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Fukushima and Chernobyl Side-by-Side

Posted by timothy on from the holy-super-pollution dept.

gbrumfiel writes "It's now been six months since an earthquake and tsunami sparked a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. New data from the Japanese government is now allowing a closer comparison of the fallout from the disaster with the Chernobyl. In terms of Cs-137, the contaminant of greatest concern, Fukushima appears to be about a fifth as bad as Chernobyl. Nature News has a Google Earth mash-up that lets you see the two accidents together. Nature also reports that chaos and bureaucracy are slowing efforts to research the crisis." (Note: There's plenty left for Linux users in the accompanying text, but the Google Earth plug-in is for Windows and Mac OS X only.)

2 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Japan's nuclear disaster "on par" with Chernobyl by debrain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Stackexchange Skeptics web-site has a relatively thorough and well cited wiki, Is Japan's nuclear disaster "on par" with Chernobyl), that compares the two disasters using a number of objective metrics.

    It seems fairly apparent based on that wiki that while Fukushima is a serious nuclear event, it is a fraction of the calamity that Chernobyl was, using the available objective data.

  2. Re:Just have to say . . . by Ferzerp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think you're an anti-nuclear power shill.

    Here you claim to work for the NRC (suspiciously no mention of supposed house ownership in Japan) http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2359418&cid=36960274

    Here you claim to own a house near Fukushima. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2418782&cid=37340946

    This time it is an apartmnet owned by a friend. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2418782&cid=37340482