All I did was interpret the XKCD chart. Your relativations are pretty irrelevant, if by accident I happen to stand in that highly radiated spot. It seems significant to me that such spots existed 50km away from the plant. The XKCD chart does not say anything about the isotopes involved, so you seem to have some additional information that was not in the XKCD chart. Then I have to say sorry, but maybe the XKCD chart is not as convincing as the wannabe-geeks would like to believe.
Likewise with the "link to cancer risk" - the XKCD chart does not say anything about eating bananas or whatever. It says "dosis x was linked to increased cancer risk" and "50km away the radiation was a twentieth of that dosis".
Outdoors/indoors - yeah, so what if I talk a walk with my dog every day? I don't see your point? It isn't so bad because we can always find ways around it? If mushrooms are poisoned, we just don't eat mushrooms? If radiation is outside, we just don't go outside? If water is poisoned, we just buy bottled water from elsewhere? I don't want to live like that - I strive to live in a relatively carefree environment, thank you very much.
Where I live, I don't run danger to accidentally run into a highly toxic spot on the map. Maybe we have chemical plants, but there are fences and warning signals around them. There are no warning signals for leaked poison from a nuclear accident.
You should read more (than XKCD) about the Japanese nuclear event and radiological exposure in general. I think you may be unduly alarmed.
Simply setting foot outdoors with your dog doesn't instantly expose you to an hour's worth of radiation. If you walk your dog for an hour every day, then it will take 480 days for you to achieve the 100msv exposure you're concerned about.
But that's also vanishingly unlikely, because the fission products that produced the 170usv (note units) measurement you are fretting about are short-lived. The few radioactive nuclides produced by the reactor that aren't that short lived aren't simply aspirated out of the air. For 480 days of dog walking to produce this cancer risk you're concerned about (which, again, appears to be significantly lower than the risk you get from eating steaks), the reactor would have to continue leaking radiation at a level comparable to that produced by a spent fuel pond fire, which is the most likely proximate cause of that measurement.
I'm criticizing you for not reasoning through this stuff. It's not a huge mystery. It works in fairly predictable ways. You can measure it and count it and add the risks up. The risks are very, very low.
"I'm criticizing you for not reasoning through this stuff."
I did not even say that I was alarmed, so I criticize you for lumping me in with an imaginary enemy you seem to perceive (the anti-nuclear, global warming warming kind presumably). I just said the XKCD chart is not as comforting as it seems. I don't know what a spent fuel pond is, btw. How did they even measure the increased cancer risk of radiation anyway, if any other daily activity seems to increase the cancer risk much more? I mean how did they isolate the radiation effect among the noise of all the cancer causing things? And what if you eat steaks AND are exposed to radiation? Does the effect of the steak cancel out the radiation effects? I think not.
Do you have a chart about the cancer risk induced by steaks, preferably drawn by XKCD because he makes it so pretty and soothing? And he is a geek, so I must believe hime?
I could point out that I don't eat steaks, but it is not really relevant...
I've read the "Fukushima is a triumph for nuclear power" articles, and I HOPE they are right. I don't think we have all the information yet, though. We don't know what things have leaked exactly. Those articles tend to not mention the cooling pools that don't have enclosings. They say Chernobyl was a cloud of ash that spread very far, but why shouldn't other clouds also spread far? In any case, if those articles are right, the media should be blamed for unnecessarily causing a panic.
If at one measurement point there was 20th of radiation for increased cancer, who says that was even the highest concentration to be found? What if by random chance there are dirt particles from the explosion that radiate more, and I swallow them while I walk my dog?
Btw. I don't like having to breathe the pollution of cars and fossile fuel plants every day either, so it doesn't really comfort me if they are also toxic. I think most cars are superfluous, but that is for another discussion.
Could you link to the source for the nature of the fission products that were being measured?
Watch the video I posted at the top of this thread; they actually break down on the periodic table how the decay produced by the fission at reactors is produced, and the different types and half-lives of the nuclides involved.
The reason "other clouds of ash" (presumably you mean Fukushima's) won't be as damaging as Chernobyl is that Chernobyl was an unshielded graphite fire that raged, producing a gigantic plume of radioactive ash, while Chernobyl was still critical and fissioning. Chernobyl was like a gigantic generator of radioactive contamination; it would have taken engineering effort to make it more damaging.
The things that have caught fire at Fukushima are 100x less radioactive than fissioning reactor fuel, and the fires themselves were much smaller (because, unlike Chernobyl, they aren't essentially being fed by a fuel source almost as flammable as anthracite coal).
