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DCFusor
Yellow Jacket
Right, different problem, but using the oceans as an open sewer is the big-picture problem. Seems we are overcoming its ability to self-purify.
I'd avoid bottom feeders (shrimp and others) anyway, they tend to be the most contaminated with whatever is out there. Always have. I have noticed the quality of even canned tuna take a turn for the worse - a lot - over the last decade anyway, and kind of cut it out of my diet, it just doesn't look and smell like good food anymore, which is enough reason for me.
I'd avoid bottom feeders (shrimp and others) anyway, they tend to be the most contaminated with whatever is out there. Always have. I have noticed the quality of even canned tuna take a turn for the worse - a lot - over the last decade anyway, and kind of cut it out of my diet, it just doesn't look and smell like good food anymore, which is enough reason for me.
ancona
Praying Mantis
The only tuna I consume is caught by my crews when we do our annual pilgrimage to the South Atlantic to work on Ascension Auxiliary Air Field on Ascension Island. We historically catch between 1500 - 2000 pounds of big eye and yellow fin tuna. We freeze it and each man can bring back an 'estimated' 50 pounds. The estimating is done by someone that for some reason, never seems to run out of tuna. ;-)
I stopped eating Gulf seafood after BP poisoned the entire center of it with toxic chemicals and crude oil. Actually, that oil volcano is still pissing out oil. It never completely stopped. In addition, several abandoned wellheads nearby are spitting out oil as well. Part of the BP funded investigation talked about how the gulf ecosystem has been dealing with oil seeps for millenia, so their little nary release was just a flyspeck on an elephants ass or something to that effect. They completely failed to include anything about the Corexit and how it decimated reds, shrimp, dolphins, turtles, and microscopic plankton in what is now thousands of square miles of gulf water from teh surface to the seabed.
I stopped eating Gulf seafood after BP poisoned the entire center of it with toxic chemicals and crude oil. Actually, that oil volcano is still pissing out oil. It never completely stopped. In addition, several abandoned wellheads nearby are spitting out oil as well. Part of the BP funded investigation talked about how the gulf ecosystem has been dealing with oil seeps for millenia, so their little nary release was just a flyspeck on an elephants ass or something to that effect. They completely failed to include anything about the Corexit and how it decimated reds, shrimp, dolphins, turtles, and microscopic plankton in what is now thousands of square miles of gulf water from teh surface to the seabed.
I love tuna. Never had to worry about one killing me before. Kind of ironic that the ocean is going to get even with us for dumping in it. This is going to work way better than birth control on keeping the population down, which is actually kind of terrifying. 
ancona
Praying Mantis
Super typhoon Fransisco is headed for Japan next week. It has winds exceeding 160mph with gusts to 195. Hopefully this monster doesn't go near Fuku.
DCFusor
Yellow Jacket
It's a matter of flow, not amount. It's actually true that the ridiculously porous formation under the Gulf has leaked far more than BP's wells - but it took millions of years, where they did it in a few weeks.
Flow rate...Where have I heard that before?
And that's not counting a few other sources that are at least as deadly, that haven't popped up to spook us (and maybe kill us fast) yet. Have any idea how much methane is tied up in clathrates undersea that could all just decide to be released at once in some earthquake, or warming event?
It's not all in nice, safe places, by far. And there's enough that there's plenty interest in mining the stuff if someone can figure out a way to do it without just losing it all to the atmosphere. It's a reasonable bet that this explains "the bermuda triangle" effects - methane poisoning when a little was dislodged undersea and boaters either breathed it or ignited it.
Same issue with Fukushima, really. We all get some sv of rad exposure in a life, it's a matter of rate - are you getting damage faster than the natural mechanisms can repair it.
Note on the xkcd chart - a lot of it is now due to our modern medicine system and flying. But also, we old farts grew up during the decay of all the nuclear fallout from atmospheric weapons testing, and it's only now getting back to normal (the longer lived stuff has a tendency to get buried, the short has largely decayed already). During my youth, background (external) and internal consumption of radioactive stuff was about double what it is now!
As I get older, the bad habits that used to not matter to my health (at least as far as I could tell - I'd quit for awhile and nothing would change) - now really matter, as my bod just can't repair the damage as fast anymore, everything takes longer to heal.
Example - I just went from being a pretty hard smoker (3 pack/day) to vaping, and it's about the same nicotine as before. But I instantly (literally, the next day) went from coughing for half an hour in the morning to kick out the phlegm - to the point of seeing spots or tossing cookies - to nothing, just from the difference in the damage due to things other than nicotine in cigarettes. In two weeks (and it's a struggle, as there are other strange habits I have to lose, like always having a lighter in my hand) - my lung capacity has gone up to where I no longer have to pause at each flight of stairs.
When I was 30 - half my current age - quit for two years and no change noticed at all, wound up starting again.
You might never have worried about tuna, but it's long been a risk for mercury, the worst sort - methyl-Hg, as it concentrates up the food chain and tuna are pretty near the top. End result, you wind up a little brain damaged - mad hatter syndrome (but in this case mercury, not arsenic). It's just that now you know the risks. Or some of them - I don't yet have data on whether the tuna is "hot" the other way yet. It's a fairly safe bet it'll be getting hotter worldwide over the next few years, though, as everything (including what the tuna eat, and what that eats, going on down the chain) gets mixed at a rate we don't fully know.
Remember, our current long life expectancy is a fairly new thing in history - we used to accept that most people a little after 65 (is it a coincidence that was the retirement year for SS not all that many generations ago?). We may simply be returning to the norm - it seems to be the case in the US, we are no longer seeing the increase like we used to. We just substituted one set of evils for another set. Not that the norm was good - just normal.
I'll not attempt to be an apologist for any of this stuff - just trying to input some perspective as I see it.
Flow rate...Where have I heard that before?
And that's not counting a few other sources that are at least as deadly, that haven't popped up to spook us (and maybe kill us fast) yet. Have any idea how much methane is tied up in clathrates undersea that could all just decide to be released at once in some earthquake, or warming event?
It's not all in nice, safe places, by far. And there's enough that there's plenty interest in mining the stuff if someone can figure out a way to do it without just losing it all to the atmosphere. It's a reasonable bet that this explains "the bermuda triangle" effects - methane poisoning when a little was dislodged undersea and boaters either breathed it or ignited it.
Same issue with Fukushima, really. We all get some sv of rad exposure in a life, it's a matter of rate - are you getting damage faster than the natural mechanisms can repair it.
Note on the xkcd chart - a lot of it is now due to our modern medicine system and flying. But also, we old farts grew up during the decay of all the nuclear fallout from atmospheric weapons testing, and it's only now getting back to normal (the longer lived stuff has a tendency to get buried, the short has largely decayed already). During my youth, background (external) and internal consumption of radioactive stuff was about double what it is now!
