Date: 2011-03-18 06:49 am (UTC)
I'm not terribly worried about it right now because, of nuclear incidents, Chernobyl really set the bar; it mildly irradiated Wales, 1500 miles away, because of the way the wind is blowing.

The reactors going bad in Japan aren't capable of that type of meltdown (different reactor type, fewer and less severe flaws) and the distance across the ocean is over 5000 miles. Yes, there will be some radioactive isotopes in the ocean, but it's a big ocean and a relatively small quantity of radioactive stuff. It sounds like the highest dose reported on site was 400 millisieverts per hour - a lot, but to put it in perspective that's about 40 rem. According to wikipedia, then, being onsite in the worst observed zone for one hour would only cause mild immediate health effects, though it'd probably elevate cancer risk later.

To further put it in perspective - the worst areas at Chernobyl were estimated at THREE FUCKING HUNDRED sieverts per hour, or 30,000 rem. That's literally seven hundred fifty times the worst of what the Japanese plant has seen so far; that kind of radiation level can rapidly give the kind of doses where the human body just gives up and dies not long after, deaths like Louis Slotin's at the Manhattan Project.

Being exposed for multiple hours at the worst levels seen so far in the Japanese disaster could hit the LD50, but it would take a while.

But yeah, I do my own math.
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