I don't think Fukushima was a triumph for nuclear power, by the way (and, because for whatever reason you brought it up, I believe in global warming and support policy initiatives to curb it). There are (more expensive) plant designs that handle loss of cooling power better. Fukushima is a disaster, and it may end up killing many volunteers at the plant itself. But that doesn't mean it's giving everybody --- or even anybody --- within a 50km radius cancer.
"But that doesn't mean it's giving everybody --- or even anybody --- within a 50km radius cancer."
No, just the twentieth of an increased risk for cancer.
As for the isotopes, I thought I heard that Cesium was released, which lasts several years? (no time for watching movies sorry). Some reactors apparently also used Plutonium, though maybe not in the blocks that exploded.
Cesium has a longer half life than most of the radionuclides in vented steam, but it also settles out of the air and doesn't travel as far. Cesium was detectably elevated, but the region isn't blanketed in cesium soot.
The fact that the reactors use MOX fuel doesn't mean plutonium is getting into the atmosphere! That's not how it works. The reactors also don't use cesium as fuel.
Finally, please stop waving the words "increased risk of cancer" around like a voodoo totem. Everything increases your risk of cancer in some way. The notion of cancer risk is only meaningful in relation to something else. More cancer than what? The risk to the general population that you are referring to is, according the published evidence, so low as to be unmeasurable.
Because, you're talking about this situation as if the alternative was "simply not using nuclear power". The cost to human health of not using nuclear power is higher than using it, in two ways. First, the fossil fuel sources which are the only scalable alternative cause demonstrably more harm, both to the environment and to carcinogenesis, than xenon radionuclides detected 50km from Fukushima. Secondly, the malaria and dysentery pathogens that ride alongside lack of electrical power infrastructure reliably kill 1.7 million people every year.
"The notion of cancer risk is only meaningful in relation to something else."
I thought it would be obvious from the context in this thread that the relation is to "not being exposed to radiation".
"as if the alternative was "simply not using nuclear power"."
I never said anything about what I imagine the alternative to be. I don't think I even said nuclear power should be abandoned (although I would like to see it go, true). Just signs for me that you use me as "the imaginary enemy" and don't even look at what I say.
"First, the fossil fuel sources which are the only scalable alternative"
Now you start to make very broad claims. Obviously a lot would have to change, but I heard that humans actually survived for millenia without any electricity at all (no idea how, but still). Not saying we should abandon electricity, but a lot of things could be changed. For example I would not miss cars - I think abandoning the majority of cars would actually enhance our quality of life, not reduce it. Just one example - but I don't claim to have "the" or even "a" solution. One aspect, though: I think fossile fuels and nuclear power are both limited resources (or is nuclear power a perpeteum mobile?). Even if we take it as a "free gift of capital from earth", perhaps we should use that energy to prepare for a time when it is not available anymore, rather than blow it on entertainment. That is, use it to build infrastructure that is less power hungry.
As for the malaria, sorry, but that is bullshit. I know it used to be a problem in areas where it is not now, but I don't think every area without electricity gets a malaria problem. Is there malaria at the north pole??
Isn't malaria far more likely to be caused by politics (and/or population growth), namely groups of people being left in poverty and forced to move into unhealthy regions (swamps) because of that?
What on earth does malaria have to do with electrical power? Dysentery, maybe, since it's clearly easier to run chlorination and sewer plants on a power grid, but malaria? I mean, you can import your bed nets, window screens, doxycycline, and cypermethrin from Iceland if need be, but I don't think they're actually that energy-intensive to produce.
I agree with your overall point, but I think that if you make it in such a non-credible fashion, it makes it harder for the rest of us who agree with you.
I think malaria is correlated with poverty, and poverty is correlated with poor infrastructure. But I also think you're right, and mentioning malaria hurt the point I was trying to make.
Likewise with the "link to cancer risk" - the XKCD chart does not say anything about eating bananas or whatever. It says "dosis x was linked to increased cancer risk" and "50km away the radiation was a twentieth of that dosis".
Outdoors/indoors - yeah, so what if I talk a walk with my dog every day? I don't see your point? It isn't so bad because we can always find ways around it? If mushrooms are poisoned, we just don't eat mushrooms? If radiation is outside, we just don't go outside? If water is poisoned, we just buy bottled water from elsewhere? I don't want to live like that - I strive to live in a relatively carefree environment, thank you very much.
Where I live, I don't run danger to accidentally run into a highly toxic spot on the map. Maybe we have chemical plants, but there are fences and warning signals around them. There are no warning signals for leaked poison from a nuclear accident.