Be glad you don't live in Japan Friday

[Cleo]

Did a bit of Goggling... seems that radiation at the bomb sites quickly dissipated.

"Today, the background radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the same as the average amount of natural radiation present anywhere on Earth. It is not enough to affect human health."
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/kid...uestion12.html

And in other news mining and burning coal kills hundreds each year.

[Linkster]

Cleo - thats correct - the radiation (actually what we call contamination) dissipates very quickly - the primary nuclides released during an atom bomb explosion last a few hours with some small amounts lasting longer and getting deposited worldwide - thats why I mentioned the deer hunters earlier - they are still eating cesium left over from the atomic tests of the 1950s in the soil/plants

The news media (and hence the people that are listening seem to confuse things as well)

Contamination is the actual material that gets blown airborne - radiation is the energy that comes from it - the way I use to explain to my students was that if you step in a pile of dog poop - the poop on your shoe is the contamination and the smell is the radiation emitted from that material.

You will hear stories where people are showered after being contaminated (although the news will say they washed radiation off of them which is actually totally impossible - it would be like taking a shower to wash off light after youve been outside)

[Bill]

Ahhh, I didn't know this, tho could have guessed.

Turns out using seawater (doped with boron) to cool those reactors ruins them.

So, a very expensive experiment indeed.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...SA_DD_20110316

As the situation at Japan's 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant goes from bad to worse—four of the plant's six boiling-water reactors have been damaged by explosions or fire, and radiation has begun leaking into the atmosphere—officials there continue to pump seawater into the reactors in a desperate attempt to cool down fuel rods and avoid a complete meltdown that could release radioactive fallout across much of the country and beyond. The move by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), which operates Daiichi, to use seawater doped with neutron-absorbing boron in the reactors' pressure vessels all but ensures that they will never function properly again, permanently damaging one of the world's 25 largest nuclear power stations.

40 years old - I thought so - which means they were likely close to their projected useful life already.

So what we are seeing is the beginning of the largest decommisioning project on the planet.