Stop lying about radiation!

My uncle recently posted:

Everyone should take a look at these forecasts (assembled from a number of meteorologist models) and act accordingly as best you can. We have no help whatsoever from our government. They are busy killing people in other lands, so,s'pose that explains their complete and utter silence.

This included a link to this youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JDNJEW8MJs

Dutchsine seems intent on giving people sensational ideas. The primary ideas of that video are that there are PLUMES OF Iodine-131, Cesium-137 HEADED STRAIGHT FOR AMERICA! DUCK AND COVER! It even has a nice radiation siren in the background.

I responded flippantly saying:

Damn it... stop spreading misinformation. These things have a half-life measured in minutes. Maybe take a look at something not posted by an idiot: http://xkcd.com/radiation/

My uncle replied:

We're all trying to figure this one out, Jason. Thanks for the links. They do give some frames of reference, but obviously they can't address all the variables. I would, however recommend that people who try to call attention to potential problems should not be dismissed so readily as "idiots". If nothing else, they are calling attention to a rather alarming event, and expressing concerns which for a lot of us are valid concerns.

Unless you want to argue that we shouldn't be concerned, or that we should leave it all to the experts (such as the scientists who designed the reactors?, the owners of the reactors?, the governments and their "think tanks"?, those who do the cost/benefits analyses, etc.)

Funny, at first thought, I would have considered them to be the idiots. But, of course, they can't be expected to factor in worst case scenarios into the plan.

As well, among my first reactions was: Anyone who had any responsibility for the design, implementation, selling, operation and oversight of these facilities should be the first ones on site to clean up this mess. Yeah, all the non-idiots who sold us this package should have the responsibility to clean up the mess. They should "own" it ALL, in total. And they should be risking their lives to make it right.

But, then again, I stop myself and say: Wow, if all the smart guys who brought us the reactors have to then step in radioactive water to clean up their mess, because it's their responsibility and they own it, then, if they get sick and die in a month, we would be without all the "brilliant" people who know so much about this mysterious energy source. And, we would be without their compassionate and prescient leadership?

I'll be removing the post, because I'm skeptical. Do you still think nuclear energy is the best way to go?

So uncle, lets begin.

First, I do not expect you to listen to what our leaders have to say about this. I've never been an advocate of other people telling you what you should know. Unfortunately it seems that you want Dutchsine to do just that, and tell you what you need to know. The best part is he says, buried in there, that he doesn't want to tell you what to do. But unfortunately he only gives you half the information. It's up to you to determine if what he is worried about is actually a worry.

So how do you determine that? Well let's start at the top, is radiation bad for you?

As you might expect there are different answers to this, a lot of this has to do with some negative connotations we have. Marie Curie died of radiation! All of those people near Chernobyl got messed up or killed! What if I told you that right now you're exposed to radiation... and it's constant and never stops, and many of us strive hard to be even more exposed.

The problem is radiation isn't a scary word made up in the 50s to scare people about nuclear power. It's a scientific term meaning that something emits (Get it, radiates!) something else. Whenever the public gets a hold of a word that scientists use the miss the real meaning. Lots of things provide radiation, the one you're constantly exposed to is called the Sun! It's constantly sending down crazy radiation, and yet people still go out to tan.

This suggests that maybe not all radiation is dangerous, or at least there are different levels of dangerous. Sure you can still get skin cancer, but that doesn't stop days at the beach. Take a look at this fun chart from XKCD: http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Pay special attention to the amount of radiation you get from eating a banana, bananas are especially full of radiation, and yet oh so tasty. Handily it also indicates the danger levels for people working in radiation, and it's hundreds of times greater than the amount of bananas you can eat.

So, are Iodine-131 (I-131), Cesium-137(Ce-137), and Xenon-133 (Xe-133) dangerous. Let me ask you a question first, does drinking milk make you throw up? As always it's a question of how much you're getting.

Unfortunately there's not a good conversion from bq/m (the values purported in dutchsine's PLUMES of Ce-137) to Sv (the value in the handy XKCD chart). This is because they're measuring different things. Becquerel measures how much radioactive decay is happening, and Sievert measures the dose being absorbed into the matter (us, for instance). So we'll have some trouble with looking at his Ce-137 chart. Let me just say that bq/m indicates the number of decays from a single nucleus per meter, And since his chart never gets above 1, I don't see how that will be particularly dangerous.

So lets look at the chart for Xe-133 (that's the one that looks like a big cloud of radiation all over the US). Going to his source I found this interesting snippet:

The colour scale shows a total of 5 colours. The area marked „E“shows an area with estimated current equivalent dose rate of 10 mSv/h (in a 25x25 km2 square). The violet colour on the outer edge of contaminated areas (Area A) represents 0,3 μSv/h, which corresponds to the amount of the natural background radiation dose

I'm not sure what E is but I imagine it's the light blue or dark blue. Regardless lets look at the scary dark blue. If you look at the legend, exceptionally difficult to do as it doesn't scale at all, I believe this says the units are in 1 x 10^-2 which corresponds to the text above of mSv/h. Excellent so lets look at what that is comparable to... HOLY COW that's like 3 flights to New York an hour! Crap man, we're so screwed.

Oh wait, did you say that's Xe-133? Wait a minute, wait a minute. How long is that stuff radioactive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon-133... Wait, a half life of 5 days? How long until it reaches us, lets look at the chart. The chart starts on the 12th and it hits America's west coast on the 18th. Damn that's 6 days, how much radiation will be left, hrm... can't be as much as they show in the graph, they must not have accounted for decay. Maybe they're trying to scare people (Or more likely this graph wasn't intended to indicate RADIATION DAMAGE!, but rather a dispersal pattern). By the time it reaches the US much of it will have already decayed.

Looking at the indicators on I-131 make sure to look at the dispersal for the northern hemisphere. Looking at the units and we see the gray part indicates .02 (at maximum) which is the same as above, and we see that it has a similar half life of 8 days.

So I'm saying, listening to news sources who try to indicate sensationalist things like we're all going to be poisoned by radiation, is just as bad as blindly listening to governments saying don't look at it.

You can even take a look at the number of radiation poisoning cases:
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/145427/15-hospitalised-radiation-poisoning-japan.html
Man, more than a dozen... wait that's less than I'd expect if they were all dying of radiation. Heck Swine Flu was worse, and turned out to be little more than a cold for most of us. Also, look at the first comment... I was unable to find a first reference for this. I think there is a lot of fear mongering, people hungering for scary danger and pain.

The Fukushima reactors were rocked by an earthquake of unheard of proportions. The devastation was immense, and yet they still managed to keep people safe and protected. It was better than the houses that did not withstand the tsunami, and better than the roads that became impassable. So yes, I say I believe using nuclear energy is safe, and I think it's a far sight better than the devastating pollution put out by our coal and oil plants. It's amazing that you can count on one hand the number of large scale radiation accidents, and with the other hand you can count the number of large scale oil spills.