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From:
James Fischer <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 3 Nov 2015 10:15:26 -0500
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"The samples showed levels of radioactive caesium-137 that are 14 times higher than samples of honey from elsewhere in the UK, prompting scientists to call for an investigation into wider contamination at the site."

I can certainly understand soil contamination near most any nuclear facility, moreso when waste is handled, and bees are very good at detecting it, but 14 times higher than what?  C-137 does not exist "in nature", so it is all the result of fission.

There was a restriction on the sale of sheep in one area of the UK that persisted for at least a decade after Chernobyl, but that isotope of cesium has a very quick "biological half-life" of less than 2 weeks, so the solution was to move the sheep, let them pasture for a few weeks, and then sell them, as they would not test positive after that.  Maybe honey from that area still shows a detectable C-137 levels?

Otherwise, there should not normally be any detectable C-137 in honey.  Multiple labs did detect short-term spikes in C-137 in rainfall, and resulting spikes in sampled nectar and honey several times, including after both the Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents.  But the levels quickly went back to "undetectable", and was more a function of prevailing winds and rainfall than anything else.  No rain, no detectable impact from honey samples.  

There was even one embarrassment for NATO, as while studying Chernobyl impact, (higher) levels of  zirconium-95 and niobium-95 than one could expect from Chernobyl were detected in honey sampled in the area around Bologna Italy.  The conclusion was that this was the impact of the use of "rapid-decay radioactive dust" in NATO military training exercises, which clearly did not decay rapidly enough to avoid civilian detection and angry articles in the press.  That must have been some very realistic training for those soldiers!

Maybe someone confused C-133 (naturally-occurring, stable, used in "atomic clocks"...) with C-137 to get the 14x number?

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