Organic forms of radioactive iodine

Dear Reader,

Some time ago me and Emma celibrated the start of a project on radioactive iodine with some interesting soup. We have now come to the end of the project, I would say that it has been an interesting journey.

Myself and Emma together with Diana have done something interesting, we tested a hypothesis which in someways is a rather frightening one. Imagine a world where the standard method of measuring radioactivity in workplaces and the environment is defective in such a way that it underreports the radioactivity.

This is a world where a false sense of security would exist, a world where people are unwittingly exposed while being reassured. The centre of the hypothesis relates to the fact that a chemical reaction between methyl iodide and an additive (normally DABCO) is needed to fix methyl iodide into a charcoal. Without this reaction the methyl iodide tends to be able to escape from the charcoal. Normally charcoals and other gas capture systems are tested (quailified) with methyl iodide.

Many organic iodine compounds such as ethyl iodide and chloromethyl iodide which can form during a serious nuclear accident react more slowly than methyl iodide with DABCO. Thus as they persist longer in the charcoal pad in their unchanged form they have a greater potnetial to reenter the gas phase and thus escape from the charcoal. This sluggish chemcial reaction casts doubt on the ability of a methyl iodide quailified charcoal to intercept things like ethyl iodide.

What we did was to do a series of tests on charcoals which have shown that the non methyl iodide organic iodines which we have tested with the charcoal absorb either as well or better onto the charcoal than methyl iodide. This indicates to us that the standard charcoal may well work just as well as sampling devices for non methyl iodide radioactive organic iodine. We would rather go to larger scale tests before givng a final answer, but the intial tests look very promising.

These results also suggest that gas masks (respirators) based on DABCO loaded charcoals will be able to remove these alternative organic iodines from air. This is further good news.

If you want to read the first paper we have published on the subject then here is a the share link which will work for the next 49 days.  The paper is

E. Aneheim, D. Bernin and M.R.S.J. Foreman, Affinity of charcoals for different forms of radioactive organic iodine, Nuclear Engineering and Design, 2018, 328, 228-240.

Trinitite

Dear Reader,

Recently I purchased off eBay a small lump of trinitite, now I had been warned that a lot of fake trinitite is being offered for sale. So I choose to take the step of examining the sample with gamma ray spectroscopy.

In less than a minute I had been a peak at 668 keV which could either be due to either ²¹⁴Bi (665 keV from the beta branch) or ¹³⁷Cs (662 keV from ^137mBa) was seen. This peak suggested that some radioactivity was present in the sample. I did a quick check at 609 keV. The line at 665 is emitted during a small fraction (1.46) of beta decays of ²¹⁴Bi, while the 609 keV photons are emitted by 46.1 of all decays. As a result it is clear that the sample contains some man made radioactivity.

Next I looked at the low energy end of the spectrum, here is a log log view to allow you to see this part of the spectrum better. I found a strong peak at 66 keV. I suspect that this is 59.5 keV peak for americium, keep in mind that the energy calibration of the detector is a little off. It was over reporting the energy of the ^137mBa, so it is not totally unreasonable for it to over report the energy of the ²⁴¹Am. As americium is associated with plutonium this is a good sign that the rock is a true lump of trinitite.

I then looked for some of the other lines of this americum nuclide, I looked for 99 and 103 keV photons. I found peaks at 99, 101 and 105 keV. This suggests that some peaks were in this expected range. Maybe it could be americium present. At 81 keV we should expect a peak for ¹³³Ba, in our spectrum we see peaks at 81.7, 83.8 and 87.7 keV.

Also at 128 keV the spectrum contains a peak which could be due to the 122 keV line from ¹⁵²Eu.

The spectrum also contains at 1414 keV a line which could be due to the 1408 keV emission from ¹⁵²Eu. Also this nuclide will emit at 964, 444 and 245 keV. In the high energy part of the spectrum we can also see a line at 1466 keV which corresponds to the 1461 keV emission of ⁴⁰K (decaying into ⁴⁰Ar).

In our spectrum we see a line at 969 keV which can be matched with the 964 keV emission of ¹⁵²Eu.

We can go further into the problem, in the range of 400 to 500 keV it is hard to decide if a peak is present. The signal to noise ratio is too bad in this range.

Now if we try again in the range of 200 to 300 keV range, we can see a line at 251 keV which is a possible match to the 245 keV.

The section of the spectrum between 300 and 400 keV shows peaks at 358 and 362 keV one of which could be the 356 keV line for ¹³³Ba.

I think that after seeing this evidence that we can come to the conclusion that the rock sample came from a place where a nuclear fission event occurred, so it is likely to be real trinitite.

We will come back to this later, what I hope to do next is to try to estimate the way in which the efficiency of the detector changes as a function of photon energy. We will try to match the different lines from different radionuclides to the graph.

Serious nuclear reactor accidents

Dear Reader,

I have recently published a review article about some of the chemistry of a serious nuclear accident, this is in a new journal named “Cogent Chemistry”. For those of you who do not know what “Cogent” means, it means “Something which appeals to the intellect or one’s powers of reasoning”. I have to confess I had to use a dictionary to look it up.

Now I am waiting for some feed back on this article, I am wondering what will come to me. It is important to note that such a review article is as politically neutral as possible. The role of a review in science is not to act as propaganda for either the nuclear industry or the antinuclear sector. In some ways the antinuclear sector seems as much of an industry as the nuclear industry. Some people seem to make being “antinuclear” as much of a full time job as some of the spokespersons hired by the nuclear sector. I am aware of some “interesting” behaviours which both pro and antinuclear zealots have. I will always refuse to name the zealots from either side, so please do not ask me for a list of them.

Some of the antinuclear zealots might even harm the environmental movement, if a person appears to be a foaming at the mouth antinuclear (anti-GMO, or anti-you add the name of a technology or industrial activity) they may start to appear to be an unreasonable person with a clear axe to grind. They may lose credibility and they might also start to tell lies (be dishonest, economic with the truth call it what you like) as a result of this “crying wolf” people will start to ignore the whole of the environmental movement so when another (and genuine) issue appears people will ignore it thinking “yet another scare story”. I am aware of people making claims of effects which are impossible, I also suspect that some people make up statistics / data and I also see dishonest tricks of argument such as “appeal to authority”, and “abusive ad hominem”. The latter is when a person’s character is attacked as a method of undermining an argument. For example consider one version of “ad hominem” known as “poisoning the well”. Someone might argue their electricity bill is wrongly calculated, and that how can you trust a worker from wicked utility company when their state that  2 + 2 = 4, thus the bill is wrongly calculated.

