As a retired radiation worker of 30 years, I had to have cataract surgery from the damage at 55 years old. I routinely used Gama sources. Be careful. Damage is done over time, even when using all prescribed measures of protection.

I am a 70 year old who as a child played outside and drank milk from a cow that grazed in a rain out area in the 50s and 60s during nuclear testing. I recently found my baby teeth and they are still slightly radioactive. I have cancer and thyroid disease. Not paranoid because I have had enough fractionated radiotherapy to kill an elephant if it were in one dose. Like you, I love playing with my Geiger counter and finding sites and sources. Fun times. 😂

this man is probably one of the only consistently uploading radiation youtubers

In order to calculate a person's dose from ingesting a radionuclide you need to use something called the CEDE - the committed effective dose equivalent for that isotope. For tritium, this is 64 mREM per milliCurie ingested. So for your sign which I see at 13:30 contains 281 GBq of activity (7,594 milliCuries), this is 7,594 X 0.064 REM = 486 REM dose, which is very serious and has a 50/50 chance of putting you into skeleton mode. However, this is only if the tritium is ABSORBED, meaning it must be in the form of superheavy water in order to give you that dose! If you just inhale the tritium gas then the absorption fraction (the part that you won't just immediately exhale again) is a mere 0.005%. Meaning your dose would be an immeasurably tiny 24 milliREM!

I worked at a municipal wastewater treatment plant, and in the areas that could have explosive digester gas (where everything must be explosion proof… cannot use steel tools.non sparking metals only) all had these kind of exit lights. They where replaced like five years ago… still where able to be seen in the dark.. we’re originally installed in 1989 (I was 8 years old!).. and well past the replacement date….. just think of how incredibly long those were generating light…the Soviet Union was still around when they’re made. Crazy

I once calculated how much radioactivity there is in all of the world's oceans that comes from natural radioisotopes, mainly Potassium-40, and compared it to the radioactivity that has reportedly leaked from Fukushima into the ocean. The ratio was in the order of many billions. This tells us that the volume of water in oceans is so huge that any human radioactive contamination that leaks into the ocean is negligible and meaningless.

As I recall, the water from the reactors had to sit in the holding ponds appx 14 hours before it was down to a low enough level considered marginally safe to be released into the Columbia River. HOWEVER, as the demand for increased Plutonium production increased, the time allotted for the water in the holding ponds was reduced and the holing ponds were emptied of their much HOTTER contents,... including IRRADIATED FUEL from split and cracked fuel elements that happened often and without warning in the reactor, the result of hot spots in the fuel cans , poor sealing during the canning process , pin holes in the joints and seams and over heating causing the fuel cans to rupture and the cooling water to carry this now radioactive fuel out into the open air of the ponds ! The only safety was that this very heavy metal would sink to the bottom of the ponds and be shielded by the depth of the water alone ! This now presented a new set of problems that the entire capacity of the holding ponds COULD NOT be emptied and a minimum water level had to be maintained over the OUT-OF-THE-CAN fuel to prevent exposure to personnel outside near the ponds.

As a Washington state native and semi-retired radiation oncologist with a background in pharmacy, nuclear pharmacy, osteopathic medicine, and radiation oncology who has worked at Washington State University Tri-Cities, your explanation of the risks of tritium release from Fukushima was perfect. Great job! GJBrownDO 11/18/2023 13:55 Eastern

"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has cited Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., with four violations concerning improper disposal and transfer of tritium exit signs at its stores throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. The violations, issued Oct. 28, concerned the improper transfer or disposal of 2,462 signs from Wal-Mart stores in states under NRC jurisdiction between 2000 and 2008, and the improper transfer of an additional 517 signs between various Wal-Mart facilities. The company also failed to appoint an official responsible for complying with regulatory requirements and failed to report broken or damaged signs as required."

Got into it with someone over Hanford's water use and he threw an absolute tantrum that it couldn't be because no commercial reactor would ever be allowed to operate that way. He was a nuclear engineer. Dunno if he was lying to me or himself in that moment. Edit; yes, Hanford is not a commercial reactor. That's the joke.

I have indeed never seen an exit sign made with radium but I do have these plexiglas capsules made by the Radium Company that they placed above light switches. They are rare items here in Belgium as I only have seen them once. I got them from a factory that was being demolished and the workers just pilled them up to be picked up for proper disposal. I took 2 of them (knowing well what they are) and while they are at least 60 years old they are still very reactive to my Geiger counter. That puts Tritium into a whole new perspective for sure. Great explanation you did here, people know so little about radiation and the press often blow it way out of proportion because they know nothing of it either.

