Quote:
Originally Posted by theking
(Post 17979450)
...coming from Japan...and being catastrophic...let me remind you that there has been more than 100 nuclear bombs detonated in the atmosphere in the CONUS with negligible effects upon the U.S. population. There were also many atmospheric tests conducted by the U.S. in the Pacific. The U.S....Britain and Russia took their nuclear tests underground in 1963 but other countries continued atmospheric tests until 1980.
Any radiation that may come to the U.S. from Japan is of no major import.
|
You are sort of right, sort of wrong.
Radiation in steam released in Japan this week is very low, with much of it having a half life of only 8 days. It can still cause cancer in anyone who breathes it in, gets in on their skin, etc. These are controlled releases to keep the pressure in the cooling system down.
It's been said that some of the earlier steam contained something which I forget now - whatever control rods are made out of - that can last for 30 years or more. If this is the case, it means that there was at least a partial meltdown. Scary? Dangerous? Yes, but not for the whole world... range is short, half life is 30 years, and it can be decontaminated.
The big danger of a meltdown is the metals become so hot, they melt through the containment buildings, into the ground to the water table, instantly boiling the water and sending a huge plume of radioactive steam into the atmosphere. This is much worse.
It still does not compare to the bombs detonated between 1945 and 1980. The bombs produce pressure waves and tremendous heat that destroy everything around it, and shoot up tons of dust from the earth made radioactive by the bombs themselves.
Powerplants cannot explode like A-bombs or H-Bombs nor can they create damage or pollute the way bombs do. The association that people make between nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs is hurting the world, not helping it.
Since "The China Syndrome" and the Two Mile Island accident 1979, people have been terrified of nuclear power. People forget though that even though there was some radiation released, there was no melt down, no injuries, no burns, no deaths associated with this accident. Of course this didn't stop Jane Fonda who was against nuclear weapons before hand (which is fine), became anti nuclear-energy after TMI and wrongly associated the 2 completely different forms of nuclear energy many times.
There is great book called "The Day we Bombed Utah", and a really good documentary called "The Atom Bomb Movie", narrated by William Shatner. Both highly recommended for those interested in this kind of thing.
