[ RadSafe ] Re: Bd-7 in the Great Lakes

[John Jacobus]

Kjell,
Did they isotropically analyze the samples to compare
natural, non-radioactive beryllium to the quantity of
radioactive Be-7? 

--- "Johansen, Kjell" <Kjell.Johansen at nmcco.com>
wrote:

> John,
> We find Be-7 everywhere in air, vegetation, and soil
> samples taken as
> part of our REMP.  Be-7 is so widespread and uniform
> in the environment
> that I could not see any difference between samples
> taken close to the
> plant and 20 mile upwind of the plant.  If it were
> from the plant, the
> concentration should fall off by more than 3 orders
> of magnitude based
> on the X/Q values for atmospheric dispersion.
> 
> The IJC group was correct in that Be-7 is produced
> at low levels in a
> reactor via ternary fission at the rate of 1E-07 or
> 1E-09 per fission
> depending upon whether you believe Los Alamos or St
> Petersburg results.
> We see it in the primary coolant but not in any of
> the releases.  
> 
> A radio-geochemist friend (and also one of the two
> leading
> radiolimnologists in the Great Lakes) of mine who
> had reviewed most of
> the report was not seen the Be-7 this portion of the
> report. He
> appologized to me for not insisting to see all of
> it. It was during his
> retirement party that I met one of the Canadian
> members of the IJC
> working group. I could not understand why he did not
> understand that the
> half life is long enough for it to reach the ground.
>  
> 
> As far as I could tell from the credentials of the
> working group's
> membership, there were no experts in radioecology or
> radiolimnology in
> the group.  
> 
> As for isotopic breakdown of Be-7, I do not
> understand your question.
> Kjell
> 


+++++++++++++++++++
>From an article about physicians doing clinical studies: 

"It was just before an early morning meeting, and I was really trying to get to the bagels, but I couldn't help overhearing a conversation between one of my statistical colleagues and a surgeon.

Statistician: "Oh, so you have already calculated the P value?"

Surgeon: "Yes, I used multinomial logistic regression."

Statistician: "Really? How did you come up with that?"

Surgeon: "Well, I tried each analysis on the SPSS drop-down menus, and that was the one that gave the smallest P value"."

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com