
Fukushima’s nuclear signature found in California wine - tmandry
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611654/fukushimas-nuclear-signature-found-in-california-wine/
======
rwcarlsen
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]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-
background_steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel)

~~~
kilovoltaire
Wow, I hadn't realized the effects of the atomic age were that widespread,
creepy.

~~~
jessriedel
You should make the opposite conclusion. The fact that atoms are so tiny that
almost _every_ notable event has a detectable affect on isotope ratios means
you should downgrade the meaningfulness of the OP article. (See my other
comment on ancient lead, which has nothing to do with nuclear tech.) Likewise,
when seizmic technology improves and we can sense explosions from further
away, we don't conclude that building demolition is somehow more important
than we previously thought.

~~~
rthille
Yeah, a similar observation is that there are more atoms in a glass of water
than glasses of water in all the oceans. So, dumping a glass of (somehow
trackable) water into the ocean would eventually cause every glass of water to
contain atoms from that glass. See also: [http://samkean.com/books/caesars-
last-breath/](http://samkean.com/books/caesars-last-breath/)

~~~
robocat
Or it takes 10 years for one of your breaths to be spread around the
atmosphere, and everyone is very likely to be breathing at least one molecule
of that breath in every breath they take.

From article "Breathing Everyone's Air" \- scroll down to that heading in
[http://www.scifun.ed.ac.uk/card/facts.html](http://www.scifun.ed.ac.uk/card/facts.html)

------
lxe
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.

~~~
fred_is_fred
Wait until someone tells the author about the sun. I get bathed in a
radioactive death rays most mornings.

~~~
kolpa
The sun is radioactive. Sunlight is not radioactive, it's radiation.

~~~
Robotbeat
Sunlight does effectively produce radiation burns in your skin, however. And
that definitely causes cancer. If we treated sunlight the way we treat barely
detectable nuclear radiation, we’d never go outside and we’d use blackout
curtains.

------
joshe
Just want to point out that low level radiation is probably good for you. It's
cool that they found it, but this is not any kind of health danger.

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.

You also probably don't have to worry about the radiation you get from bananas
or plane flights. And it's possible those dumb sounding radioactive water spas
might have actually been helpful.

Fukushima is aweful for the nearby region and still a cautionary tale. But it
didn't poison the whole world.

[1] [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/04/06/small-
radi...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/04/06/small-radiation/)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477717/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477717/)

[http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/yang1/](http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/yang1/)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26808887](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26808887)

~~~
joshe
Here's a very straightforward study, "Evidence That Lifelong Low Dose Rates of
Ionizing Radiation Increase Lifespan in Long- and Short-Lived Dogs" [1].

Two studies on beagles:

"One exposed the dogs to whole-body cobalt-60 γ-radiation."

"The other evaluated dogs whose lungs were exposed to α-particle radiation
from plutonium."

For both studies, excess radiation improved their lifespans by 20-50 percent.
It is a substantial beneficial effect. Above a beneficial level of radiation
their lifespans shortened to the level of dogs who were not exposed at all and
then to substantial reductions in lifespans.

This graph illustrates it best:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347275/figure/...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347275/figure/fig4-1559325817692903/)

We don't know why low radiation exposure is good, but it does seem to be.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347275/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347275/)

~~~
fhood
The lack of public trust in science is a real problem, and mostly unjustified
or misdirected. That said, nothing reinforces the evil scientist image like
irradiating puppies.

~~~
joshe
It is pretty dark. There's even a cute beagle picture in a graph. Apparently
beagles are the preferred model animal for radiation studies going back to the
1950's.

~~~
fhood
I don't even have a problem with it necessarily, but they should probably use
pigs. Nobody cares about pigs.

~~~
drag0nballz
Pigs are actually great pets. They've been domesticated practically as long as
dogs

~~~
ddingus
Truth. Had pigs for a time as a kid. When people spend quality time with them,
pigs respond.

They like people.

------
godelski
For some context a Becquerel (Bq) is a single decay per second (note the graph
shows mBq/l). One gram has an activity of ~3 TBq.

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).

That being said, these are such low quantities you'd die of alcohol many times
over before increasing your chance of cancer by 1% over the course of your
lifetime.

From Wiki they gave some dogs a dose of 140 MBq/kg and they all died in 33
days. When they gave some other dogs half (70MBq/kg) dosage all the dogs
survived.

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1_800_UNICORN
Very interesting read. I did a double take that a lack of Cesium-137 meant
"post-1980" (not "pre-1980") since the levels have dropped off since the
testing in the 50s and 60s.

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new_age_garbage
I'm tasting hints of berry, hints of oak, rubber hose, high notes of
plutonium...

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iancmceachern
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's because of all the x-rays needed for
minimally invasive surgury.

