What use are those to the average Independent reader? But I already indicated that you just would have to look up UK regulations for the precise numbers.
Are you being serious, DoDo? What use is actual, relevant, hard information to the average paper reader? Indeed. I suppose they coul also go and log in on the relevant website to read the report, why does the press need to mention it at all? And if the information is out there, why ask anyone to prepare a report at all? People can go make their own measurements, themselves, if they care about it.
You then quote out of context.
I quoted the ONLY instance in the article of a (indirect) mention of an actual exceedance of the (unknown) trigger levels.
I suspect natural radioactivity is out of the question
Prove it.
It should not be up to anyone else to prove the negaitve of this. It's up to you to prove such allegations. Your anti-nuclear stance is blinding you. Let's hold nuclear energy to the highest standards, but that means that criticism should also be made with some (ideally, the same) standards of transparency and verification.
That article of the Independent and your own comments totally fail any kind of reasonable standard for proof. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
High natural radioactivity is usually associated with bedrock, magmatic or volcanic. Peat bogs are - soil. Heavy waterfall and no outflow makes them sinks for anything washed out of the atmosphere. Another point against natural sources is the short half-life of caesium.
I did some homework in another post, but I couldn't find much on Cs background levels in connection with either peat bogs or sheep in Britain. (I found one document with data on tested sheep from Northern Ireland with most below 1 Bq/kg and a maximum of 5.43 Bq/kg. I also found a worldwide survey for fishes, values ranged from 0.2 to 2.1 Bq/kg.) I'm certain if natural levels would be anywhere near that value, pro-nuclear sites would have the info. Instead, I find those mentioning the sheep issue stress the reduction in the number of affected farms. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Nutrient-poor and acidic, a bog is a peat-accumulating wetland comprised of acidophilic vegetation, particularly Sphagnum mosses species and ericad shrubs. Although bogs are water-saturated, they have virtually no inflow or outflow of mineral-bearing water. Isolated from the groundwater table, their only source of nutrients is precipitation.
Read here. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Heavy rainfall caused minerals such as iron to be washed out or leached from the surface layers of the thin soil, in a process known as paludification. These were deposited lower down in the soil profile where they formed an impermeable layer known as an iron pan (see Figure 2). As water cannot move down through such a layer, the soil surface became waterlogged. Under these conditions the accumulation and spread of peat was made possible.
There are nice figures for explanation. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Well, I didn't, you saw me in the process of self-education :-)
My image of a peat bog was (a) a German low-land filled-up lake, or (b) a Scottish or Cornish hilltop moor (the versions I have seen personally, and the ones I read of as being used for 'atmospheric composition archeology'), so blanket bogs were a news to me. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