As I get older, the bad habits that used to not matter to my health (at least as far as I could tell - I'd quit for awhile and nothing would change) - now really matter, as my bod just can't repair the damage as fast anymore, everything takes longer to heal.
Example - I just went from being a pretty hard smoker (3 pack/day) to vaping, and it's about the same nicotine as before. But I instantly (literally, the next day) went from coughing for half an hour in the morning to kick out the phlegm - to the point of seeing spots or tossing cookies - to nothing, just from the difference in the damage due to things other than nicotine in cigarettes. In two weeks (and it's a struggle, as there are other strange habits I have to lose, like always having a lighter in my hand) - my lung capacity has gone up to where I no longer have to pause at each flight of stairs.
When I was 30 - half my current age - quit for two years and no change noticed at all, wound up starting again.
You might never have worried about tuna, but it's long been a risk for mercury, the worst sort - methyl-Hg, as it concentrates up the food chain and tuna are pretty near the top. End result, you wind up a little brain damaged - mad hatter syndrome (but in this case mercury, not arsenic). It's just that now you know the risks. Or some of them - I don't yet have data on whether the tuna is "hot" the other way yet. It's a fairly safe bet it'll be getting hotter worldwide over the next few years, though, as everything (including what the tuna eat, and what that eats, going on down the chain) gets mixed at a rate we don't fully know.
Remember, our current long life expectancy is a fairly new thing in history - we used to accept that most people a little after 65 (is it a coincidence that was the retirement year for SS not all that many generations ago?). We may simply be returning to the norm - it seems to be the case in the US, we are no longer seeing the increase like we used to. We just substituted one set of evils for another set. Not that the norm was good - just normal.
I'll not attempt to be an apologist for any of this stuff - just trying to input some perspective as I see it.
ancona
Praying Mantis
DC,
Actually my friend, you are the only person so far that has given ANY sincere and objective frame of reference to the whole Fukushima nightmare. Thanks for the voluminous input, without which I would not have a clear understanding of what is going on.
Someone needs to stop that Gunderson knucklehead, as well as Caldicott. They both are spewing nothing but fear wrapped in a PHD.
Actually my friend, you are the only person so far that has given ANY sincere and objective frame of reference to the whole Fukushima nightmare. Thanks for the voluminous input, without which I would not have a clear understanding of what is going on.
Someone needs to stop that Gunderson knucklehead, as well as Caldicott. They both are spewing nothing but fear wrapped in a PHD.
DCFusor
Yellow Jacket
"They both are spewing nothing but fear wrapped in a PHD."
Thanks - I might swipe that line, it's a great one. You seem to come up with them pretty often. Cheers, have one on me. On second thought, make it a double, you've earned it. And I haven't even read your latest rant yet.
I guess we old farts, who largely have already had more fun than the current batch ever will, have a little different take on all this. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it. Else all that education I subjected myself to has no meaning.:rotflmbo:
In my own case, a single digit % increase in likelihood of say, cancer 30-40 years from now means nothing - it'd have to reach into the grave to get me, gives one a bit of perspective, having lived through things like the Cuban missile crisis and others - yeah, I "prepped" a bomb shelter, even. Don't have kids myself, I feel sorry for the young, but these are only symptoms of the issues we create for them (and our ancestors for us) due to human nature, which sadly is never "different this time". At least not so far. We're still getting ready for the last war, and the wrong one, at that.
Thanks - I might swipe that line, it's a great one. You seem to come up with them pretty often. Cheers, have one on me. On second thought, make it a double, you've earned it. And I haven't even read your latest rant yet.
I guess we old farts, who largely have already had more fun than the current batch ever will, have a little different take on all this. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it. Else all that education I subjected myself to has no meaning.:rotflmbo:
In my own case, a single digit % increase in likelihood of say, cancer 30-40 years from now means nothing - it'd have to reach into the grave to get me, gives one a bit of perspective, having lived through things like the Cuban missile crisis and others - yeah, I "prepped" a bomb shelter, even. Don't have kids myself, I feel sorry for the young, but these are only symptoms of the issues we create for them (and our ancestors for us) due to human nature, which sadly is never "different this time". At least not so far. We're still getting ready for the last war, and the wrong one, at that.
they will simply redefine "fun". Foraging, gleaning, etc. My wife refuses to buy into the Catholic guilt thing about the kids. "Thats their life, this is ours." She certainly is solid in that belief.
edited to add: we call it paragliding, they simply call it running from raiders....
ancona
Praying Mantis
DCFusor Said:
I guess we old farts, who largely have already had more fun than the current batch ever will, have a little different take on all this. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it. Else all that education I subjected myself to has no meaning. :rotflmbo:
DC, the education thing might be something you were subjected to, but everything I have learned since 1979 I taught myself. I walked away from high school in my Junior Year and never looked back. I've learned foreign languages, calculus, construction estimating, engineering and more and I've done it by myself. We're the last of a generation where one could actually be an engineer without having to have a masters or bachelors degree from some school or another, and still be respected in the working community.
We only needed the skill.
I design and set up steam sparge units at leaking underground fuel tanks yet I have no degree. My plans are regularly stamped by the State of Florida not because I have a scrap of paper, they're stamped approved because I know what the fuck I am doing.......just like you, only without the scholastic underwriting.
I also perform industrial dismantlement on close-quarter projects where inches separate what goes with what stays. I've NEVER missed. I'll bet I could go to a meeting of fifty people and pick you out from the crowd, because you sound just like me!
I guess we old farts, who largely have already had more fun than the current batch ever will, have a little different take on all this. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it. Else all that education I subjected myself to has no meaning. :rotflmbo:
DC, the education thing might be something you were subjected to, but everything I have learned since 1979 I taught myself. I walked away from high school in my Junior Year and never looked back. I've learned foreign languages, calculus, construction estimating, engineering and more and I've done it by myself. We're the last of a generation where one could actually be an engineer without having to have a masters or bachelors degree from some school or another, and still be respected in the working community.
We only needed the skill.
I design and set up steam sparge units at leaking underground fuel tanks yet I have no degree. My plans are regularly stamped by the State of Florida not because I have a scrap of paper, they're stamped approved because I know what the fuck I am doing.......just like you, only without the scholastic underwriting.
I also perform industrial dismantlement on close-quarter projects where inches separate what goes with what stays. I've NEVER missed. I'll bet I could go to a meeting of fifty people and pick you out from the crowd, because you sound just like me!
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DCFusor
Yellow Jacket
I think you misread me a little. I said "subjected myself to" rather than "was subjected to".
I too, quit the formal education system early. I skipped out of high school, as while a sophomore, I was already a teaching assistant for senior physics/chem/bio, and was taught perfect standard English by my parents, and thus aced all the sats (800s*)...so I got an all-expenses-paid scholarship to a college, where the same thing happened - more or less, and I got a great job offer (6 figs in the early '70s was nothing to sneeze about) and left before graduating.
