Fukushima Sake Brewer Rescues Yeast From Nuclear Exclusion Zone

The yeast was sealed inside glass tubes as can be seen in the video.  As long as it was not in an open container, such that radioactive particles could land on it and be mixed into it (particles like cesium or strontium or iodine) it will not be “radioactive”.  Materials emitting radioactive particles can bathe things surrounding them in radioactive rays, but that does not make the item bathed in those rays radioactive itself.  Think about it – if it did, you would become slightly radioactive every time you had an x-ray, and you don’t.  Why not?  Because the radioactive material that generates the x-rays does not come in contact with your body nor is any of that material “attached” to you after they turn the x-ray off.

You can take bottled water and canned food that has been covered with fallout from a nuclear explosion or covered in radioactive waste, and as long as you clean the container off carefully and make certain that none of what was on the outside of that bottle or can touches or mixes with what was inside that bottle or can, the contents are safe to eat and/or drink.

Now, that said, if those vials were bathed in enough radiation, the yeast inside would die, true.  It apparently didn’t, which says to me it was not exposed to an unacceptably high level of radiation.  So if it is alive, and does not contain any radioactive particulate contamination, there is no problem.  It won’t make a “godzilla strain”, or turn the drinker into the Hulk, or Spiderman, or cause giant ants to roam the American Southwest.  Sadly, real radiation does not produce any of those kinds of cool effects.