I assume that most of my readers have a GCSE in maths or some other similar basic maths qualification so they should know that 2 +2 = 1 + 3 = 5 -1 = 6 – 2 = 7 – 3 = 8 /2 = 4

Now while I am sure that none of my readers (antinuclear, pronuclear or otherwise) would want to argue that working for a particular company renders you unable to count. But I have seen some people from both sides of the debate use these types of tricks.

One use of a related trick was an incident where a meeting regarding a renewal of a license for a nuclear forensics / research site was being discussed. At one point the subject of radioactivity levels was being discussed, one activity was smaller than that due to potassium in a normal person. One person became angry and was saying “how dare you say that you know nothing about me and my body”. I think that this is a rather silly reason to become upset and angry (example of poisoning the well) as I can tell you that if you lost most of the potassium from your body you would die of a heart attack. Hypokalemia is the term for low blood potassium which when taken to an extreme results in a heart attack.

On the other hand some of the lunatic pronuclear lobby (One man who works in a national nuclear research centre calls them “atomheads“) are likely to harm the nuclear industry (and all other sectors which use radioactivity) by overselling nuclear technology and doing questionable things to prop up the image of their favourite industry. Promises of “electricity too cheap to meter”, nuclear powered cars (like the Ford Nucleon) and other outlandish things will result in disappointment. Also some statements which were later shown to be wrong on safety issues will in the long run do a lot of harm, during the three mile island accident a series of ambiguous and contradictory statements were made which in the long run did a lot of harm to the reputation of nuclear power. In terms of the flow of information to the public the three “big” reactor accidents were very different. Three mile island had a series of statements made to the media / public by the utility / the state, the Soviet Union tried to suppress the news about Chernobyl (that failed big time when workers at a Swedish plant arriving for work were found to be contaminated) while Fukushima was the internet age nuclear accident where lots of organisations were racing to post news and updates (some of which contained or were based on bad data). But a discussion of the way in which the early information was released for these accidents will have to wait for another day and another post.

I suspect that the article will enlighten and entertain the reasonable people from both sides of the nuclear / antinuclear debate rather vexing them. However both the most hardline opponents and staunch supporters of nuclear power will find the article disagreeable. The most antinuclear zealots will hate it as it fails to paint the picture of hopeless total doom which they so want while the pronuclear zealots will hate it as it discusses some of the things which can go wrong. Those who are protruth and proenlightenment should have no problem with it.

Cherry picking

Dear Reader,

It was interesting that Sarah Phillips choose to accuse me of “Cherry Picking”, for those of you who do not know what “Cherry Picking” is it is when a person uses a very small amount of data either while deliberately ignoring a large amount of data or while being too lazy to obtain more data.

The problem with a cherry picker is if their argument is reasonable and based on something which truly exists then their use of a far too small amount of data weakens their own argument. For example if I count the blue tits in my garden over one minutes then I might see if I am lucky in summer one blue tit.

If we assume that the area of garden outside my window where I am gazing has two states (free of blue tits or contains a blue tit) then we can use the same ideas as are used for counting radioactive events. The estimated standard deviation (no that is not some sort of sexual matter) of the number of blue tits counted is the square root of the number counted.

So if I look out of the window and see during my observation of the garden that one blue tit is present during the one minute observation time then the estimated standard deviation (ESD) based on the number of observations of the blue tits is 1. This means we have an ESD which is the same size as the average number of blue tits seen per minute.

If during my one minute observation of my garden I see one blue tit and if during a similar observation of the next door’s garden I see no blue tits then it is unlikely that a real difference exists between our gardens.

On the other hand if I observe my garden for one whole hour and see 60 sightings of blue tits while in the garden next door I only see 6 sightings. Then the ESD on my garden is 7.75 blue tits while the ESD on the observation of next door’s garden is 2.44.

The difference between the numbers of blue tit sightings in the two gardens is 56 which is 5.5 times larger than the sum of the ESDs of the two measurements. Thus the likelihood that the gardens are different is far more than 99%.

While bluetits are important to me, their appearance in the garden is a source of joy to me the significance of their numbers is less important than the incidence of adverse health effects in the human population. Now unless you have been hiding in a hole in the ground and making a point of never reading a newspaper, blog or even “yahoo news” you should be aware of the fact that a great debate exists regarding the question of “should we use nuclear power to make our electricity ?”.

After the Fukushima debacle the question of how likely is a nuclear power accident to harm a member of the general public has become important to many members of the public. The problem is that no matter what energy system we choose to make our electricity a finite risk exists that someone will be harmed.

For your information a series of adverse events associated with energy systems are listed below, to qualify as a death it must occur within one year of the event. A worker is a person working at the energy production site during the accident.

Energy   system	Location	Worker   deaths	Non   worker deaths
Coal	London   (Great Smog, 1952)	0	12000
Hydropower	Vajont Dam (1963)	0	Circa 2000
Coal	Courrières mine (France)	1099	0
Natural   gas	Ufa train disaster (USSR)	0	575
Natural   gas	New London School (Texas)	0	Circa 300 children
Hydropower	Dale Dike Reservoir (1864)	0	244
Natural   gas	Piper   Alpha (1988)	167	0
Coal	Aberfan   (1966)	0	28   adults 116 children
Nuclear	Chernobyl   (1986)	31	0
Biomass	Boston Molasses Flood (USA)	0	21
Nuclear	SL-1 (Idaho, USA)	3	0
Nuclear	Fukushima   (Japan)	0	0

Now we should be able to see that in terms of short term human deaths that both Fukushima and Chernobyl are small compared with many of the other energy accidents which have occurred in the 20^th century. While it was a small scale accident for pure gross out the Boston molasses accident is one which is etched into my mind, it was an event which condemned people to a truly sticky end.

