Debunked: Fukushima released 76 trillion becquerels of plutonium

Chew

Senior Member.
enenews headline declares "Report: 76 trillion becquerels of Plutonium-239 released from Fukushima — 23,000 times higher than previously announced"

What really was released was 76 TBq of neptunium-239 which decays into plutonium-239. When an isotope decays it no longer has the same half-life so it does not have the same activity and the activity of the daughter isotope must be re-calculated, something none of the alternative media websites were aware of. The simplest way to re-calculate activity is to multiply the activity by the specific activity of the daughter isotope and divide by the specific activity of the parent isotope.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?...ific+activity/neptunium-239+specific+activity

76 trillion Bq of neptunium-239 decays into 20.3 million Bq of plutonium-239.

enenews' source for this printed a correction to their article but enenews didn't bother. 9 out of 10 fear porn addicts choose enenews for their Fukushima hit! enenews was started 5 days after the Tohoku earthquake btw.

http://enenews.com/updated-report-7...shima-23000-times-higher-previously-announced



How much plutonium did Fukushima release and how does it compare to Chernobyl?

This study calculated the releases and has data for Chernobyl too: http://www.rri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/anzen_kiban/outcome/Proceedings_for_Web/Topics_4-02.pdf

Going by the METI study, Chernobyl released 6000 times more Pu-241 and 13,000 times more of the other plutonium isotopes as Fukushima.

Atmospheric nuclear weapons testing released 20 times as much Pu-241 and 125 times as much Pu-239+240 as Chernobyl.

The Rocky Flats Plant fire of 1957 released 65% as much plutonium as Fukushima. Rocky Flats is located 15 miles northwest of Denver, CO.




One outlier study came up with releases of 100 times more but most studies converge around this study's estimates.
 
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