Radioactive Water Found In Two Reactor Buildings

RedEaredSlider writes "Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said it detected several kinds of radioactive material in the water on the floor of reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The isotopes found in the water were cobalt-76, technetium-99, silver-108, iodine-131, iodine-134, four isotopes of cesium, barium-140 and lanthanum-140. All have half-lives measured in hours or days, with the exception of cesium-137."

Comments

Have any of the workers developed superpowers?

[elrous0]

You can keep your sieverts. I prefer to measure radiation by the level of socially-isolating, mutated superpowers that it produces. Are any of the plant workers brooding yet, or developing secret identities, or lamenting how society has shunned them, or experiencing montage sequences where they learn how to use their new powers?

Re:Have any of the workers developed superpowers?

[matt_gaia]

I propose a different measurement: How many Godzilla's will this produce?

And not the 1998, Matthew-Broderick-starring Godzilla either, because, let's face it... that Godzilla sucked.

plutonium was just found outside

[Anonymous Coward]

This does not have a half life in days, but years

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/28/3-types-of-plutonium-detected-at-japans-fukushima-daiichi-plant/

This is extremely bad

Re:plutonium was just found outside

[0123456]

This is extremely bad

Oh my God, the protons in your body have a half-life of over 10^30 years!

You, uh, do realise that the longer the half-life the _less_ radioactive something is? Generally speaking, plutonium is more likely to kill you because it's toxic than because it's radioactive (unless someone makes a bomb out of it).

Re:plutonium was just found outside

[0123456]

That rule of thumb fails if said element happens to decay into yet another radioactive isotopes. Like, say, uranium...

Somewhat, though you're not going to get much of that other radioactive isotope if you start with a few grams of something that has a half-life of hundreds of thousands of years.

Re:plutonium was just found outside

[HungryHobo]

.... not really no.

it ups it but if your isotope with a 20K year half life decays into something something with a halflife of say (for an example that would be easy on the math)5 seconds then you'll get twice as much radioactivity out of it (assuming the seconds products are as dangerous forms of radiation) with a little variation.

a isotope with a 20K halflife will still be utterly dwarfed in terms of radiation output by something with a halflife of a few decades even if the former has a decay chain 10 isotopes long because it can only add a linear multiplier, not an exponential increase in radiation output.

once you're into halflives in the tens of thousands be more afraid of heavy metal poisoning than radiation poisoning.

Re:plutonium was just found outside

[increment1]

From what I read, plutonium is pretty bad if you inhale or ingest it, otherwise not too much of a problem. If it gets into you it can stay in you for years, causing cancer and bone problems (it can get into your bones and bone marrow).

Outside of your skin, the radiation is too weak to cause much concern, but when it is inside you, the radiation is enough to cause reasonably serious harm (or at least the potential therein).

Re:plutonium was just found outside

[Amouth]

no more than i would lead.. but that is because of the same reasons.. it is more toxic to the body than it's radiation is.

Re:plutonium was just found outside

[fishbowl]

I wish I had mod points, but I'm tired of getting into arguments about it.

I would be far more concerned about the health and environmental effects of the big refinery fire that we didn't hear much about, than the Fukushima reactor so far.

Re:plutonium was just found outside

[Mindcontrolled]

The problem is, apart from the heavy metal toxicity, that it has a biological half time of decades. It bioaccumulates. So it's gonna stay around with you - ample time for that 5 MeV alphas to hit your DNA. You don't need a high activity when you carry it around in your liver for the rest of your life.

Re:plutonium was just found outside

[KonoWatakushi]

Plutonium in perspective.

As far as widespread release of Plutonium into our environment is concerned, consider this:

The most important effects of plutonium toxicity by far are those due to nuclear bombs exploded in the atmosphere. Only about 20% of the plutonium in a bomb is consumed, while the rest is vaporized and floats around in the Earth's atmosphere as a fine dust. Over 10,000 pounds of plutonium has been released in that fashion by bomb tests to date, enough to cause about 4,000 deaths worldwide. Note that the quantity already dispersed by bomb tests is more than 10 million times larger than the annual releases allowed by EPA regulations from an all breeder reactor electric power industry.

Plutonium is not good for you, but the sky has yet to fall, and seems unlikely to in the future.

