Radioactive fallout in North America

This post is a deviation from my normal style of posting, but I feel that some things need to be said. The big news is the Fukishima power plant problems in Japan. First off, I'd like to explain that I was a certified nuclear engineer and power (steam) plant mechanic in the U.S. Navy years ago. I do see a place for nuclear power on subs and surface ships, but I'm not a fan of civilian based nuclear power. I believe solar and geothermal show much more promise without all the dangers. That being said, I'd like to discuss a few items of interest I've been hearing on the net.

What about the MOX fuel? One particle of Plutonium will kill you because it is the most radioactive substance on the planet.

I'm not sure where this myth started. Perhaps because people hear about Uranium all the time and not so much about Plutonium, that it sounds more exotic and powerful. It is true that for a given amount of Pu-239 and U-235, the Plutonium would be much more radioactive. They both decay with close to the same energy (sort of) but they have much different half lives. Pu-239 is about 24,000 years while U-235 is about 700,000,000 years. That means that Pu-239 will decay and release radiation 29,000 times more often than U-235. So, for a given amount stuck inside your body, the plutonium would be many times worse.

But lets compare with something else like Pollonium 210. Po-210 comes from Uranium and Uranium exists in small quantities in the earth's crust and a lot more exist in phosphate fertilizers. So, all the food we eat has Uranium in it, but it also has Po-210. Po-210 has a half life of 138 days which means it decays 1.8 billion times more often than enriched uranium and 63,500 times more often than Plutonium 239!

Luckily, we have adapted to trace amounts of radiation in the air, food, and water. But we haven't really adapted to the levels of radiation we get by fertilizing with phosphates. To make matters worse, people smoke tobacco that was grown with these fertilizers and the Po-210 gets lodged in the tar and stays in the lungs longer than it should. The body will get rid of it after a few months, unless that person continues to smoke.

I'm not saying that radiation is good, I'm saying that smoking is bad and people don't seem to care about smoking, or pollution, or living near coal plants. But they seem to be freaking about Fukishima. I'm just trying to stop the fear mongering and focus on the things we should really be afraid of.

Acid rain, oh yeah. Didn't it turn out to be no big deal?

Well, the media certainly doesn't talk about it anymore. But in actuality, it could be one of the biggest stories of the century with incredible ramifications to the health of the planet and the life it supports.

All plants have a root system that absorbs nutrients from the soil. The trick is, they only absorb water soluble substances. Aluminum exists in the earth's crust at about a 7% concentration. It is either oxidized or part of a salt of aluminum and therefore not water soluble. But when the rain is slightly acidic, it will dissolve the oxide layer on the aluminum and make it temporarily water soluble. Since aluminum is toxic to plants, you can see the problem. If you have seen the movie "The Road", you know where I'm going with this.

All the excess CO2 from burning fossil fuels and the sulfur from burning coal is making sulfuric acid and carbonic acid (among others) in the rain. Another problem is the uranium naturally occurring in the soil. It oxidizes as well and isn't water soluble until the acid rain hits it. So, with all our pollution and acid rain, we are getting far more radiation in our food, air, water, and cigarettes than our grandparents did. Enough said about that.


Fukishima has been pumping out radiation for a month straight and the west coast of North America is heavily contaminated now.


I live on Vancouver Island, so I found someone close that monitors radiation and here is what I found.http://saltspringexchange.com/2011/03/16/dont-panic-salt-spring-radiation-monitor/

These data points were measured on Salt Spring island. Notice the slight spike on the 21st of March. This was just over a week after the tsunami in Japan. Why didn't the readings stay elevated if huge amounts of radioactive particles were streaming out of the reactors?

Here are some graphs from Berkley for Cs-137 and I-131 in rainwater.

Notice that the spike happened on March 23rd, just after the Salt Spring island spike. Also note that the readings have been steadily going down to minimum detectable levels. Also note that on the Berkley site it says that at the peak for the Cs-137 you would have to drink 4,000 liters or about 1,000 gallons of that water to get the same level of radiation as one would get in a round trip flight from San Francisco to Washington D.C. I would worry more about the I-131 because it concentrates in the Thyroid gland which is about 1300 times smaller than a 180 lb person. Their chart says 136 liters to get the same radiation, but really it would be about a tenth of a liter. But I-131 has a short 8 day half life, and as you can see from the charts, not much is making it over here.

I also found a German site with some Fukishima power plant numbers.

And finally we have this site (Norwegian) and it shows Xenon 133 everywhere. Admittedly this looks bad.

But this is total column. It shows the total radiation as expected from the ground to the sky. Not that useful to us humans, so next I look at surface contamination less than 100 meters.

So, the fear mongering videos show the first images but not the more down to earth surface contamination predictions. Here is one they really don't want you to see, I-131 surface contamination.