I live just south of there in Corvallis, Oregon. It's funny that the more i learn about radioactivity, the more i realize how strange people are about how we've reacted to different things depending on the way it's been communicated. Then on top of that, it feels like even tho modern day nuclear energy options have advanced so much with their engineering designs, safety measures & understanding of safety protocols, etc. it still doesn't matter to a large amount of people.. it's like they are ingrained with a natural negative response when talking about certain nuclear energy & radioactive topics. It's a bummer because i truly believe that our best option for our future is to start utilizing Modern advanced nuclear energy options in our electrical grid. It's just proving to be challenging to get people & politicians to sign up and get on board. It will really allow places to be much more energy independent. Less reliant on fossil fuels. They'll have efficient, stable electrical grids and the rest of the grid could experiment with alternative power sources, etc. We need to heal from the trauma of our past. See & learn that those things only happened solely from Us not understanding what we were doing when it came to nuclear energy at the time. We didn't have advanced enough technology, material science, engineering, safety measures, understanding of how to go about everything, etc. This source of energy will greatly help the world improve towards the future and lowering emissions. More than anything else could, while also providing a very stable electrical grid system. Currently we have alternative energy options but the majority of our grid is powered off of fossil fuels and emission producing sources of energy. We will be so much better going forward commiting to modern advanced nuclear energy options.

Don't forget, The neutrons would have activated any trace elements in the river water and created N16 . N16 has a short half life but we had to hold if in our Waste Gas Decay tanks for several months prior to releasing it due to the energy level of the of even a single gamma decay. I was employed a Crystal River 3 from 1984 until 2009. The waste decay gas tank room had to have its entrance filled with 2 ft. of concrete. An18 by 18 inch crawl way was left as the entrance to the room . The new door was a was made of 24 by 24 inch lead plates totaling 12 inches thick on a steel frame cart that could be rolled out of the way if necessary for entrance. During my 25 years there the lead cover was never moved. The pre job briefings for Reactor Building at power entries always covered the danger of these gamma's.

I crunched the numbers in my own video on Fukushima. But I don't think people really understood or appreciated the insignificance of the contamination. I think your video does a much better job by using the exit signs as a comparison!

Southeast Washington State resident here (an hour downwind of Hanford, relatives that worked there.) Have lost multiple relatives to cancer, including my mother. It is poor here. It is a cultural backwater (my county, for example, is still not even 100 years away from its last Klan march.) It's the perfect place to pollute, due to the residents', shall we say, unquestioning nature. I've lived on the other side of the mountains, on the west side. After being spotted in a PDX bar with a book about our environmental disasters, I had a man tell me, "Let 'em die." The attitude is that it's our fault, and we're sending the radiation down the river, and screw us for not doing anything about it, we deserve to suffer. The point: a lot of the locals in the East don't care, and those in power in the OR/WA state seats on the West don't care about people in the East. They refer to us as "jawas" (or however you spell those Star Wars desert things) or inbred, etc. (The last part is partially true, the further East you go.) We are an afterthought. A noxious threat to the West side's working order. I often find myself disgusted by the attitudes of those in this area who ignore Hanford's threat (those people often have other noxious beliefs, refer to above.) To everyone outside of here...remember where most of your wheat and potatoes are grown. Enjoy your poisoned food, hope that apathy works out for you.

few other points about Hanford…the open trenches they filled and covered over. The leaking double walled tanks…all contribute to ongoing leaching into the Columbian River. The cases of anencephaly along the Columbia River are much higher than the mean average in newborns born elsewhere…Fukushima was a great headline to use, to direct attention away from the polution right in their own back yard. And almost never mentioned is the whoops at WIPP…remember?

Thanks for the video Drew. Standing back and thinking about this and how you explain it makes so much sense. Where the radiation release at Fukushima is bad. It's nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. And thanks for making that very clear.

You have such a great skill of explaining things for the average person to understand. Well done.

