Fukushima: What Ever Happened To Armageddon?
REMEMBER the Japanese nuclear reactor crisis in Fukushima? Sure, poo soaked organic beansprouts killed more than Fukushima and BP Oil Spill. But the was panic. There was a nuclear rabbit. A huge nuclear plume was heading to Oxfordshire after wiping out the US and showering deadly nuclear rain on Australian.Your Filipino maid was advised to take pills. You should buy potassium iodide pills at reassuringly expensive prices.
Experts predicted 50,000 deaths. It would be bigger than Chernobyl. It was agreed that this was another Chernobyl. France rowed over an MP’s Parked Car.
Fox News warned that night clubs would explode. The West was doomed. Armageddon was certain.
And then:
The fallout from the radiation leak at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in Japan may be less severe than predicted.
Radiology researcher Ikuo Kashiwakura of Hirosaki University, Japan, and colleagues responded immediately to the disaster, travelling south to Fukushima prefecture to measure radiation levels in more than 5000 people there between 15 March and 20 June.
They found just 10 people with unusually high levels of radiation, but those levels were still below the threshold at which acute radiation syndrome sets in and destroys the gastrointestinal tract. Geiger-counter readings categorised all others in the area at a “no contamination level”.
How did the population of Fukushima prefecture dodge the radioactivity? Gerry Thomas at Imperial College London, director of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank, says the answer is simple. “Not an awful lot [of radioactive material] got out of the plant – it was not Chernobyl.”
But it might have been…
Posted: 18th, November 2011 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
