Plutonium levels at nuclear test site in WA up to 4,500 times higher than rest of coast, study finds
Plutonium levels at nuclear test site in WA up to 4,500 times higher than rest of coast, study finds
www.theguardian.com
Plutonium levels at nuclear test site in WA up to 4,500 times higher than rest of coast, study finds
Researchers say contamination found at Montebello Islands is part of fallout from 1950s British tests and will persist for thousands of years
Emphasis mine.
Not saying this isn’t a big problem, but the article seems like it’s fearmongering too, or at least not providing enough specifics. 4-4,500 times higher than almost zero is still extremely low, and it’s only dangerous if inhaled.
Relevant XKCD
@brucethemoose
Well, not quite fearmongering but certainly an unclear sentence that was derived from the study's abstract.
Multiple sites were tested, and the range of contamination across those sites was "four to 4,500 times higher in the Montebello Islands than the WA coastline..."
In short, 'bad' in some places, 'very, very bad' in others.
@mio
I didn’t realize the paper was linked! It specifically mentions:
This is a unit of radiation / mass. Going by a WolframAlpha example, one cubic meter of “typical” emits soil about 10,000 Bq. 1 cubic meter of the tested soil emits about > 900,000 Bq, though the high end is an outlier:
So 90x above ambient soil radiation, it seems.
…This is not a lot! Dirt is not very radioactive, we are talking microscopic amounts compared to radiation sources like X-rat machines. You wouldn’t want to inhale a ton of the soil, but still.