very well written post!
Thank you
while I will agree it is very hard to compare all the events..I will try my best to explain my point
less than 1g of the 600g of material were transformed to energy (you can compute this from Einstein's famous E = mc^2 equation). The rest of the fissile material probably evaporated and was pushed up into the atmosphere, most of which rained back down on the city and in nearby fallout.
I will not dispute what you said at all
following is the figures for 1 fuel rod assembly
Uranium/assembly, kg = 183.3
source
The Fukushima Daiichi plant has seven pools for spent fuel rods. Six of these are (or were) located at the top of six reactor buildings. One “common pool” is at ground level in a separate building. Each “reactor top” pool holds 3450 fuel rod assemblies. The common pool holds 6291 fuel rod assemblies.
that would be 632,385kg of uranium for one pool alone...I will leave it to you if you want to do further math..
Yes, a reactor explosion and fire *can* release more radiation than a nuclear bomb. But it is highly questionable to state that the reactors in Japan have done or will be able to do that.
This is why I wish we could get better news out of Japan..That Questionable part is the hard part
The dosages of radiation at Chernobyl were fatal within minutes. They were clearly thousands of times higher than has ever been the case at the Fukushima reactors.
Again this is where I wish we could get numbers from the site...we are at the mercy of what is been reported
Rather high levels radiation, over 1,200 microsieverts per hour
source
Chernobyl was 300 Sieverts per hour near the core
source
but from japan we don't have this kind of info yet
but
Max radiation levels recorded at Fukushima plant yesterday 400.00 mSv
Exposure of Chernobyl residents who were relocated after the 1986 explosion 350.00 mSv
Source
A 30km exclusion zone remains to this day, and that is after more than half a million "liqiudators" (people with shovels and wheelbarrows) carted away the radioactive remains of the disaster and after the reactor was entombed in concrete.
And in Japan we have a 30km Zone as well.....and the U.S. Military has made that a 50km zone for U.S. troops
At this point, to compare the accident in Japan with Chernobyl is just folly
I disagree..because one is over and can be studied and one is still on going..
