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Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant prepares to release diluted radioactive water into the sea
(www.koreatimes.co.kr)
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I'm very rusty here, so please correct me where I'm wrong.
Isn't most of the radiation that makes it to the earth's surface from the sun just EM radiation? That acts a lot different than radiation due to nuclear decay. Your use of the unit 'tons' makes me think you're talking about particle radiation, of which the only one that reaches earth's surface in large quantities would be muons, which may as well be ignored because they aren't interacting with anything.
The water being released by Japan has the following isotopes:
All four of these isotopes decay via beta decay.
So, a comparison to the Sun seems weird here.
Here's an IAEA overview as of February 2023,
So it's diluted well below internationally accepted concentrations. Moreover, the release is even less than when it was operational!
This is the quality post that I love getting these discussions. Thanks for the info!
That 50 ton per day I recalled from long ago. So I had to make some search, here's what I found :
These effects are usually measured as elevated levels of neutrons and muons. These events can increase the radiation dose of an individual at sea level or while in an aircraft, though not by enough to significantly increase an individual's lifetime risk of cancer. ...and
400 km/s x 5 ions/cm^3^ x 1g/mol x ...(6400km)^2^ x 3.1416 x 1e15cm^3^/km^3^
... x 86400s/day x 1/(6.02e23 ions/mol) This is about 37 tons per day, mostly proton and alpha particles.
...
I used the diameter of the earth instead of that of the magnetic field around the Earth, this is simplistic but should give an order of magnitude. I did not find better information and the real value should be found by someone else.
solar wind details inside :
Properties and structureVelocity and density :
"Near the Earth's orbit at 1 astronomical unit (AU) the plasma flows at speeds ranging from 250 to 750 km/s (155–404 mi/s) with a density ranging between 3 and 10 particles per cubic centimeter and"...
You're right and I completely forgot about those somehow.
For pespective,
So, cosmic rays contribute hardly (about 4%) any to the radiation we receive every day.
I'm no expert here, clearly, so I'm not sure how to compare these units of radiation with the ones being provided for the Fukushima water release; those numbers are provided in becquerel from the sources I found.