...The nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan is progressing. This makes it the third disaster -- this time, man-made -- to hit Japan in the last few days. Not to speak of the foreshocks and aftershocks of the 8.9 monster earthquake.
According to World Nuclear News,
"Over the last several hours evacuation orders for local residents have been incrementally increased and now cover people living within ten kilometres of the power plant." This is bound to go up if the seriousness of the incident escalates.
Put this in context: (see www.stratfor.com)
- Chernobyl is still a no-go zone for a 30-km radius after 20 years.
- Radiation exposure for the average individual is 620 millirems per year, split about evenly between manmade and natural sources. The firefighters who served at the Chernobyl plant were exposed to between 80,000 and 1.6 million millirems. Exposure rates outside the plant were at about 620 millirems per hour, though it is not clear whether that report came before or after the reactor’s containment structure exploded.
- Japan’s troubled Fukushima Daiichi reactor site is only about 300 kilometers from Tokyo. While current wind patterns indicate that any radioactivity in the air would be carried out to sea, that can change at no notice at all.
The disaster waiting to happen at Japan should be the final tipping point on use of Nuclear Energy. In no ways the Nuclear Energy is "Clean".
ReplyDeleteHuman race should look for sustainable energy solutions rather than be greedy and accept Nuclear Energy as a short cut method. I suspect the Nuclear capable countries of using Nuclear Energy technology as money making venture, keeping aside the risk that it carries for planet earth.
We are literally sitting on Nuclear Bombs...