So I actually have no official schooling papers at all...I just learned on my own, because I wanted to know, and be able to do fun stuff. A lot more than those clowns would ever teach me I'm pretty sure, since I worked for them in college (like a grad student often does, but I wasn't even a grad), having them take credit for my work since they couldn't do it themselves.
As a result, I got "engineer", then "staff engineer" then "Veep of engineering" etc on my business cards. No one cared about stupid academic creds if you could do the stuff, and I could and did.
Now if I bothered with cards, I guess I'd put "owner, and philosopher-king" on them, or "chief scientist" or whatever. I earned it the hard way - school of hard knocks. But that was easier for this free spriit than bowing down to some "teacher" with half my brains on a subject I already knew more about than he, or even if less. I don't respond well to attempts at subjugation. I've been lucky, though, to have had some key mentors. Totally different deal.
I've never gotten a good job from a place where I hit HR first. Always through some other person at a firm that I met some way, who decided they should hire me, and then and only then did HR get their grubby little hands on the real truth - but by then, it never mattered. I was hired already.
Which is a good thing. I find it hard to lie about having 5 years experience in junk that's only existed for 3, the kind of thing they often demand, or go for ridiculous certifications that are narrowly focused on some outfit's current product line.
We are probably the last of those who could pull that off, other than those, now famous for skipping out early to do some startup that was hugely successful - I'm sure that most who skip out who try, don't achieve that status, or keep it if they do, it's about as rare as winning a lottery. Actually, more rare, I only need one hand to count all I know of. I lacked the social and financial skills to do that at first, so wound up at various "beltway bandits" as a superstar engineer...till I caught on to the other skills I needed.
That's how I know what you go through dealing with government. I've hit my share of response matrices in proposals...we both know that game pretty well.
From then on, it's been starting and running my own biz of one sort or another, finally retiring.
Sort of. You can't really stop, you just do things with less eye to money and more to fun. Which rarely (or never) involve government money. The paperwork just isn't worth it for me. I'd bet you have to pay at least one or more people just for that. I could never stomach that. For running a civvie biz, I just wrote software to take care of all the paper stuff - my accountant thought well of my reports that laid it all out for him and made his job super easy - and very part time.
You probably could pick me out of a crowd, because in fact - I AM just like you in a heck of a lot of ways. Except where you work, they probably wouldn't accept my current appearance very gracefully - I look like the aging rock star I used to be (haven't shaved or had a hair cut in about a decade - but you know that if you've visited my forums lately - that's my real picture - hey, a guy has to have a hobby).
It's a fun facade - it instantly eliminates all who judge a book (incorrectly) by its cover, saving me no end of issues with small-minded types - they self-eliminate from trying to work with (or on) me. They can't tell I'm smart till I open my mouth or keyboard and let the true me come out.
Then they either run like hell or offer me a job. They still don't ask where I learned all this. No one is truly self-taught though. I was born right...and we all learn what we know "standing on the shoulders of giants", don't you think? Sure, we all have to earn it either way. I found I had a ton more motivation learning what I wanted to, rather than memorizing the curriculum as demanded, in some particular order, that's all, so I did better that way. And that way, you actually learn it - memorization is for disks, not humans. I prefer understanding. And pushing limits, not just rising to barely meet them.
*Don't know how it is now, but at the time the SAT tests were based on what you were supposed to have learned by the time you took them, according to the current curriculum. Since I was at least 2 years ahead, killing them didn't mean I was particularly smarter than anyone by itself - I was two years ahead since I was helping teach people 2 years ahead...that's all, so they seemed pretty simple to me, and by golly all multiple choice, which is easy to guess mostly when 3 of the four answers are stupid. So hopefully, I'm not bragging, I just got real lucky on that.
Sorry for the OT here, but a fun story - an anti-rant.
I was "elected" to give the keynote speech at a fusion conference recently, based on recent results from my lab. I showed up early, since I was nervous (that happened a lot even with a lot of stage experience - at least till you get going, the butterflies torture you). The other guys, suit types, all assumed I was one of the catering staff, due to how I looked, and since I didn't care, sure, I'll get you coffee, a sandwich, a chair, whatever.
Then I got called on stage to give my presentation - you should have seen the looks from the crowd! Not only at first, but after the presentation, where I showed how and why I'd broken all their records - partly due to measuring what was really going on, rather than depending on what turned out to be vastly over-simplified assumptions. Victory was sweet!
What I find humorous, and what my next such outing will cover (since I've done it again, re breaking records), is that I actually know more science history and detail than most of those guys put together. My latest breakthrough is based on something Wolfgang Pauli said in about 1935, but which the fusion community has totally ignored all this time...I won't get a prize (after all, I didn't think of it myself, just remember something they forgot - nuclear spin conservation), but I still find it funny. Yet they have the "paper quals" I lack.
You might even guess, I joined you in that double. Cheers!
I too, quit the formal education system early. I skipped out of high school, as while a sophomore, I was already a teaching assistant for senior physics/chem/bio, and was taught perfect standard English by my parents, and thus aced all the sats (800s*)...so I got an all-expenses-paid scholarship to a college, where the same thing happened - more or less, and I got a great job offer (6 figs in the early '70s was nothing to sneeze about) and left before graduating.
So I actually have no official schooling papers at all...I just learned on my own, because I wanted to know, and be able to do fun stuff. A lot more than those clowns would ever teach me I'm pretty sure, since I worked for them in college (like a grad student often does, but I wasn't even a grad), having them take credit for my work since they couldn't do it themselves.
As a result, I got "engineer", then "staff engineer" then "Veep of engineering" etc on my business cards. No one cared about stupid academic creds if you could do the stuff, and I could and did.
Now if I bothered with cards, I guess I'd put "owner, and philosopher-king" on them, or "chief scientist" or whatever. I earned it the hard way - school of hard knocks. But that was easier for this free spriit than bowing down to some "teacher" with half my brains on a subject I already knew more about than he, or even if less. I don't respond well to attempts at subjugation. I've been lucky, though, to have had some key mentors. Totally different deal.
I've never gotten a good job from a place where I hit HR first. Always through some other person at a firm that I met some way, who decided they should hire me, and then and only then did HR get their grubby little hands on the real truth - but by then, it never mattered. I was hired already.
Which is a good thing. I find it hard to lie about having 5 years experience in junk that's only existed for 3, the kind of thing they often demand, or go for ridiculous certifications that are narrowly focused on some outfit's current product line.
