Sunday, March 20, 2011

So what's a cubit? What's a Sievert?

"What's a cubit" was Bill Cosby, playing Noah, asking God about ark construction. A Sievert is the new unit of radiation dose in which all the Japanese reactor stories are reporting. I finally googled on "Sievert" and I find 1 Sievert is the same as 100 REM. So, switching to new speak, 0.1 Sievert or 10 REM is the safe yearly dosage for nuclear plant workers. One whole Sievert means radiation sickness but it's curable. Four Sieverts kills a lot of victims. Eight Sieverts kills everybody.
By press reports the radiation in Japan is still in the safe yearly dosage range even on plant property.
There are also press reports of "trace" amounts of radioactivity on food in in ground water. No definition of "trace". Newsies don't understand numbers. Modern laboratory equipment can detect "trace" amounts of anything, damn near anywhere. So, lacking real numbers, it's quite possible that those "trace" amounts have been there all along. And that "trace" is so low that it doesn't matter.

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