Thanks Drew. A well presented explanation that anyone can relate to. You asked why the media like to use those esoteric units of measure when reporting and sadly it’s because they use it to create tension, sensation and drama (for many reasons that I won’t go into). If the media used your rational form of presentation for their report on Fukushima, that alternative version would not be “marketable” - as in “who cares” instead of sounding scary and dramatic. My new Radiacode 102 arrived in just a few days after ordering, a far cry from the long wait I had for the ‘101 a year ago. It actually arrived ahead of their estimate! It really is a well-designed, simple device and a tenth of the cost of the Rad-Eye detector you also showed. The small form factor makes it something easy to throw into a pocket or backpack and doesn’t draw attention, something I can’t avoid with my much larger Canberra/Mirion RDS-100P (AN/PDR-77) system.

Beautifully done, Drew. You caught me with the Oppenheimer 70mm piece. Here’s something completely different but just as interesting. Your attention to detail shows. Please keep it up

I'm 77 and when I was a kid we would go to shoe stores and the salesman would take us over to an x-ray machine and we could see our feet inside the shoes to see how well they fit. I remember wiggling my toes and seeing them. I could see the bones because it was x-ray. Crazy. They finally outlawed the machines. There's no telling how many shoe salesmen died before their time from being exposed to x-rays day after day.

Have you ever thought of teaching nuclear science formally? Your presentation is excellent and you keep it interesting. I don’t know much about radiation but I learn from your videos.

Yes,finally! The Hanford site is a nightmare. The more I learn about it,the more I'm horrified...and It seems like very few people around here even know about it. I'm happy to see you in my neck of the woods,and glad you're bringing light to the Hanford site. I'm not too worried about the cooling water/river,or residual radiation from it these days,but maybe I should be.. The "unknown slurry" left in those huge storage tanks,the contamination everywhere at the site,and what is being stored there,is what scares me. If those tanks start leaking (and many are) God Only Knows what is coming out of them. I urge people to research the Hanford site,and what is being done there. The cleanup is pretty interesting. There is still a reactor running near there for electricity generation. I hope you're going to make a stop at the old Trojan site. Or maybe the abandoned cooling tower site just outside of Elma,Wa. (Satsop,I think. -IIRC,there is another type of reactor running near there,also.)

Yeah, they do do a horrible job explaining nuclear physics. Thank you for explaining it. It still fascinates me that you can put two materials next to each-other and they get hot. Almost like a magnetic effect but we're not allowed to play with it so it's always a mystery.

sadly, people might assume that because there's plant and animals and they seem unaffected in their environment, that there is no contamination here and they're safe to eat. happens with heavy metals and radiation, the organisms either don't live long enough to be affected or aren't affected by it. so they enter the food market. a habit of eating food like that is not good.

The pilgrim nuclear power plant where I live they were denied releasing a million gallons of water. They used all sorts of scare tactics and it was going to be released over something like 10 years

My grandmother lived in Arizona when above ground tests were being done. She had 5 miscarriages with 6 children surviving, No proof radiation caused it, just a strong suspicion.

Love your videos Drew, thanks a lot! As a German, my attention was suddenly raised when you tried to say "Bremsstrahlung". The pronunciation was only half correct, but I immediately recognized this (German) word. (Sorry if my English is not perfect.)

It is no more difficult to say 'so many milligrams of Tritium' or 'so many Bq of Tritium'. Both numbers will change similarly over time. External exposure to a beta emitter is very different from internal exposure. Internal exposure to a beta emitter that doesn't bioaccumulate is very different than one which does bioaccumulate. Jon

I remember watching a 60 Minutes segment about it like 20 years ago but no update... Thank you for this video!

If you think that's bad. Three Mile Island in PA sits on the Susquehana River - the same river the Hershey's chocolate plant takes all its water in from for making Hershey's bars. Also Portland, OR is on the Willimette River which forks right off the Columbia.

Thanks for releasing this one early on Patreon, love the videos!

Good video! I can understand in the 40s the lack of concern at releasing contaminated water in the river since they did not have a full understanding of radiation hazards, but by the late 50s and 60s they should have known better. The various ways of measuring radiation is so confusing so thank you for making it more understandable. I have some understanding of micro sieverts and CPM and can relate that to my background level, but the others have no meaning to me. You always put radiation levels in terms we can understand and that is very useful. I have a tritium compass but it stopped glowing years ago.

Great video as always! Love those Cammenga compasses, they were my first memorable experience with radioactive glowing things when I was in the Army. Aside from being sooo much better for land navigation than what I had in boy scouts as a kid, it was incredible at night. Way better that the glow in the dark painted stuff, and probably the first radioactive thing I bought after how well it served me previously. Really cool to see one in your collection.

