Slashdot Mirror
A Handy Radiation Dose Chart From XKCD
An anonymous reader points out Randall Munroe's latest contribution to public health awareness, a "chart of how much ionizing radiation a person can absorb from various sources, compared visually. 1 Sievert will make you sick, many more will kill you, however, even small doses cumulatively increase cancer risk." It's a good way to think about the difference between Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Fascinating, the mention of bananas was smart, since there's something known as Banana Equivalent Dose
An additional useful chart can be found here, in a slightly more readable and intelligible format:
http://eq.wide.ad.jp/files_en/110315houshasen_mext_en.pdf
Not as all-inclusive as Randall's work, but still good.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
So what you are saying is that XKCD did more research and analysis for a web-comic than the 24 hour news networks do for a story?
There are so many radiation units out there and people keep using them without regard to what they really mean. It's nice that you've got your Sieverts covered. Now you'll have to learn about Grays, Curies, Becquerels, Rads, Rems, and Roentgens. Here's a handy conversion chart.
I found one source that said firefighters had radiation levels of 27 mSV after a 13 hour operation (presumably to cool down the reactor). Which doesn't seem to me to be a severe healthrisk after looking at the chart provided. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm vastly annoyed with the media, given how they talk you'd think people were losing their hair and growing skin lesions.
The Sievert is a measure of ACCUMULATED dose. Time is a factor. Therefore being exposed to 1 Sievert for a second (the real unit behind the sievert is the J/s, which is equivalent to Watts) is the same as being exposed to 1 milisievert for 1000 seconds, or 1 microsievert for 10^6 seconds.
This is also why many measurements are done on a "per hour" basis. 400 milisieverts per hour (near the pool between reactors 3-4) is not harmful to you if you are going to be there for 5 minutes. If you stay there for 2.5 hours, however, you could experience signs of acute radiation sickness.
I find it laughable, however, how the press a) fails to understand this and b) has obvious trouble converting between micro and mili.
Finally one must bear in mind that radionuclides will decay over time (Iodine-131 being the main culprit here, has a half life of 8 days). So in 5 half lives (40 days), most of it will be gone. And also that the chronic health risk of radiation is usually overestimated, especially for such small doses as currently seen in Japan. It's statistical roulette, just like smoking. It just takes one cigarette to unleash the chain of events that will eventually lead to cancer. However the odds of it being the cigarette you are currently smoking are quite small. But if you smoke all your life, you're likely to buy the winning ticket eventually. The same with radiation. There are still living survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and these people were exposed to far more (and more harmful) radiation - gamma rays vs. beta particles. And yet not that many of them have "grown a third arm". Yes, there have been cancer deaths, but considering the population exposed, it wasn't all that much.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I would like to have seen the dosage given by using the backscatter machine at an airport listed.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
Coal fired powers stations emit more radioactivity than nuclear power stations and also release greenhouse gases and ash. We should be shutting all of these as soon as possible to protect the Earth and its people. The deaths due to coal mining annually exceed all deaths in over fifty years of nuclear power generation.
12mSv/h is slightly more than one red square, no where near an orange one. This makes the highest level of radiation detected, in the cloud of vented gas from inside the containment vessel about 30,000 times less than those at chyernobyl, and only for a very very brief period involving very short half life elements.
The radiation level has since fallen back way down, especially since managing to resubmurge the spent fuel. The reaction has also slowed to about 1/2000th of it's original rates in the reactors, making a melt down extremely unlikely at this point.
That was a peak reading. It must have lasted in the order of a second. And then decreased exponentially. Chernobyl, on the other hand sustained its rate for hours, days, years...
There is a good graph of the readings on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents
http://www.mext.go.jp/component/a_menu/other/detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/03/19/1303887_1910.pdf shows measured doses 20-30km from the reactors.
Seeing the wild claim I have seen on various network, and web news aggregator, I would say anybody researching *a bit* did more research than news networks...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Or read this article about how the US coverage from nearly all outlets (not just Fox) is sensationalist, late, and often just wrong?
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/JNlPwKP6WAs/taking_stock_3.php
Example: "This has not been just Fox News, but also CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and even the New York Times to differing degrees. They get the reactors mixed up or report information that is simply wrong (e.g., writing that the TEPCO workers had fully abandoned the effort to control the plant because of radiation levels when TEPCO had only withdrawn some non-essential personnel). They are perpetually late, continuing to report things the Japanese media had shown to be wrong or different the day before. They are woefully selective, bringing out just the sensational elements ("toxic clouds" over Tokyowhen in fact radiation in Tokyo now is actually less than that in LA on some days). They are misleading (implying for instance that the dumping of water from the air was some last ditch effort to cool the core, when it was just an effort to replenish the water in the spent rod poolswhich are now full in reactor 3 and back to normal temperature)."
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I think one major cause of nucleophobia is that doses of a millionth of anything dangerous or less are easily measurable
Negligible doses of most every poison is always around, but are unmeasurable. Radiation radiates its presence and is observed, reported and terrifying.
I'm fond of Rad-X. Rad-Away is nice and all, but an ounce of prevention etc.
Read your own friggin' articles and stop spreading FUD.
"Yukio Edano, Japan's chief Cabinet secretary, confirmed at a news conference Saturday that milk produced by a farm in Fukushima Prefecture near a crippled power plant and spinach from the neighboring Ibaraki Prefecture were found to be tainted with radiation levels SLIGHTLY [emphasis mine] above that set by the government.
However, Edano said, the contaminated food posed no immediate threat to human health. The public should remain calm, he urged.
Referring to the milk, he said, "drinking it for a year would only expose consumers to the radiation equivalent of one medical CT scan.""
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Most of the casualties from Chernobyl (4000 to 8000 fatalities and counting) were from Thyroid cancer.
Check your facts! 4000 cases of thyroid cancer and only 9 fatalities, because it is 99% curable (I think I read somewhere else 15 deaths).