[ExI] Two Japanese reactors on red alert

[Kelly Anderson]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Mirco Romanato <painlord2k at libero.it> wrote:
> Chernobyl was 100.000 much worse
> (as radiation contamination) and needed only 25 years to return to the
> natural background radiation level.

Where did you get that piece of disinformation from?

>From "Chernobyl Catastophe and Consequences" by Jim Smith and Nicholas
Beresford published in 2005, it says "Radioactivity from the Chernobyl
accident affected food production systems throughout Europe. Large
areas of agricultural land in the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were
abandoned and much of this land remains uninhabited and unused to this
day." (p 81)

Perhaps what you are saying is correct in Norway, but large areas
around Chernobyl remain a virtual ghost town. 3500 Km^2 were evacuated
(p 6) around 116,000 people were relocated. "At present (2005) many of
the evacuated areas remain uninhabited, though some small areas have
been resettled".

Because of these evacuations, "High levels of natural radiation
exposures ... are comparable to the dose rates ... observed in the
Chernobyl affected populations during the period 1986-1995." Meaning
people who work on high altitude airlines, or coal mines are exposed
to slightly more than the average Chernobyl survivor. However, if
people were allowed to live in the most severely affected regions, the
exposure would be much higher.

The book is 300 pages (I haven't read it all, of course) and I can
provide a pdf to anyone wishing to dig in deeper, or cherry pick data
that matches their point of view. It is complicated data, but in no
way do I believe it is fair to characterize things as having returned
to normal in the 30km exclusion zone around Chernobyl.

-Kelly