The Radiacode 103 is now available, which is the upgraded 102. It is available from the manufacturer on Amazon. It is best to hold the detector id close to the soil when detecting radiation depositions.

Great explanation correlating the exit sign tritium content to the Fukushima seawater equivalent. I had figured the concentration to be super low, but you nailed how to describe it concisely. Thanks!

Yeah the single pass reactors at Hanford dumped a lot of isotopes into the Columbia infact there is still detectible amounts of Cs-137 and other fission and activation products downstream of Hanford in river sediment especially sediment holdup on the lower Columbia dams. I think it was PNNL who did a study of this about 20 years ago. That is just what ended up in the river. There was also emissions from the chemical separation facility stacks especially early on with things like the green run. There is a reason that the downwinders filed a lawsuit I believe in the 90s.

Excellent Drew! I finally ordered a Radiacode 102. Keep em coming!

I have to say that you have done an Amazing job of truly putting the levels of radiation coming from Fukushima into perspective!! Hat's off to you sir! Thumbs up too, but I'm already subscribed so thats the best I can do right now!

I bought a Bauer gravy boat from an Antique Shop a few days ago. The person at the front desk was a fellow radiation hobbyist, and showed me some old Soviet geiger counters, and some fiesta ware. I found a piece, (the gravy boat), that was making my geiger counter angry as soon as I pointed it in the direction of the pottery. It got up to 12k CPM.

Amazing video! As someone who just got into the hobby of finding radioactive items I really love your content, it really helped me understand things that I didn't know before. You're one of the best creators on the platform man!! 🙏

I love this. This is live science. You are showing what you are doing, and making a point to show that radiation isn't always a boogeyman. I hope you live past 90 and show that radiation exposure isn't a death sentence even a bit high over time. My question is, if you become terminally ill in your 60s, would you automatically be like, "just the luck of the draw, wasn't all that radiation I got." or automatically "Well I screwed up, I thought I was fine with a little bit at a time over many years." You see where I am getting at, nuance matters. I appreciate your commitment to it!

Great to see someone talking radiological sense, and great to see you back in the saddle. One of the big problems here is, who's going to believe anyone from government or industry to tell the truth on the dangers involved - that's where Drew steps in!

13:14 Reason to identify location, for firefighters? a fire would burn the plastic case and expose the element?

Every single video is an impressive new demonstration of your filming skills. Keep the good job! I just love watching them! Take it easy!

Thanks Drew ‼️another great show ,I always wish they were longer ‼️👍

And just think… I was conceived in decently close proximity to Hanford and loved within eye shot of the steam plumes for half my child hood. My grandmother worked at Hanford for decades until she retired. She was diagnosed not long after with small cell lung and liver cancer. Hanford was more than happy to pick up the tab for all medical treatment, hospitalizations and eventually hospice care until she died. Personally I think her daughter should have sued them but its not really my family’s way. ANYWAY. I find it kind of coincidental that any part of my family, including myself, that grew up around there have more than a handful of health problems (not cancer) but almost none of the family that didn’t, have no real health issues. Conspiracy or coincidence??? Hmmm

Tritium is such a "soft" radioisotope that it is even used in consumer products. It is not an environmental problem by any stretch of imagination.

Most in the public don't have a way of comparing with Exit signs either. Here are a couple ways that could be more helpful to some: For scale, the Pacific Ocean already contains 8,400 grams of pure tritium from natural and bomb test sources while Japan will release 0.06 grams of tritium every year. The minuscule amount of extra radiation won’t make the tiniest bit of difference. A lifetime’s worth of seafood caught a few kilometres from the ocean outlet has the tritium radiation equivalent of one bite of a banana.

Excellent production value. Very educational from a laymans perspective as well. Thank you for the information.

I am very used to the seivert scale (Milli and Micro) for my 5 years in the nuclear industry. Love your channel and your content!!

Radium(Ra, 88) was probably put in some of the paint for compasses, but the biggest usage of all time was hands in clocks and watches.

If a year ago someone were to ask me if I would be interested in this type of content; I would've said, no, on the face of it. Though somehow this is one of my favorite channels. I suspect I'm able absorb Drew's pedagogy, because he truly enjoys making these videos.

Bremsstrahlung means braking radiation in English. That is how an x-ray device works. In order to maximize it, you need electrons to strike dense material with heavy nuclei: lead, tungsten, uranium.