We should also be aware of the fact that in England (London) and Japan the burning of fossil fuels has lead to clear adverse health effects, even if others are rushing to ban one energy system (nuclear) we should not ignore the fact the many energy systems do have the potential during accidents or in normal operation to harm people.

While I strongly hold the view that we should improve health and safety standards in the nuclear sector, it is clear that great room for improvement exists in the non nuclear sector. I was at a recent meeting on nuclear safety during which one of the speakers did consider the Bhopal event, I held (and expressed) the view that the international scale for radiological accidents should be expanded to consider non nuclear events. The Bhopal event is at least as serious as Chernobyl, the Chernobyl accident was not able to wipe out a whole town in the same was as the MIC gas was able to gas to death a vast number of members of the general public.

One way to put it is “why should other sectors of industry be held to a lower standard than the nuclear industry ?” which I think is a better attitude than “why can not the nuclear industry be held to the same lower standard as other sectors of industry are held to”.

While some people might think it is monstrous we need to ask ourselves the questions of.

1. Which electricity generation method kills the least people per kilowatt hour ?
2. Which energy system does the least amount of environmental damage per kilowatt hour ?
3. Where can society make the largest reduction in death and human suffering for a given expenditure ?

Then based on the answers to these questions we should choose which energy systems to use rather on some philosophical or emotion based reason such as “coal is the devil’s fuel as it is found underground”, “biomass is good because it comes from nature” or “nuclear power is evil as some of the technology was invented during weapons research”.

I know that a lot of people choose their preferred energy system for emotional reasons rather than rational reasons, I would like to know how many of them would choose a health care provider based on emotional reasons such as

“that doctor must be good as he comes from my home town”,

“that doctor is no good as he comes from my home town”,

“that doctor is (good / no good) because the doctor is (Tall / Short / Male / Female / Irish / English / Swedish / An arab / Jewish / Buddhist / Muslim / Hindu / Black / White / insert some other type if you are not happy with the selection offered)”

or

“That doctor is good he always prescribes pills with nice colours”

I am more interested in questions such as

“Is the doctor sober when on duty”

“Does the doctor pay attention to my health issue or not”

“Does this doctor’s care give good outcomes for the patient”

“Does this doctor’s bedside manner rub me up the wrong way”

While a single incidence of finding the doctor drunk in his surgery, smoking weed beside the hospital entrance or snorting drugs off his desk or a single case of a lazy medic would make me go elsewhere the mere fact that one of the doctors patients had an adverse outcome (maybe he was unable to cure a person) or maybe the doctor seemed to annoy me once (properly because he/she failed to fix me as quickly as I wanted to be fixed with zero pain or effort on my part) does not mean a doctor is no good.

Even the best doctor has cases where he/she fails to cure a person, the doctor who only takes on easy to cure cases is deeply unethical. Also the doctor who I do not instantly feel is my best friend can still be a perfectly good doctor.

Rather than using a single observation of the doctor it is better to look at what has happened to a large number of patients. For example in the case of Harold he might have seemed like the perfect family doctor who was willing to visit the frail old lady if you made a single observation of him. But for those of you who do not know of this disgusting felon the local undertakers were aware that a large fraction of his patients were dying in an unusual manner. Harold Shipman the GP from hell was poisoning his patients for his own depraved amusement; an examination of a large dataset was needed to identify this nefarious fiend to enable the evidence which sent him to jail to be collected.

In the same way as you should choose a doctor based on rational reasons, you should choose your energy supply system on rational reasons AND using a data which can be trusted.

Now after seeing the value of using a large pool of data, I have to ask why does the anthropologist use such small samples of people to prove her points in her papers about Fukushima and Chernobyl ?

Regarding Chernobyl Dr Phillips (lets get her name and title right) uses a single case of a man who had brittle bones and died of lung cancer as evidence that radiation exposure is exceptionally bad for your health.

While I hold the view that radiation is bad for my health we need to consider the degree of risk of an adverse outcome, also we need to consider if some effects require a dose above a threshold to exert a malign effect on our bodies. Sadly she has failed to gather or otherwise obtain the evidence required.

She wrote about the alleged radiation induced ill health of a man who worked as a construction worker building housing in a contaminated area (1986 to 1987), this man also was said to have been catching fish from lakes in the restricted areas. While it impossible for me to estimate his internal exposure from the fish, I was able to look in a UN report and see what external exposure level construction workers who were classed as liquidators were subject to. On average a construction worker in 1986 would have had 86 mSv while in 1987 the average dose was 25 mSv. The total average dose would have been 111 mSv which a dose which will have a 0.56 % chance of inducing a cancer, while this is a non trivial dose it is not one which is able to cause the acute radiation syndrome (radiation sickness).

The problem is that the man died of lung cancer and was known to be a smoker, already because the nature of his cancer we have a very reasonable and likely alternative cause of the cancer. Also the sample size was very small. Furthermore a link exists between smoking and the bone disease (Osteoporosis) which further undermines her argument that the Chernobyl event was the cause of the man’s ill health. The fact that ICRP118 indicates that at least 50 Gy is needed to cause rib fractures, also undermines Dr Phillips report of broken bones being associated with Chernobyl. I strongly hold the view that the man would never have been able to get a whole body dose of 50 Gy and live for years after the exposure.

If we look at the UN report on the effects of Chernobyl then we can see some interesting things. Many people were considered as “accident witnesses” who were on the Chernobyl site at the moment when the accident occurred and the emergency workers who were on site at 8 AM the next day then you have a population of 820 people where almost everyone had a dose of at least 500 mSv. The vast majority of these people survived the accident. At first one might reason that surely if in any population brittle bones and cancer would be observed then this population might seem to be the best place to start looking for these effects. If we assume that all the 820 people had a dose of 500 mSv then we would be looking at a collective dose of 410 manSv. This would be expected to induce 21 extra cancers (We assume a 5% additional risk of cancer per Sv for a single person and one cancer case per 20 manSv).

But the problem with this group is that it is small, quite a few who had the higher doses died off early and their exposure is very varied.

