Flying in Airplanes Exposes People To More Radiation Than Standing Next To a Nuclear Reactor (businessinsider.com)

Traveling the skies by jet lifts us far from the hustle and bustle of the world below. From a report: But many flyers don't know that soaring miles above Earth also takes us out of a vital protective cocoon -- and a little closer to a place where our cells can be pummeled by radiation from colliding stars, black holes, and more. You can't see these high-energy charged particles, but at any given moment, tens of thousands of them are soaring through space and slamming into Earth's atmosphere from all directions. Also called cosmic rays or cosmic ionizing radiation, the particles are the cores of atoms, such as iron and nickel, moving at nearly light-speed. They can travel for millions of years through space before randomly hitting Earth. These rays don't pose much of a risk to humans on Earth's surface, since the planet's atmosphere and magnetic field shield us from most of the threat.

Comments

Re:Miss Mash is a RETARD Club

[Z00L00K]

The problem with radiation is in general not at the reactor but throughout the whole chain and to that the longevity of the radiation of both enrichment byproducts and the waste after the fuel has been used that adds to the problems with nuclear energy.

Just consider the full life cycle cost, not just the cost today, but also the cost to maintain the waste for the next 10k years.