Laughable "expert" quote of the day

Experts have repeatedly said that people outside of the evacuation radius of 12 miles (20 kilometers) are safe.

"If you released all of the radioactivity from one of these fuel rods ... even if some terrorist gets in and it explodes with dynamite and spreads it out, it's not going to spread in the same way as nuclear fallout from a nuclear bomb," said Gerald Laurence, a radiation safety consultant and associate professor at Adelaide University in Australia.

However, he said, contamination can spread through winds.

news.yahoo.com...

How is that in any way 'laughable'? Different materials are used in nuclear power than the ones used to make nuclear bombs

reply to post by Griffo

First of all, who said anything about a nuclear bomb? How can that analogy possibly be used to assure anyone beyond a 12 mile radius that they're "safe?"

Secondly, you're incorrect in saying the materials used in a nuclear bomb are different than those in some nuclear reactors. Fukushima reactor #3 is fueled by "MOX," the exact same plutonium used in nuclear weapons. Matter of fact, MOX contains reprocessed plutonium from nuclear weapons.

Laughable political quote of the day:

President Barack Obama, trying to reassure a worried nation, declared Thursday that "harmful levels" of radiation from the Japanese nuclear disaster are not expected to reach the U.S., even as other officials conceded it could take weeks to bring the crippled nuclear complex under control.

Imagine trying to "reassure" anyone weeks before the situation has been resolved and the hazards have been calculated.

I'll file this one with the rest of Obama's "reassurances."

reply to post by Griffo


Its "laughable" because he doesn’t agree with it, not because he can offer and sound fact based argument against it. It seems that ignorance is looked at as some kind of virtue by these people

Well, fallout per se would consist of a LOT of ground material sucked into the fireball of a nuclear detonation, activated by neutron bombardment (with possibly some r-process stuff going on early in the shot), mixed up with any unfissioned radionucleides left over from the bomb (typically the tamper) and lofted to a really high altitude, which will rain out over a very large downwind area.

This is more like some light isotopes, mostly iodine, cesium, some zirc and rod material oxides scattered by ground level winds. Very little to no neutron activation at all. No higher level activation. No activated ground material.

In one case, you've got tons of high-altitude crap with millions of Curies of airborne debris that's going to propagate a long distance. The other, you're not going to lose a lot of mass to the wind unless the rods really get to burning. The MOX rods are the worst because plutonium's chemically far more toxic than Uranium.

So, yeah, the use of the word "fallout" is not strictly accurate in a reactor fire/meltdown. It's good for causing emotional kneejerk responses in the uninformed, though, so I'm sure you'll continue to hear it a lot.

lmao. Good find.

Ever listen to scientists?? No really...

They say the earth is 4.5 billion years old and that "fossils date the rocks, however the rocks date the fossils more accurately." lol, say what?

reply to post by GoldenFleece

First of all, who said anything about a nuclear bomb? How can that analogy possibly be used to assure anyone beyond a 12 mile radius that they're "safe?"

It says it in the text you quoted

Secondly, you're incorrect in saying the materials used in a nuclear bomb are different than those in some nuclear reactors. Fukushima reactor #3 is fueled by "MOX," the exact same plutonium used in nuclear weapons. Matter of fact, MOX contains reprocessed plutonium from nuclear weapons.

Actually no, it's different. the plutonium contained in nuclear reactors is Pu 240. Pu 240 can decay via spontaneous fission i.e. it doesn't need to be hit with a neutron, it will decay on its own. Because of this, there are a background flux of neutrons in any plutonium containing more than a few percent of Pu 240. If you tried to use it as a weapon, it would predetonate. One stray neutron would most probably start the chain reaction too early.