We are probably the last of those who could pull that off, other than those, now famous for skipping out early to do some startup that was hugely successful - I'm sure that most who skip out who try, don't achieve that status, or keep it if they do, it's about as rare as winning a lottery. Actually, more rare, I only need one hand to count all I know of. I lacked the social and financial skills to do that at first, so wound up at various "beltway bandits" as a superstar engineer...till I caught on to the other skills I needed.
That's how I know what you go through dealing with government. I've hit my share of response matrices in proposals...we both know that game pretty well.
From then on, it's been starting and running my own biz of one sort or another, finally retiring.
Sort of. You can't really stop, you just do things with less eye to money and more to fun. Which rarely (or never) involve government money. The paperwork just isn't worth it for me. I'd bet you have to pay at least one or more people just for that. I could never stomach that. For running a civvie biz, I just wrote software to take care of all the paper stuff - my accountant thought well of my reports that laid it all out for him and made his job super easy - and very part time.
You probably could pick me out of a crowd, because in fact - I AM just like you in a heck of a lot of ways. Except where you work, they probably wouldn't accept my current appearance very gracefully - I look like the aging rock star I used to be (haven't shaved or had a hair cut in about a decade - but you know that if you've visited my forums lately - that's my real picture - hey, a guy has to have a hobby).
It's a fun facade - it instantly eliminates all who judge a book (incorrectly) by its cover, saving me no end of issues with small-minded types - they self-eliminate from trying to work with (or on) me. They can't tell I'm smart till I open my mouth or keyboard and let the true me come out.
Then they either run like hell or offer me a job. They still don't ask where I learned all this. No one is truly self-taught though. I was born right...and we all learn what we know "standing on the shoulders of giants", don't you think? Sure, we all have to earn it either way. I found I had a ton more motivation learning what I wanted to, rather than memorizing the curriculum as demanded, in some particular order, that's all, so I did better that way. And that way, you actually learn it - memorization is for disks, not humans. I prefer understanding. And pushing limits, not just rising to barely meet them.
*Don't know how it is now, but at the time the SAT tests were based on what you were supposed to have learned by the time you took them, according to the current curriculum. Since I was at least 2 years ahead, killing them didn't mean I was particularly smarter than anyone by itself - I was two years ahead since I was helping teach people 2 years ahead...that's all, so they seemed pretty simple to me, and by golly all multiple choice, which is easy to guess mostly when 3 of the four answers are stupid. So hopefully, I'm not bragging, I just got real lucky on that.
Sorry for the OT here, but a fun story - an anti-rant.
I was "elected" to give the keynote speech at a fusion conference recently, based on recent results from my lab. I showed up early, since I was nervous (that happened a lot even with a lot of stage experience - at least till you get going, the butterflies torture you). The other guys, suit types, all assumed I was one of the catering staff, due to how I looked, and since I didn't care, sure, I'll get you coffee, a sandwich, a chair, whatever.
Then I got called on stage to give my presentation - you should have seen the looks from the crowd! Not only at first, but after the presentation, where I showed how and why I'd broken all their records - partly due to measuring what was really going on, rather than depending on what turned out to be vastly over-simplified assumptions. Victory was sweet!
What I find humorous, and what my next such outing will cover (since I've done it again, re breaking records), is that I actually know more science history and detail than most of those guys put together. My latest breakthrough is based on something Wolfgang Pauli said in about 1935, but which the fusion community has totally ignored all this time...I won't get a prize (after all, I didn't think of it myself, just remember something they forgot - nuclear spin conservation), but I still find it funny. Yet they have the "paper quals" I lack.
You might even guess, I joined you in that double. Cheers!
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think we covered the Generalists vs Specialists discussion somewhere here but its clear to me that Fusor is one of the few who is a real Generalist and capable of thinking outside the box whilst drawing understanding from many areas of specialty.
Thanks for being here Fusor and long may you show those experts that you can even do catering at a level way beyond them
Thanks for being here Fusor and long may you show those experts that you can even do catering at a level way beyond them
DCFusor
Yellow Jacket
All of us who are smart, type fast, and have something to say get around...I even have my own site as well as bothering you guys and a few others. I know I'm not a plant, government or otherwise, though like some others here, I used to work for them - no longer, and no, I don't approve of what they are doing now. :loco:
And all these compliments - we now need a "blushing" icon or something.
And all these compliments - we now need a "blushing" icon or something.
Hey DC,
I thoroughly enjoy the information you provide and although I love to poke fun, I take what you write completely seriously. Your knowledge base is quite incredible and you have a most interesting life story (and haircut). Thank-you for the time you take to try to educate the regular folks out here like me.
Aubuy
I thoroughly enjoy the information you provide and although I love to poke fun, I take what you write completely seriously. Your knowledge base is quite incredible and you have a most interesting life story (and haircut). Thank-you for the time you take to try to educate the regular folks out here like me.
Aubuy
ancona
Praying Mantis
A 7.3 magnitude earthquake just hit Japan right off the coast from Fukushima. I cannot imagine how scary that is for the workers still laboring away at that heap of radioactive rubble. That's got to just curdle their stomach juice when quakes strike. No word on whether or not a tsunami is expected, but I suppose we'd have heard something by now if it had. i wonder if some day, through some miracle or another, we'll hear something good come from Fukushima instead of all the horror.
heres another Fukishima article with videos:
http://www.pakalertpress.com/2013/1...utm_campaign=Feed:+pakalert+(Pak+Alert+Press)
http://www.pakalertpress.com/2013/1...utm_campaign=Feed:+pakalert+(Pak+Alert+Press)
DCFusor
Yellow Jacket
Statistically unlikely, but it's a big universe with a lot of coins flipping, and if you make one side heavier than the other...which they did, not good.
TL;DR
Guys, everything water soluble/reactive, which include the rather nasty Cesium and Strontium isotopes, either already has or will soon be in the water and that will soon be in the ocean - ice dam my ass - like that'll either happen on time, or work if it does. It's likely too late to do anything about it but wring hands if that's your plan. That's just gotta be a joke.
Lucky, the ocean is really big, and once mixed uniformly (which is going to take awhile - perhaps a decade before it's really uniform), it's not going to be all that bad - or even easy to measure. Look to see hot spots around the world in and for 3-5 years until then. Sorry, I can't give better numbers - the limitation is the understanding of oceanography (or at least the unclassified data). Ocean fish are going to take a hit for awhile, again...humans seem to lack regard for that system, particularly energy consuming/producing types.
The only way to fix the rest - which is "mostly harmless" in place, but only mostly, would be to build what amounts to a huge cable-car/suspension bridge with a giant grapple on the end of a winch - the big version of that money-skimming machine in some arcades where you try to pick up the toy, and grab whole huge chunks of the probably once-molten core junk, and place all the chunks into heavy huge SS containers (so more water etc can't leach stuff off), stack them and stay away from them for a (very) long while. It's the only way to grab this stuff up without getting too close to it (you build your suspension towers far away from the center of the site where humans can work and live - topography looks helpful here). Helicopters, as far as I know, just don't have the lifting power for that job.
