Japan Fukushima nuclear thread

[Don1]

As is the blast of an exploding bomb. Then fallout (etc).

This however is another question, isn't it? This shielded robot in there has 2 hours before it stops working. What would happen to an animal/human in there, if they were magically transported into such an environment? What effect does such a environment have? I assume it is very hot in there as well, for example? I think the question would be better termed what would kill you first? If it is the radiation - how?

Yes, thank you, I did read the article (before I posted the question), amongst others. Sorry if my phrasing of the question wasn't good enough.

[hidetheelephants]

Given that 5-10 sieverts is supposed to be well inside the lethal dose range a human being will be toast if they get 530; what the specific symptoms would be is difficult to predict but death would be very rapid indeed, minutes if not seconds as the nervous system would be fried.

Don1 said:

A slightly ghoulish question.... With the 530 sieverts reading, how would you die? Spontaneously combust? Sudden toxic shock and everything would stop? Turn into the Gestapo officer in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Asking for a friend, obviously.

[Don1]

Thank you.

[hairykrishna]

The highest dose in well documented accidents is something like ~50Gy whole body (many hundreds to the extremities). At this level death's inevitable and extremely unpleasant. You kill off basically all the cells in your body which leads to organs shutting down over a period of days/weeks. For some grim reading you can check out the Sarov criticality accident report;

http://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/publications/pdf/pub1...

Not sure what going up another factor of 10 would do. If you were lucky you'd be unconscious fast and not come round again.

[hidetheelephants]

hairykrishna said:

The highest dose in well documented accidents is something like ~50Gy whole body (many hundreds to the extremities). At this level death's inevitable and extremely unpleasant. You kill off basically all the cells in your body which leads to organs shutting down over a period of days/weeks. For some grim reading you can check out the Sarov criticality accident report;

http://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/publications/pdf/pub1...

Not sure what going up another factor of 10 would do. If you were lucky you'd be unconscious fast and not come round again.

Exposure to a criticality has other tricks up its sleeve as neutron radiation can activate other materials, you become radioactive and start irradiating yourself. Grim is the word.

[Einion Yrth]

Some interesting, if unpleasant reading.

[llewop]

Einion Yrth said:

Some interesting, if unpleasant reading.

Indeed, Slotin's accident is one of the most famous/infamous criticality accidents.

Must confess the dose estimate in the wiki article for him feels low to me, I thought it was more than that. The dose to one of the workers at Tokaimura was at least 50% more and he survived a lot longer, although probably with better care.

[Gary C]

Don1 said:

A slightly ghoulish question.... With the 530 sieverts reading, how would you die? Spontaneously combust? Sudden toxic shock and everything would stop? Turn into the Gestapo officer in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Asking for a friend, obviously.

500 Sv is a massive dose in radiological terms but in energy it's not, so you wouldn't melt.

Immediate effect skin, severe sunburn

Blood would breakup, very quickly feeling sick, cells die, necrosis and loss of full depth of skin in days.

Failure of organs and death.

Not nice

[Don1]

Grim. Thanks for the answers chaps.

[Welshbeef]

Does anyone have a rough idea what litvenienqu took as a dose in servers? That's a real life example of a lethal dose of plutonium which killed him over a long agonising period

[hidetheelephants]

Welshbeef said:

Does anyone have a rough idea what litvenienqu took as a dose in servers? That's a real life example of a lethal dose of plutonium which killed him over a long agonising period

He was killed by Polonium poisoning; the radioactivity was a sideshow, the stuff is a bad ass heavy metal toxin.

[llewop]

Welshbeef said:

Does anyone have a rough idea what litvenienqu took as a dose in servers? That's a real life example of a lethal dose of plutonium which killed him over a long agonising period

Sieverts not servers...

however: as the dose was internal, the report quotes organ doses and in Gray not Sieverts. One element (bone marrow dose) of the assessment says 17 Gray in the 22 days between presumed intake and death vs LD50 of 2 Gray.

[Gray is energy deposited from the radiation - Sieverts takes into account relative biological effectiveness of type of radiation, so Gray = Sieverts for x-rays/gamma rays, but not for alpha]

[The Don of Croy]

Don1 said:

Grim. Thanks for the answers chaps.

Not wanting to derail the topic un-necessarily, but there was a good drama based on the immediate aftermath of Chernobyl made (iirc) by the beeb some years back - Adrian Edmondson was in it.

In one scene shortly after 'the event' a group of survivors relate their symptoms in a ward - one describing getting up and his skin on the legs rolling down like socks...at one point they kept telling HQ the top reading was 'safe' but only because the gauges only read up to that level!

After yesterdays dire financial report from Toshiba, is the Japanese nuclear industry still extant or living on state funding?

