Groundwater readings in Florida show Japan earthquake

[Wise Old Owl]

As I sit here at Grand Cayman, mild Radioactive rain was the topic of the BBC and although it is still safe it came down in Mass. Strangely the CNN crew was JOKING about it.

[DapperD]

I just read today that low levels of radioactivity have been found in Massachusetts rainwater:http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...13732220110327

[berninbush]

Radiation is one of those things that most people (myself included) tend to be afraid of because we don't UNDERSTAND it and have no way of assessing what is a threat and what is not. When you say "mild radioactive rain"... the truth is that ALL rain is mildly radioactive. Radiation is everywhere-- the soil, the water, the air, the sunlight. We are all exposed to it, every day. And when the media reports that a particular event has "raised radiation levels to 1,000 times above normal" they fail to add that radiation can be a MILLION times above normal before it even begins to be a problem, so there's no context.

My brother in law the physicist posted a link to this chart that helps put it all in perspective: http://xkcd.com/radiation/ If you do the math, you can see that one cross-country flight in the U.S. gives you more radiation than living for 10 days in an average town near the Fukushima plant.

I don't think the folks in Massachusetts have anything to worry about.

[Pedaling Fool]

Radiation is one of those things that most people (myself included) tend to be afraid of because we don't UNDERSTAND it and have no way of assessing what is a threat and what is not. When you say "mild radioactive rain"... the truth is that ALL rain is mildly radioactive. Radiation is everywhere-- the soil, the water, the air, the sunlight. We are all exposed to it, every day. And when the media reports that a particular event has "raised radiation levels to 1,000 times above normal" they fail to add that radiation can be a MILLION times above normal before it even begins to be a problem, so there's no context.

My brother in law the physicist posted a link to this chart that helps put it all in perspective: http://xkcd.com/radiation/ If you do the math, you can see that one cross-country flight in the U.S. gives you more radiation than living for 10 days in an average town near the Fukushima plant.

I don't think the folks in Massachusetts have anything to worry about.

Finally, someone with a rational post on this issue And thanks for the link.

BTW, I also can scare myself with thoughts of radiation, but there are so many other things I can scare myself with thoughts of that are equally non-detectable with our senses. Lets at least take comfort that radiation is much more detectable than many deadly chemicals/biological toxins. Always gotta look on the side

[BobTheBuilder]

That's interesting, and surprising, given the fact that it took several hours for tsunami waves from the quake to reach U.S. shores. Obviously, whatever reverberations were detected in Florida must have moved through the center of the planet rather than along the surface at sea level.

Not really. The energy passed around the world through the earth's crust instead of through the center, but the transmission speed of the energy wave through the (generally) solid crust is much faster than the transmission speed through water. Very much like the speed of sound, which is higher through the water than through the air, and higher through most solids than through water.

Sorry, got my nerd hat on today.

[Blue Jay]

when the media reports that a particular event has "raised radiation levels to 1,000 times above normal" they fail to add that radiation can be a MILLION times above normal before it even begins to be a problem, so there's no context.

My brother in law the physicist posted a link to this chart that helps put it all in perspective: http://xkcd.com/radiation/ If you do the math, you can see that one cross-country flight in the U.S. gives you more radiation than living for 10 days in an average town near the Fukushima plant.

On this issue the media which has almost zero credibility at the best of times, has less than zero now. As your brother in law will also tell you is that there are many aspects of this disaster which no one has the slightest clue as to what has happened or will happen. For example plutonium, a completely man made substance, has never escaped before. It has the potential to kill every living thing it touches, over and over, for thousands of years. Will it, we don't have the slightest idea. We are yet again conducting an unknown number of completely blind scientific experiments with the entire planet as the gunea pig.

[WingedMonkey]

Not really. The energy passed around the world through the earth's crust instead of through the center, but the transmission speed of the energy wave through the (generally) solid crust is much faster than the transmission speed through water. Very much like the speed of sound, which is higher through the water than through the air, and higher through most solids than through water.

Sorry, got my nerd hat on today.

Thanks nerd

For more information on the actual post.

[Pedaling Fool]

Kind of a separate issue, but not entirely, yet very interesting. If you were to fall through a hole in the earth the travel time would be 42 minutes. http://www.mathreference.com/ca-vec,tunnel.html

[berninbush]

the transmission speed of the energy wave through the (generally) solid crust is much faster than the transmission speed through water. Very much like the speed of sound, which is higher through the water than through the air, and higher through most solids than through water.

Thanks, I'd forgotten that particular science fact, but it makes sense.

Hm, sounding like the actual plant sites with plutonium sitting around may be uninhabitable for a long, long time. I just hope the end result is not to create a "dead zone" like around Chernobyl. Japan was crowded enough already without losing usable land.

[berninbush]

Kind of a separate issue, but not entirely, yet very interesting. If you were to fall through a hole in the earth the travel time would be 42 minutes. http://www.mathreference.com/ca-vec,tunnel.html

Ok, the folks at the link sound like they know what they're talking about, but *I* sure don't get it. I would have thought you'd come to a stop once you reach the center of the earth... It's hard to picture "falling up" away from the center of the earth for the second half of your trip.

[Driver8]

I just hope the end result is not to create a "dead zone" like around Chernobyl. Japan was crowded enough already without losing usable land.

I suspect this will be the end result. No one will want to live near this place anyhow. Probably not as large a dead zone as in the Ukraine, however. Latest news I've heard is that the plutonium found to have escaped containment means most likely that at least No. 2 suffered a partial meltdown. Sobering. Not a good idea to build a nuke plant near a big fault zone capable of an 8+ earthquake.

[The Solemates]

its only a matter of time when we will now start picking up nuclear waste in US water due to the japan earthquake

[RockDoc]

Water is especially sensitive to earthquake waves because it is incompressible. (This is why you can "fish" in a pond with dynamite).

For example, water saturated sediments always shake more and longer than dry areas in earthquake regions. We saw this with the King Dome implosion in Seattle a few years ago. I think the water saturated river valleys rang for about twice as long as the dry hill areas.

So, no surprise that sensitive instruments would pick up earthquake waves in ground water a long way from the source. And, yes, the waves travel mainly through the crust.

Something that I haven't heard mentioned is the power of the peak ground accelerations from the Japan earthquake. Above a certain point it exceeds gravity and everything, including vehicles and structures, is thrown into the air. I would guess that this happened in some areas during the Japan quake. Pretty scary!


just another nerd (former FEMA earthquake person) chiming in...