Little Health Risk Seen From Fukushima's Radioactivity 201
gbrumfiel writes "Two independent reports show that the public and most workers received only low doses of radiation following last year's meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Nature reports that the risks presented by the doses are small, even though some are above guidelines and limits set by the Japanese government. Few people will develop cancer as a result of the accident, and those that do may never be able to conclusively link their illness to the meltdowns. The greatest risk lies with the workers who struggled in the early days to bring the reactors under control. So far no ill-effects have been detected. At Chernobyl, by contrast, the highest exposed workers died quickly from radiation sickness."
Spent fuel pools still a risk (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Chernobyl... (Score:5, Informative)
Who said Chernobyl was over? There are still radioactive sheep in the UK for heavens sake!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects#25_years_after_the_catastrophe [wikipedia.org]
XKCD (Score:4, Informative)
...already covered this [xkcd.com]
Nice to see others have finally figured the same thing out.
Re:I'm having trouble believing anything they say (Score:4, Informative)
true but if the majority of radiation was alpha it is easily blocked unless ingested.
Since what got carried away in the explosions and water was alpha and beta, The danger is less. most of that has become heavily diluted in the ocean.
Radiation has many different effects depending on type. a high dose of one has a different short term, and then long term effect.
Gamma goes through everything but doesn't stick around as much.
Alpha can stick around in an environment for decades continuously poisoning and re-poisoning those who come in contact with it.
Re:Chernobyl... (Score:3, Informative)
We are still not a net importer
Is that perhaps because you're extending the life of extremely polluting [thenational.ae] coal plants [reuters.com]?
No. (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear tech saves many lives every day(Cancer treatment and detection), as well as powering the most likely long term energy solution.
The Japanese did not use graphite moderated reactors for very well known reasons, Chernobyl being the best example of those reasons... (Negative steam void reactivity coefficient, was a major one, iirc.)
The reactors at Chernobyl were pretty much updated versions of the ones we built during WWII to make plutonium, also iirc.
Idiocy=Bad.
Any tech is only as bad or good as what you use it for, and how you use it is your problem to explain.