And yes, you'd need a bit more than just a grapple, it'd probably have to have at minimum, some serious plasma cutters and other tools etc on the end to clear some obstructions first. But you can only do this with an operator at a distance, no matter what. The tech for the "tele-robotics" exists already and is in practical use in other businesses.
It's the kind of thing ancona's company, working with a couple others I know, could do. It would be expensive. It would take awhile (few years). It's the only thing I can think of that would work.
The main thing it has going for it, is past a certain not very long distance, the air itself stops all radiation, so it could be done in some definition of "safe". Sure, you'd lose bits - just like the game (though in this case, you wouldn't design the grapple to fail like they do in the game), but then you'd be down to bits loose in the world, vs (tens of) tons of the really bad stuff. Those bits you're probably best off just covering in concrete.
Now, this currently-chemically-inert waste-stuff IS beta-decaying, and some of the resulting products are going to be water-reactive or soluble and still hot (beta decay tend to be chains). So it's not the best move to just leave it there and build a fence around it - active remediation should be done if someone can figure out a way (see above, I just did).
This doesn't mean you'd get to the point of being able to use that site again, or that there would not still be many tons of "warm" stuff there (not hot enough to kill immediately, but you wouldn't want it in your bedroom either) - build a fence around it all, you've just found a way to destroy some real estate for quite awhile, no way every single beam or bit of contaminated concrete is going to be removed, and just moving it solves precisely nothing - you gotta put it someplace, and it already is someplace. On the other hand, the spent fuel, broken cores etc - the real nasty stuff - that can be "put in a box and locked up".
It just takes money, engineering, and well, the will to do it. Japan (now finally taking over from Tepco) seems to lack at least two of those. If they fired off an RFP, I'd know who to call to get 'er done. They just don't want to spend the dough or the time.
This is a classic case in a sense of the old saying "there's never time/money to do it right, but always time to do it over" - except for one thing - you gotta do this right.
And that's the sad truth. This can be mitigated to a great degree with some fairly extreme effort, it's not impossible, just expensive and takes thinking ahead...Not things the current people in charge of the mess are good with.
Note: We have three types of radiation here. Alpha, beta, gamma. Alphas stop in a few inches of air, betas a few feet - gammas "downscatter" (look up Compton scattering), losing energy every time they interact with an air molecule (or anything else). Very high energy ones have a lot of range (cosmic rays) but these are "tame" by comparison - some hundreds feet get them all down to low enough energies to be safe around, at least for a decent time interval. EG, the guys doing it wouldn't die.
We have mostly betas and gammas out of this junk. A few inch thick metal tank will stop the betas pretty well, leaving just gammas. Here, the square law is your friend too - just don't be close.
Your exposure is proportional to the inverse square of distance from the source (measured in size units of the source size), on top of energy loss from scattering, so it's a little better than pure square law.
Anyway, that's the responsible thing to do there. OK, we have this huge mess. But stop hand-wringing or trying to figure out how to do it a dime cheaper, and wasting time while doing it - more is going to leak while you have committee meetings. Just do it.
TL;DR
Guys, everything water soluble/reactive, which include the rather nasty Cesium and Strontium isotopes, either already has or will soon be in the water and that will soon be in the ocean - ice dam my ass - like that'll either happen on time, or work if it does. It's likely too late to do anything about it but wring hands if that's your plan. That's just gotta be a joke.
Lucky, the ocean is really big, and once mixed uniformly (which is going to take awhile - perhaps a decade before it's really uniform), it's not going to be all that bad - or even easy to measure. Look to see hot spots around the world in and for 3-5 years until then. Sorry, I can't give better numbers - the limitation is the understanding of oceanography (or at least the unclassified data). Ocean fish are going to take a hit for awhile, again...humans seem to lack regard for that system, particularly energy consuming/producing types.
The only way to fix the rest - which is "mostly harmless" in place, but only mostly, would be to build what amounts to a huge cable-car/suspension bridge with a giant grapple on the end of a winch - the big version of that money-skimming machine in some arcades where you try to pick up the toy, and grab whole huge chunks of the probably once-molten core junk, and place all the chunks into heavy huge SS containers (so more water etc can't leach stuff off), stack them and stay away from them for a (very) long while. It's the only way to grab this stuff up without getting too close to it (you build your suspension towers far away from the center of the site where humans can work and live - topography looks helpful here). Helicopters, as far as I know, just don't have the lifting power for that job.
And yes, you'd need a bit more than just a grapple, it'd probably have to have at minimum, some serious plasma cutters and other tools etc on the end to clear some obstructions first. But you can only do this with an operator at a distance, no matter what. The tech for the "tele-robotics" exists already and is in practical use in other businesses.
It's the kind of thing ancona's company, working with a couple others I know, could do. It would be expensive. It would take awhile (few years). It's the only thing I can think of that would work.
The main thing it has going for it, is past a certain not very long distance, the air itself stops all radiation, so it could be done in some definition of "safe". Sure, you'd lose bits - just like the game (though in this case, you wouldn't design the grapple to fail like they do in the game), but then you'd be down to bits loose in the world, vs (tens of) tons of the really bad stuff. Those bits you're probably best off just covering in concrete.
Now, this currently-chemically-inert waste-stuff IS beta-decaying, and some of the resulting products are going to be water-reactive or soluble and still hot (beta decay tend to be chains). So it's not the best move to just leave it there and build a fence around it - active remediation should be done if someone can figure out a way (see above, I just did).
This doesn't mean you'd get to the point of being able to use that site again, or that there would not still be many tons of "warm" stuff there (not hot enough to kill immediately, but you wouldn't want it in your bedroom either) - build a fence around it all, you've just found a way to destroy some real estate for quite awhile, no way every single beam or bit of contaminated concrete is going to be removed, and just moving it solves precisely nothing - you gotta put it someplace, and it already is someplace. On the other hand, the spent fuel, broken cores etc - the real nasty stuff - that can be "put in a box and locked up".
It just takes money, engineering, and well, the will to do it. Japan (now finally taking over from Tepco) seems to lack at least two of those. If they fired off an RFP, I'd know who to call to get 'er done. They just don't want to spend the dough or the time.
This is a classic case in a sense of the old saying "there's never time/money to do it right, but always time to do it over" - except for one thing - you gotta do this right.
And that's the sad truth. This can be mitigated to a great degree with some fairly extreme effort, it's not impossible, just expensive and takes thinking ahead...Not things the current people in charge of the mess are good with.