That's right. Nothing shows up. From all of the above graphs it is obvious that there was some meltdown and radiation leak. But the pockets of fissioning must have slowed way down. The danger to North America is almost non existent at the moment. But that could all change very quickly. But even if it does change for the worse, the level of dilution by the time any particles get over 6000 miles across an ocean would bring the levels down close to background normal or less in some cases. It is kinda like one person spraying some hair spray at one end of a football field and someone at the other end worrying about getting hair spray in their eyes. Even with a good wind, it just aint gonna happen.

Japan admits daily radioactive release from Fukushima at 154 trillion Becquerels...

On April 5, the estimated amount of radioactive materials released from Fukushima I Nuke Plant was 0.69 terabecquerels/hour for iodine-131 and 0.14 terabecquerels/hour for cesium-137. When the numbers were recalculated according to the INES method (converting cesium amount into iodine equivalent), the amount released turned out to be 6.4 terabecquerels/hour (which was 154 terabecquerels per day.

That was the new story, but I have a problem with the way they convert Cs-137 to I-131 equivalent. I-131 has a 8 day half life and Cs-137 has a 30 year half life so they say the Cs-137 is 1300 times worse. But even though it is in the environment 1300 times longer, it decays 1300 times less often. In the body Cs-137 only has a 70 day biological half life because the body will eventually get rid of it. I-131 pretty much stays in the thyroid. By the way, the thyroid is about 1300 times smaller than the whole body of a 180 lb person. And Cs-137 has more power per decay. The net result is that I-131 is actually about 100 times worse in the body for a given amount. In the environment, for a short time, I-131 is over 800 times worse than Cs-137. After about 40 days almost all the I-131 is gone and you are left with Cs-137 in the environment.

Another way of looking at it is if you had just enough I-131 to give you cancer in the environment and you had the same weight in Cs-137, the cesium would be there for 150 years but at 1/100th the radiation effect in the body. And you could injest that level your whole life and never get cancer from it. I'm not saying Cs-137 is good, I'm just comparing it to I-131. And I think the conversion to Iodine equivalent is bogus. They should have just reported the numbers separately to avoid confusion.

Conclusion

People in North America worried about drinking the milk with radioactive iodine should worry more about drinking milk after the acid rain just made the grass more radioactive. Remember, acid rain makes uranium and pollonium temporarily water soluble and the roots will absorb it.

And people should worry about living downwind from a coal burning plant. Heavy metals and radioactive isotopes occur naturally and it is in coal as well. We burn it and that junk gets in the air. You get more radiation from a coal power plant than you get living next to a nuclear power plant.

And worry about smoking. I know your grandparents smoked until their 80s before they died. But we have more phosphate fertilizers and way more acid rain. The cigarettes of today are many times more radioactive than 50 years ago.

So, stop the fear mongering and focus on reality. There are legitimate things to worry about, but the radiation fear should be focused on Japan, not North America. .....At least for now.

Richard

Colloidal Silver updates - using the phone line

I have experimented making colloidal silver / ionic silver for awhile now. I've learned several things:

• more silver electrode surface area is better. I use Canadian maple leaf coins that I pounded with a sledge hammer to make them oblong. Based on how much of the coins are exposed to the water, I would need 12 gauge silver wire looped down 6 inches and back up 6 inches just to equal the surface area. And never mind the thinner gauges like 16 or 18 gauge. What happens is a certain amount of current is flowing, but with less surface area, current density is too high and makes too much silver per given area.  Even though all the particles are the same size when they come off into solution, too much in a given area means they will clump together and make larger particles.
• some form of stirring is necessary. Either manually stirring every few minutes, or having an electric motor to do the work is fine. The easiest is a hot plate like this.This isn't that hot, it is meant to keep coffee warm. You don't want too much heat, it could shatter your glass container.

• There should be a way to monitor current flow. I make sure that I never get over 4 mA. It is interesting. When the current gets to 2 or 3 mA, then I would manually stir for about 5 to 10 seconds and the current would drop again. What is happening is that the silver ions are mostly between the two electrodes and the more silver , the more conductive. By spreading them out by stirring, there is less concentration between the electrodes and the current drops. If I use the heat pad, then stirring doesn't do anything. This proves that the heat is stirring the water enough! 
• The more voltage you have, the faster the process starts. But anything over 50 volts can be dangerous. The phone line is nice because it is about 50 volts and limited to 30 mA. With this simple circuit below, I limit the absolute maximum current to about 19 mA (I don't let it get above 4mA though). If I accidentally touch the probes together the red and green leds both light up brightly. Typically, I plug in phone line and when the silver probes are put in the water, the red led will light up to show there is a connection and electrons are flowing. The meter stays all the way down and the green led is off. If the probes aren't touching and the green led comes on and the meter pegs high, that means you don't have pure distilled water(I've accidentally used spring water and this happened). The container of water should be on a hot plate and after awhile( about 1.5 hours per quart) the meter will get up to the high side and the green light will be lit. No stirring needed because of the hot plate.

I placed the circuit in a small tin box:

I used about 25 ohms instead of the 100 ohm potentiometer for my meter shunt. But you have to adjust it so that it reads about 3/4 full scale when your silver is ready. You can use any old meter you find.  This one came out of an old microwave detector I found for a dollar in the thrift store.

