No. It’s NOT “Worse than Chernobyl”… Just Stop it (archive)

(archived from March 15, 2011)

by Scott Creighton

Oh No! The Apocalypse!

I am tired of people running around acting like it’s the end of the world if they don’t get their iodine pills and duct tape. Look, yes it’s radiation and yes, you don’t want to stick your head in the microwave.  But folks, let’s put this into perspective… it’s NOT worse than Chernobyl. No way, no shape, no how.  So stop it.

The IAEA is putting out constant updates about radiation levels at the Daiichi site.  This is what their latest updates state;

“The Japanese authorities have informed the IAEA that the following radiation dose rates have been observed on site at the main gate of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

At 00:00 UTC on 15 March a dose rate of 11.9 millisieverts (mSv) per hour was observed. Six hours later, at 06:00 UTC on 15 March a dose rate of 0.6 millisieverts (mSv) per hour was observed.

These observations indicate that the level of radioactivity has been decreasing at the site.”

… About 150 persons from populations around the Daiichi site have received monitoring for radiation levels. The results of measurements on some of these people have been reported and measures to decontaminate 23 of them have been taken. The IAEA will continue to monitor these developments.IAEA website

Oh my God… that sounds horrible… WTF does it mean?Should I kill myself? Should I put my kids out of their misery before the brain-eating zombie holocaust?!

“A person’s radiation exposure due to all natural sources amounts on average to about 2.4 millisievert (mSv) per year. A sievert (Sv) is a unit of effective dose of radiation. Depending on geographical location, this figure can vary by several hundred percent.

Since one sievert is a large quantity, radiation doses are typically expressed in millisievert (mSv) or microsievert (µSv), which is one-thousandth or one millionth of a sievert. For example, one chest X-ray will give about 0.2 mSv of radiation dose.” IAEA website

So the latest readings at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant showed that if you stood on the plant grounds, naked, for an hour, it would be like getting 3 chest x-rays.  And this is not too long after the latest problems with reactor 2. This is certainly not advisable, but I wouldn’t start looking for Mothra anytime soon.

Now, just for the fun of it, let’s just compare that to Chernobyl. Over 70 people died as a direct result of Chernobyl most of them from acute radiation sickness or radiation burns.

“The radiation levels in the worst-hit areas of the reactor building have been estimated to be 5.6 roentgens per second (R/s) (1.4 milliamperes per kilogram), equivalent to more than 20,000 roentgens per hour. A lethal dose is around 500 roentgens (0.13 coulombs per kilogram) over 5 hours, so in some areas, unprotected workers received fatal doses within minutes. However, a dosimeter capable of measuring up to 1,000 R/s (0.3 A/kg) was inaccessible because of the explosion, and another one failed when turned on. All remaining dosimeters had limits of 0.001 R/s (0.3 µA/kg) and therefore read “off scale.”  Wikipedia

Japan reactor – stand naked for an hour is like having 3 x-rays – whereas in Chernobyl you would receive lethal dose of radiation in minutes.

Chernobyl is still abandoned although there has been a lot of effort to rehabilitate the surrounding areas and towns. That’s because even 25 years later, Chernobyl is more radioactive than the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Run! Snork! EEEEE!!!!

That cloud is not too healthy folks but it’s also not producing herds of 3 headed flipper-babies (or Snorks) in a swath across the Pacific. What happened in Japan is horrible but you kind of expect that when nuclear plants get hit by earthquakes and then major tsunamis. In fact, you kinda expect worse.

All in all, I would say they handled it pretty well if so far they have only had to “decontaminate” 23 people. By this time in Chernobyl many were already dead from acute radiation poisoning.

So just so you know, these two things aren’t even close.  Relax. It’s bad, but it ain’t Chernobyl.

Yes, some of our more apocalyptic sooth-sayers out there seem to be readying themselves for Thunderdome, talking about hitting their Big Macs with Geiger Counters everyday for the rest of our lives. But it just ain’t like that folks. Relax, play some Stalker, have a glass of wine to kill the excess rads, and start focusing again on Michigan and Wisconsin and all the lovely neoliberalism taking shape right here before our eyes.

You want to worry about something, worry about that.Right now your children stand about a 100o times more of a chance of being a slave than a mutant. And that’s a fucking fact. Right now, the last pathetic vestiges of democracy are being stamped out right before our eyes in OUR country and the majority of our “dissent” sites want to argue about which way the wind is blowin in Japan?

Leave Godzilla and Mothra to take care of themselves. They’re doing just fine. Better than we did with 3 Mile Island I might add. Let’s fix what we can and leave the breeze to blow as it will. We got more pressing matters to deal with. Honestly, we do.