“Measuring Radiation”
Jun 4, 2017 08:29:30 #
“Measuring Radiation”
“Measuring Radiation”
By Russell D. Hoffman
“What are Curies, Becquerels, Rems, Rads, Grays, Sieverts, Roentgens, Q, RBE etc.? Here are some answers (quotes are taken from my book, "The Code Killers." Free download link below.)
Let's start with a Curie: "An amount of radioactivity defined as 3.7 *10^18 decays per second... about equal to the radioactivity of one gram of pure radium. Replaced by the Becquerel (Bq)."
Becquerel: "Exactly one radioactive decay per second. Abbreviated Bq."
So those are just different measurements for the same thing: Radioactive decays per unit of time, regardless of strength or type of radioactive emission. A Curie is a lot of radiation. A single Becquerel, not so much. One Bq is equal to 27 picocuries, which makes sense because a picocurie (a millionth of a millionth of a Curie) is 0.037 disintegrations per second, and mathematically 0.037 times 27 equals (approximately) one. Radioactive disintegrations, of course, don't actually happen in fractional amounts. They either happen or they don't. WHEN they are likely to happen can be guessed at by the isotope's half-life, but it's only a guess.
But knowing the disintegrations per second doesn't tell you very much, really. To guess at the damage a given amount of radiation causes, you still need to know the average energy of the disintegrations. And of course, you need to know the type of emission: alpha, beta, gamma, x-ray, etc.. Each type has different properties, and each isotope's type(s) of emissions have average energy levels. Some occur together -- a gamma ray and an alpha emission. Some follow in short sequence: A beta emission followed by a gamma ray shortly thereafter. Sometimes the decay product is also radioactive. This can go on for dozens of steps.
Gamma rays are very penetrating but have no mass and no charge. They are pure energy, traveling at the speed of light. X-rays are less penetrating than gamma rays, having less energy, but are still damaging or "ionizing".
Alpha particles (also sometimes called alpha rays) are relatively massive (the size of helium atoms minus their two electrons) and don't travel very far before they've collided with so many things that they've slowed down, and become a helium atom out of place, grabbing two electrons and floating away. It's said that a single alpha decay has enough energy to visibly reposition a grain of sand on the beach. Alpha particles travel at "only" about 98% if the speed of light when they are first emitted during a radioactive decay. Compared to beta particles, gamma rays and x-rays, that's slow!
Alpha particles are not much of an external radiation hazard because they can be blocked by a sheet of newspaper or dead layers of your skin (mucus membranes, eyes, and a few other exposed areas can be damaged by external alpha radiation). But alpha particles released inside your body can do a lot of damage to molecules they collide with, and they have a double positive charge, which is also very damaging as they pass by many thousands of molecules before they slow down and capture two electrons.
Beta particles (also known as beta rays) are negatively charged particles which are ejected from the nucleus of an atom at 99.7% the speed of light or even faster. Beta particles are tiny: They are only as big as electrons, which is what they are once they slow down. Beta particles do most of their damage as their negative charge passes by other charged things - protons and electrons.
When beta particles are traveling very quickly, their charge is not near any particular thing long enough to have any significant effect. Most of the damage occurs when they've slowed down most of the way. For this reason, the health effects for the exact same TOTAL energy "dump" per kilogram of body tissue for beta particles with low energy emission values, such as tritium, are HIGHER than for isotopes of elements with higher beta energy emission values. But knowing the decays per second and the type of emissions, and their average energy levels, is still only a small part of understanding the potential damage from any particular radioactive release such as Fukushima Daiichi.
You also need to know the isotopic composition of the sample. Otherwise, you won't be able to estimate what the Bqs or Curies will be in a minute, or a day, or a year, or a thousand years. You need to know the half-lives of the isotopes that have been released, and the ratios of each isotope and each element.
A sample of plutonium-239 giving off one curie of radiation per hour (wow! that's a lot!) will give off about 99.999...% as much radiation tomorrow, or next year. But a sample of Iodine-131 giving off the same amount of radiation today, will give off half as much radiation in just eight days, and half as much as that - a quarter curie per hour- eight days after that. In a few months it will be gone completely.
But even knowing all THAT isn't nearly enough. The next step is to estimate the absorbed dose. One measure of this is the Radiation Absorbed Dose or RAD. Grays are another way to measure absorbed dose. But, absorbed dose still doesn't provide an estimate of the damage the radiation may do. For that, there is effective dose, which is measured in REM ("roentgen equivalent man") or sieverts. Background radiation varies greatly by location and other factors, but is usually given as almost a third of a REM per year, expressed as "320 millirem" for instance. One additional, traditional, measurement of radiation is the roentgen (pronounced rent-gen (like rent again without the "a") which is defined as 0.876 RADs "in air".
