june gloom on 20/3/2011 at 05:18
Aside from the fact that that's what they're actually saying, what I linked to wasn't the webcomic proper but Randall's bloag. I like how casually dismissive you are though.
Koki on 20/3/2011 at 10:08
Quote:
Ten minutes next to the Chernobyl reactor core after explosion and meltdown - 50Sv
Try 300Sv per hour(not year which I assume the chart lists, it doesn't say).
Shug on 20/3/2011 at 13:17
Ten minutes x 6 = one hour.
50 Sv x 6 = 300 Sv.
Gingerbread Man on 20/3/2011 at 16:40
Now THAT'S science!
Tocky on 21/3/2011 at 03:45
Are you sure it's not math cause it has numbers and stuff.
And what's this Sv stuff? Why have a rad term like rad and not use it? Sv is nowhere near as rad as rad because it has nowhere near the same letters but rad has them all and in the correct order.
Koki on 21/3/2011 at 07:33
Quote Posted by Tocky
Sv is nowhere near as rad as rad because it has nowhere near the same letters but rad has them all and in the correct order.
Yep,
that is science.
heywood on 21/3/2011 at 07:36
Quote Posted by Kolya
Iodine tablets lower the risk of thyroid cancer immediately after an accident, but they are no effective protection and you're still open to any other type of cancer, permanent immune system damage, spinal marrow damage, DNA damage, etc. Also there's high risk from radioactive food and breast milk which is in many ways worse than external radiation.
You may say more people die drowning in a dam break, just like demagogue jokes about the fact that more people die from obesity than radioactivity but it's a fallacious argument because as Nicker pointed out the consequences are long lasting and much more severe in the end than can be counted by immediate (
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7951-major-un-report-counts-human-cost-of-chernobyl.html) deaths alone. Had a dam broken in Chernobyl in 1986 you wouldn't see stats like this showing the number of thyroid cancer cases in children that are directly related to Chernobyl. And that's with iodine tablets distributed immediately after the accident.
It's not a fallacious argument. Even if you add in the impact of projected cancer deaths, the casualties from Chernobyl are insignificant compared to the things demagogue mentioned. Not to mention other sources of energy.
Also, there were insufficient potassium iodide tablets on hand at the time of the accident, so no, not everyone did get the tablets in time. I read that the residents of Pripyat got them immediately from the stash at Chernobyl and consequently they didn't suffer so bad. But surrounding communities didn't receive them until weeks afterward or not at all. One of the big lessons from Chernobyl is that you have to stockpile the tablets in advance for quick distribution. Also, the radioactive iodine poisoning from Chernobyl was primarily attributed to drinking milk from local livestock. The people weren't warned not to do this.
It should also be noted that thyroid cancer is very treatable and has a high recovery rate (something like 95%) which pushes down the death toll from Chernobyl.
The bottom line is that even if we don't improve nuclear safety one bit and we keep having minor and major accidents up to the Chernobyl scale every few decades, the impact of nuclear power on human life pales in comparison to fossil fuel power. Here is a an analysis comparing the deaths per TW-Hr for different energy sources:
(
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html#) http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html#
According to that, you're more likely on average to die from falling off a ladder while installing a rooftop solar panel than from nuclear power.
Quote Posted by Martin Karne
Its time to steal the sun's electrical current with a huge coil in orbit around the earth.
Wouldn't it be more efficient to capture power from wavelengths where the Sun's emission spectrum peaks and which aren't redirected around the Earth by its magnetic field? ;)
PeeperStorm on 21/3/2011 at 07:39
That's not science. If it was science, there would be a graph. And if it was serious science, it'd have a graph on a log-log scale.
