The operator Tepco says the workers came in contact with the wastewater when a hose came off accidentally and have been taken to hospital as a precaution
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.
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.
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