All of these yardsticks are blunderbuss attempts to estimate the potential damage from radiation as a function of energy dumped into the body. One rad equals an absorbed dose of 0.01 joules of energy per kilogram of body tissue. For ongoing radiation assaults, a time factor needs to be included: "1000 milli-sieverts per hour" or something like that. They might call that "one sievert per hour" too. Same thing. (About 6 sieverts or 6 grays, or about 600 rem or 600 rads, is considered a fatal dose, the slow and painful death coming within a few weeks of exposure. 400 to 450 rem received over a short time will kill about half the population that receives it within about 30 days.)
What is really happening when radiation damages the body, in large or small doses, is a very complex microscopic assault on living tissue. Certain elements concentrate in certain organs: Iodine in the thyroid, strontium in bones, astatine in the brain, etc.. If the percentage of radioactive strontium isotopes goes up compared to non-radioactive strontium isotopes (as it is in Japan today), the radioactive strontium will concentrate in bones and teeth. And, sometime in the future, the incidence of bone cancer and leukemia will increase.
So simply averaging the assault across "whole bodies" can miss things and is improper. Another adjustment factor is needed. That's expressed by assigning each isotope of each element a Q (Quality factor) or RBE (relative biological effectiveness value), or the more modern "radiation weighting factor" (which works better with computers). Analysts use these numbers to try to compare apples to oranges, or, more specifically, for example, tritium exposure in drinking water to an xray of your knee after you blow it out on the tennis court.
None of these values consider the effects of bioaccumulation: Radioactive isotopes build up in the edible portions of one living thing (strontium concentrates in beans, for instance) and are then eaten by another (beans concentrate in Mexicans, for instance) up the food chain to us, at the "top". When that happens, a dose that had been dispersed into the environment becomes concentrated again. It's all a very inexact science, and that inexactitude is used by the nuclear industry to hide what is really nothing short of premeditated murder."
- http://counterpunch.org/hoffman04222011.html
•
Russell D. Hoffman is author of "The Code Killers: An Expose of the Nuclear Industry." Free download: http://acehoffman.org/. He lives in Carlsbad, California, 25 miles south of the San Onofre nuclear generating station and runs a blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
•
Source: http://www.webplaces.org/radiation/
“Measuring Radiation”
By Russell D. Hoffman
“What are Curies, Becquerels, Rems, Rads, Grays, Sieverts, Roentgens, Q, RBE etc.? Here are some answers (quotes are taken from my book, "The Code Killers." Free download link below.)
Let's start with a Curie: "An amount of radioactivity defined as 3.7 *10^18 decays per second... about equal to the radioactivity of one gram of pure radium. Replaced by the Becquerel (Bq)."
Becquerel: "Exactly one radioactive decay per second. Abbreviated Bq."
So those are just different measurements for the same thing: Radioactive decays per unit of time, regardless of strength or type of radioactive emission. A Curie is a lot of radiation. A single Becquerel, not so much. One Bq is equal to 27 picocuries, which makes sense because a picocurie (a millionth of a millionth of a Curie) is 0.037 disintegrations per second, and mathematically 0.037 times 27 equals (approximately) one. Radioactive disintegrations, of course, don't actually happen in fractional amounts. They either happen or they don't. WHEN they are likely to happen can be guessed at by the isotope's half-life, but it's only a guess.
But knowing the disintegrations per second doesn't tell you very much, really. To guess at the damage a given amount of radiation causes, you still need to know the average energy of the disintegrations. And of course, you need to know the type of emission: alpha, beta, gamma, x-ray, etc.. Each type has different properties, and each isotope's type(s) of emissions have average energy levels. Some occur together -- a gamma ray and an alpha emission. Some follow in short sequence: A beta emission followed by a gamma ray shortly thereafter. Sometimes the decay product is also radioactive. This can go on for dozens of steps.
Gamma rays are very penetrating but have no mass and no charge. They are pure energy, traveling at the speed of light. X-rays are less penetrating than gamma rays, having less energy, but are still damaging or "ionizing".
Alpha particles (also sometimes called alpha rays) are relatively massive (the size of helium atoms minus their two electrons) and don't travel very far before they've collided with so many things that they've slowed down, and become a helium atom out of place, grabbing two electrons and floating away. It's said that a single alpha decay has enough energy to visibly reposition a grain of sand on the beach. Alpha particles travel at "only" about 98% if the speed of light when they are first emitted during a radioactive decay. Compared to beta particles, gamma rays and x-rays, that's slow!
Alpha particles are not much of an external radiation hazard because they can be blocked by a sheet of newspaper or dead layers of your skin (mucus membranes, eyes, and a few other exposed areas can be damaged by external alpha radiation). But alpha particles released inside your body can do a lot of damage to molecules they collide with, and they have a double positive charge, which is also very damaging as they pass by many thousands of molecules before they slow down and capture two electrons.
