Grauniad: Interesting article - what's the most radioactive city in the world?

Not what you might think.

or

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Reply to
Mike Tomlinson
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It's that place in Iran isn't it?

Ramsar (

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130mSV per year in one place.

Oh, for a change the Guardian appears to have done some research...beyond cut and pasting from the latest CND/Greenpeace/Foe press release.

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Is a good read.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I haven't read any of the links, so my initial guess was going to be Aberdeen, the granite city. Nasty stuff, granite.

Reply to
GB

You'd be right - but as much because it avoids radon as the bedrock.

Try parts of Derbyshire and Cornwall for radon. I lived in Bakewell for a while - very high readings (using a test thing I got from the US). The owner didn't seem even slightly interested - even though their neighbour and daughter smoke.

Reply to
RJH

I've heard it said that Grand Central Station would be classified as a radiation controlled area if it were on a nuclear power station site, presumably because of gamma radiation from the granite. (I assume it is sufficiently well ventilated not to have significant radon levels).

ISTR that Denver's height above sea level increases the cosmic ray dose significantly (and La Paz must be much worse).

Reply to
newshound

En el artículo , The Natural Philosopher escribió:

Downloaded for a read later. Thanks.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

I often think that the reason life on this planet has to reproduce sexually, is to combat mutations caused by various types of radiation and other environmental toxins. If there is such a planet where the environment has been stable and undemanding for long enough, the planet might well be populated by long lived organisms. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

And what about airline pilots? Or for that matter, astronauts. It has been known for some years that certain individuals seem to have a more tolerant biology for some reason. Not just toward radiation damage but even to pollution and smoking. Some of the people who first went into the Russian reactors seemed to have this aspect, though others did not. Interesting but presumably hard to test without killing people! One thing has always intrigued me. Why do we not all have little Geiger counters made dirt cheap in china? some of the devices you get these days built into phones aware very complex, so is there a conspiracy to stop us finding out directly what our radiation environment is? Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

See also Wade Allison's book Radiation and Reason,

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(230 pages, so a bit much for printing!)

or buy from Amazon, Kindle or hard copy

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Reply to
Chris Hogg

Most damage to DNA in the cell is fixed up by cellular repair mechanisms. Just as well, too, since without these mechanisms the system wouldn't work at all.

Reply to
Tim Streater

En el artículo , Chris Hogg escribió:

Thanks very much.

There's a download link, so I've grabbed it to read on my iPad. Cheers.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

Indeed. Actually detectors aren't that easy to make but I totally agree in principle.

There are however reasons not top let this happen.

First of all, the public would become aware that we live and always have lived in a radioactive world. There would be panic as people complained to their MPS and demanded that we 'clean up Dartmoor'; and make it a 'restricted zone' since it's far more radioactive than Fukushima. They would refuse to install smoke alarms. They would freak out when their alarms went off all over the hospital X-ray and cat-scan clinics.

Then of course if they got used to it, and demanded nuclear power cost its safe cheap and reliable once shorn of hysterical opposition, a lot of people selling high priced wind solar gas and coal plant would go out of business and be Very Unhappy.

And what about the CND and the Greens? I mean here we are, no more CO2 emissions, Polar bears safe, nuclear power a godsend, not a disaster? We would ruin millions of lives of people who seriously believed in tooth fairies and the evils of nuclear power.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Bugger,. I paid for it a few years back!

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

That's a good example of the over-reaction that Wade Allison is complaining about (see TNP's post in this thread). From the quoted extract of Vollman's visit to Tomioka "At a nearby house with yellow danger tape around it, the base of a drainpipe registered 22.1 microsieverts per hour. The daily dose would be 530.4 microsieverts; the yearly dose, 193.6 millisieverts. A little perilous, I?d say. The grassy field was a cool 7.5 microsieverts per hour ? 65.7 millisieverts per year ? while the main highway on which the decontamination trucks kept raising dust was only 3.72 per hour, which still comes to 32 times the recommended annual dose."

Wade Allison is suggesting a safety limit of 100 mSv/month, or 1200 mSv/yr, some six times higher that the highest figure quoted above, yet the Japanese are moving heaven and earth, well earth anyway and literally, over much lower levels.

The Wiki link that TNP put up about Ramsar quotes a record level of

131mSv/yr in one house, presumably the other houses had lower levels, yet this is some ten times lower than WA's recommended level. And in support of WA, there don't appear to be any radiation-related health problems there.

Incidentally, the picture at the top of the Grauniad article shows radioactive soil and debris being arranged for storage. I was intrigued by the regular arrangement of the black polythene sacks, all carefully separated from each other. I wonder why. Are they worried that if they put them closer together, they'll exceed the critical mass? Knowing the Japanese alarmist attitude to all things nuclear, it really wouldn't surprise me.

Reply to
Chris Hogg

====snip====

My guess is the more prosaic that they're samples taken from a field (whether several per field or each one from the middle of a single field it matters not) and they've been laid out so as to avoid 'crosstalk' of count readings between the sample bags.

ICBW but the thought that it might be a possible concern over critical mass is undoubtedly even 'wronger'. :-)

Reply to
Johnny B Good

It was a bit tongue-in-cheek, I'll admit!

Reply to
Chris Hogg

En el artículo , Chris Hogg escribió:

I noticed that too. They seem to be holding down a tarpaulin (against wind, maybe) and I put the regular arrangement down to the Japanese tendency to neatness.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

I did realise that, hence the 'smiley'. I thought I'd best offer up a more reasonable explanation before anyone else was inspired to accept your tongue in cheek comment as fuel to legitimise a scaremongering campaign off their own misconceptions about radiation hazards.

Reply to
Johnny B Good

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