As expected, the levels are way below any level of concern, as is true with all of the treated water. So the hospital trip is just a precaution, not because of any actual harm having occurred.
The radiation levels in the two hospitalised men were at or above 4 becquerels per square centimetre, the threshold which is considered safe.
Honestly. This is journalistic malpractice.
A Becquerel (should be capitalized) is 1 decay per second. That isn’t really even detectable above background, and radiation is really, really easy to detect in minute quantities.
I have spilled vastly more than that on myself and didn’t even bother telling anyone.
A simple nuclear medicine scan uses something like 500 MBq.
This is at the level of rubbing yourself with a banana.
Thanks for your clarifying knowledge. Could you explain how radiation is measured? It seems like every time I read about the subject a wildly different type of unit is used, and it’s fairly confusing for the lay person.
Radiation units are difficult. Especially so because Sievert is used in SI for several different concepts (that really don’t belong in the SI, imo).
I can’t really explain this to you simply. There’s probably some YouTube videos that are good, but you really need a sophisticated understanding of modern physics and lots of engineering principles.
I’ll be brief, but I just can’t explain this stuff in a text post and I’m not used to not explaining it to people who don’t already have detailed knowledge.
Bq and Curie are units of activity. That’s how many times you measure a decay per second.
Roentgens is a unit of exposure. That’s about how much the radiation is charging up a unit of air. You recognize this from the Chernobyl series (which is extremely good and at least accurate in the physics).
Absorbed dose is the cumulative energy deposited. This is Gray in SI. That’s the unit of measure you use when you prescribe someone radiation therapy.
Then there’s equivalent and effective dose. Those depend on various ways about where the radiation goes and what kind of radiation it is. You can irradiate your hands a lot without problems. It’s different for your colon or brainstem.
Rad, thanks for the explanation.
Its way, way lower than rubbing yourself with a banana afaik
Five workers were cleaning pipes at the system filtering wastewater for release into the sea when two were splashed after a hose came off accidentally, according to a spokesperson for operator Tepco.
Two others were contaminated when they were cleaning up the spill, the spokesperson added.
The radiation levels in the two hospitalised men were at or above 4 becquerels per square centimetre, the threshold which is considered safe.
As others have noted, those exposed are safe and the exposure was fairly minimal. But, these precautions are always important, both to monitor the direct effects on those involved and to allow for proper decontamination and limit any possibility of further spread of radioactive material.
By quantifying, monitoring and containing you can maintain safety around the whole incident. If you don’t, there’s the chance you’re left trying to investigate, trace and mitigate after the fact, similar to accidents in 1987 Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil or 1984 Cuidad, Juarez, Mexico. You really don’t want that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Ju%C3%A1rez_cobalt-60_contamination_incident
That is completely out of scope to this.
Ionizing radiation is dangerous in large amounts, but this is not a large amount. I’m not even sure how they got their 4 Bq/cm2 number. You’re way more radioactive than that on your own.
The dosage makes the poison.
This is more like rubbing a banana on you.
Those incidences are people finding dangerous, improperly discarded sources and not knowing what they were.
You’re right. Those were far worse than this had any chance of being. My point was more that it’s a lot easier to know the scope and everything else about what’s happened when action is taken immediately and that containment protocols are there for a reason.
It’s a good thing that these folks were attended to promptly and are under watch for now.
I disagree. This is fear mongering.
I’ve spilled a lot more than this on me and didn’t even report it. I’m pretty sure they would have laughed at me if I did.
My dad just got diagnosed with cancer. He had a pet scan, got about 600 MBq of tracer injected, then proceeded to sleep next to my mother and piss that radiation all over the place.
That is much worse than this, and it’s just not a problem.
This article will get down voted by Lemmy’s rabid nuclear energy crowd.
Not only is the article being upvoted, but the implication behind your comment contradicts the actual harm caused to the workers - which is no harm at all, treated water is safe, they’re safe. How exactly would a crowd that defends nuclear power be mad at this information?
The title is a bit misleading
They were taken as a precaution because they were exposed to the threshold of safe levels of radiation and they’ll be chilling at the hospital for a couple weeks of observation as per standard for those kinds of events. The workers are stable.
Honestly this article doesn’t seem like it should have even been written for how much of a non-issue it is. It was a workplace incident where the individuals are being checked out at the hospital as a precaution.
I work in the freight industry and if we had an article written about every incident that was this much of a non-issue we’d have about 500 PER DAY. Source.
It was written for the sole purpose of anti-nuclear propaganda.
Most people only read the title and it will be used as a gotcha
