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Over EPA limit: Cesium levels in San Francisco area milk now higher than 6 months ago [... - 0 views

  • Title: UCB Milk Sampling Results Source: University of California Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering Date: 1/14/2012 (9:40am)
  • By integrating all of the milk data we have collected since March 11, we can estimate the total effective dose equivalent (TEDE) one could have received from exposure to fission product isotopes in milk to date. For someone drinking milk at the relatively high rate of one gallon per week, the TEDE could be nearly 1 microsievert, or the total effective dose equivalent for only 12 minutes on an airplane flight or 3.7 hours of the average person’s background exposure from natural sources of radiation.
  • Pasteurized, Homogenized Milk from the San Francisco Bay Area with Best By Date of 12/29/2011 Cs-134: 0.068 Becquerels/liter (Bq/l) ±0.011 [MDA=0.044] Cs-137: 0.075 Bq/l ±0.015 [MDA=0.052] Total cesium is .143 Bq/l, or 3.87 picocuries/l (pCi/l) (1 Bq = 27.1 pCi). The EPA Maximum Contaminant Level for radioactive cesium in milk is 3 pCi/l:
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  • “EPA lumps these gamma and beta emitters together under one collective MCL [Maximum Contaminant Level], so if you’re seeing cesium-137 in your milk or water, the MCL is 3.0 picocuries per liter; if you’re seeing iodine-131, the MCL is 3.0; if you’re seeing cesium-137 and iodine-131, the MCL is still 3.0.” -Forbes.com Current levels are about 40% higher than what was detected 6 months ago: Pasteurized, Homogenized Milk from the San Francisco Bay Area with Best By Date of 8/22/2011
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U.S. wasn't fully prepared for radiation risks following Japan earthquake, top general ... - 0 views

  • In the first few days of Japan’s nuclear crisis this spring, the U.S. military wasn’t fully prepared to deal with possible radiation exposure to its troops and equipment, the top U.S. general in Japan said Wednesday.
  • U.S. Forces Japan commander Lt. Gen. Burton M. Field talked about the radiation risk to U.S. troops during a briefing on Operation Tomodachi for members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan on Wednesday.
  • “As the (Fukushima Dai-ichi) reactors exploded and they sent some of that radiation out, we had the issue with it being detected off shore by the Navy,” he said. “We had to start dealing with the kind of environment that the U.S. military had not really worked in, so we didn’t have the strictest guidelines on what kind of risk we would take in terms of radiation exposure for our (service) members.”
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  • Servicemembers didn’t initially know what kind of contamination procedures they would have to use for equipment that was going to be exposed to the radiation, he said.
  • However, last week the U.S. Pacific Command’s top surgeon Rear Adm. Michael H. Mittelman held town hall meetings at U.S. bases in Japan to tell people about a plan to calculate radiation doses received by each of the approximately 61,000 U.S. personnel living and working in Japan during the disaster. The military has already done “internal monitoring” of radiation levels inside the bodies of 7,700 personnel who worked in parts of the disaster zone closest to the damaged power plant, including those who flew over the disaster zone, Mittelman said.
  • Every pilot who was asked volunteered for the mission, Field said.U.S. Forces Japan has declined Stars and Stripes’ requests to release the levels of radiation or toxic substances detected in areas where U.S. personnel worked during Operation Tomodachi. The military also has not released levels of radiation detected on servicemembers’ clothing and equipment.
  • Shortly after the earthquake, personnel from the Department of Energy departed the U.S. with radiation measuring equipment bound for Yokota Air Base, he said.The equipment could measure radiation on the ground if it was flown over an area in an aircraft, Field said.“We figured out how to strap these things on airplanes and helicopters,” he said. “We asked the pilots: ‘Okay, we are going to have you fly into weird and wonderful places that might have a lot of radiation. Who’s in?’ ”
  • The scans revealed that 98 percent of those personnel did not have elevated radiation inside their bodies, he said. Mittelman said that among the 2 percent of servicemembers (about 154 individuals) with elevated internal radiation levels the highest readings were about 25 millirems, equivalent to the dose that they would receive from 2 1/2 chest X-rays.Field said he learned some lessons from the operation.“I would have been a lot smarter on the effect of radiation on humans, plants, animals, fish, ocean, land, air, soil, kids…,” he said. “I had zero idea about nuclear reactors before. I could probably teach a course in nuclear reactors and nuclear physics medicine at this point.”
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Breaking News: Explosion underground? [29Sep11] - 0 views

  • 19:05 9/29/2011(JST) ,there was an earthquake near Fukushima plants. Scale 5+ M5.6 Now there are some aftershocks still.
  • Strange points 1) Though it was a major earthquake,it was scale 5+ only around Fukushima nuc plants. 2) According to Japan Meteorological Agency,the epicenter was “very shallow”.They can’t even specify how deep it was. 3) Though Fukushima city is in the same prefecture,it was only scale 1 there. 4) A lot of the people heard loud brontide,which is rare for normal earthquake.
  • Unconfirmed info (info from Twitter) 1) The epicenter is right under Fukushima plants. 2) From the live streaming video,sometimes you see flash from the buildings. 3) From the live streaming video,steam is coming up from around reactor 4.
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  • Facts 1) Radiation level is increasing. In Futabayama area, 21.48 uSv/h @9/21 → 24.65 uSv/h @9/29 19:01 2) Unusual amount of helicopters and airplanes are flying around in Fukushima. (hovering near Ishimori,Kamiya,etc..)
  • From viewing all those reports, this earthquake seems to be something usual. Considering the fact that melted fuel rods are sinking about 17m deep in the ground, it is possible to think the last earthquake was a hydrovolcanic explosion caused by nuclear fuel touching the underground water vein.
  • “It’s catastrophic. I don’t even want to imagine,but it might have been some kind of explosion of meltouted fuel rods touching underground vein. It was scale 5+ just around the plants but no scale 4 class of earthquake detected in other prefectures.” Tomorrow,Japanese government is lifting the mandatory evacuating area.
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SF Milk Cesium 137 Above EPA Safe Levels [21Oct11] - 0 views

  • Please note that though all I-131 activities have increased due to this revision, the levels are still very low -- one would have to consume at least 1,900 liters of milk to receive the same radiation dose as a cross-country airplane trip.
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