I think a better group to look at are the military men who worked in 1986, their average external dose was 110 mSv and the population was 61762 people. This gave a collective dose of 6800 manSv, I would expect this to induce a total of 340 cancers. The great problem is that the natural background for cancers in the human population is high. If we assume that 20 % of the population die of cancer and that 80 % of cancers are fatal then in this population of military personal then 15441 will have get cancer over their lifetime regardless of their exposure at Chernobyl.

So we would be looking at a population with a total of 15781 cases of cancer, the ESD on this will be 125. If we were to take a population of 61762 unexposed men then we can expect 15441 cases of cancer (ESD on this number is 124). Now the sum of the two ESDs is about 249 which is smaller than the expected difference between the two populations, so I would conclude that it might be possible over their lifetimes to see a difference in the cancer rates between the military who worked at Chernobyl in 1986 and members of the military who were stationed elsewhere.

It will be important to use a control group which is well matched to the exposed group in terms of smoking habits, diet, social back ground, drinking habits, sexual habits and other things. If you were to expose a bunch of hard drinking smoking womanizing soldiers to radiation then it would be wrong to compare them with a group of teetotal non smoking monks as a control group.

Already a large group exists in which a health effect caused by Chernobyl can be seen, this is thyroid cancer in children. If we consider two areas of Belarus (Gomel and Mogilev) then we can see a difference. In Gomel the thyroid doses of children which occurred back in 1986 were estimated to be larger than they were in Mogilev. From the UN report I have seen data for 27463 children from Gomel and 4548 from the less exposed Mogilev area.

In the years 1986 to 1989 then Gomel had nine cases of childhood thyroid cancer (the ESD on this is 3, and it was about 6 cases per year per million children. While the Mogilev area had no cases of this disease. However over the time 1991 to 1994 there were 138 cases in Gomel (ESD 11.7 and it was about 140 cases per year per million children). So it is clear that the condition has become more common.

However the data for Mogilev for 1991 to 1994 suggests that only 16 cases occur per year per million children which shows that the higher the thyroid dose the greater the health effect is. This dose response dose makes the hypothesis that the radioactive iodine from Chernobyl causes thyroid cancer to be more convincing.

These reliable statistics do allow an intelligent discussion of how safe an energy system is, these are far better than using a single case in which it is not clear what was the cause of the observed effect. I have not included data for all energy systems, to do so would require me to work for weeks on end on a single blog entry. One adverse outcome from the use of coal / oil and gas which is being considered as length is climatic change.

I think that the Chernobyl accident is at the top of the scale of what can happen, I think that the passive and active features of better reactor designs will limit the consequences of reactor accident to a smaller accident, I am involved in work which is designed to reduce further the consequences of a reactor accident. I would also say that with better designs than a RBMK1000 the likelihood of serious core damage is lower which also makes a reactor safer.

In the case of the thyroid cancer this effect can be designed out of a plant, it is noteworthy that the release of iodine to the outside world can be suppressed by the use of a sodium thiosulfate filled scrubber, this safety feature is fitted to all power reactors in Sweden. Like a Volvo a Swedish nuclear plant is designed to be crash worthy. One of these days I may well blog about the scrubber of a light water reactor.

It is important to judge a technology based on the modern product or system which is being offered rather than making your choice based on yesteryear’s model, I note that the Fukushima boiling water reactors were very old models (The Ford model T of the nuclear world) so it is not reasonable to judge the latest power reactor designs based on the old designs. I would also say that a need exists to retrofit old units or replace them to improve their crash worthiness, the first major modification I would add would be a wet scrubber between the containment and the stack.

I would have also included passive hydrogen recombiners in the containments and reactor buildings at Fukushima. While these do not slow down the core damage or the radioactivity release into the containment, they do improve worker safety during the reactor accident. The likelihood of a hydrogen explosion or fire is reduced which eliminates one threat to the workers and also helps to keep buildings in a good condition.

S Phillips and her ideas about radiation

Dear Reader,

I have noticed in recent times a disturbing movement within some parts of society, I was talking one night on the train to a philosopher about some of the trends in post modernism. One of the political problems which some elements are having with science is the fact that science is not a democracy. It does not matter how many people hold a point of view, it does not make it any more right (or wrong) if a vast number of people hold a point of view.

My legal advisor has told me on countless times on one large internet forum (a virtual society) that in the legal advice section it is common for a person to come with a legal query regarding a case which they are involved in. For example a person might be parking without permission or other legal authority on another persons land. The person goes to the legal issues section and then they tend to present their case. What often happens is that a group of people with legal training (law students, police officers and lawyers) often dispense free advice on the case. But then other people with less understanding of the law start to make suggestions which are totally opposite to the broad consensus offered by the true legal experts. It does not matter how many armchair judges or barrack room lawyers offer the same outlandish opinion, it is still often deeply wrong.

In a recent document an American woman named Sarah Phillips wrote the following about the serious nuclear accident at Fukushima in Japan.

“Measuring radiation exposure and absorbed dose requires specific, often hard-to-access technologies, and laypersons are dependent on experts and their expert knowledge for interpretation of these measurements. Individuals’ ability to know and assess their risks is severely curtailed when expert knowledge—produced by agents usually beholden to states and powerful industrial interests—is the only form of knowledge recognized as valid, even as states and industry intentionally withhold information on hazards and their biological effects. Meanwhile, embodied self-knowledge is discredited.”

I have to agree that the measurement of radiation and radioactivity does require specialist equipment and some training to understand the numbers or other indications which the device spits out. But I have to point out that I think that Cresson Kearny was right when he wrote his book and suggested that the general public could be given the radiological (and other) training required to survive world war three and to minimize their radiation exposure.

Cresson even reports that members of the general public are able to build radiation meters successfully.

While some people might find Cresson’s book, his reasoning and suggestion that a sizeable fraction of the American population could survive a nuclear war by means of “do it yourself” protective measures to be outlandish or offensive, I have to say that his efforts to empower the general public by sharing knowledge and skills with them is more noble than the efforts of others to scare the general public out of their wits while making sure that they remain as ignorant as possible.

In contrast the writings of Sarah Phillips do have the potential to spread misinformation. In her publication “half-lives and healthy bodies” she wrote of dietary countermeasures which protect against internal contamination. While I have to admit that it is possible to take dietary measures to reduce a person’s exposure to radioactivity and even to decontaminate a person’s innards, sadly she failed to consider for a moment if these radioprotective substances are effective.

