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Reindeer are strangely radioactive 30 years after Chernobyl

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Marlin:
   This article was in the Nukeworker news feed but there is a slide show circulating on Facebook about the issue and I responded with the comparison of Norway’s limit of 3000 Becquerel’s of radioactivity per kilogram to the banana equivalent dose derived from 3100 Becquerel’s of activity per kilogram in bananas. Puts the Norwegian limit being higher than Europe’s activity limit in perspective. Different isotopes but without being too complicated a good layman's guide to relative risk.

Reindeer are strangely radioactive 30 years after Chernobyl

http://www.techinsider.io/chernobyl-radioactive-reindeer-2016-2?op=1

Chernobyls Reindeer

http://www.rferl.org/fullinfographics/infographics/chernobyls-reindeer/27575578.html


   If you find yourself in a discussion about this here is a good source of common sense for laymen.


--- Quote from: Marlin on Feb 22, 2016, 11:04 ---Your Coffee Is Radioactive, And That's Okay

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/02/your_coffee_is_radioactive_and_thats_okay.html

--- End quote ---

Marlin:
   Cesium contaminated deer is not new' I personally saw a couple of incoming whole body counts that were traced back to consumption of deer due to Chinese nuclear testing in the 70's and 80's.

rlbinc:
My understanding of Cesium persistence is that the lichens which grow on trees concentrate Cesium.
Deer chew on lichens for mineral intake.
Cesium ends up being one of the ingested minerals. Cesium is on the same column as Potassium on the periodic chart. So the Cesium, if uniformly dispersed, has a biological half life far shorter than the vector associated with the concentrated Cesium in our friend the lichens.

Venison in the US shows similar Cesium tenacity.

Marlin:

--- Quote from: rlbinc on Mar 01, 2016, 02:04 ---My understanding of Cesium persistence is that the lichens which grow on trees concentrate Cesium.
Deer chew on lichens for mineral intake.
Cesium ends up being one of the ingested minerals. Cesium is on the same column as Potassium on the periodic chart. So the Cesium, if uniformly dispersed, has a biological half life far shorter than the vector associated with the concentrated Cesium in our friend the lichens.

Venison in the US shows similar Cesium tenacity.

--- End quote ---

Yes but is has been declining with the cessation of above ground bomb testing. Scandinavia was in the primary Chernobyl plume, we were not immune but significantly less impact. I remember the cloud circumnavigating the world a few times with detectable spikes in environmental samples.

OldHP:
It wasn't too many years ago (OK! 30'ish) when a neighbor and I would hunt deer on the lower portion of SRR.  If you got one you had to stop on the way out and turn over the internals.  Just for grins and giggles I brought a pancake with me one week and found highly elevated count rates from the heart down, before I stopped to turn over the internals.  (Never got the heart of a SRR deer)!

 O:) :old: [beer]

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