I really like seeing the numbers they talk about expressed in terms that are more intuitive. It really helps explain what's actually going on when the media or polititions are trying to sensationalize what's going to to scare folks.

I've lived in Richland, WA for almost 20 years now. My dad worked in the nuclear industry for 30 years, mostly construction related, moving all over the place. Would be great to see you do more content related to Hanford; past, present, and future. Maybe you have? I haven't looked thru your video history yet.

Such a great video know I am starting to understand thanks so much!!!

There have been several nuclear powered submarines lost at sea, reactors and all. I can't imagine that whatever comes out of Fukushima's slow water release is worse than that, but I don't know enough to say for sure.

I have a tritium keychain that's about 6 years old now, and still glowing quite brightly. It's a rare purple phosphor one. Great video, Drew

We the people are exposed to so much through our environment, food and water. Our bodies can adapt to many things, but what will kill us all is nano plastics.

Excellent video, Drew!! I own a few of these vials of Tritium in various forms, mostly as you've shown in Kit Markers etc. Braking Radiation was how I learned about Radiation and what the difference between that given off by Tritium and that off Uranium Glass. I bought a Radiascan Dosimeter a few years back but I've not yet been in touch with Serge about the Incredible Radiacode 101!! I actually own a Bronze model of Chernobyl Unit 4 with small Tritium Vials, glowing as the exposed fuel in the reactor! (That I got from the makers of the Radiacode & Radiascan devices!!)

I pray you never get cancer Drew. Handling all these small particle items and walking in radioactive areas of USA.

Not only was this interesting and informative, it was unexpectedly cinematic and beautiful.

I wonder how many actual exit signs washed into the Pacific Ocean during the tsunami (if Japan uses tritium signs)...

when i was a kid i used to swim in the columbia river all the time. i was a good swimmer. even better now thanks to my third arm

*pure* H2O (deionised/demineralised water) doesn't really activate much, if at all. The problem with using river water (and what shocked me) is that it has much more in it than just H2O. There's all kinds of dissolved minerals and suspended solids, and those are going to undergo neutron activation.

This is so cool to see you filming in my state! Great vid, per usual! 👍👍

Drew, how about if you take some core samples along the Columbia River and check them for isotopes with your gamma spectrometer. I am sure there is some Cesium as its half life is around 30 years? The early cartridges were made of aluminum, I believe, and they occasionally failed. The isotopes will still probably be in the silt along the river. There are some hot spots, I am sure.

Lived in Tullahoma TN for 10 years. Arnold Air force base is there with underground wind tunnels. They check shuttle tiles, why one broke off, and jet engines. We used to water tube on Tim Fords Lake connected to the base. My dear friend Mike, who passed of cancer, was . Colonel at the base. He said do not eat the catfish due to all the PCBs on bottom of Lake as it's water was used to cool the wind tunnels. Beautiful lake and base if you want to chk radiation levels there. I like your channel very much. I subbed. Thank you!❤

Man, I love your videos. Thanks for enlightening us. Just ordered my Radicode 102. They are running a 10% off sale right now.

I have enjoyed your videos for some time now. Always great information that is presented well. Thank you also for the drone footage accompanied by music. Those videos have also been continuously improving. A Happy, Healthy, 2024 to you and yours!

I agree with the point of your video, but the way you got there isnt that good you should read ICRP Publication 119 it has all the exact values for the inhalation/ingestion of tritium. Infact it has values for pretty much every isotope you'd be able to find. Anyways the internal dose for tritiated water is 666 mSv/Ci. you should mention the purpose of the unit bq and Ci, which is to measure how many times the atoms in the sample decay per second You shouldn't be showing the danger of tritium tubes with a simple pancake, none of the beta particles make it out of the glass tritium tube, and most of the bremsstrahlung is also too low energy to be detected. Tritiated water is dangerous, but you barely went over the most important factor here, which is the dilution. The main reason why it's safe to dump tritiated water into the ocean is because the amount of gallons it gets diluted into is insanely high, so that a human wouldn't be able to drink even a single bq. This isnt hate just trying to educate all of us.