Note: We have three types of radiation here. Alpha, beta, gamma. Alphas stop in a few inches of air, betas a few feet - gammas "downscatter" (look up Compton scattering), losing energy every time they interact with an air molecule (or anything else). Very high energy ones have a lot of range (cosmic rays) but these are "tame" by comparison - some hundreds feet get them all down to low enough energies to be safe around, at least for a decent time interval. EG, the guys doing it wouldn't die.
We have mostly betas and gammas out of this junk. A few inch thick metal tank will stop the betas pretty well, leaving just gammas. Here, the square law is your friend too - just don't be close.
Your exposure is proportional to the inverse square of distance from the source (measured in size units of the source size), on top of energy loss from scattering, so it's a little better than pure square law.
Anyway, that's the responsible thing to do there. OK, we have this huge mess. But stop hand-wringing or trying to figure out how to do it a dime cheaper, and wasting time while doing it - more is going to leak while you have committee meetings. Just do it.
the girl that graduated with my 29 year year old from high school has been in Tokyo the last five years teaching English. When I saw her mom in the grocery store one day, I asked her what the thought of Fukishima, and she flatly ridiculed me. "Oh they cleaned that up years ago. Don't believe everything you read on the internet." And she is "well" educated.
Great idea! I surfed for cranes and found this monster. Not exactly your concept but it looks like it could eat a reactor core for breakfast:
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DoChenRollingBearing
Yellow Jacket
...
@ DCFusor, very nice write up, I always make the effort to plow through your dense, but common-sense pieces.
@ Aubuy, wow, can I have one of those bucket-wheel excavators? And then find a place in Peru to USE the sucker...!
@ DCFusor, very nice write up, I always make the effort to plow through your dense, but common-sense pieces.
@ Aubuy, wow, can I have one of those bucket-wheel excavators? And then find a place in Peru to USE the sucker...!
ancona
Praying Mantis
The gantry at Newport News Shipbuilders [drydock #4 I think] is pretty big too. There is another big one at Lisnave Shipyard outside of Portugal as well.
At Nuclear Sites, Radioactive Questions Linger
Years after the Cold War, the U.S. effort to build nuclear weapons has left the country with a $350 billion cleanup project at hundreds of sites in dozens of states.
Site in Queens, N.Y. Raises Questions on Radiation Exposure
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles...579079483154040874?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories
snip:
• Record-keeping has been so spotty that the Energy Department says it doesn't have enough documentation on several dozen sites to decide whether a cleanup is needed or not.
• Despite years of trying to track these sites, the government doesn't have the exact address for dozens of them. It acknowledges it doesn't even know what state one uranium-handling facility was located in. :shrug:
Years after the Cold War, the U.S. effort to build nuclear weapons has left the country with a $350 billion cleanup project at hundreds of sites in dozens of states.
Site in Queens, N.Y. Raises Questions on Radiation Exposure
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles...579079483154040874?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories
snip:
• Record-keeping has been so spotty that the Energy Department says it doesn't have enough documentation on several dozen sites to decide whether a cleanup is needed or not.
• Despite years of trying to track these sites, the government doesn't have the exact address for dozens of them. It acknowledges it doesn't even know what state one uranium-handling facility was located in. :shrug:
ancona
Praying Mantis
Fukushima work has been accelerating after a lot of sabre rattling from Asian neighbors. The spent fuel pools should definitely be their prime focus. Get those things down to ground level instead of balanced a hundred feet in the air.
DCFusor
Yellow Jacket
That DAEWOO thing is more or less what I had in mind with my idea - it'd be more stable than long cables and stays from nearby hilltops, but there's a limit to beam length (weight) too if you have to lift it into place. Obviously, there's not enough information right now (at least public) to know how long the main beam/support would have to be such that you could build it without killing the guys erecting the verticals with radiation - there are undoubtedly hotter and cooler places around the site (they may have made that issue worse with the location of the "hot water" tanks, dunno - but if it's a liquid, it can be pumped elsewhere)...I don't think tools yet exist to put up a lift like that with all remote-control stuff (obviously it needs a foundation, for example), and time is ticking. You'd also need to do some engineering time on custom grapples and tool attachments for same to pull this off.
This is based on the *assumption* that what we're dealing with here is some sloppily collapsed buildings with some highly nasty stuff at the bottom - you'd pick off pieces of the debris and set those aside to get to the nasty stuff, then yank it out (most is probably in pieces, with perhaps a once-molten big chunk of really nasty stuff at the bottom - you might have to break that up some to get it out of there and into a reasonable size container) and drop it into water-tight containers and bolt the lid on them. Remote tools exist for that, most people saw them first on the mini subs used in the BP disaster. Not too different twisting bolts underwater than here. It would be a major pain to do it, and take awhile, but not decades. Most of the time would be getting the gear into place, not doing the main cleanup. Priority should be removing the truly evil stuff, so people can get close enough to do the rest with more normal methods.
From what PM bug just posted, it looks like they are tackling the easy stuff first, and what is possibly the least threatening, depending on details we don't know. I mean sure, getting hot stuff out of there in general is a good plan, but is the contained stuff the priority, or the un-contained and leaking stuff?
How likely is that pool to present a real problem, short of yet another natural disaster? I sure can't say from the info I have, so I can't pass judgment. It'd be a good test run for certain, since it should be comparatively easy to pull rods out one by one with remote operated tools, and handle them.
Those are meant to be remotely handled and the gear exists to do it - and send them off for reprocessing, which separates the really evil but low volume stuff from the not so evil bulk of what's in a fuel rod, making disposal a much smaller-scale problem, and they DO do reprocessing there.
That rod-moving stuff is likely already on-site and some of it probably still works fine - maybe it's not in the right building now, but...playing pick-up sticks from a distance isn't that challenging. They're designed for that.
But (again without real-detail data), I'd be concentrating on the stuff that's leaking and causing harm NOW, and doing the easy stuff later. Or in parallel. Rod removal from one building while doing the crane thing at another. Move the stuff around and repeat. Not cheap, just effective and fast. Like they say in engineering, pick two, it's all you're gonna get, anyway.
With more data, a good proposal could be written and floated...this is do-able, it's just a question of the details. Yeah, you wind up building a monument to human stupidity - but we have that already, much as Japanese pride hates that kind of thing. Chernobyl is now a tourist site(!). You could at least make it "neat" and far safer from doing further damage to the rest of the world. At this point, I'm not so sure the Japanese even should have final say - how about everyone else who likes to eat fish? The Japanese aren't the only affected party here. And they're not showing serious responsibility in their decisions either, as far as I can tell from here.
You can't, practically speaking, take that argument too far, or we'd be thinking of shutting down China's pollution sources, but in this case it's not a big leap, the danger is much more immediate without remediation, and they are doing a pretty poor job, that much is obvious. And the Chinese are at least already trying to solve their problems by using more alt-energy.