Being an academic brings some moral responsibility, I hold the view that it is immoral to promote an ineffective treatment or prophylaxis for a medical problem while either a perfectly effective protective or curative measure exists. For example it would be wrong for me to teach my students that staring at the moon is an effective prophylaxis against either catching HIV or getting the common cold.

If Dr Phillips is not intending to endorse these products, I suggest that she alters her language to indicate that she does not promote the use of this product. I see nothing wrong with Dr Phillips reporting the behavior and attitudes of members of the public, but I do hold the view that it is poor academic practice for an anthropologist to blindly accept the ideas, actions and belief systems of their subjects.

In one of her essays about Chernobyl she makes the statement “Intake of radionuclides is said to leach the bones of calcium, making the exposed person more susceptible to fractures and breaks.”, later in the footnotes of her essay she makes reference to the comments made by the family of a single man, surely this far from a statistically significant answer. I would be more happy if she would base her views on a larger sample.

Another example regards nose bleeds and radiation. In one paper she states that during the early days of the accident that the dose rate outside a child’s home was 1.5 microsieverts per hour. The child was reported in the article to have suffered from nosebleeds. While the paper does not state that the radiation exposure caused the nosebleeds it does imply that a link exists between the two when the nosebleeds are first mentioned. Later in the section entitled “I am not a doctor but I know my children are sick” the text of the paper implies that for political reasons the state employed medical doctors are unwilling or unable to diagnose an aliment as being related to radiation exposure.

The mother association of the nosebleeds with the Fukushima nuclear reactor accident may well be an example of a confirmation bias. The woman is likely to already holds the view that radiation exposure is harmful to health (this is true) and that small exposures can cause short term acute (deterministic) effects (which is untrue). But she views the nosebleeds of her daughter as evidence which supports her belief that the small radiation exposure causes acute adverse health effects.

During a 1980s serious radiological accident, some of the exposed persons were initially thought to be suffering from food poisoning. This misdiagnosis may well be due to a confirmation bias, both the patients and medical staff are likely to have assumed that their nausea, vomiting and other digestive system disturbances were due to food poisoning because they would have associated such symptoms with bad food because of past experiences.

An alternative explanation for the failure of the medical doctor to attribute the nosebleeds to radiation exposure is that the medical doctor, who is likely to be more rational and emotionally detached, in the absence of evidence of a radiation injury offers an explanation which in their professional opinion is more likely to be correct.

While a large radiation exposure can cause blood abnormalities which include a decrease in the ability of the blood to clot, such gross blood abnormalities require an exposure of at least 1 gray of gamma/beta radiation delivered over a short time. In common with drunkenness a dose of radiation above a threshold dose is required to induce the very serious effects observed after large exposures. For an acute (short term) radiation (or alcohol) effect the larger dose the greater the probability that a person will experience a given effect, and the greater the dose the more intense the symptom will be.

As the dose rate which the child was exposed to was 1.5 microgray per hour a total of 76 years of exposure at this low dose rate would be required to inflict a dose of 1 gray on the child. Clearly it is not possible for the child to have even approached 10 % of the threshold dose for these blood abnormalities. Also it is noteworthy that a series of self repair processes exist in living organisms which repair the sublethal damage imposed by radiation before it can accumulate to a lethal level. The effects of these self repair mechanisms have been observed in humans, dogs and cell cultures. These self repair mechanisms greatly reduce the ability of radiation to kill or cause a localized injury, in general the longer the time required to deliver the dose the smaller the ability of the radiation to cause injury. In short it is not possible for the radiation exposure caused by the Fukushima accident to have caused the nosebleeds.

While one may sympathize (I do) with the Japanese people affected by the Fukushima accident it is important to remain objective, while it is reasonable and correct to write “the mother of the child holds the view that the child’s nosebleeds were caused by radioactive contamination from the Fukushima accident”, to blindly accept the beliefs of others as truths is wrong.

This can be expressed in a different way, if a person was to work on the sociology of religion a person might interview a Roman Catholic nun about her attitudes towards her faith. She is likely to express the view that her praying to God helps to make the world a better place. While the nun is likely to sincerely believe this it is not reasonable to an academic to blindly endorse the nun’s beliefs.

Now back to antiradioactivity food additives.

I suspect that the distributed production of apple pectin and other similar homemade natural preparations is more politically correct to those who reject “the establishment” than the centralized production of medical grade Prussian Blue by a few large suppliers. The act of choosing and making a “natural remedy” against radioactivity might make a person feel empowered, but this sense of empowerment would be based on false hope which has been sold to the general public. The fact that a large number of people might think that these anti radiation foods are effective does not render these foods any more effective. I strongly hold the view that scientific knowledge is not some social construct which might be agreed upon by a group (or mob) of people.

I know from a friend that the production of good quality cesium removing Prussian Blue is not easy, my friend who is a professional chemist told me that each batch he made was different. Now I think that the general public (and a small company) is unlikely to be able to cope with the difficulties of being able to make such a medical product. As a result its production should be entrusted to a large centralized facility which would have the ability to make and supply a product which works.

I find it interesting that she claims that an effort is being made to conceal the truth, firstly I think that this is a potentially libelous statement and is a very nasty innuendo to smear others with. To recklessly or maliciously suggest that a person in authority is trying to endanger the general public in this way is about as bad as suggesting that Dr Thomas John Barnardo is the biggest killer of children since King Herod.

If she is trying to raise up an angry mob then I would like to suggest to her that she presents some hard and convincing evidence to back up her claim of “states and industry intentionally withhold information on hazards and their biological effects”. If her evidence is convincing then I suspect that many more people (including radioactivity workers) would speak out and join her campaign. If she has evidence then who better to share it with than me.

About the “embodied self-knowledge is discredited” comment, I have been advised by the philosopher that in the humanities the academics tend not to use the additive approach used commonly in the sciences where the literature from the past is built on.

