Radiation detected in the UK

Radiation has today been detected in Oxford & Glasgow currently authorities are claiming that it's "trace amounts" taking trouble to point out that levels are currently below the annual permissable level.

There is no safe dose of radiation and permissable legally should not be equated or conflated with safe.

 The levels being detected ion Oxford today are 300 micro bequerels per cubic metre or  300uBq/m3  
 Whilst this may be less than annual levels what they are not talking about is that it's more than the kind of dose, you'd be expect to receive over the course of one day or a daily dose. This issue of dose is a highly controversial part of the science of radiation protection, not within the industry (they all take the same [convenient] line). Those who have done significant work researching the effects of radiation both prior to the Manhatten project, and since weapons testing & fallout from industrial radioctive incidents, whereby radioactivity is released into the environment such as Three mile island, Chernobyl etc have found non-linear no threshold dose dependancy, not the linear relationship that the IAEA and ICRP describe as the consensus.

The problem with getting an exposure to a years permissable levels in a period of time significantly shorter than that year, is that your bodies ability to initiate repairs to damage caused by the ionising radiation may be compromised in complicated ways - this it seen by many lead to health disorders & problems associated with even low levels of radiation - i.e normal non-incident levels. The IAEA and various other nuclear industry organisations go to great lengths to try & avoid acknowledging these findings ususally by excluding dissenters from the investigative processes & forums.


There is also the question of whether or not the alpha emitters are here too, iodine & caseium are gamma emmitters and strontium 90 is a beta emmitter. The radiation being discussed in the press today in the UK is Radio-iodine 131. This can be taken up by the thyroid and it is this isotope that authorities try to prevent being taken up when give out potassium iodate tablets.

News on radioactivity arriving in the UK from is claiming the levels are nothing to worry about less than background (except I dont think that radio-iodine is usually a part of the radiaoctive discharge inventory under normal conditions so there are not usually background levels associated with Iodine 131). Japan is claiming that the dangerous radioactivity is being confined within the 30km exclusion zone around Fukushima, sound's a bit reminiscent of France's claims that the radioactivity friom Chernobyl 'stopped at the border'!

I'll do some more work on this later but right now i'm off to bed as it's late. I've been at  DECC today for a meeting with the Office for Nuclear Development & Lord Marland (Charles Hendy couldnt make it for personal reasons). I'll say something about that tomorrow.