The Panic Over Fukushima

An anonymous reader points out an article in the Wall Street Journal about how irrational fear of nuclear reactors made people worry much more about last year's incident at Fukushima than they should have. Quoting: "Denver has particularly high natural radioactivity. It comes primarily from radioactive radon gas, emitted from tiny concentrations of uranium found in local granite. If you live there, you get, on average, an extra dose of .3 rem of radiation per year (on top of the .62 rem that the average American absorbs annually from various sources). A rem is the unit of measure used to gauge radiation damage to human tissue. ... Now consider the most famous victim of the March 2011 tsunami in Japan: the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Two workers at the reactor were killed by the tsunami, which is believed to have been 50 feet high at the site. But over the following weeks and months, the fear grew that the ultimate victims of this damaged nuke would number in the thousands or tens of thousands. The 'hot spots' in Japan that frightened many people showed radiation at the level of .1 rem, a number quite small compared with the average excess dose that people happily live with in Denver. What explains the disparity? Why this enormous difference in what is considered an acceptable level of exposure to radiation?"

Red Heading

[stephenmac7]

Off topic but: What's with the red heading?

Re:Red Heading

[Osgeld]

they are red when they are freshly posted

Re:Radiation in Denver is unavoidable

[asicsolutions]

I've avoided it my entire life here in New Hampshire.

There's an obvious difference

[cvtan]

The radiation in Denver is natural organic radiation, but the toxic killer rems in Japan were made by an evil corporation.

Why Fear?

[SuperKendall]

Average kids pool in Denver:

http://community.avid.com/cfs-filesystemfile.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.04.28.10/red-square.png [avid.com]