You make an interesting point. I have always been confused by the ever changing radiation dose names. sieverts, Rads, Curries, Rems, and now Becquerel . I realize some of these may be narrow in their scope (like measuring only Beta or Gama rays) but to your average consumer (me :), it can be confusing. Also this "misunderstanding" can also fraud on the part of those reporting. How about "pick a lane" and stay in it. This reminds me of the naming convention for USB (few people know how fast it really is :). Enjoyed your video, Thanks

Not to forget, that in Fukushima they have a miles long pipe from the site to the discharge point. And China is polluting more on the other side of Japan at this very moment.

I live near the hanford sight 15 miles away, they get paniced anytime there is a gras fire on or near the site, what is being released from the burning vegitation that they would be concerned with? And how harmful is it?

My mom & her 3 best friends were Hanford release downwinders. All had cancer by their mid-forties. Most died within a year or so. I won't eat Columbia river- farmed salmon😱. Alaskan wild/(Copper River) only. My husband's grandparents had a farm in Hood River. I've read about the water problems there. I brought my own lol😅.

The perspective on relative amounts was good for people to hear. Regarding Hanford, they do tours of the B Reactor there which is very interesting.

Awesome video! I really like your content! It's awesome!!

You spend a lot of time taking about tritium from the single pass reactors (100B, C, KE, KW, D, DR, H, and F). However there was another reactor at Hanford 100-N that discharged radioactive water to the Columbia. Sr-90 was the major problem. look up N -Springs and the radioactive discharges. There is a Tritium plume entering the Columbia River that comes from facilities on the Hanford Reservation about10 miles away from the river. Is that tritium a hazard to the public, NO, the amount is too low relative to the volume of water in the Columbia River.

I wrote the text below back in July, 2023. Your videos are always an excellent source of information, and I think you offer a very balanced approach. Unfortunately, there really isn't a "better" approach to dealing with the tritiated water being stored at Fukushima. But let's not ignore two things: it is still solving pollution through dilution, and they are still actively producing more contaminated water at the site. You can't put a timetable on it because nobody knows when it will end. Anyway - hope someone benefits from my thoughts below. There is a lecture question about "radioactive cookies" used by professors of nuclear physics to help students understand the different radiation risks posed to humans by alpha, beta, and gamma emitters. It goes like this. You have three radioactive cookies. One is an alpha emitter, one a beta emitter, one a gamma emitter. You must eat one, sit on one, and throw one out the window. How do you minimize your radiation dose? The answer is, "Eat the gamma, sit on the alpha, and throw away the beta." I won't explain it all here, but you can go look it up online if you are interested. The key takeaway is that ingesting alpha or beta radiation is very bad (ideally, you should never ingest anything radioactive). There are three naturally occurring isotopes of Hydrogen: Protium, Deuterium, and Tritium. Of those three, only Tritium is a radioactive. It is a beta emitter with a half-life of about 12 years. Naturally occurring Tritium is extremely rare on Earth. It is, however, artificially created by the irradiation of Lithium in nuclear reactors (which is great if you are looking for a source of fuel for nuclear fusion in hydrogen weapons). Before I go too far off track, back to Tritium being a beta emitter (the cookie we want to throw away). When Tritium is exposed to water, it displaces the Protium atom with itself - resulting in something called tritiated water. Outside the human body, this isn't a big deal. But if ingested via food or water, it can be more concerning. The half-life inside the body is relatively short (7-14 days). Not a huge deal if it is a one-time exposure. But what if the food you are consuming is exposed? What if the fish you eat was swimming in tritiated water? That brings us full circle to today's real world problem with plans to release tritiated water into the ocean a half-mile offshore of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Officials at TEPCO and the IAEA say it is safe because the tritiated water has been diluted. But what about the fishermen who catch and sell fish in that region? Do you want to eat those fish? Of course these agencies "support" the release of the tritiated water. Is it really safe, or is it because there is nothing else that can be done economically to solve the problem? It's the oldest trick in the book - solving pollution through dilution. What they are glossing over is that this isn't a one time release. They will be releasing contaminated water for decades, and the site is still producing more contaminated water every day. TEPCO's plan is to dilute the water to 1,500 becquerels of tritium per liter. For comparison, the United States has a more conservative limit of 740 becquerels per liter.

HEY YOU GUY'S.........

Those photographs from the Hanford open water tanks, surprised the radiation emitting from those contaminated water didn't zap the film?

I bought a radiacode 102 about a month ago, the only complaint I have is that, I had no idea the radiacode 3 was going to be released a few weeks later.

I really enjoy your production Drew! Thank you for taking us along with you and for helping to educate us along the way. Keep up the great work!

