Just weeks after the completion (and failure) of one supposed ‘containment’ wall (and as the construction of the “ice wall” begins), TEPCO, the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, has admitted that the levels of radioactivity in underground tunnels has risen sharply (4000x last year’s levels). As NHKWorld reports, TEPCO officials have stated that they plan to investigate what caused the spike in radiation… yes, that would seem like a good idea.
With the newly constructed 780-meter ‘containment’ wall “already leaning,” news that the radiation leaks are growing is a grave concern. As NHKWorld details,
Tokyo Electric Power Company has detected 482,000 becquerels per liter of radioactive cesium in water samples taken from the tunnels on December 3rd. That’s 4000 times higher than data taken in December last year.
So, about 70mREM/hr if a substantial quantity were ingested, or just under 48 hours until radiation poisoning becomes evident, and aproximately 9.5 days until LD50 is achieved, if my calculations are correct. This >suggests< that LD99 would be somewhere around Day 22, although there is no strict calculation for it in human populations.
"Substantial Quantity"; i.e. a typical water bottle full of it. Or, at 1/10th that dose, each day, repeated over a number of days (figure 5~10 days). This is so because the 137-Cesium isotope, while rather active, has a half life of just over 30 years, so it decays at a rate slow enough to yield nearly straight-line dosage-over-time, which is the most deadly function.
It is also very important to note that the most common propagation of CS-137 into the environment is via it's various metalic salts, which are highly soluble in water, and therefore do not readily settle out of solution as the radioactive isotopes of cobalt, uranium, strontium, and some other fission products do.
Last comment was a partial misfire -- I’m picking it up in this one…
This is true because the 137-Cesium isotope, while rather active, has a half life of just over 30 years, so it decays at a rate slow enough to yield nearly straight line dosage-over-time fucntions in living tissue, which is the most deadly function.
— I.E. where a damaging dose is delivered every hour from ingestion until death, and beyond, without remittance or attrition in its toxicity.
This makes it a food-chain destroyer, because the radioactive substance will be concentrated by organisms at each level of the food chain, and passed on up. The exrceates and carcases of the toxified animals are recycled to the plants and lower animals as food and fertilizer, which further concentrates the radioactive toxins for the next generation; functionally ensuring the destruction of entire chains of plants and animals with lifecycle dependencies upon each other.
IOW, most of the north the Pacific is dead, and that which comes out of it is deadly. The question is, how far will this deadly substance travel? By the currents and tides? In the bellies of Whales, porpoise, and other large aquatics? And through human commerce via fishing in contaminated waters, and canning the poison fish for export sale? (Because China would never do such a thing, right?)