If she is so concerned about the discreditment of knowledge then why does she fail to mention the opposing argument of the experts (She calls them “agents usually beholden to states and powerful industrial interests“) which she disagrees with. In her article on Socratic method Linda Elder she comments on “Intellectual empathy” and she considers the question of “Can I summarise the views of my opponents to their satisfaction? Can I see insights in the views of others and prejudices in my own?” as part of list of traits which she thinks students (and I assume academics) should adopt.

A further deep problem is that much of what the general public “know” about radiation and radioactivity is false or misleading. Much of their radiological education has been through the mass media. The mass media has a series of incentives, such as newspaper sales and cinema box-office revenues, which can reward lurid and spectacular material in which some effects are exaggerated while other, less photogenic or dramatic effects, are either ignored or minimized.

A survey of newspaper reporting of hazards in the UK and Sweden revealed that the newspapers were more likely to print alarmist reports rather than reassuring reports, and that these reports rarely employed statistics to express the degree of risk.

An example from fiction is in the Nevil Shute novel “On the Beach” which describes a future after a large scale nuclear exchange. The exponential decay of the radioisotopes in the fallout is ignored. During the long time which would be required for the radioactive particles to be transported by wind from the northern hemisphere to Australia many of the radioisotopes would have decayed away. Using simple mathematics it is possible to calculate the decay of the radioactivity, for those who do not wish to repeat the calculation a suitable example of such results was published by T. Imanaka et. al. It is patently clear that during the time required for the fallout to arrive in Australia that the intensity of the radioactivity would decrease and the population would have time to construct shelters to further reduce their exposure. A version of “on the beach” where members of the public were to enjoy the benefits of this decrease in radioactivity level during the transport of the fallout who also protect themselves using sheltering and some behavioral modifications would be unlikely to be as entertaining as the version of the “On the Beach” which was published.

A more recent example of a deep flaw in popular culture is in the 2006 television series Jericho, in this Robert Hawkins dons a plastic suit and goes out as heavy fallout from a very recent nuclear detonation arrives in the town. During this time the other residents of the town are sheltering in places such as mines. While the plastic suit might have protected Robert Hawkins from inhaling or otherwise absorbing radioactivity, the majority of the radiation from the fallout would have penetrated the plastic suit and delivered its energy into his body. Here the entertainment industry ignores the considerable threat which would be likely to cause a mortal injury. It is likely that the more complex and insidious threat from internal contamination is more captivating for the general public than the simpler but greater threat in this exposure scenario due to external exposure.

I have to ask should Dr Phillips trust the generally misinformed general public over people who have had some specialist training in the subject ? The thing is that science is not a democracy, it does not matter how many people say that “2 + 2 = 5” it is still wrong. Even if Chalmers students and people who passed their GCSE in maths (Who I suspect have a good or at least reasonable understanding of maths) are in a minority the equation “2 + 2 = 5” is still wrong.

I hope that people do not misunderstand me, I would be glad for people like Dr Phillips to write about the social issues associated with nuclear technology. I just want them to write the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I also want them to avoid writing incorrect things on the subject.

If for a moment they feel unhappy about being required not to write “incorrect things” then I suggest that they consider the Mark Foreman book of english history (A spoof book thank goodness), here is a short part of the book.

[nonsense]King Henry the 8th had jack the ripper hung drawn and quartered. He also opened an institute devoted to women’s rights, he also had afternoon tea with both the pope and Martin Luther King on a regular basis. He was keen to encourage the Americans to declare independence and become an independent country (USA)[/nonsense]

I imagine that any history student will be unhappy about this nonsense book (Trust me I will not print such rubbish), in the same way I get unhappy about nonsense on matters of science and technology. By the way I have told Dr Phillips about this article but she has chosen not to discuss the matter with me privately.

Fukushima water leak

Dear Reader,

It has come to my attention that a tank holding radioactive waste water at Fukushima has been leaking,

The story is that workers found leak from a tank and a puddle of water which was about 9 square meters (1 to 2 cm deep) which had leaked, this was found to be radioactive. This water was contained inside a dyke and had not started to flow into the sea. A second puddle was found outside the dyke (3 square meters and 1 cm deep). This was in the H4 area.

This water was found to be radioactive, it had 46 Bq of Cs-134 per cubic cm, 100 Bq of Cs-137 per cubic cm, 1.2 Bq Co-60 per cubic cm, 1.9 Bq of Mn-54 per cubic cm, 71 Bq of Sb-125 per cubic cm, 80 kBq of total beta activity per cubic cm and it contained 5200 ppm of chloride per litre.

In this area TEPCO workers measured dose rates of 6 mSv per hour in a drainage channel.

TEPCO workers also found a pair of leaks in the H3 area near a tank where the worst dose rate was 100 mSv per hour. Later radioactive water was found in drainage channel B (0.15 Bq of Cs-137 per cubic cm) this is near the H4 area. A set of diagrams of the tank farms and the drainage channels can be seen here.

The cesium level in the water leaking from the tank farms is much lower than the water which is flowing out of the reactor buildings, according to a recent report the water in the central radioactive waste treatment buildings is in the range of 55000 to 28000 Bq of Cs-137 per cubic cm. After the cesium removal plant the water only has 5 or fewer Bq of Cs-137 per cubic cm.

The radioactivity levels suggest one of two things is happening, either the leak is a very new leak which and the radioactivity has not had a chance to percolate out into the drainage channel which flows into the sea. Alternatively the soil is acting as a filter for the radioactivity, this could account for the much lower radioactivity level in the ditch water which is flowing to the sea.

What is needed in the long term are details of how well the soil on the site binds to cesium and also the cesium absorption capacity of the soil. When I know more I will provide you with my thoughts on what is happening. But always bear in mind that when radioactive cesium is a problem clay can often be your best friend.

On of the key parameters needed to understand how well the clay will trap radioactivity is the Kd value, to understand Kd please look at this post about plutonium in spanish soil. Also do bear in mind that not all clays are equally good at catching cesium for details of some different clays please see here.

Mud in Fukushima

Dear Reader,

It has come to my attention that mud at the bottom of swimming pools at Fukushima has been found to contain cesium. A film has appeared on another blog which claims to be a reading of the work of a Masakazu Honda. In this film and the text it points out that the mud at the bottom contains lots of cesium while the film suggests that nothing was noted when the water was tested.

