria drives page hits, and gets them more revenue from thier ads. If they educated the public, we would see that this 'scare' is not that bad, and the world isn't going to end. Nuclear is still a safe power source, if contained well, there is little risk to the surrounding area, much less the entire world. They instead throw scary words around and get people all worked up over nothing.
Great to see someone took basic year one chemistry.
why ask where they got education from that's like asking what's a wall of water coming at us or is it safe to be here kiss Ur ass goodbye
On the contrary, an actual "handful" of plutonium atoms would be extraordinarily deadly, both radiologically and chemically.
Half life of plutonium 239 is 24,000 year. Quarter life is 48,000 years Eighth life is 96,000 years, etc.
Plutonium 239 is about 2 million times MORE hazardous than uranium according to Nuclear Radiation Resource Center.
Are we starting to get the BIG picture now?
What do you mean by "highly radioactive?" It has a pretty long half-life, which means that it takes a long time for the plutonium to decay. It is decay that causes the radiation.
education is bad for wall street.
Raphael, et al:
Don't get wrapped around the axle focusing on the dangers of plutonium specifically. The presence of plutonium in the soil is pretty much proof of three things: (1) a partial melting of the reactor core, (2) a breech of primary containment, and (3) a breech of secondary containment.
The issue isn't so much what plutonium alone will do to the environment, but the implications of the above three things. That is, if there is plutonium in the soil, there is also a bunch of other nasty not-plutonium stuff in that same soil. All of it is toxic, all of it is radioactive, and the half-lives range from microseconds to thousands of years.
That there is plutonium in the soil is as indicative as would be iodine or cesium, however in this case plutonium points to a specific reactor (#3) at the Fukushima site, whereas iodine and cesium would be byproducts of fission from any of the reactors at site.
The more-worrisome indicator is the 1,000 mSv/hr they measured in the trench water. That gives an indication as to how much fission products have breeched primary and secondary containments.
Pu is one of the most toxic substances known,
only 0.001 milligrams will kill you dead.
Not just kill you a little bit like the cheerleaders say, but dead...
And Pu244 has a half-life of 80 million years...
Plutonium is present everywhere on earth as a result of the atmospheric nuclear testing done in the 50's and 60's. Since this report states that the amounts found at the plant are equal to background amounts there is no way to say that they are there from reactor breaches or anything else. And even if they were present at the site from these reactors, the source could absolutely be from leaks in the cooling system or other contamination sources. The amounts are so tiny that they do not indicate primary or secondary containment breaches in any way.
This is why nuclear power plants are such a lousy idea. What in civilization is 24,000 years old? The cave paintings maybe. Not the pyramids. So who is going to keep life off that contaminated spot for 24,000 years? The answer is, some day it will kill unwary living things.
There has to be a clean-up, but it probably won't remove all the contamination.
Atomic and nuclear weapons cannot be beaten into ploughshares. But I guess they can be turned to profit some unscrupulous creeps like the GE executives and the TEPCO ones.
Thanks, Rafael, the first valid reply. This way or the other way: The meltdown is going on right now in 3 reactors and produces highly dangerous radiative products, which might leak to the ocean, if they don't take measures to isolate the leakages. But I still have very important questions:1. Why did they build cooling generators outside the buildings? 2. Why there is no reserve cooling systems?? 3. Why there was no movable/portable generators? 4. What happens if the emergency situation will go on 10 nuke stations simultaneously? Do they know how to deal with that? Just imagine for one second a situation like that?!! Why did they build the stations on the ocean coast?? 5.Why they did not believe Russian scientist who had predicted an earthquake and tsunami like that back in 1997??? Don't believe, but get ready for that possibility.and Final question: Will they build cooling generators some safer place, inside the building or on top of the buildings from now on having this experience. Will they??? Or as usual, there will be no money for that?
Listen up PPL.
Fact: One SINGLE Atom of Plutonium inhaled WILL and DOES CAUSE LUNG CANCER ON CONTACT WITH LUNG TISSUE. PERIOD. It is the most Toxic material known, because it was created by Man and does not occurre in Nature on Earth. If anybody says differently, they are mistaken. I was told this FIRST HAND at a Conference of Scientists of Nuclear Studies in the 1970's. It is easily released into an airborne state and may travel around the entire Planet. But as long as somebody can make $$$$ on it..... Not Good, eh?
we are all doomed
Great, now I can eat and drink anything I want and I won't have to worry about money!
why pay your credit card debts?
The best way to stop the madness of nuclear energy ;
http://nuclear-madness.jouwweb.nl/
Please vote or/and post a comment !
I'm waiting for my third arm to grow.
I already have a third arm. LMAO, I couldn't resist, it was there for the taking
once you have it, list it on ebay.
