Relevant to my interests

captainhoers:

lonelycross:

“Spurred on by Hayao Miyazaki, and after the disaster of Fukushima, Studio Ghibli has decided last year to stop using energy from nuclear.”

Look at this genius. I love him.

This is bullshit and let me show you why.

 

This is a diagram of various radiation doses, such as things you experience on a regular basis, legal limits, doses experienced by people in exceptional circumstances, etc. It was made by the guy who does XKCD, and while it’s not accurate enough for physicists and doctors, it’s close enough for public information, and, more importantly, is informed and independent - he used to work for NASA and has his references listed. It was translated into Japanese and distributed around Fukushima after the disaster. The shrunk image here doesn’t do it justice, you really need to click the link. But I’d like to call your attention to a few values.

• 1 Seivert (1 Sv) is about half the dose that will give you severe radiation poisoning.
• Two Fukushima workers - the guys working in the plant during the accident - was 0.18 Sv.
• The average daily background dose is 0.004 Sv.
• The typical dose in the Fukushima Exclusion zone over two weeks was just 0.001 Sv.
• The dose during a mammogram is 0.0004 Sv.
• The dose received at Fukushima Town Hall over two weeks after the accident was 0.0001 Sv.
• Living within 50 miles of a coal power plant for a year gives you an extra dose of 0.0000003 Sv (0.3 microseiverts).
• Eating a banana gives you a dose of 0.0000001 Sv (0.1 microseiverts).
• Living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant for a year gives you an extra dose of 0.00000009 Sv (0.09 microseiverts).
• Using a cellphone gives you a dose of 0 Sv because it doesn’t produce ionising radiation.

You get more radiation from eating a banana than a year near a nuclear power plant. We live in a world where radiation is abundant, and it didn’t need our help to get that way. The dangers of radiation are woefully overblown to the point that radiation’s greatest weapon is fear. Both the rate and severity of nuclear accidents are drastically lower than accidents concerning fossil fuels (how many oil tankers keel over every year? Compare Chernobyl with Deepwater Horizon which is still leaking might I add). The fact that the average person in 19th century Britain would have had a higher radiation exposure than in modern Britain by virtue of the drop in coal use is gleefully ignored.

Let’s get one thing straight. We all know fossil fuels are going to run out, we all know “traditional” green energy like Solar, Wind, Hydro and Geothermal are being stymied at every turn, and nobody knows how to make Fusion power work. At least as an interim solution, nuclear power is our best bet for not going back to the stone age when Saudi Arabia runs dry and Canada’s been turned inside out digging up tar sands. Or at least it would be if people would get over this irrational panic about it.

This picture demonstrates why artists generally aren’t nuclear physicists. 

Have to agree with the captain here

(Source: )