Beta particles (also known as beta rays) are negatively charged particles which are ejected from the nucleus of an atom at 99.7% the speed of light or even faster. Beta particles are tiny: They are only as big as electrons, which is what they are once they slow down. Beta particles do most of their damage as their negative charge passes by other charged things - protons and electrons.
When beta particles are traveling very quickly, their charge is not near any particular thing long enough to have any significant effect. Most of the damage occurs when they've slowed down most of the way. For this reason, the health effects for the exact same TOTAL energy "dump" per kilogram of body tissue for beta particles with low energy emission values, such as tritium, are HIGHER than for isotopes of elements with higher beta energy emission values. But knowing the decays per second and the type of emissions, and their average energy levels, is still only a small part of understanding the potential damage from any particular radioactive release such as Fukushima Daiichi.
You also need to know the isotopic composition of the sample. Otherwise, you won't be able to estimate what the Bqs or Curies will be in a minute, or a day, or a year, or a thousand years. You need to know the half-lives of the isotopes that have been released, and the ratios of each isotope and each element.
A sample of plutonium-239 giving off one curie of radiation per hour (wow! that's a lot!) will give off about 99.999...% as much radiation tomorrow, or next year. But a sample of Iodine-131 giving off the same amount of radiation today, will give off half as much radiation in just eight days, and half as much as that - a quarter curie per hour- eight days after that. In a few months it will be gone completely.
But even knowing all THAT isn't nearly enough. The next step is to estimate the absorbed dose. One measure of this is the Radiation Absorbed Dose or RAD. Grays are another way to measure absorbed dose. But, absorbed dose still doesn't provide an estimate of the damage the radiation may do. For that, there is effective dose, which is measured in REM ("roentgen equivalent man") or sieverts. Background radiation varies greatly by location and other factors, but is usually given as almost a third of a REM per year, expressed as "320 millirem" for instance. One additional, traditional, measurement of radiation is the roentgen (pronounced rent-gen (like rent again without the "a") which is defined as 0.876 RADs "in air".
All of these yardsticks are blunderbuss attempts to estimate the potential damage from radiation as a function of energy dumped into the body. One rad equals an absorbed dose of 0.01 joules of energy per kilogram of body tissue. For ongoing radiation assaults, a time factor needs to be included: "1000 milli-sieverts per hour" or something like that. They might call that "one sievert per hour" too. Same thing. (About 6 sieverts or 6 grays, or about 600 rem or 600 rads, is considered a fatal dose, the slow and painful death coming within a few weeks of exposure. 400 to 450 rem received over a short time will kill about half the population that receives it within about 30 days.)
What is really happening when radiation damages the body, in large or small doses, is a very complex microscopic assault on living tissue. Certain elements concentrate in certain organs: Iodine in the thyroid, strontium in bones, astatine in the brain, etc.. If the percentage of radioactive strontium isotopes goes up compared to non-radioactive strontium isotopes (as it is in Japan today), the radioactive strontium will concentrate in bones and teeth. And, sometime in the future, the incidence of bone cancer and leukemia will increase.
So simply averaging the assault across "whole bodies" can miss things and is improper. Another adjustment factor is needed. That's expressed by assigning each isotope of each element a Q (Quality factor) or RBE (relative biological effectiveness value), or the more modern "radiation weighting factor" (which works better with computers). Analysts use these numbers to try to compare apples to oranges, or, more specifically, for example, tritium exposure in drinking water to an xray of your knee after you blow it out on the tennis court.
None of these values consider the effects of bioaccumulation: Radioactive isotopes build up in the edible portions of one living thing (strontium concentrates in beans, for instance) and are then eaten by another (beans concentrate in Mexicans, for instance) up the food chain to us, at the "top". When that happens, a dose that had been dispersed into the environment becomes concentrated again. It's all a very inexact science, and that inexactitude is used by the nuclear industry to hide what is really nothing short of premeditated murder."
- http://counterpunch.org/hoffman04222011.html
•
Russell D. Hoffman is author of "The Code Killers: An Expose of the Nuclear Industry." Free download: http://acehoffman.org/. He lives in Carlsbad, California, 25 miles south of the San Onofre nuclear generating station and runs a blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
•
Source: http://www.webplaces.org/radiation/
Jun 4, 2017 09:55:46 #
pafret wrote:
“Measuring Radiation” br br img https://3.bp.blo... (show quote)
Thank you for bringing up this topic. The Fukushima power plant is exceeding all of these Levels by drastic amounts dumping over 300 tons day of toxic waste into the Pacific Ocean. That is why we are seeing so many whales and other mammals beaching themselves after swimming through and feeding on the available food in these areas which is radioactive.
If you ask Google why is there radioactive material in the Great Barrier Reef, you will understand why these worldwide Reefs are dying off.