• Another thing I learned is to not overcook it. I can get about 12 to 15 ppm and it is still perfectly clear. If I go over that, it will start to turn amber color over the next few days.
• Also, you may have a 90% ionic and 10% colloidal solution when you first make it. But after a few days, it seems to settle into about a 70% ionic and 30% colloidal solution. At this point, the ppm meter reading goes down, but the laser tyndel effect goes up from the initial tests.

Cheap Air Conditioning - Part 2

This is a follow up on my last post about cheap air conditioning.  I started looking for a whole house fan but the ones I found looked fairly expensive.  About $200 to $900 depending on what I was looking for.  I didn't want to cut a hole in the ceiling and most of them wouldn't fit in my back window.  I started looking at regular fans and finally box fans.  A typical 20 inch box fan has about 2,000 cubic feet per minute (cfm) of air flow.  A typical 16 inch fan has about 1000 cfm.  So, I decided to pick up a couple of $24 box fans from Canadian Tire.  The same fan in the states at Target has been seen for $12 or so.

I cut some plywood to fit the back window and cut holes in it to accommodate the fans.  I took the front faces off the fans and used the grill as a template to mark the size and screw holes.

I cut the hole about 1 inch smaller all around than the grill.  I used zip ties to hold the fan to the plywood by using the front face screw holes.

Here they are in the back window. The top one is upside down so it is easier to turn off and on. You have to have both running at the same time or it does no good.  If just one is on, then the air just goes in a small circle. Both these fans blow out and that causes air to come into the house through the windows.

It is really nice.  I turned them on and every window I opened had a really good breeze blowing.  It completely refreshed our house air in about 2 minutes at a whopping 4,000 cfm.  As soon as the sun set we actually started to get cold and had to shut it down.

The above picture is from a website for whole house fans.  You can see what kind of savings can be accomplished based on where you live.  I checked the wattage with my trusty kill-a-watt meter.  It showed 142 watts for low, 153 watts on medium, and 164 watts on high.  And that is both fans together.  A window mount AC (that would only cool one or two rooms) uses about 1000 to 1500 watts.  A full house AC can use 10 times that.

Richard

Cheap air conditioning

Cooling off this summer is becoming a priority for most. Not so much for me because I live on Vancouver Island. A heat wave is 85F and it only lasts about one week every year. Most people don't have air conditioners here but the new house we are renting looks like it might get a little warm this summer, so I'm thinking of options. In the past, I've talked about using solar to cool the house. But I can't do that here because I rent. There are a few cheap options though:

1) Whole House Fan - A whole house fan is a powerful fan that is designed for ceiling mount and it sucks air from the house and pushes it into the attic. That, in turn, causes the attic air to be pushed out. So, if the windows in the house are open, then fresh air is sucked into the house and goes out through the attic. This has a cooling effect on the house.

But, being a renter, I can't cut a hole in the ceiling. Another option is to take a piece of plywood and cut a hole in it to mount the whole house fan in. I can size the plywood to fit in a window at one end of the house. Then with windows in other rooms open, the house will cool down. And I can take the fan with me when and if we move.

2) Swamp Cooler - A swamp cooler is designed for places that aren't humid. In fact, they only work in 60% or less humidity. Vancouver Island is very humid most of the year. But I checked some weather data and it turns out that during the summer, almost every day, the humidity drops to about 30 to 50% during the hottest time.

So, I could build a swamp cooler, many people do. All it is is a water reservoir with a wicking material and a fan that blows air across the wick. As the water evaporates it cools the air. But the other day I saw a humidifier in a thrift store and it was a only $8. I don't think I could build one for that cheap. It was the kind with a big cylindrical wick. (it has to be that kind, not just any humidifier) I'm guessing that it would easily cool down a medium size room. I'll do some tests over the next few weeks and blog about it.

One thing to think about it mold growing on the wicking material. So people have to clean them constantly or put a little bleach in the water. The bleach sounds a little harsh. A better idea is to add some homemade colloidal silver to the water reservoir. This will keep the water nice and clean. Although, the water will have to be added everyday, the silver doesn't need to be added every time. Just once a week is probably fine.

Richard

Poor Man's Lightning Arrestor

If you live in a place where lightning is a problem, then protecting your equipment is a must. You would also need a lightning rod at the highest point near your house.  Maybe this is your house or it could be a windmill or some other structure.  But either way, you would need a metal pipe or rod at the highest point and pretty big wire going straight to a ground pipe.  But even with a lightning rod, if lighting strikes on your property, then a huge static charge would still be in the local area.  This could travel through your shortwave antena wire or power cable from your windmill and fry your expensive circuits.

The trick with lightning is that it hates to change directions.  If it is traveling along a conductor to ground and the conductor changes direction, then lightning will want to jump to the next nearest conductor to ground.  In the below picture, the copper power wire from a windmill is wrapped around a metal pipe that is driven into the ground.  The wire is wrapped several times and then loops up and back down again before continueing to the charge controller.  It is just clamped to the pipe with a zip tie.

Richard