[hairykrishna]

hidetheelephants said:

He was killed by Polonium poisoning; the radioactivity was a sideshow, the stuff is a bad ass heavy metal toxin.

I don't think so - the estimate is that he was only dosed with about 50 micrograms. That's too little for traditional poisoning.

[hidetheelephants]

hairykrishna said:

hidetheelephants said:

He was killed by Polonium poisoning; the radioactivity was a sideshow, the stuff is a bad ass heavy metal toxin.

I don't think so - the estimate is that he was only dosed with about 50 micrograms. That's too little for traditional poisoning.

Mea culpa; you're correct, polonium is pretty much only toxic as a result of being highly radioactive, it doesn't seem to have a biological effect outside of that. I must have been thinking of plutonium despite correcting the original error.

[Gary C]

hidetheelephants said:

hairykrishna said:

hidetheelephants said:

He was killed by Polonium poisoning; the radioactivity was a sideshow, the stuff is a bad ass heavy metal toxin.

I don't think so - the estimate is that he was only dosed with about 50 micrograms. That's too little for traditional poisoning.

Mea culpa; you're correct, polonium is pretty much only toxic as a result of being highly radioactive, it doesn't seem to have a biological effect outside of that. I must have been thinking of plutonium despite correcting the original error.

The thing is, the actual decay rate of a substance is not really a good measure of its biological effect. Polonium is a prime example. As an alpha emitter, external exposure is relitvely benign as the dead skin layer absorbs virtually every particle (being relitvely massive), however when taken into the body, with no dead cells to act as protection, the size of the particle and hence the energy, causes huge damage directly to the cells its exposed to.

In addition, the way the body absorbs and distributes the substance is vitally important, some pass through the body very quickly while some such as strontium are taken up by the body (bones particularly, which is why it's non radioactive form was used in toothpaste) and continue to irradiate it for days, months or years. Another example is iodine, the thyroid gland absorbs iodine easily and it's one of the radioactive isotopes formed by fission, hence the 'radiation pills' that are used to floor the thyroid with non radioactive iodine to prevent take up in an accident.

We are very cautious of tritium, while its a very weak alpha emitter it's basically hydrogen so is present in irradiated water which is very easily absorbed by the body and distributed throughout the entire body. While some other, more 'active' contamination is less of a risk.

What's always got me about the polonium poisoning is that, being such a rare substance, requiring nuclear facilities to produce in sufficient quantities, it would have been much easier just to shoot him. Can only think it was done to make absolutely plain it was the Russian government that ordered and organised the murder.

Edited by Gary C on Wednesday 15th February 22:54

[eldar]

Gary C said:

What's always got me about the polonium poisoning is that, being such a rare substance, requiring nuclear facilities to produce in sufficient quantities, it would have been much easier just to shoot him. Can only think it was done to make absolutely plain it was the Russian government that ordered and organised the murder.

Got to have been misjudgement. He left a lot of contamination after him, door handles, carpets most things he touched. Kept a decontamination team busy for a few weeks. Covert or subtle it wasn't.

[llewop]

eldar said:

Gary C said:

What's always got me about the polonium poisoning is that, being such a rare substance, requiring nuclear facilities to produce in sufficient quantities, it would have been much easier just to shoot him. Can only think it was done to make absolutely plain it was the Russian government that ordered and organised the murder.

Got to have been misjudgement. He left a lot of contamination after him, door handles, carpets most things he touched. Kept a decontamination team busy for a few weeks. Covert or subtle it wasn't.

in my view - all of the above! Although to be fair, if the nature of the material hadn't been worked out in time (prior to or within a few months or so of death) it may have ended up a mystery.

I think the intended 'message' was: mess with us and you'll regret it... and it will be really painful!

PS - we're getting some massive topic drift going on! and I know I'm not helping that at times

[hairykrishna]

An old colleague of mine, an expert in biological effects of hot particles, held the theory that it was a dosage error by people unfamiliar with handling radioisotopes. At a low dose it would still have killed him very unpleasantly but without him presenting immediate, obvious, symptoms that had them looking for the compound.

[Talksteer]

hairykrishna said:

An old colleague of mine, an expert in biological effects of hot particles, held the theory that it was a dosage error by people unfamiliar with handling radioisotopes. At a low dose it would still have killed him very unpleasantly but without him presenting immediate, obvious, symptoms that had them looking for the compound.

Correct, the people doing the killing were also either poorly discsplined or in ignorance of what sort of poison they had.

The fact that they opened it contaminated themselves and then produced a trail that made them easy to identify was pretty stupid.

The Polonium was a pure alpha emitter with a low gamma. If ingested in the body no detectable radiation should have been emitted.

However they weren't aware of how sensitive counters the British police could get their hands on hence how they were able to follow the trail.