Re:plutonium was just found outside

[Rising Ape]

Its radiotoxicity is very significant, more so than its chemical toxicist. Ingested alpha emitters are nasty - Thorotrast was highly carcinogenic despite Thorium having a 14 billion year long half life and so being only weakly radioactive.

Of course, Thorotrast was ingested in huge quantities, which won't happen for this plutonium.

Re:plutonium was just found outside

[HungryHobo]

not to put too fine a point on it but there's no shortage of completely non-radioactive substances which will diddle with your DNA, get something planar which can bind between bases and you get a nasty little insertion mutation.

lead and it's friends bioaccumulate pretty badly as well.
Not to put too fine a point on it but radiation isn't very special.

plutonium leaking into groundwater is serious but so would be lead or arsenic getting into food or groundwater.

you don't say!

[AdamThor]

Huh. So you say they dumped water all over the radioactive disaster with helicopters, firetrucks, a big concrete pump truck, and now the basement of the reactor is filled with radioactive water?

Re:you don't say!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm interested in hearing objective news

No, you're interested in news reinforcing your subjective opinion; just like everybody else.

Re:you don't say!

[mbkennel]

The "trace amounts" are newsworthy because they indicate that the inner steel containment has been cracked and so have a few of the fuel pellets.

In particular, these isotopes are fission products, which are supposed to stay solid and encased in their cladding.

Previous radioactive materials were probably a consequence of neutron activation and had short half-lives, but weren't long term cause for concern.

Re:you don't say!

[Mindcontrolled]

Yeah. Of course. The containment withstood the quake. That's why it is still CONTAINING that plutonium. And I, Cs, Tc and whatnot. That is why we see dose rates of 1 Sv/h in water OUTSIDE the containment. But hey - no matter. Radiation is healthy and ingesting Pu is like chewing on an iron nail, as read further up this thread. You guys are getting somewhat embarrassing by now.

Re:you don't say!

[Solandri]

Several of the radioactive elements they're finding have half lives of a few hours (I-134 and Ag-108 are less than an hour). For those decay products to be found in significant quantities 2 weeks after shutdown indicates the source of the water has a large concentration of these decay products. This would suggest a leak in the reactor's containment, rather than residual run-off from the water dumping/spraying operations. Reactor 2 sustained a hydrogen explosion inside containment, probably within the torus/suppression pool. So this isn't really a surprise.

Reactor 3 had no reports of a similar explosion, but they are inferring that containment is breached based on higher than expected radiation measurements. That is the more worrisome one, since it's using a MOX fuel rather than plain uranium. However, they are reporting that reactor 3 isn't losing pressure, so maybe there isn't a leak.

If you check my post history, you'll see I'm adamantly for nuclear power. But we shouldn't downplay what these reports are telling us.

Re:you don't say!

[gilleain]

I'm interested in hearing objective news

No, you're interested in news reinforcing your subjective opinion; just like everybody else.

I'm interested in hearing news that reinforces my opinion that I don't like reinforcing my opinions. It's hard to find, though.

Re:you don't say!

[GooberToo]

The lesson for the future is to include redundant diesel generators

And more importantly, don't place your backups at or below sea level; and especially not so when on the coast. And especially, especially not so when tsunamis are prevalent in your region. The absolutely obvious stupidity is jaw dropping.

I would seriously like to know why the IAEC didn't have something to say about that long before this happened. Even moreso, I'd like to know why they didn't have generators in standby for such emergencies; as is commonly done in the US. I actually thought this was an international standard. And even moreso, I'd like to know why generators were not immediately made available within the first 12-hours by the military after an emergency had been declared. Had any of this been done, there would have never been an initial emergency declared, let alone an ever growing escalation.

Everything about this smacks of massive human incompetent by the Japanese government and the utility company, which seemingly, has unyielding authority which seems to usurp that of the people and even the government.

The final word in analysis, once its actually penned, is likely to be a scathing review of incompetence at almost every level of governance and corporatism.

They had helicopters functioning. Its not like all of Japanese society ceased to function. It literally would have been trivial to have a generator, or a series of generators delivered within the first twelve hours. Hell, contrary to the popular spin, their inability to deliver the most basic of emergency services by their military strongly suggests that they were in fact, completely unprepared for any and all emergencies they are likely to face.

Re:you don't say!

[jmorris42]

> It literally would have been trivial to have a generator, or a series of generators delivered within the first twelve hours.

