CNN wants you to believe it's safe if you are > 50 mls away from a nuclear reactor

[piasabird]

Background radiation or the radiation from stone is about 100,000 weaker than a dosage if a human is exposed to for 5 hours is fatal. This is kind of hard to relate to. I wonder how much radiation, my dial on my watch has? Much radiation has less effect than the electromagnetic field created by a Cell Phone.

 

[werepossum]

Do dams typically break more at night?

LOL No, but I typically run slower if I'm asleep.

 

[wuliheron]

Background radiation or the radiation from stone is about 100,000 weaker than a dosage if a human is exposed to for 5 hours is fatal. This is kind of hard to relate to. I wonder how much radiation, my dial on my watch has? Much radiation has less effect than the electromagnetic field created by a Cell Phone.

It's not exactly easy for scientists to grasp either. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the only two large populations exposed to high amounts of radiation under controlled circumstances. By measuring how far people were from the blasts its been possible to get an idea of exactly what radiation does to the human body over time, but its still a lot of guess work and hard to comprehend contexts.

One US senator is famous for saying, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money!" With radiation a billion is nothing. There are some 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in the human body with an unimaginable variety of particles zipping right through it including some 65 billion neutrinos alone going through every square centimeter every second. Make no mistake, its sheer chaos and unimaginable numbers and complexity we're talking about.

For those of us who don't work with the stuff everyday about the only meaningful sweeping statement that can be made is ingesting or inhaling radioactive dust is far more dangerous then skin exposure. There may not be much we can do about random environmental exposure to radiation, but radon gas in homes is widespread problem that is easily tested for and an easy way to ensure your exposure is minimized.

 

[rcpratt]

Well, the thing about neutrinos is that they go through, but practically never interact. Good post.

 

[wuliheron]

Well, the thing about neutrinos is that they go through, but practically never interact. Good post.

Yeah, about a 50/50 chance of hitting something going through five light years of lead. Still, it gets the point across without having to go into wave-particle duality, the entire particle zoo, and whatnot. BIG numbers, utter chaos, and unimaginable contexts.