You can't actually detect the radiation being dumped by Japan in the North Pacific current making it's way to the western US coast because it's an order of magnitude less than what China regularly dumps during "regular operations". (You can detect a small change in the isotopic makeup of the radiation though because Japan is filtering the water from Fukushima while China just dumps the fission lanthanides into rivers.)

Wait......at 08'57", an exit sign is shown as having an activity level (new) of 25 Ci.....that is equivalent to about 80 residential smoke detectors and about the same as your 'hot' industrial smoke detector. When i say "equivalent" I mean in terms of disintegrations per second not dose, since the tritium exit sign is a beta emitter not an alpha emitter I think. No wonder they make you sign some shit when you buy an exit sign! Later in the video, when you opened the exit sign, the label stated "0.281 Bq tritium" which converts to 'only' 7.6 Ci but still the same order of magnitude as earlier in the video - obvs just different sign specs. FWIW, the "two exit signs per Fukushima storage tank" was genius-level communication; and just the highlight of a super-informative video. Thanks!

We studied pollution from Hanford extensively at Oregon State University.

Yes, at least one radium Exit sign was made - someone in one of my groups found it in an antique shop. It was a small one - about the size of the GMC-500+ it was photographed next to; no manufacturer's marks on it though.

Apparently the Columbia river digs out about 2 inches a year so most of the materials will be offshore or washed back on the beach.

So as an exit sign with a tritium core, I am in the understanding these are supposed to be used in areas where it is unfeasible to install an electrified sign or in an area where electrifying a sign could be hazardous as these are intrinsically safe. Does that seem right?

I have always been fascinated by radiation, especially since I did an essay on Chernobyl in 1993 for school. Loving your channel and the content you bring to the table. Thank you Radioactive Drew!

I bought a ww2 compass and it is 575 uSv/h which holds 30 uCi of radium 226

My mother and aunt were down winders during beginning of Hanford. Back in WWII .

Excellent video! Thank you for putting things in perspective!

I've always thought that the solution for nuclear waste disposal was NOT to concentrate it in one area but to dilute it heavily and then pump it into the ocean at many depths through a piping system dragged by a ship, thus diluting it even more. The ocean is already radioactive naturally, so as long as you keep the result somewhere close to the natural background radiation it will be fine.

Well done!... That's a very realistic explanation of what's going on. Using myself tritium for professional systems, I'm quite chocked that this Exit sign uses an expiry date instead of the manufacturing date which is the universal common usage to timestamp the activity of a sealed sources. The first label in the video at 13:06 shows this activity obviously at the manufacturing time (0.281 TBq) but without any manufacturing date. This may complicate a lot further activity decay calculation. We can just assume that subtracting "10 years" (based on what?) to the expiry date could be the manufacturing date. But what can we say when for example several "expired" exit signs are stored somewhere believing they are useless, but still radioactive? I have a RC102 too and I really appreciate it, and can confirm it's the only simple sensor able to peak the bremsstrahlung of tritium... (if enough material)

Very helpful to understand the basics for ocean radiation contamination.

Are there other contaminants like strontium and cesium in the water ?

Tritium costing $30.000 per GRAM Im making a wild guess there isn't much of it in exit signs. There are likely other non-radioactive substances that likes to light up like phosphor.

Your take on the Fuku holding tank/ exit sign/release situation is reassuring, but I mostly stopped eating ocean fish after 3-11; I also cut down on drinking California wines and reduced milk and meat products due to the radioactive plumes drifting over NA after the explosions. I worry about radioactive bio accumulation, causing cancer. We (my mother, younger brother, and I) lived in the San Fernando Valley when I was a kid and the Santa Susanna meltdown occurred. My health-conscious, clean living mom died in 1989 of pancreatic cancer; my younger brother died of liver cancer last year, and I have just been diagnosed with a rare sinus sarcoma this month (on top of the prostate cancer I have had for years). i know this is all anecdotal and not provable cause-and-effect, , but ... just sayin'! I worry most about the future and the new push to revive the failed nuke industry, in spite of the proven hazards, the likelihood of the contamination of our NA fresh water supply when a natural or man-made EMT melts down the inland and Great Lakes shoreline nuke plants. With the proliferation of nuke weapons in the hands of the most extreme actors ever to strut upon the world stage - don't get me started on the high probability of nuclear war! Thank you, Drew, for your rational and informative studies on this topic!