Out of the 26,000 penguins that return to their rookeries every year the environmentalists have only counted 2400 Penguins this year due to the fact that the rest of them could be, and they are checking to see, if the other penguins have died on their way to the rookeries due to the radioactive Waters that they are swimming in, and the food that they are feeding on!
Not only is this amount of radioactivity polluting the Pacific Ocean, it is also drastically raising the temperatures of the waters do to what is called thermal pollution. So come on people let's talk about climate change! Let' Also talk about the biggest OPEN SEWER THAT WE ARE CREATING, and it's effect on WILD LIFE!
I am thinking about changing my name to
{SUPER OBSERVANT MAN}!
Jun 4, 2017 10:55:41 #
Weasel wrote:
Thank you for bringing up this topic. The Fukushim... (show quote)
This post is from ENENews, or Energy News, which is a fear mongering anti-nuclear news aggregator that was created in response to the Fukushima I nuclear accident. The site tends to have three different types of posts: posts that imply the Fukushima accident has poisoned the entire Pacific Ocean and adjacent coastlines (as if a single nuclear accident could do such a thing) and that "They" are covering up the true scale of the disaster. The site also features posts that report on any and every case of animal death and disease that occurs in the Pacific Ocean and adjacent coastlines, and posts that claim that the Fukushima reactors are seconds away from exploding again and releasing more pollution. Read all of this with a brick of salt.
You will see that Bob Nichols, a self-proclaimed expert says we have already experienced an extinction level event and all life will be gone from the planet within 90 years. If that is true so what? We can't stick the rads back in the bottle or even gather all material up from around the globe.
****************************
Fukushima Update: "Fukushima Equals 14,602.8 Hiroshima Bombs Today, More Tomorrow"
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
- Shiva
Updated June 3, 2017: Fukushima Equals 14,602.8 Hiroshima Bombs Today, More Tomorrow; There is No Place On Earth to Escape the Rad: The 3 melted-through cores of the destroyed reactors, totaling over 600 tons, at Fukushima daily release the radioactive equivalent of 6.45 Hiroshima bombs directly into the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean. As of June 3, 2017 - 2,264 days since the disaster began - this equals the detonation of 14,602.8 Hiroshima atomic bombs and it is still going strong, with no end in sight, considering that the half-life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years and that of uranium-235 is 704 million years. There is no technology on this planet to deal with this situation. There are only 336 cities on Earth with more than one million people. That is the equivalent of 43.46 Hiroshima atomic bombs apiece. - CP
"Your Radiation This Week"
by Bob Nichols
"First thing, grasp the difficult concept that this is an ELE or Extinction Level Event. The deadly meltdown and dispersion of radioactive fuel throughout the world is on-going to this day. There is no escaping our fate, there are no solutions. No one is exempt. The radioactive particles are all over the world now. The Rad lethality will continue to increase because that is what Rad lethality does. The simple reason is some of the Uranium decays to Plutonium. When that happens the Rad count increases. Once set free, the change cannot be altered or stopped by anyone or anything. The Rad is the ultimate power and its mission is to kill You.
There is nothing we can do to stop it. The Rad will take us all out. Yeah, that includes all of us; plus the bugs and the fish driving around in our air, lakes, rivers and oceans. The Rad also nails the long lived remnants of the Dinosaurs; y’know… the birds. They don’t have a prayer. All of us are included; none are left out. That is reality, anything else is just wishful thinking or a purposeful lie. The amount of Rad in the air now dooms Humanity to a relatively quick extinction. Done In by our own war toys, how moronic is that! I can’t say it any plainer than that."
Bob Nichols' “Your Radiation This Week” report can be viewed here:
http://youtu.be/Wiek6fYS9uI
- http://www.veteranstoday.com/author/bobnichols/
○
- http://enenews.com/
Jun 4, 2017 11:24:54 #
Bob in not the only one proving these facts.
Our United States Air Craft has been in the area with Radiation Sniffers and the results are staggering.
9 fisheries along the West Coast from Alaska to Mexico are gone, and have claimed a total loss on their operation to put live caught seafood on our grocery shelves.
Mexico has claimed that at least 1 million sardines are washing up dead on their Shores daily.
Only time will sort out the truth.
We may very well be seeing an Opaqaliptic Event!
Good Luck Humanity! £¥₩!
Our United States Air Craft has been in the area with Radiation Sniffers and the results are staggering.
9 fisheries along the West Coast from Alaska to Mexico are gone, and have claimed a total loss on their operation to put live caught seafood on our grocery shelves.
Mexico has claimed that at least 1 million sardines are washing up dead on their Shores daily.
Only time will sort out the truth.
We may very well be seeing an Opaqaliptic Event!
Good Luck Humanity! £¥₩!
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