

XKCD provides a better radiation chart - elliottcarlson
http://www.xkcd.com/radiation/

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lulin
While this is much, much better than what the (german) media has on this, I
still miss the one thing I would really want: To actually know what this means
for the people living near the plant, or just somewhere in Japan. Will
everyone living under 10km away get cancer and die? Will eastern Japan have to
be evacuated? Will nothing change at all, except for a small rise in cancer
rates for people who live next to the plant?

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cperciva
_Will nothing change at all, except for a small rise in cancer rates for
people who live next to the plant?_

Nothing will change at all, even for people who live right next to the plant.

Someone sitting at the front gate of the plant for the past week would have
absorbed approximately 100 mSv of radiation. This is a significant amount --
equal to the recommended annual limit for radiation workers -- but too low to
cause radiation sickness (symptoms of acute radiation sickness start at
between 250 and 500 mSv).

The cancer risk from radiation is roughly 0.01 cancers per Sievert, so this
individual would have a 0.1% increase in his chance of getting cancer. People
living further away would naturally have even lower probabilities of
developing cancer.

Based on the population density of the surrounding area, there is a low
probability of _any_ cancers being caused by the Fukushima nuclear incidents,
_even if the residents had not been evacuated_.

(Does this mean that the residents should not have been evacuated? No. It
means that the evacuations were a precautionary measure to keep them safe in
case the situation got worse than it has in fact gotten.)

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kenjackson
What about the amount from those TSA machines under normal operation and the
amount apparently emitted by mistake recently?

~~~
elliottcarlson
It would have been helpful to get that number on that chart - just because it
would help dispel bad information about the backscatter x-rays as well. The
regular amount of radiation emitted by one of those machines is 0.1µSv
(according to the chart - equivalent to eating a banana). The supposed mistake
would have made the emissions 10 times higher (couldn't find a real µSv
reading, just the 10x statement[1]) which would be 1µSv, or the same as using
a CRT monitor for a year.

[1] [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/tsa-radiation-
test-...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/tsa-radiation-test-
bungling/)

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Skalman
For some reason the traditional media won't show anything nearly as clear as
that - it's needed for understanding the proportions. Good job, Randall!

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uros643
Sorry, OT, but this really makes me appreciate the readability of bitmapped
Monaco. I find it unfortunate that Mac OS X has such crappy support for
bitmapped fonts in general...