Nuclear rain is coming to california. It will give nuclear exposure and people don't know about. Red scare
Sounds like we are not getting the real story at all, and it is very frustrating. Please post some good sources of information, and explain the nuclear rain
If you think it will stop at the CA borders and not effect the rest of the US, you're DEAD wrong.
it's come and gone about 10 times by now.
311 will be known as the day that Nuclear Energy stopped being a safe dependable way to generate electricity and started to be a Global polluting Eco-distaster, the size of which the Earth has not seen in modern times!
That date was 4 a.m. local time on Wednesday, March 28, 1979,
place was Three Mile island, Pennsylvania, USA...
One day the truth will prevail....
October 5, 1966, Detroit Edison Fermi 1. read the book "We Almost Lost Detroit" for details.
Is it just me, or does nearly every one of these updates include wording such as 'very little health risk', 'elevated but far below safety recommendations', etc. I am so sick of hearing that people don't need to worry yet...if we're seeing these levels in a wider and wider distribution and the reactor hasn't melted down yet, what the heck are we going to see when things go beyond the point of no return? It just seems ridiculous to still be advising such a conservative evacuation area – if they lose control of the plant an hour from now, people are going to be affected much further than 15 miles away. I've seen nothing that the government, TEPCO, or even the nuclear agency has done to give any confidence that they are getting the upper hand on this thing – quite the opposite, in fact. The conduct is appalling.
'like'
If you are seeing plutonium in the ground samples, then the reactor is not only melting down, or had a partial meltdown, but there is also a breech in the containment vessel. CNN, and I think most news agencies are afraid to say this due to the very limited information they have. They simply don't want to risk being the ones that are *Creating a panic*, but all the clues point to a meltdown that is still in progress, with a breech as well.
No it's not just you! They love saying things like"Normal, nothing to worry about", so many contradictions, its like they think we are idiots or we forgot what they said two days ago. They knew about plutonium a week ago, and we found out today, what are we going to find out next week?Why are they not giving any numbers, why are they saying we don't KNOW what happening in the plants and reactors yet there have been workers in all the areas all the time, OF COURSE THEY KNOW they are just not telling us. ALSO they haven't told us how many workers have already died!!, and I heard MANY workers are dead.
Yeah, I'm with you. Every time I hear "very little health risk" I actually get a little more nervous.
What is blowing me away is the 1,000 mSv readings they are getting from a trench full of water. What isotopes are in there? Plutonium in the primary coolant means there has been at least a partial meltdown of the core. Plutonium in the soil means there has been a breech of primary containment. CNN (on TV, not here yet) keeps hedging their words, saying that the presence of plutonium is "indicative, but not proof" of a primary containment breech. B***s**t. There really is no other way that plutonium (and I don't care at this point how "low" the plutonium readings might be, the 1,000 mSv/hr water and hundreds of mSv/hr ambient readings are not "low" no matter how you slice it) can get to the soil, unless it's left over from a previous meltdown and primary+secondary containment breech that went unreported years ago...
This is serious, people. By tax day, if not sooner, the first workers exposed the most will start dying. I'm seriously wondering if there is a radiation death or two already that we don't know about yet...
appalling, maybe, but surprising, not one bit.
JR, what do you mean "and the reactor hasn't melted down yet"?
Don't you realize it melted days ago, probably within the first three days after the tsunami. Everything since then has been trying to assess how bad it is without telling people so much that it would panic them.
Doh!
Oh, I'm sure everything will be just fine. Who wants ginger snaps?
I am beginning to think no amount of concrete is gonna cover this up.
If one plant goes meltdown then the entire area will be a molten hole that will become a "toxic steam pit filled with ocean water and that will change the Earth's ecosystem!
wall street thieves will die rich, hugging their paper money all the way to Hell!
@ AGenius, hmmm, did you come up with that name by yourself?
@ A genius, that's already happened. haven't you been paying attention?
Latest News is not good news:
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/81572.html
you know every ship still in port on the west side should come around and load up with people and move them off that island you know if it was in the"usa"we'd want to get the heck out of there asap lots of those people have no money to leave so they wait and bye the looks of it to die... there is a whole race of people that are going to be effected by this .. we as the world should help get them to safty...
load them and take them where? i wanna know.
main land china or somewhere west of the trade winds or jet stream ..
All the worlds governments are playing down the exposure risks. They don't want global hysteria. The truth is, this is pretty bad. Just wait, 20 years down the road, studies will indicate some sort of huge jump in cancers globally. We live on relatively small enclosed ball. It's time humans start thinking that way. One countries disaster can effect everybody.
Thanks for saying something that actually is worthy of note. This is a terrible situation that affects all of us, particularly the children of this planet who are going to be here longer than I am. This is an absolute mess, and we ignored warnings for decades. ALL OF US. Not just the builders, not just the designers, but every citizen of every country who didn't make a stink and protest and yell NIMBY! and who continues to use electricity like it is infinite. This is our doing, and our children will be the victims.