Or for that matter just airdrop complete self powered pumps and hook those up. Before the area became a radioactive hell on earth just how hard could it have been to drop in a pump, hook it up to the inlet and let it rip. Hell, in the DAYS that elapsed with no water in those reactors we could have flown a single pump from New Orleans that could have put enough water into those things to blow the fracking tops off the steel containment vessels and created geysers a thousand feet high over all four of those damned reactors. And it is a veritable certainly that somewhere in Japan existed an equally powerful pump or three. The investigations and recriminations over this pooch screw is going to go on for decades.

Re:you don't say!

[Rei]

You know, at this point, I'm almost tempted to say who cares what's damaged or not? The contamination is happening, no matter what the cause. Residets of Iitate, 40km from the reactor and outside the exclusion zone, are getting a free dental X-ray (40 microsieverts) every 4-6 hours (including pregnant women and children). That's merely considering radiation from external sources; if they feel much like breathing or eating, they'll be getting internal accumulation and exposure, which is orders of magnitude worse.

Sure, what exactly failed matters for the cleanup and post-mortem, but regardless of how it happened, Serious Problems Occurred(TM) that have to be dealt with.

Radioactivity?

[JBMcB]

Let's see - they've been pumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of seawater into the spent fuel pools for over a week now. I would take a wild guess and predict that, yes, there will be some radioactive water lying around.

Re:Radioactivity?

[Fibe-Piper]

Let's see - they've been pumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of seawater into the spent fuel pools for over a week now. I would take a wild guess and predict that, yes, there will be some radioactive water lying around.

Makes sense to me. The problem is, through concentrated disinformation, the corporation in charge has been very good at minimizing the extent of the issues their lack of preparedness has caused the people of Japan.

Everything is being relayed in terms of what they are doing to prevent this or that nuclear side-disaster; nothing to do with the effects of the disaster that has already occurred and continues to occur.

Re:Radioactivity?

[sjames]

I would say the best way to contain the threat is to not go fishing in the reactor building.

"half-lives measured in hours or days"

[amazeofdeath]

Technetium-99 has a half-life of over 200k years. Of course, it's still days, just a lot of them.

Re:"half-lives measured in hours or days"

[ZombieWomble]

And decays to technetium-99, so almost all the initial technetium-99m from the fission reaction while the reactor was active has almost certainly become plain old technetium-99 by now.

Re:"half-lives measured in hours or days"

[Artraze]

As others pointed out, they're probably referring to Tc99m, which has a short half life. The fact that ground state Tc99 has a half life of roughly forever is probably why it's not mentioned... It's so long that you need a lot of it to get a lot of decays. It's also fairly unreactive and doesn't form any particularly soluble salts (as best as I can tell), so the exposure possibility is limited. Finally, it decays with a fairly low every beta (294keV) and only very rarely emits a low energy gamma (90keV @ 0.0006%).

Compare to Cs137 which has a 30yr half life, so it has the same decay rate as 7,000 times as much Tc99. It forms highly soluble salts and can be absorbed by the body and concentrated in plants. On top of that, it has a much higher decay energy, and usually emits a strong beta (514keV) and gamma (662keV). It makes the Tc99 look like so many bananas. So, they aren't technically correct, but Tc99 isn't really important.

For reference:
Tc99m: http://ie.lbl.gov/toi/nuclide.asp?iZA=430399
Tc99: http://ie.lbl.gov/toi/nuclide.asp?iZA=430099
Cs137: http://ie.lbl.gov/toi/nuclide.asp?iZA=550137

I'm fine with nuclear power.

[Beelzebud]

I'm fine with nuclear power. I'm not fine with nuclear power plants being run by greedy assholes that put the profit margin above the safety margin. We have a few reactors here in the U.S. that are obviously being ran "on the cheap", and frankly those companies should be ran out of town, and taken over by people that put the public safety first.

Re:I'm fine with nuclear power.

[antifoidulus]

Couple that with a culture that tends to frown on whistle blowing and reporting your superiors and you have a real problem on your hands. While this is the first major nuke incident in Japan, there is a long record of serious safety violations and technicians and engineers not willing to go behind their bosses back to report them. In 2003 TEPCO was caught forging documents at ALL 17 of it's reactors. This is far from an isolated incident.

Re:I'm fine with nuclear power.

[H0p313ss]

If anything, this demonstrates how safe nuclear power it.

