>>20849>1) The ones dangerous to humans are not usually exposed in areas that can comes near human contact and/or are in small amounts The ones dangerous to humans are generally dangerous to pretty much all wildlife. And guess what, before mining operations for uranium started in all of the US started, normal ass wildlife just existed on top of it.
>2) There's different kinds of radioactivity, and natural background radiation is not the same as radioactivity from artificially enriched materials used in human nuclear projects The radiation coming off of naturally occurring radioactive elements is not background radiation. Background radiation refers to the "measure of the level of ionizing radiation present in the environment at a particular location which is not due to deliberate introduction of radiation sources" (from wikipedia). If you turn up a Gieger counter in your house it won't make a peep. If you put it down next to some uranium containing ore, plenty of which is literally just lying on the surface of the earth, it would start beeping.
What sort of radiation in particular are you worried about in this case? Beta particles presumably, because the worry with the Fukushima water is tritium, yes? Well, from the wikipedia article on tritium: "Beta particles from tritium can penetrate only about 6.0 millimetres (0.24 in) of air, and they are incapable of passing through the dead outermost layer of human skin". But you yourself pointed that out. As for the bio accumulation, read on.
>False, this is the same bullshit excuse the US military uses to claim Depleted Uranium is "safe" yet that is patently untrue. What are you referring to specifically?
>Not against their allies, not without political or real motivation. Japan isn't stepping on any toes politically for the USA or West, so it makes no sense for them to push this without a real risk or reason.China and Russia are not allies of Japan. As for South Korea, well that's why I point out the possibility of ignorance. Nuclear scaremongering is effective.
As for the article you posted, brother, read your own stuff please.
>According to TEPCO, the seawater around the plant has tritium levels below 10 becquerels per liter, well below the company's 700-becquerel set limit and the World Health Organization's (WHO) recommended safe drinking water threshold of 10,000 becquerels.>In America, this standard is an “annual-average maximum contaminant level (MCL) of 740 becquerels per liter.”So first, whatever levels of tritium there are in the water they've stored, once it gets released into the sea it will be diluted a lot. Indeed it has been diluted to under 10 Bq/L in the sea water around the plant, and the concentration will decrease even more with distance from the plant and with time. Furthermore, in order for that tritium to be bio accumulated in humans through drinking (I mention through drinking specifically because it is what is mentioned in the article you posted) it would have to go through the water cycle (even more dilution) until it reached a fresh water reservoir.
The sputnik article you posted suggests (taking the conclusions of the paper that they cite at face value, I agree) that the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) standard, the "annual-average maximum contaminant level (MCL)" is inadequate by pointing to the paper "Drinking water standard for tritium-what's the risk?" (pdf related). In that article the authors point out that the USEPA's reported lifetime risk of cancer of 0.000056 for consuming water at their MCL (740 Bq/L), is five times larger if you factor in the presence of tritium and include cases of skin cancer, which presumably the USEPA did not. That is a significant find! But it's important to know precisely what this means. It is the discovery (and I can't say if it's definitive without taking a deep dive into the research topic) of poor methodology in risk calculation on the part of the USEPA. Definitely important.
But the authors themselves point out that their results "should greatly exceed actual risks to the public from ingestion of tritium in drinking water" and that "in many drinking water supplies that are impacted by releases from nuclear power plants concentrations of tritium are comparable to or less than the detection limit of 37 Bq/L specified by the USEPA", remember Japans
sea water around the plant was below 10 Bq/L, "if long-term average concentrations were maintained at levels less than the detection limit, mean lifetime risks would be less than 0.00002" (pic related).
So anon, I gotta say, you're either not reading what you post or not parsing it correctly.
I'm open to the idea that TEPCO might be lying about their measurements of tritium but if you're going to make that case, please cite a good source for an alternate value of the tritium.
I'm responding in good faith, please return the favor. No monosyllabic rebuttals, please.