Going Bananas Over Radiation

Updates

January 6, 2018: update. Still taking ND radioactive waste to eastern Montana.

March 31, 2014: it turns out that Montana allows facilities to accept waste with radioactivity levels up to 30 picocuries (six times that allowed by North Dakota). For that reason, a waste facility just across the state line is doing great business taking radioactive waste from the North Dakota Bakken. The Bakken.com is reporting:

While North Dakota figures out what to do with radioactive waste from oil production, a Montana operator hopes it doesn’t change a thing.

Ross Oakland, owner of Oaks Disposal northwest of Glendive, Mont., is doing pretty good business taking oil field waste from North Dakota, because his operation is handily located at the western edge of Bakken operations, and also because Montana’s rules allow his facility to take radioactive waste up to 30 picocuries per gram.

Because Oakland saw an opportunity ripe for the taking, he’s now the first operator to take advantage of Montana’s new low-level radioactive waste program.

See original post below: bananas "typically" have 520 picocuries per 150 grams (or 3.5 picocuries/gram). 

March 13, 2014: another story of illegal dumping of radioactive "socks" reported by ThinkProgress:

A heaping mound of black trash bags stuffed with radioactive nets that strain liquids during the oil production process — commonly known as “oil filter socks” — has been found in an abandoned North Dakota gas station, state officials confirmed Wednesday, in what may be the biggest instance of illegal oil socks dumping the state has ever seen.

Police last week discovered the illegally dumped oil socks piled throughout the old gas station building and attached mechanic garage in the small town of Noonan, state Waste Management Director Scott Radig told ThinkProgress. The bags were covered in a layer of dust, Radig said, meaning they had probably been sitting in the building for some time.
The 4,000-square-foot building is owned by a felony fugitive named Ken Ward, who Radig said likely did independent work for the state’s booming oil and gas industry.

North Dakotan soil has a limit of 5 picocuries (see original post) — the standard measure for the intensity of radioactivity — of radium per gram of soil in order to be considered not radioactive. The oil socks, Radig said, are typically in the range of 10-60 picocuries of radium per gram. Though the bags haven’t been taken to a laboratory for examination yet, Radig said an initial reading showed that the oil socks were “above background, so they are slightly radioactive.”

Original Post

The folks responsible for the mess in the picture accompanying a Bismarck Tribune story need to clean up their act, but the reporter needs to put things in perspective. I have no idea the significance of "5 picocuries."

But this should help:

A banana equivalent dose is a concept occasionally used by nuclear power proponents to place in scale the dangers of radiation by comparing exposures to the radiation generated by a common banana.

Many foods are naturally radioactive, and bananas are particularly so, due to the radioactive potassium-40 they contain.

The banana equivalent dose is the radiation exposure received by eating a single banana.

Radiation leaks from nuclear plants are often measured in extraordinarily small units (the picocurie, a millionth of a millionth of a curie, is typical).

By comparing the exposure from these events to a banana equivalent dose, a more intuitive assessment of the actual risk can sometimes be obtained.

The average radiologic profile of bananas is 3520 picocuries per kg, or roughly 520 picocuries per 150g banana.

The equivalent dose for 365 bananas (one per day for a year) is 3.6 millirems.

A chest x-ray is about 10 millirems.

According to the US government: in general, a yearly dose of 620 millirem from all radiation sources has not been shown to cause humans any harm.

Now that I have a bit of science behind all this, it puts the Bismarck Tribune story in perspective: it's inappropriate; the state will fine the guilty; and life will go on.

Brad Torgerson, with the state Health Department’s waste management division, said the team determined that radiation levels “do not appear to present any public health hazards.” He said the company, RP Services, of Riverton, Wyo., was told to put the waste in proper containers and submit a plan for cleanup.

The article doesn't seem to say how many picucuries were found in one of the representative containers (called a "sock") but did note this:

Schreiber said his operators have tested filter socks “so hot our meters are maxed out” at readings equivalent to 1,000 picocuries (the equivalent of two bananas).

"Maxed out" at readings equivalent to 1,000 picocuries. Remember that, the next time you buy a banana. A typical banana has 520 picocuries of radiation.

This is all beyond my comfort zone; I may have misunderstood something but if anything seems wrong to you, go to the linked sources. While chomping on a banana.