I hope that you can come back in five years and say that with a straight face. I think it's fair to say that at this point we have no idea what the long term issues will be with this reactor and the contamination.

Re:I heard it on TV!

[radtea]

They said we're all gonna dieeeeee!!!!!

Which is what they said after TMI and Chernobyl and for all I know Windscale as well.

If nuclear power is so damned dangerous where are the piles of dead bodies?

Call me when the number of people in the past thirty years gets up to 0.1% of the number killed by automobiles, or half the number killed by coal power in all its dreadful glory.

Nuclear power has serious economic issues. If it had significant safety issues it would have killed WAY more people by now.

And no, Greenpeace propoganda about us not being able to prove that Chernobyl didn't kill 10,000 people world-wide per year in the past 20 years doesn't count. Every reputable health authority that has looked at the consequence of the Chernobyl disaster has pegged the number in the low thousands at the most. No fun fore those people, but the vastly larger number of people killed by coal and cars aren't having any fun either.

"No problem..." is what we'll read here

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all just a minor accident that could have been avoided if it weren't for the hippies who won't let us build completely safe reactors to replace the existing completely safe reactors. Right? RIGHT?

IMHO the people who keep playing this down should go to Japan, get in one of those fancy radiation worker suits and CLEAN UP THIS HICCUP WITH THEIR OWN TWO HANDS, FFS.

Re:"No problem..." is what we'll read here

[vlm]

This is all just a minor accident that could have been avoided if it weren't for the hippies who won't let us build completely safe reactors to replace the existing completely safe reactors. Right?

I know you're trying to be sarcastic but unfortunately you're correct. The ones that melted down had sorta-crappy Mark I containment structures. They were planning on building replacements on site with much better containment structures... To some extent its just bad luck, but note how they blew up almost in order of construction and the newest ones pretty much shrugged it all off.

Re:"No problem..." is what we'll read here

[jmorris42]

> The politicians should definately tell them to STFU, nothing gets in the way of a good democracy like voters always yappin'

Yes it is time to tell a small but noisy bunch of socialists (scratch a green, find a red. Not every time but often enough, and the odds grow the higher ranking the green is) to STFU until they come up with a solution instead of mindlessly objecting to every single energy source. And until they are willing to lead by example, other than the admirable way they have at least given up on procreating more of their stupid kind. Give up the cars, planes, mansions and such. And no, driving a hybrid doesn't make it all right, ain't one yet that is net positive. Same for putting up solar panels subsidized by the taxes of people poorer than the sanctimionious pricks installing them.

Pick an energy source that actually works and doesn't cause side effects. Now promise you won't start bitchin as soon as it actually starts providing a non-trivial percentage of the national energy supply.

Oil? Oh the horror.... unless we are paying Petrobras to drill so we can import from them, then it must be ok.

Natural gas? Nope. Coal? Ick, dirty... except this mythical 'clean coal' that will never be viable.

Hydroelectric? Nope, harms fish.

Geothermal? Causes earthquakes.

Solar? Not even in the desert is it ok to deploy on a commercial scale. Great for preening greens to put on their roofs though, just as long as it isn't economically viable it is ok. And we won't worry about the ecological problems from producing photovoltaic cells until it goes into commercial production.

Biofuels? Hello, converting commercially significant amounts of farmland is causing food shortages already and we aren't even getting much of our fuel from it yet. The Four Horsemen will ride long before we got off dead dinosaurs.

Nukes? Please, you guys have been hatin on that since forever, mostly with FUD.

Wind? Not anywhere greens can actually see the windmills... which happen to be where the energy tends to be needed, so until we can get better transport of electricity it is a problem, and the cost/benefit still blows. (ok, that was horrible)

Tidal energy will almost certainly kill some rare fish in 100% of proposed locations.

Re:I heard it on TV!

