Be glad you don't live in Japan Friday

[Linkster]

JK - fusion first of all is being researched heavily right now but the technology has not been refined enough to make it useful for probably at least 50 years - there is a group of countries right now pouring alot of money into the research in the ITER reactor project currently underway. The problem so far has been that all experiments have required more energy input to the reactor and systems than you produce. The ITER project has claimed that they believe they can produce power at 10 times the input power.

In answer to the amount of money being spent - more money is spent on fusion research than any other energy research currently

The concept that there is no waste to deal with is not true - you still have radioactive waste - the difference is that it decays in about 300 years (which is about the same length of time it takes the radioactive waste from a coal buring plant to decay) vs. the 10,000 years or so from the fission process.

The last issue is that most environmental groups and anti-nukes will have issues with the tritium that leaks from fusion reactors since it is even an issue right now in groundwater from many other industries including fission. Tritium is usally dismissed by most people as a harmless waste, however if you ingest it or absorb it through the skin it is much more damaging to the body than most other nuclides we deal with in fission plants - and tritium is very abundent in fusion

An example I guess I could make would be that if a fusion plant was located in Japan during the earthquake and flooding, you would have significant issues from the resulting magnet explosions, tritium releases etc that would probably kill way more people than anything all of these fission reactors will do....during Three Mile Island (which is the closest type of release compared to the Japanese plant releases) there were exactly 0 deaths caused and the risk of cancer rose by less than if each one of the people in Pennsylvania had smoked one cigarette

[RedCherry]

Saw this posted up on the current radiation levels that have been measured, and how long you would have to be exposed to to them to equal common radiation exposure.

http://www.cbryanjones.com/journal/2...n-english.html

[Linkster]

Thats actually an excellent comparison - although in the US we use a different (non-intl unit) measurement system which is in millirem and rem (1000 mrem = 1 Rem)

the micro sieverts he uses on the map equate to our units of measurement by using 1 mrem = 10 micro sieverts

The legal limit the nuclear industry workers in the US are allowed per year is 5000 mrem, although none come even close - the highest Ive ever received in one year is around 2000 mrem.

The natural background we see in the US at sea level is about 310 mRem per year - 40 mRem comes from your own bones (potassium is radioactive) and another 310 mRem from the average xrays, medical and commercial/industrial operations(smoke detectors, exit signs above doors etc etc)
If you happen to live in Denver you obviously would get more since you are closer to the cosmic radiation coming in from space - and flying gets you a little more each flight.

A good read for the US background is:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-co...radiation.html

The levels outside of the worst damaged plant in Japan is somewhere between 2 and 4 mRem per hour if you were standing at the fence constantly.

In comparison - the worst radiation levels anyone was exposed to at Three Mile Island was at the fence and it was 1 mRem per hour - at the height of the accident - and then tapered off to background levels after a few hours. Of course the only people close to the fence were the news media and they had to be shooed away to make sure they didnt get that extra 1 mRem since they aren't evidently capable of learning anything about nuclear power