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To: agitator
This is a load of CRAP. Don't expect to get the truth from the propaganda ministry. During the TMI release the lamestream media asked "How much radiation are people near the plant being exposed to?" and the comforting answer was "It's equivalent to a chest x-ray." What they didn't tell you was that there's a big difference between the instantaneous dose rate and total accumulated dose. Hanging around TMI was like climbing into an x-ray booth, turning it on, and sitting there for a week with the machine running. No thanks..

And you're full of that CRAP. You are displaying your ignorance both of the biological effects of ionizing radiation and reading comprehension. The dose estimates were total, accumulated dose for a hypothetical worst-case exposure. You simply integrate the time-dependent dose rate over exposure time to get a total dose. Since it is well-known that the TMI exposures occurred over a relatively short period, it is not invalid to use that to estimate effects from an acute dose. Non-harmful changes in biological functions such as white cell production become statistically significant at between 5 and 10 rems of whole-body exposure. The maximum hypothetical dose at the TMI plant boundary were in the tens of millirem range. Orders of magnitude below observable effects.

Now, use that same exposure to estimate latent effects. Long-term exposure studies indicate that a dose in the range of 10 to 100 millirems results in about one excess cancer death in an exposed population of a million. Now, of that same cohort group, the expected fatal cancer rate is in the range of 160,000 from non-radiation effects. Put another way, a single individual receiving an accumulated exposure in the 100 millirem range increases their fatal cancer risk by about one in one million. The best estimates of average exposure in the TMI cohort group is in the one to 10 millirem range. Adding that into the accumulated total exposure over the average liftetime of a resident of that area, adds about 0.14% to the accumulated total, using the natural background exposure in that area of the country, and excluding medical exposures, which, depending on the individual, can greatly exceed the natural expoures, and dwarf anything a person might get from the accident. So, bottom line, the total added exposure was very, very small, with correspondingly small biological effects.

280 posted on 01/31/2002 4:09:37 PM PST by chimera
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To: chimera
Excuse me Mr. or Mrs. Obnoxious Authority, but the dose RATE (not the total accumulated dose, the dose RATE PER HOUR) within 10 miles of TMI during the first week of the "event" that I heard on the radio at the time was on the order of 150mR PER HOUR. Now if you can show me with something other than your pompous imagination that what I heard on the radio from a government official was incorrect, then I'll agree that what I said overstated the total accumulated dose. In either event, anybody that sticks around to be exposed to radioactive effluvia from a melting nuke at any level is an idiot. On the other hand, 150mR/hr x 24hrs x 7days = 25.2R. You must know that effects noticeable to the untrained occur in 50% of the exposed population at 50R. Frankly, you can have that because I'm not interested.
295 posted on 01/31/2002 6:36:24 PM PST by agitator
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