[Beelzebud]

Oh nonsense. From day one there has been a minority of pro-nuke people that have insisted this is all perfectly safe, and have been proven wrong over and over and over again. Those types of people do more harm to nuclear power than an army of hippies ever thought about doing. Flippancy isn't the way to deal with this issue, and acting like you're right all the time just makes you look like a jackass.

above post: example of techie vs public disconnect

[circletimessquare]

what happened at fukushima might not be as horrible as the media portrays. however, you have to understand, when the general public sees this kind of accident and some techie starts scoffing and arrogantly laughing and proclaiming how insignicant this accident is THEY STOP LISTENING TO YOU

there is an educated person on a given subject matter, and an uneducated person. what does it take to turn the uneducated person educated? well, not the attitude you see on display in the post above

when the educated person acts like an arrogant ass, the uneducated people doesn't learn anything except that you have an ego problem. they immediately tune you out, and most importantly, they decide, without your input, that nuclear power is too dangerous and insist to their politicians that we don't use it. because no one educated them. they just scoffed at them

do you want nuclear power to be widely adopted? then impassionately and concisely summarize why things might not be as bas they seem to be to the average person. when they ask a stupid question, or display colossal ignorance on a subject matter, smile and educate them simply and succinctly. or laugh at them. and see nuclear power get mothballed everywhere

frankly, ego problems like on display in the comment board above are more irresponsible than an uneducated public. because they show that the educated are more interested in proclaiming their "superiority" (eg, their ego problems) than actually informing people

congratulations jackass: your attitude helps kill nuclear power

The real problem

[Pumpkin Tuna]

We're missing the real problem here. If these test results are correct, (and there's some question about that) then there is still a critical reaction going on intermittently. The reactors's scrammed nearly two weeks ago and therefore couldn't be putting out something with a half life of days or hours unless fission had restarted. That would be a Very Bad Thing.

Re:I heard it on TV!

[HungryHobo]

They're almost as annoying pro-air-travel people who insist that air travel is safer than going by car.
I mean only a little while ago there was all that news about a plane crash and they *still* insisted that air travel is "safer".

while all sensible people know that the only safe way to get anywhere is by driving there or cycling.

Re:above post: example of techie vs public disconn

[vlm]

That's not a very well informed argument, although your target selection is not too bad.

The unwashed masses stop listening because they want to be scared. They want to be scared because anyone whom doesn't watch garbage like the mainstream media produces... does not watch that garbage.

You know how much of a pain in the ass it is to sit next to the guy at the magic show who spends all his time telling everyone around him how its all fake and I bet I know how it works? Or the guy at the horror movie whom feels the need to tell everyone around him how its all fake and none of it is real? What a PITA for the folks whom want to be entertained.

Same way with the TV news viewers. They literally don't want the truth, so stop trying to tell them. They want to be scared. If you somehow convince them not to be scared about this thing, they'll be pissed that you've "ruined the fun" as they wait for the next scary story.

With a memory best measured in days or weeks, I don't think the opinion of the general unwashed masses really matters for nuclear power, at all.

Now on /. its OK to tell the truth about whats going on. Some of us actually want to know. But keep the non-fiction here and the fiction out there on the TV news where it belongs.

see how powerful the disconnect is?

[circletimessquare]

i pointed out people with ego problems more interested at scoffing at the uneducated than educating them, and this yahoo replies by being exactly the sort of archetypical arrogant jackass i am talking about:

"The unwashed masses stop listening because they want to be scared."

oh, really? congratulations, you have an ego problem

being uneducated on nuclear power is not uncommon, it is normal. being ready and interested in being educated is not uncommon, it is normal. unfortunately, techies with ego problems, more interested in ridiculing and denigrating the common man, is also not uncommon, and i guess, "normal"

congratulations, you are a bigger part of the problem than the uneducated. because your attitude is caustic, wrong, and serves your stunted ego more than it serves the common good

i see someone with an attitude like yours, and i think less of you than i think of a scared uneducated person

Re:see how powerful the disconnect is?

[sweatyboatman]

actually I thought the GPs point was valid and well made. it's this:

You know how much of a pain in the ass it is to sit next to the guy at the magic show who spends all his time telling everyone around him how its all fake and I bet I know how it works?

CNN/Fox/et. al. have access to many qualified, tv-friendly experts who could put the Fukushima accident in perspective, but they choose not to. Why? Because their audience is not interested in reporting, they are interested in "news". They want the "magic" and "horror" of real live disasters. They are not interested in seeing the "magic" or "horror" revealed as neither magic nor particularly that horrifying.

Not everyone who fears/hates nuclear power falls into this category. Not even everyone who watches cable news channels. But it does seem an interesting insight into why the cable news channels prefer talking heads who hype the disaster over experts who would offer a more even-handed and sedate assessment of the situation.