~~~
lysium
Do you have a source on that that you can cite? Thanks in advance!

~~~
code_duck
Here’s a link I found by searching ‘surgeon radiation exposure’:
[https://spinalnewsinternational.com/reducing-radiation-
expos...](https://spinalnewsinternational.com/reducing-radiation-exposure-
during-spine-surgery/)

This one discusses limiting procedures per year. Apparently in one example a
surgeon could do 4000+ safely with a lead apron and only 300 without one.
[https://insights.ovid.com/crossref?an=00007632-201304010-000...](https://insights.ovid.com/crossref?an=00007632-201304010-00013)

There appears to be plenty more material out there relating to this.

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jcl
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.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=nAgxAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA2-PA63&l...](https://books.google.com/books?id=nAgxAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA2-PA63&lpg=RA2-PA63&source=bl&ots=sy0Cj7lW5m&sig=_m7VUqXXDDmYTdRGV_r4ZJmsWuE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiBk6eJ167cAhXSGDQIHUpPDBAQ6AEIhAEwCQ#v=onepage)

------
candiodari
We should treat this as what it is: a humbling reminder of just how big
avogadro's number is.

------
novia
Edit: Oh no. Physics For Future Presidents lied to me. See here:
[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alcohol-
radioactive/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alcohol-radioactive/)

I'd delete this comment if it were possible.

~~~
bdz
Fake news

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alcohol-
radioactive/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alcohol-radioactive/)

------
devy
I wonder if Japanese Whiskey would be affected?

~~~
iask
Oh boy! Is that why some in the US are so expensive?

~~~
cevn
That's a different problem. Basically the whiskey makers under predicted the
demand 12 years ago or so when they were making that batch. Now it's sold out
practically everywhere, hard to find even in Japan.

~~~
warmwaffles
Glad I have a couple bottles stashed in my liquor cabinet.

------
tabtab
"Daahling! This vintage tastes absolutely _radiant!_ "

------
tzahola
Oh my god! Ban all nuclear reactors ASAP!!!

Just kidding. A regular banana is probably an order of manitude more
radioactive than these wines.

~~~
bitL
I hope you understand different types of radioactivity and what they do to
your body once they are incorporated in your tissues long-term. Something like
5,000 inhaled particle causing cancer probability to rise by 1%... Enjoy your
banana simplifications!

~~~
tzahola
5000 particle? LOL! If that was true we would all have cancer:

“The average concentration of radon in the atmosphere is about 6×10−18 molar
percent, or about 150 atoms in each ml of air.”

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon)

~~~
bitL
Enjoy your ignorance:

[https://ratical.org/radiation/CNR/CHfIP1975.pdf](https://ratical.org/radiation/CNR/CHfIP1975.pdf)

~~~
tzahola
Nowhere in this document do they state that inhaling 5000 particles increases
lung cancer risk by 1%.

I recommend revisiting high school chemistry, especially the topic of molar
mass. (Hint: Plutonium is about 250 g/mol. One mol is 6x10^23 particles.)

------
java_script
> 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.

And yet I bet wine snobs are gonna pretend their palates are so refined they
can taste it now.

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oceanghost
This wouldn'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.

~~~
foxyv
After the disaster my professor measured increases in radioactivity to try and
determine if there was any increase in background radiation from man made
sources. Unfortunately even our liquid nitrogen cooled gallium detector
couldn't find anything. I think you need a mass spectrometer to really detect
any change in California. (Fukushima itself is a different matter!)

Variation in radiation levels of the magnitude you are showing can be caused
by many different sources, most of which are natural. Sun spots, changes in
the upper atmosphere, cat sleeping on the detector, etc...

EditNote: We definitely could still detect the consequences of Chernobyl and
atmospheric weapons testing. Fukushima didn't come close to touching the
contamination from THAT

~~~
oceanghost
Interesting to know, thank you.

------
branko_d
BTW, alcoholic drinks are requred to be radioactive by US law.

[https://youtu.be/1N1ydPJGGj4](https://youtu.be/1N1ydPJGGj4)

~~~
function_seven
[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alcohol-
radioactive/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alcohol-radioactive/)

------
cremp
If I'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.

How could you properly date a bottle if it was in Fukushima during the event,
vs a 1960's bottle during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

> the levels of cesium-137 are barely detectable, and even then, only if the
> wine is destroyed.

So nothing to see here, move along.

~~~
24gttghh
The article seems less about the toxicity of the cesium levels, and more about
their use as a signature in dating the wine, which I find is still
interesting.

~~~
GW150914
_The article seems less about the toxicity of the cesium levels, and more
about their use as a signature in dating the wine, which I find is still
interesting._

And rightly so, by far the most toxic thing in these bottles is alcohol, not
vanishingly small traces of cesium.

