Fukushima’s nuclear signature found in California wine

This reminds me of the desirability of pre-WWII battleship steel in particle physics experiments. Due to required detection sensitivity they need to construct experiments from materials that have as low background radiation as possible in order to not mask the actual information of interest. Ever since the first atomic bombs were detonated, sufficiently low-radioactivity steel became much more difficult to find. A large portion of available low-background steel supply is from battleships that were built before the bombs [1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Low-background_steel" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Low-background_steel</a>

When they say “bathed in radioactive cloud” they actually mean “wind carried trace amounts of radioactive materials”. Anytime anything “nuclear” is involved, the reporting gets very poetic.

Just want to point out that low level radiation is probably good for you. It&#x27;s cool that they found it, but this is not any kind of health danger.<p>Low level radiation probably acts as a beneficial stressor, like exercise or fasting [1]. Although this level is so low it probably does nothing at all.<p>You also probably don&#x27;t have to worry about the radiation you get from bananas or plane flights. And it&#x27;s possible those dumb sounding radioactive water spas might have actually been helpful.<p>Fukushima is aweful for the nearby region and still a cautionary tale. But it didn&#x27;t poison the whole world.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.discovermagazine.com&#x2F;crux&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;06&#x2F;small-radiation&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.discovermagazine.com&#x2F;crux&#x2F;2015&#x2F;04&#x2F;06&#x2F;small-radi...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC2477717&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC2477717&#x2F;</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;large.stanford.edu&#x2F;courses&#x2F;2016&#x2F;ph241&#x2F;yang1&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;large.stanford.edu&#x2F;courses&#x2F;2016&#x2F;ph241&#x2F;yang1&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;26808887" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;26808887</a>

For some context a Becquerel (Bq) is a single decay per second (note the graph shows mBq&#x2F;l). One gram has an activity of ~3 TBq.<p>Though 137-Cs has a half-life of ~30yrs it has a biological half-life of ~70 days. (30 if you are treated with Prussian Blue). It fairly uniformly distributes through the body, though it has higher concentrations in soft tissues, which does pose greater damage (see Sievert).<p>That being said, these are such low quantities you&#x27;d die of alcohol many times over before increasing your chance of cancer by 1% over the course of your lifetime.<p>From Wiki they gave some dogs a dose of 140 MBq&#x2F;kg and they all died in 33 days. When they gave some other dogs half (70MBq&#x2F;kg) dosage all the dogs survived.

Very interesting read. I did a double take that a lack of Cesium-137 meant &quot;post-1980&quot; (not &quot;pre-1980&quot;) since the levels have dropped off since the testing in the 50s and 60s.

I&#x27;m tasting hints of berry, hints of oak, rubber hose, high notes of plutonium...

Even more interesting than other sources is the fact that many spinal and similar surgeons reach their lifetime radiation exposure limit in just 10 years of practice. Many (most?) end up with cataracts or other tell tale symptoms of radiation exposure. It&#x27;s because of all the x-rays needed for minimally invasive surgury.

A similar example of how sensitive measurement tools are: wine from the Livermore area is slightly higher in tritium than wine from elsewhere in California, ostensibly because of proximity to LLNL.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;books?id=nAgxAQAAMAAJ&amp;pg=RA2-PA63&amp;lpg=RA2-PA63&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=sy0Cj7lW5m&amp;sig=_m7VUqXXDDmYTdRGV_r4ZJmsWuE&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiBk6eJ167cAhXSGDQIHUpPDBAQ6AEIhAEwCQ#v=onepage" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;books?id=nAgxAQAAMAAJ&amp;pg=RA2-PA63&amp;l...</a>

We should treat this as what it is: a humbling reminder of just how big avogadro&#x27;s number is.

Edit: Oh no. Physics For Future Presidents lied to me. See here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.snopes.com&#x2F;fact-check&#x2F;alcohol-radioactive&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.snopes.com&#x2F;fact-check&#x2F;alcohol-radioactive&#x2F;</a><p>I&#x27;d delete this comment if it were possible.

I wonder if Japanese Whiskey would be affected?

&quot;Daahling! This vintage tastes absolutely <i>radiant!</i>&quot;

Oh my god! Ban all nuclear reactors ASAP!!!<p>Just kidding. A regular banana is probably an order of manitude more radioactive than these wines.

&gt; The team began their study with the conventional measurement of cesium-137 levels in the unopened bottles. That showed levels to be indistinguishable from background noise.<p>And yet I bet wine snobs are gonna pretend their palates are so refined they can taste it now.

This wouldn&#x27;t surprise me even a little. I was living in Anaheim at the time of the disaster, and background radiation levels were elevated for so long that I got bored of checking. A normal reading might have been 0.08 - 0.15mSv, and it was super common to see readings in the 0.40-0.50mSv range for months at a time.

BTW, alcoholic drinks are requred to be radioactive by US law.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;1N1ydPJGGj4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;1N1ydPJGGj4</a>

If I&#x27;m reading it correctly, they can date wines based on the amount of radiation given off by them, and line it up with a chart for amount of radiation the atmosphere took in during events.<p>How could you properly date a bottle if it was in Fukushima during the event, vs a 1960&#x27;s bottle during the Cuban Missile Crisis?<p>&gt; the levels of cesium-137 are barely detectable, and even then, only if the wine is destroyed.<p>So nothing to see here, move along.