And yes, AuBuy, we made quite a mess making nukes, but the major sites are quite well known (follow the invoices - that source may not have had access to the classified stuff, or does and can't say), not even classified anymore. There might be some minor messes elsewhere, but the fact they don't even know how bad they are points to the fact that they're "mostly harmless" or it'd be obvious.
Most of these were done on big, .gov-owned campuses in boonie locations. They have leaks we know about, but where they did much of it (not that far from me, BTW), it's looking like the stuff decays before the ground water it's flowing in even makes it to the fence. Could be better, but could be worse too.
Now, all the stuff there - the metal, the concrete, you name it, is going to be a little radioactive. But we know how to handle low grade stuff already, the tools exist and so on, and you can be near enough for long enough to do it without killing the people doing it. We already mine some pretty hot stuff with tools we have now, and don't kill a lot of people doing it. This part is more or less the same job without having to be in a deep hole in the ground at the time - easier.
This is based on the *assumption* that what we're dealing with here is some sloppily collapsed buildings with some highly nasty stuff at the bottom - you'd pick off pieces of the debris and set those aside to get to the nasty stuff, then yank it out (most is probably in pieces, with perhaps a once-molten big chunk of really nasty stuff at the bottom - you might have to break that up some to get it out of there and into a reasonable size container) and drop it into water-tight containers and bolt the lid on them. Remote tools exist for that, most people saw them first on the mini subs used in the BP disaster. Not too different twisting bolts underwater than here. It would be a major pain to do it, and take awhile, but not decades. Most of the time would be getting the gear into place, not doing the main cleanup. Priority should be removing the truly evil stuff, so people can get close enough to do the rest with more normal methods.
From what PM bug just posted, it looks like they are tackling the easy stuff first, and what is possibly the least threatening, depending on details we don't know. I mean sure, getting hot stuff out of there in general is a good plan, but is the contained stuff the priority, or the un-contained and leaking stuff?
How likely is that pool to present a real problem, short of yet another natural disaster? I sure can't say from the info I have, so I can't pass judgment. It'd be a good test run for certain, since it should be comparatively easy to pull rods out one by one with remote operated tools, and handle them.
Those are meant to be remotely handled and the gear exists to do it - and send them off for reprocessing, which separates the really evil but low volume stuff from the not so evil bulk of what's in a fuel rod, making disposal a much smaller-scale problem, and they DO do reprocessing there.
That rod-moving stuff is likely already on-site and some of it probably still works fine - maybe it's not in the right building now, but...playing pick-up sticks from a distance isn't that challenging. They're designed for that.
But (again without real-detail data), I'd be concentrating on the stuff that's leaking and causing harm NOW, and doing the easy stuff later. Or in parallel. Rod removal from one building while doing the crane thing at another. Move the stuff around and repeat. Not cheap, just effective and fast. Like they say in engineering, pick two, it's all you're gonna get, anyway.
With more data, a good proposal could be written and floated...this is do-able, it's just a question of the details. Yeah, you wind up building a monument to human stupidity - but we have that already, much as Japanese pride hates that kind of thing. Chernobyl is now a tourist site(!). You could at least make it "neat" and far safer from doing further damage to the rest of the world. At this point, I'm not so sure the Japanese even should have final say - how about everyone else who likes to eat fish? The Japanese aren't the only affected party here. And they're not showing serious responsibility in their decisions either, as far as I can tell from here.
You can't, practically speaking, take that argument too far, or we'd be thinking of shutting down China's pollution sources, but in this case it's not a big leap, the danger is much more immediate without remediation, and they are doing a pretty poor job, that much is obvious. And the Chinese are at least already trying to solve their problems by using more alt-energy.
And yes, AuBuy, we made quite a mess making nukes, but the major sites are quite well known (follow the invoices - that source may not have had access to the classified stuff, or does and can't say), not even classified anymore. There might be some minor messes elsewhere, but the fact they don't even know how bad they are points to the fact that they're "mostly harmless" or it'd be obvious.
Most of these were done on big, .gov-owned campuses in boonie locations. They have leaks we know about, but where they did much of it (not that far from me, BTW), it's looking like the stuff decays before the ground water it's flowing in even makes it to the fence. Could be better, but could be worse too.
Now, all the stuff there - the metal, the concrete, you name it, is going to be a little radioactive. But we know how to handle low grade stuff already, the tools exist and so on, and you can be near enough for long enough to do it without killing the people doing it. We already mine some pretty hot stuff with tools we have now, and don't kill a lot of people doing it. This part is more or less the same job without having to be in a deep hole in the ground at the time - easier.
DoChenRollingBearing
Yellow Jacket
...
Mighty Daewoo! Hyundai builds ships too.
Yes, THAT looks like the type of construction the Japanese ought to get going on ASAP.
***
But we sure are glad Daewoo made those little P.O.S. Daewoo Tico cars... WAY underengineered for Peruvian roads. Their front wheel bearings are (currently) our bread & butter...
Daewoo: the good, the bad and the ugly!
Mighty Daewoo! Hyundai builds ships too.
Yes, THAT looks like the type of construction the Japanese ought to get going on ASAP.
***
But we sure are glad Daewoo made those little P.O.S. Daewoo Tico cars... WAY underengineered for Peruvian roads. Their front wheel bearings are (currently) our bread & butter...
Daewoo: the good, the bad and the ugly!
This is a fascinating topic and I enjoy DC's engineering perspective on life! "See a problem and solve it using science and not emotion" If only we had few more people who thought like that in Washington. :judge:
For me personally I'm not too worried about radiation (except in my tuna) and usually enjoy an hour or two of it everyday after breakfast, although I do wear sunscreen. The thought of a tourist trip to Japan to see all this stuff would be appealing to me. I think the Japanese culture is quite fascinating.
So I agree that this doesn't have to be all terrible news for Japan. I really hope they can rise to the challenge and show the world something amazing. A real world demonstration of their engineering expertise. They have the people and the know how to really step up here. :clap:
Here's a picture that seems closer to DC's suspension cable idea being used to build a bridge. I think this idea really has merit. After you remove the really bad stuff you could build a series of "bridges" over the top and basically put it inside a giant roofed in structure.
For me personally I'm not too worried about radiation (except in my tuna) and usually enjoy an hour or two of it everyday after breakfast, although I do wear sunscreen. The thought of a tourist trip to Japan to see all this stuff would be appealing to me. I think the Japanese culture is quite fascinating.
So I agree that this doesn't have to be all terrible news for Japan. I really hope they can rise to the challenge and show the world something amazing. A real world demonstration of their engineering expertise. They have the people and the know how to really step up here. :clap: Here's a picture that seems closer to DC's suspension cable idea being used to build a bridge. I think this idea really has merit. After you remove the really bad stuff you could build a series of "bridges" over the top and basically put it inside a giant roofed in structure.
