if my pee glows at night should I be worried?

Eagerly awaiting the return of Godzilla

Godzilla was a fucking pussy, now Mothra he was a bad motherfucker................

Gamera bathes in lava and eats radioactive Iodine!



I like turtles.

My nuts are tingling.

Radiation increases mutation rates. High mutation rates speed evolution. We Must evolve as a species to conquer the universe. Bring it on!

What he said.

129-I is a beta (and to a much lesser extent gamma) emitter, which means that you have to be in close proximity (as in inches) to the source to gain any significant exposure, and unless you ingest it somehow, it's extremely unlikely to hurt you. However, this is exactly why they stopped using radium for watches, the ladies who painted the dial liked to tip their brushes by licking them, which resulted in ingestion, which eventually resulted in mouth, throat, bone & stomach cancers for them.

Gamma is ionizing radiation, meaning that it goes right through you, occasionally interacting with the atoms of your body. Unless you're around a large source of a gamma emitter, you're also not in much danger. You probably get more ionizing radiation (cosmic rays and natural gamma emissions) on a single international flight, than you would from swimming every day next to the discharge from the two reactor sites.

Iodine is excreted at about 80% of the ingestion, which means that only 20% stays in your body. Yes, the damage from an ingested beta (or alpha) emitter is cumulative assuming it stays in your body. Don't eat radioactive iodine, or at least not 129-I. 131-I is a natural byproduct of fission (well, both are), but it's created in much larger quantities, so much so that nuke subs / ships can't restart their reactors for about 3 days after shutting them down due to what's called thermal neutron absorption (it's referred to in the industry as a nuclear poison). Iodine is remarkably good at tamping down a reaction, to the point that it can't be restarted until it goes through it's half life of about 8 days. However, this is the same stuff they might (I think barium is more common, Emmanuel can probably correct me) give you as contrast for a series of x-rays to highlight your innards.

However, external exposure from a dispersed source is not cumulative, think of it as dropping a hammer on your thumb from an inch or so, doesn't hurt much, and it won't bruise, even if you do it a lot over time (low exposure, like a radiation source dispersed by seawater over the size of an ocean). Now, if you drop the hammer from a couple of feet, you do damage, and if you continue, you're going to do cumulative damage because your body hasn't had time to heal in between (Fukushima / Chernobyl clean up crews).

Is it bad that they've dumped it in the ocean? Yeah, they probably shouldn't. Should you worry about it? Maybe, if you're a worry wart and have nothing better to do, otherwise, no.

Same with Fukushima. Even the Cesium 137 seems to be dissipating naturally at a faster than expected rate.

That's some great info. Jukkou is a bit (a lot!) of a chicken little

A foil wrapt chikun liddle.

Yeah this isn't a big deal.

Wow man you actually made me laugh for once.