This is perfectly reasonable in terms of chemistry, I have been saying since the accident occurred that the cesium will stick to soil minerals. I would say that it is important to consider both the water in the pools and the mud at the bottom. I think that the best thing might be to use a swimming pool vacuum cleaner to suck out the mud. The mud will then have to be sent away as radioactive waste. It may be best to condition the mud with cement (plus put it into plastic drums) before sending it away as these actions will make a release of radioactive muck less likely during transport.

The cement will not bind the cesium, but it will hold the radioactive soil particles in a solid which will not form mobile dust. The best thing may be to put the waste into a waste store. If this is left for 300 years then the cesium will decay away and the drums will be giant paperweights.

Be careful of two groups of people, one lot to watch out for are the professional doomsayers. They seem to be unable or unwilling to find a real and useful job and then they make their money by scaring the wits out of people. They will tell you that the Fukushima accident has extinguished all hope and that there is nothing which we can do to protect ourselves or clean up our environment. The second lot are those who claim that there is absolutely nothing to worry about and that you should ignore the results of the Fukushima accident. My advice is do not trust either of these “friends”, they are false friends who will lead you into different but equally bad places.

The age of the earth and where I have been

Dear Reader,

I suspect that some of my regular readers have noticed that I have not been blogging for a while. The reason why I have stopped blogging for a while is that I am in the process of writing a book. I saw something on UK TV today which is an outrage, it is the idea that the earth is only about 6000 years old.

Now while freedom of thought and speech allows people to hold and express what ever ideas they have, even the outlandish and odd ones ! But the idea that the earth is only 6000 years old is deeply disturbing and clearly wrong !

I heard one of the young earth creationists being told by a geoscientist about radioactive dating of rocks and minerals. The creationist said something to the effect of “how do you know when the clock was zeroed”. I know that in Africa many years ago a natural nuclear reactor operated. Some of the fission products such as Tc-99 have decayed away. This suggests that far more than 6000 years has passed since the reactors were in operation.

I will leave it up to my readers to look up the half life for Tc-99 and work out how long it will take for 90 % of the Tc-99 to decay to Ru-99. Think of it as homework.

Different reports on the same subject

Dear Reader,

In recent times we have had the first serious nuclear accident of the internet age, I am not sure why it is the internet age. The ‘ages’ were named after the materials used to make typical tools.

Stone age : Stone axes

Bronze age : Bronze swords made of a Cu / Sn alloy

Iron age : Iron ploughs

Then later the industrial age came, then we had the atomic age, the space age and then the internet age. My big problem is that for the majority of tools which we use in our lives we do not use atomic (nuclear), space or internet tools to do things like open cans of dog food or dig our gardens. For opening pet food cans and tending the vegetable patch I still use tools based on iron (steel).

While a nuclear powered digging machine or a space satellite which zaps the weeds might make life a little more easy (assuming you can afford to buy it) I think we will be sticking with steel spades and can openers for the forseeable future.

But I think that we do need to move onto something else. Recently a series of different reports have been published about the Fukushima event in Japan. Greenpeace have published a report as have the Japanese government and also Jon. M. Schwantes et. al. in the journal Environmental Science and Technology (DOI: 10.1021/es300556m) have published a paper in which they use the isotope signature of the accident to probe the event. In common with many things it is not always possible to make a direct measurement from samples which can be taken by hand, instead other measurements were used.

Now before we get going I will saw that it is impossible to have a single report which deals with a complex event in perfect detail. The problem is that if we examine one aspect of an event in great detail (using a state of the art study which includes as many details as possible) then this report is likely to become very large and close to impossible to read. If we then couple together a series of sections with a similar level of detail on all the different aspects of the event then we will end up with a wall of words which is impossible to comprehend.

Greenpeace have written about a recent Japanese report that

“The lethally high levels of radiation still present in the damaged reactors have prevented committee members from conducting a full analysis. They should be given all the time they need to complete their investigation.”

While the Japanese writers of the big government report stated that their mandate was

1. To investigate the direct and indirect causes of the Tokyo Electric Power Company Fukushima nuclear power plant accident that occurred on March 11, 2011 in conjunction with the Great East Japan Earthquake.

2. To investigate the direct and indirect causes of the damage sustained from the above accident.

3. To investigate and verify the emergency response to both the accident and the consequential damage; to verify the sequence of events and actions taken; to assess the effectiveness of the emergency response.

4. To investigate the history of decisions and approval processes regarding existing nuclear policies and other related matters.

5. To recommend measures to prevent nuclear accidents and any consequential damage based on the findings of the above investigations. The recommendations shall include assessments of essential nuclear policies and the structure of related administrative organizations.

6. To conduct the necessary administrative functions necessary for carrying out the above activities.

I have highlighted in bold the part which interests me most as a chemist, the Japanese panel  also stated that they would not undertake a series of actions which included.

“investigations that would require on-site visits to reactors with dangerous levels of radioactivity.“

My understanding is that they have chosen quite wisely to avoid either waiting for a full examination of the reactor sites (which will take decades) or rushing into a dangerous area to gather data. My view is that samples collected from outside the reactor buildings, eye witnesses from the site, data from those sensors inside the plant which continued to work together with details which can be obtained from undamaged BWR plants. I see the problem of the clash of two cultures.

The scientific and engineering communities are seeking to get the best quality report which is correct, the speed of publication of the report is a secondary factor. In these communities it is better to delay the publication of a report if the delay will allow the quality to be improved. Also the answer has to be traceable, the computational methods used, the persons who did the work, the devices used and the samples used all have to be documented clearly in this type of work.

On the other hand the newspapers and many of the green NGOs (like Greenpeace) are aiming for speed of publication as their highest priority. In these reports the things which were used to produce the final answer are often not as traceable. What is interesting is when both the rapid publication of people like Greenpeace agrees with the slower and more thorough investigation which goes into the official reports. I would say that it is important to avoid being caught by statements by “The findings of both these reports match closely with the Lessons
from Fukushima report released by Greenpeace in February” in a trap where you think that both reports are the same.