Still not looking good

[Animats]

The best reports on reactor status are at Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, which publishes a status table every day. This is addressed to people in the industry. They just list the facts, without explanation.

The good news for March 28 is that Unit 3's containment is now listed as "undamaged" instead of "possibly damaged". Unit 2 is listed as "damaged and leakage suspected", and that's now the most worrisome unit.

There's finally a fresh water supply for cooling. That's a big relief. Sea water cooling in a boil-off situation leaves tons of salt behind, and there was a real worry that the seawater cooling would stop working once too much salt accumulated. Fresh water cooling can continue indefinitely. It's not clear where the water is coming from. Hopefully they have a water line to a reliable source by now, and aren't just bringing in tanker trucks.

The cores in units 1,2, and 3 still have exposed fuel rods. Until water injection into the core is working again, the reactor can't be brought to cold shutdown. Remember, the reactor vessel is pressurized and contains a mixture of water and steam. Injecting water into a boiler is inherently difficult. Injecting water into a damaged boiler in a ruined structure in a highly radioactive area is very tough.

The spent fuel pool situation on reactors 3 and 4 is marginally under control. Seawater spray continues, but if they have to keep putting water in, the situation is still bad.

They're weeks from a stable emergency shutdown.

That's just the beginning. The situation isn't safe until there are again redundant closed loop cooling systems working. The current cooling hacks dump radioactive water into the ocean.

Then comes decommissioning. The spent fuel pools have to be cooled for three years or so, and then the fuel rods transferred from the wrecked buildings to dry casks. It will probably be necessary to build another containment building around unit 2, at least. Units 1,2, and 3 are all too damaged to ever de-fuel normally. It's not clear what will be done there. Unit 4 wasn't fueled, but it had a hydrogen explosion while cooling was lost, and will probably never be restarted. Units 5 and 6 can potentially be restarted, but it's doubtful that they will be.

Re:Still not looking good

[Tailhook]

Great post. One issue with it:

Units 5 and 6 can potentially be restarted, but it's doubtful that they will be.

The history of nuclear power accidents does not support this. Three Mile Island No.1 reactor is still in operation in Pennsylvania. Chernobyl No.1, 2 and 3 reactors were operated for up to 14 years after No.4 blew up and contaminated Europe, and there are 11 other RBMK reactors still in operation elsewhere. The power reactor at the Windscale site was operated for 46 years after the graphite fire in the weapons reactor.

Nuclear reactors represent astonishing capital investments by their builders, and by that I mean the companies, governments and citizens. Japan is dealing with rolling blackouts. This is intolerable in a nation that relies on meeting the demands of the export market. The No.5 and No.6 reactors represent about 2GW of generation capacity they desperately need.

They'll bring those reactors up at some point.

Re:above post: example of techie vs public disconn

[khallow]

what happened at fukushima might not be as horrible as the media portrays. however, you have to understand, when the general public sees this kind of accident and some techie starts scoffing and arrogantly laughing and proclaiming how insignicant this accident is THEY STOP LISTENING TO YOU

THEY WEREN'T LISTENING IN THE FIRST PLACE. Sometimes you only can get people to listen to you by disagreeing "arrogantly".

okay, let's go with this observation

[circletimessquare]

if you understand something about the psychology of people's attentions, then you can and should begin to understand how it is permanent, intractable, and just an unchanging facet of human nature. now what? laugh at it? scoff at it? get depressed? use it to tell yourself how superior you are?

analogy: car rides are far more dangerous than airplane flights. but the average person perceives the opposite. the psychological reason is the aspect of control, or the illusion of it. in an airplane, you are handing control of your life over to a pilot. a dedicated trained seasoned pilot with many safety and security protocols, but you are handing over control nonetheless. in a car, you have your hands on the steering wheel: you are in control. but this is an illusion, because you are on a road with hundreds of other people also driving, and texting, and applying makeup, and drunk, and they have power over your life by their actions behind the steering wheel. it doesn't matter how good a driver you are if one of the hundreds of assholes around you crosses over the yellow line

psychologically, it is about what you can perceive as finite and concrete (a tsunami) versus what you cannot perceive as limitless and never-ending (nuclear decay and radiation). perception, and control: more important to human psychology than other risk factors

so if you emphasize to someone what they can perceive, and what they can control, about nuclear radiation, you demystify it, you make it concrete, you make it within their grasp. and thus you reduce the fear and panic and hysteria