Over the last few weeks there have been a stream of fearmongering articles in the press detailing leakage of contaminated water from Fukushima Daiichi.
The most feverish have described a leaking storage tank said to have discharged up to 300 tons of contaminated water into surrounding soil. Apparently a seal on the tank has failed and water has slipped out, over a rainwater dam and seeped into the ground. The water has been described as highly radioactive - up to 1800 mSv/hour.
Well, 1800 mSv/hour seems a lot, until you read that the vast bulk is beta radiation which only goes 1-2 meters through the air and is stopped by paper or clothing. The reading is so high because the measurement was made right next to the source. In fact, what the fearmongering articles do not say is that this water is nothing special - it's just the same water that has been leaking on and off since March 11 2011, without anybody caring too much, and completely insignificant next to the radiation releases of March and April 2011, which themselves have not impacted anybody's health in any observable way.
For some reason it is only now that these irrelevant figures are being bandied about. The water has not affected worker health in any way and no contamination has been detected offsite. Indeed, there is no special reason to believe that any of this water has entered the Pacific Ocean at all.
Even if it did, any radiation in the water would be swamped by the natural background radiation that exists in every ocean around the world; its impact would be negligible, and, if measurable at all, only because humans are extrememly adept at creating instrumentation that can measure minute traces of radioactive products that would otherwise not be noted by anyone and have no effect on anything.
This hasn't stopped massive overreactions in differernt parts of the world. The Korean government, for example, has banned seafood imports from a bunch of Japanese prefectures based on fear of these leaks. Even my otherwise harmless aunt in Sydney is afraid of the water in Fukushima!
The nuclear debate is filled with ironies that frustrate those who approach the issue rationally. Beta radiation is chump change. So far from these leaks being a real problem, probably the best thing to do with the entire quantity of waste water being stored at Fukushima is to filter out what you can, and just dump the rest into the Pacific!
This New Scientist article points out exactly that.
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