You mean that the reactor isn't going to fall into the ocean? And if it does, it's not going to poison the whole Pacific? I kid you not. That was a statement/question posted last night on a thread.
It could poison the entire Pacific ocean.
Another one wondered if the fallout would poison us all if it crossed the Pacific and made it to America.
People need to get a grip on reality.
I was on another thread where was someone going around posting a graphic showing fallout coming across the Pacific and contaminating the West/midwestern USA. Apparently it is a well circulated graphic.
They said people on the west coast were going to get 750 Rads of exposure.
Here is what I posted:
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Hey. Calm down. Have a seat. I just want to talk to you to help you calm down. There are a lot of things to be concerned about, but there is no reason to get crazy about this 750 RADS thing you hear. There are people out there throwing these numbers around, moving decimal points three ways to one side or another, not realizing they are doing it, mistaking millicuries for curies, Rads for millirems, sieverts for grays, and so on. Look. Don’t get crazed. When someone tells you that 750 Rads are going to contaminate an area, it is nonsensical. The units are wrong. It is like telling someone they need a kilometer of flour to bake a loaf of bread. It is nonsensical and irresponsible, because it is scaring the crap out of people.
Here’s the thing. A Rad measures the amount of absorbed radiation on something. Not the amount of radiation, but the amount of energy transferred to something, typically human flesh. (note, you may hear someone refer to rads and rems...for the purposes of human flesh and discussion, they both mean about the same thing...so we will just stick to “rads” because that is what you hear out there a lot) Basically, a Rad measures EXPOSURE to radiation.
If you hear someone mention curies, millicuries or megacuries, that is an amount of decays of an isotope in a given amount of time. When you know what the isotope is, and you know how much energy or what kind of energy is given off when that particular isotope decays, then you have an idea how much radiation there will be.
When you know THAT, then you can figure out how much exposure human flesh will get in a given amount of time when exposed to certain levels of that radiation, and that exposure is measured in Rads.
Now. Here is the thing. EVERYONE gets exposure to radiation, and when your tissue absorbs that radiation, you get exposed to a certain amount of rads of radiation. We ALL get exposed. The average annual exposure to the average person living on this planet is 310 millirem. That is very, very small. That is .31 Rads, spread out over a year. Think of it as eating a cup of salt. Would it be bad for you if you took a cup of salt, mixed it in a glass of water and drank it in one minute? You bet it would be bad. But if you eat that cup of salt over the period of a year, you would probably be fine, but if you eat that much all the time, you will probably have cumulative problems from it, right? Radiation is the same. If you get it spread out over time, it isn’t that bad, your body fixes it, but a fair amount over time might have cumulative effects.
I worked in nuclear medicine for 15 years, and I was allowed to have up to 5 rads (that is 5,000 mrad, but we refer to it as mrem or a millirem) a year of exposure to my body. I could have a lot more than that to my hands, which I probably did. But I was allowed to get up to 50 Rads (that’s 50,000 mrad!!!!) over the course of a year to my hands because you don’t have much in your hands that can be damaged by radiation. I am still here. And I worked with people who handled radiation at much higher levels than I did, and they are in their eighties now, without a problem.
The have a measurement they use called the “LD50/30” dose. It means, the amount of radiation (Rads) that a person can get at one time, all in one shot, that will give you a 50% probability of being dead in 30 days. That amount of radiation is about 600 Rads, more or less.
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To be honest, it is starting to piss me off. There is plenty to worry about. This situation is cause for concern. BUT WE ARE NOT GOING TO IRRADIATE EVERYONE ON THE WEST COAST WITH 750 RADS. It is stupid and irresponsible. And some of the people hopping from thread to thread still persist.
These dumb asses wouldn’t know the difference between a rad, a sievert, a millicurie and a bequerel. But they know enough to shoot their mouths off and freak people out.
Well, JR's never insisted on an I.Q. check as a prerequisite to membership here. Anyone can sign up (as we well know).
But I hear you. It's mind blowing to see that sort of stuff posted here. Best we can hope for, is that posts like the one up top, will dissipate the hysteria through dissemination of solid and factual information.