Read this:
Ah, I see what the problem here is. You heard something on the radio and are assuming that if your source is quoted in the popular media that qualifies it as expert in a scientific discipline.
Well, since you asked, here are a few references for background information on the subject under discussion:
Click here for a better source of information about radiation risk
And here is another:
Another perspective (pretty good)
A better source from a scientific credibility viewpoint would be NUREG-0558, authored by L. Battist, et al., wherein is cited (if you are not too lazy and take the time to read it), the findings of the Ad Hoc Interagency Dose Assessment Group, which found that the maximum total exposure for an offsite individual was about 83 millirems, and this was based on TLD (do you know what that is) information, and would have occurred if this individual was located on the east bank of the Susquehanna River for the entire duration of the accident, which no one was.
The President’s select commission (Kemeny Report – go read it, its good) came up with a similar estimate, but somewhat lower, in the range of 20 to 70 millirem, which takes into account occupancy time (i.e., accident duration) and dosimeter overresponse.
In either event, anybody that sticks around to be exposed to radioactive effluvia from a melting nuke at any level is an idiot.
Well, maybe, but someone who takes something they heard on the radio as a credible source of scientific fact is worse than an idiot. Anyone who isn’t brain dead can at least do some research on their own using reputable scientific sources and learn some of the facts before running amok, spewing nonsense on a public forum.
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.
You attempt at math is incorrect because you know nothing of the accident dynamics. The exposure rate was not constant. It had a time variance. For example, I’ll bet you didn’t know that the peak exposure rates for offsite locations did not occur immediately after the initial accident. Rather, they occurred at a point a few days later, when there was some difficulty with management of material incorrectly transferred to the auxiliary building from containment (sump), and a puff release occurred because of the opening (again incorrectly) of a valve. Now, if you know anything about puff releases, these are often modeled in dispersion calculations as a delta function (Know what that is? Look it up.) For this functional form, while the peak is very high, the integrated function is often quite miniscule. Applying the source term to any kind of reasonable meteorological dispersion model, which will account for adiabatic lapse rate and incorporate some form of Gaussian dispersion in the downwind radial and axial directions, you again end up with ground-level exposures in the millirem per hour range, for short periods of time (i.e., hours or minutes).
But, even if we give you your faulty math, you come up with 25 rem. Seems we have come a long way down from your earlier “pompous imagination” story about something like an “x-ray booth” for a week being the baseline for assessing dose. You could at least be a man and admit that this was a figment of your “pompous imagination". But, asking you to be a man is probably asking more than you can give, so we’ll have to go with it.
Now, based on what I taught you in my earlier post about LD50/60, is 25 rem a sufficient dose to induce lethal short-term effects? Also, based on what I taught you about latent effects, what would you expect the long-term effects to be in an exposed population group, say of one million people, for this kind of individual dose? As a follow-up question for extra credit, compare your estimate to the latent effects in the same cohort for non-radiation effects.
Frankly, you can have that because I'm not interested.
Well, from your lame attempt at debate and refutation of facts so far, that much is obvious. In fact, it more like the old “my mind is made up so don’t confuse me with the facts” gambit.