Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Water water everywhere

But none of it fit for human consumption.

Except it is really, it just went over the threshold for infants which is extremely low. The Japanese threshold is 100Bq/l (Becquerel, yet another unit...) for infants, 300 for adults and the measured level was about 200 at one point, briefly. The thresholds recommended by Euratom and the IAEA are 500 and 3000 respectively (via Japanprobe).

Still, better safe than sorry. From now on I'm going to be drinking only...

Life is tough.

7 comments:

EliRabett said...

Well yeah, but about a month from now, after the lagering time, you will have to switch to ten year old single malt Scotch

Nick Barnes said...

The back of my envelope says that 100 becquerels of iodine-131 is about 20 femto grams. When it decays, it gives up a 364 keV gamma and a beta particle with an average energy of 190 keV, making 550 keV, so that 100 becquerels is about 10 picowatts, and as it fully decays it will give up about 9 microjoules of energy. If all of that iodine takes up residence in a typical adult thyroid (50g), it will deliver about 180 microSieverts. More in an infant of course.
Unless my sums are way off, of course.
In comparison, treatment for thyroid problems such as Graves disease can involve single doses of (say) 20 millicuries of I-131, which is 740 million bequerels. I think.

James Annan said...

Eli,

I'm banking on the brewing time being enough half-lives that I can keep on with it. (Obviously this depends on the pollutant remaining only iodine).

Nick, presumably the point of the Graves disease treatment is to kill the thyroid? I quite like mine as it is.

Anonymous said...

Graves Disease you say Nick? Perhaps we can persuade a certain Viscount to take up residence at Fukushima Daiichi...

Steve Bloom said...

So perhaps there's a business opportunity in selling nipples designed to fit on beer bottles?

James Annan said...

Hmm, well that wasn't the safest thing to google for, but it's been done, more or less :-)

David B. Benson said...

Bottoms up!