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DCFusor
Yellow Jacket
"Fix the problem, not the blame, it's better".
Yeah - the details of the "sky hook" looked more like this bridge in my mind, but that's based on not knowing just how far you'd have to keep the humans away from where it will do the work - it's going to take humans to do the ends. If it's nasty all over down there, you need a bigger support from further away, obviously. But we don't have a detailed map of the rad levels on site at this point (they might, but they're not a model of sharing).
I personally think it's the broken stuff in the ground, and being washed over by groundwater heading to the sea that is the big one. Fuel rods are pretty well built, and even a pool collapsing probably will amount only to making it harder to pick up and move them. Note, I'm using qualifiers like "probably" here, since again - we don't know what the heat load is and other details that would make a good determination possible.
Yeah - the details of the "sky hook" looked more like this bridge in my mind, but that's based on not knowing just how far you'd have to keep the humans away from where it will do the work - it's going to take humans to do the ends. If it's nasty all over down there, you need a bigger support from further away, obviously. But we don't have a detailed map of the rad levels on site at this point (they might, but they're not a model of sharing).
I personally think it's the broken stuff in the ground, and being washed over by groundwater heading to the sea that is the big one. Fuel rods are pretty well built, and even a pool collapsing probably will amount only to making it harder to pick up and move them. Note, I'm using qualifiers like "probably" here, since again - we don't know what the heat load is and other details that would make a good determination possible.
latest fukishima article:
http://thelastgreatstand.com/lgs/20...-at-crippled-japan-atomic-plant-shocks-world/
http://thelastgreatstand.com/lgs/20...-at-crippled-japan-atomic-plant-shocks-world/
69mach351
Predaceous Stink Bug
There are articles coming out today that they are finding high levels of radiation in the snow (it was in Missouri) - twice the normal amounts. They are attributing it to the plant in japan.
DCFusor
Yellow Jacket
Haven't yet throughly fact-checked this - there is reason to doubt the oversimplified for media version(s), but I saw just today a Swiss study of the stratosphere that claimed to still be able to see radioactives from the nuke tests that happened as I was a child in the '50's. This oddball weather might have brought some of them down? Let's just say, "inquiring minds want to know".
No one will know until they take a gamma spectrogram and look for signatures, along with a mass spec to see the ratio to the decayed (now stable) elements. Fresh (fuk) looks a lot different than old (nuke tests), since much of this stuff has a relatively short half-life. Double the background is in any case, no big deal - unless your standard is the background in a certain natural reactor that happened in Africa quite a long time ago - I've got samples from that, and it's truly dangerous-hot.
It is, in fact, the only thing I've got, and I've got a nice collection of radioactives (nothing large, it's just nice stuff for calibrating the gamma spec - microcuries mostly) - that will make an old CDS ion chamber or dosimeter read...truly dangerous stuff. I keep it in lead pigs 100 meters from where I live.
With the right "book" - classified info - you can tell which reactor anything came from, easy. They all have a "signature" of the ratios of the fission byproducts that differs quite a bit. That bit in Tom Clancy's "Sum of all fears" as done in the movie is actually correct and on-topic here. You really can trace it all back to a definite source. Not trivial, but we have some nice tools these days. It's that book of signatures you (or even I) can't get your hands on.
There's a many to one difference already in nature about what constitutes "normal" background in various places - perhaps over 10::1 depending (and not counting Africa, where it's more like thousands/one). So it could be fuk, it could be the weird weather cleaning up the old news. I can't tell from the data available to me at this point. Keeping the mark one eyeballs open here.
I live in a place where if you have a super sensitive scintillator-counter, you see variations of 100::1 in 100 meters, from uranium deposits deep underground spewing radon from any cracks in the overlying shale, which is overlaid by farmland clay most places, but not all. Found that out by accident while "prospecting" - the doggone thing went nuts at certain places - from inside my truck(!). That was a TSA counter, designed to "go off" at the drop of a hat, probably surplussed because it was too good and allowed too may excuses for groping hotties.
All of this is in general, quite a bit less radiation than you get on a cross country flight - those make even a numb geiger counter go nuts while at 30k feet. My partner in fusion tried it (he has a pilot's license) and went crazy, since he's a little paranoid and has a weird leukemia-type condition already. Just one more reason to stay on the ground if that kind of thing worries you.
Or a little above it. Where I'm sited - it's around 3x quieter inside than it is outdoors, since even on the ground floor, I'm 6 feet from the dirt and granite, which is "hot" compared to normal, except here, that's normal.
No one will know until they take a gamma spectrogram and look for signatures, along with a mass spec to see the ratio to the decayed (now stable) elements. Fresh (fuk) looks a lot different than old (nuke tests), since much of this stuff has a relatively short half-life. Double the background is in any case, no big deal - unless your standard is the background in a certain natural reactor that happened in Africa quite a long time ago - I've got samples from that, and it's truly dangerous-hot.
It is, in fact, the only thing I've got, and I've got a nice collection of radioactives (nothing large, it's just nice stuff for calibrating the gamma spec - microcuries mostly) - that will make an old CDS ion chamber or dosimeter read...truly dangerous stuff. I keep it in lead pigs 100 meters from where I live.
With the right "book" - classified info - you can tell which reactor anything came from, easy. They all have a "signature" of the ratios of the fission byproducts that differs quite a bit. That bit in Tom Clancy's "Sum of all fears" as done in the movie is actually correct and on-topic here. You really can trace it all back to a definite source. Not trivial, but we have some nice tools these days. It's that book of signatures you (or even I) can't get your hands on.
There's a many to one difference already in nature about what constitutes "normal" background in various places - perhaps over 10::1 depending (and not counting Africa, where it's more like thousands/one). So it could be fuk, it could be the weird weather cleaning up the old news. I can't tell from the data available to me at this point. Keeping the mark one eyeballs open here.
I live in a place where if you have a super sensitive scintillator-counter, you see variations of 100::1 in 100 meters, from uranium deposits deep underground spewing radon from any cracks in the overlying shale, which is overlaid by farmland clay most places, but not all. Found that out by accident while "prospecting" - the doggone thing went nuts at certain places - from inside my truck(!). That was a TSA counter, designed to "go off" at the drop of a hat, probably surplussed because it was too good and allowed too may excuses for groping hotties.
All of this is in general, quite a bit less radiation than you get on a cross country flight - those make even a numb geiger counter go nuts while at 30k feet. My partner in fusion tried it (he has a pilot's license) and went crazy, since he's a little paranoid and has a weird leukemia-type condition already. Just one more reason to stay on the ground if that kind of thing worries you.
Or a little above it. Where I'm sited - it's around 3x quieter inside than it is outdoors, since even on the ground floor, I'm 6 feet from the dirt and granite, which is "hot" compared to normal, except here, that's normal.