The Greenpeace report has some similarities with and some differences from the Japanese government report, but I would say that neither report deals at length with the containment chemistry and the radiochemistry of the accident. I am unsure of what Greenpeace would be hoping for in an extended report which might be written in 20 years time when the insides of the containments have been fully explored. I think that a main part of the final purpose of the examination of the reactor buildings will be to determine what chemical and physical effects occurred during and after the accident.

The Greenpeace report is more dominated by photographs which relate loosely to the event, I am unsure why it is important in a report of 52 pages to include devote ten pages to photographs of things like wrecked buildings with very little explanation of what is going on in the photograph. For example on page 28 a whole page is devoted to a person holding a pair of radiation meters in a field. There are a series of important questions which are not answered in the text such as “what level of radioactivity has the person found in the field”, “what is the testing protocol” and “what is the date of the measurement”. I hold the view that the report should be written in a way to make these things clear rather than forcing the reader to dig deeply in a series of documents for the answers.

The Japanese government report is much more text and far fewer pictures in the main body of the text than the Greenpeace report, towards the end a lot of data is presented in appendix in the form of graphs. These graphs include things like the fraction of the public who were aware at a given time of some key events. While graphs might be less eye catching than photographs, I hold the view that a well labeled graph is a better way to communicate an idea to another person than a photograph which has little if any commentary in the caption.

The problem I see is that if I show 100 people a photograph with very little writing in the caption then a danger exists that each of the 100 people will interpret it in a different way, while in recent years there has been a backlash against science made by people like the postmodernists. Some people value their “feelings” above everything else and express the view that a series of different interpretations of the same evidence are equally valid, I have to disagree. Firstly there is no such thing as an impartial observer (Read the section of the Alan Chalmers book “Whats this thing called science” on induction for more details).

Secondly some interpretations of evidence are deeply wrong, for example if I was photographed by an alien (who has no knowledge of pet ownership) while walking my dog in the forest the aliens might think (based on the photograph) that I am some sort of cruel person who enslaves small white animals and chains them up. While this interpretation might fit the evidence in the photograph it is deeply flawed.

As a result I think that a report which is dominated by photographs which do not have a clear set of captions explaining what is going on is not a good report. But a report which uses the same amount of space for graphs and figures which bear captions which explain all the key points does communicate in a better way with the reader.

The comment that Greenpeace made of “The lethally high levels of radiation still present in the damaged reactors have prevented committee members from conducting a full analysis. They should be given all the time they need to complete their investigation.” suggests to me that Greenpeace want the Japanese government report to be a comprehensive report which deals with all aspects of the event. It might even be understood as Greenpeace suggesting that their report is more comprehensive.

I have read both reports and I can say that some rather important things are missing from both reports. Neither report mentions the transfer of cesium from soil to plants and then to humans via the food supply. I hold a view that this is an important issue, depending on the soil chemistry, the biology of the food production system and what countermeasures are taken the cesium in the diet is either going to be a small issue or a large issue. Also neither report gives a detailed list of the radionuclides released from the reactors and the amounts which were in the cores during the accident.

One of the best reports on this issue is the paper by J.M. Schwantes et. al., this paper uses the relative amounts of the different radionuclides in soil samples taken from Japan to work out what happened inside the cores of the damaged units.

This paper concludes

1. Volatility dictated by temperature and reduction potential dictated the fraction of the radioisotopes which were released.

2. All coolant was likely to have evaporated by the time the containments were vented.

3. The damage to the fuel was extensive.

4. The vast majority of the less volatile elements such as plutonium, niobium and strontium were contained within the reactors.

In the paper it has been calculated that the ratio of released cesium to plutonium from the Fukushima event was 100000 : 3 which suggests that the Fukushima event was far closer to a pure cesium / iodine release than the Chernobyl event was. The cesium to plutonium ratio for Chernboyl was about 10 : 1. I had from an early time made this prediction as the Chernobyl and Fukushima events were very different types of accident. One was a power surge while the other was overheating.

The most interesting thing in this paper is the graph of soil activity / reactor inventory against the oxygen potential of the dominate oxide form. This graph suggests that the more thermodynamically stable the oxide is then the less of the element will be emitted. The good news from this graph is that worst elements (plutonium) will not be emitted. The only problem is that the graph has some points which are a long way from the trend line.

More barium was released than this graph suggests while less ruthenium and silver was released than this simple model suggests. I think that I can explain why less ruthenium was released, the most easy ways to release ruthenium are either as fuel particles (which did not happen at Fukushima) or as ruthenium tetoxide which would not form as the reactors stayed under reducing conditions during the accident.

Dose estimates

Dear Reader,

I have found an interesting document which is on the subject of the atomic bomb tests done years ago down under in Auz. Now before we get going, I do not want to get dragged into a debate regarding the rights / wrongs of nuclear bombs or the moral issues associated with bombs and their testing. What we will be dealing with here is just the reported facts.

A document has been released some time ago by the Australian government which gives estimates of the radiation doses which Australians were exposed to as a result of the bomb tests there.

What is interesting is that the doses are quite low, if the data in the document is true then the vast majority of the Australians were exposed to low doses of radiation. But before we look at the dose estimates lets look at what the current UK limits are.

The 1999 law (1999 Ionising Radiations Regulations) set the following yearly limits

20 mSv Radiation worker

6 mSv Trainees aged between 16 and 18

1 mSv The general public

While the 1980s Ionising Radiations Regulations set the upper limit for a radiation worker at 50 mSv per year.

If we look at table 7.27 in the report from down under we will see the results.

A. 78.9 % of the people involved had doses which were lower than the current UK limit for the general public (1 mSv). I hold the view that this low dose of less than 1 mSv is nothing to worry about.

B. Only about 4 % of people are in the above 20 mSv group, these are doses which would break current UK law for a radiation worker.

C. Very few people (19 people, 0.2 %) are in the above 50 mSv group. These doses are above the yearly limit in the 1990s for radiation workers.

D. About 6.3 % of the people had unknown doses, in some ways this is the most interesting and more worrisome group. Most of these people were in the Royal Australian Air Force.

What would be very interesting is if an alternative set of dose estimates or measurements exist from the same bomb tests. By the way if dose estimates get you angry, do not get mad at either me (I did not make the dose estimates) or someone else but do feel free to point out other dose estimates which you think are more trustworthy.