Dave Hawksford
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Yes, Fukushima was a bad event, but in all fairness, there are a number of people who dispute the severity of the damage and the predicted future consequences. Many of them are actual nuclear engineers and scientists, as opposed to web bloggers and YouTube journalists. Personally, I don't have enough unbiased data to make a decision of my own. (And I try not to let YouTube videos with dramatic music shape my opinions on this type of thing.) ;-)
Keep in mind that I may be biased. I have lived much of my life in Los Alamos and Albuquerque (or points in between), where there are more nuclear physicists per capita than most places. Nuclear science and energy (in various forms) paid a lot of my parents' bills when I was a kid, and continued to play a part in my income for quite a few years once I became an adult. From this experience I know for fact that there are a lot of uninformed people waving their hands and running in circles about "nuclear" anything, when they actually have no idea what they are talking about.
...I tend to dismiss anything said by the extremists on either side of most issues.
...It would be interesting for someone with real knowledge to tell the difference between a leak from a damaged plant to an actual nuclear warhead detonated. It would seem that with over 500 above ground nuclear testing that have occurred, many in the Pacific, that accurate impact would be known. We still seem to be living and fishing in the Pacific even after all those testing...
Strangely enough, one of my jobs while in the USAF was nuclear weaponeering, which involved matching nuclear weapons with targets to achieve a desired level of damage. Twenty years ago I could have given you a detailed explanation of the effects of air burst vs ground burst on various facilities to include rates of incapacitation of personnel at various distances from ground zero, as well as the theoretical effects of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). Fortunately, I can't remember any of that stuff. It's true. If you don't use it , you lose it. I hope the day never comes when we see the results of that kind of planning.....It would be interesting for someone with real knowledge to tell the difference between a leak from a damaged plant to an actual nuclear warhead detonated. It would seem that with over 500 above ground nuclear testing that have occurred, many in the Pacific, that accurate impact would be known. We still seem to be living and fishing in the Pacific even after all those testing....
Somewhat different topic, but one that suggests the official safe level of radiation is absurdly low.
My wife had cancer, and after 28 external radiation treatments (fried her like a microwave - about 4000 rads summer 1999), she was put in a hospital with 11 hollow needles surgically implanted, then moved to her room so radioactive pellets could be inserted in the needles, for the next 40 hours (2000 more rads, October 1999). After they were inserted, they measured the radiation level in the room and decided
1. No pregnant or child-bearing-age nurses could take care of my wife
2. Total time any care giver could spend in my wife's room was 5 minutes, with sign in sheets for anyone entering the room.
3. I could spend 30 minutes per day standing in the doorway, but no closer.
Sounds like prudent care, until you realize that all this radiation is only about 18 inches from my wife's brain. And there were no plans to treat her for radiation sickness. I spend the two days at the foot of her bed, not shouting from the hallway. You can make jokes about that is what happened to me - why I am the way I am - but my wife survived both the cancer and the radiation treatment. And I have no regrets spending those two days 6 feet away instead of outside the door.