US Surgeon General Regina Benjamin is an idiot. People in California are panicking over the continued drama at the Fukushimi Daiichi power plant in Japan. Ms. Benjamin added to their panic by saying that stocking up on iodine tablets “makes sense”.
Iodine tablets are only needed in a small radius around a nuclear plant that has actually exploded and showered the surrounding area with fuel and internal reactor guts. Uranium fuel fissions into cesium and iodine. The particular isotopes of these elements have half-lives on the order of a week (iodine) and 30 years (cesium). Within a few weeks, the amount of radioactive iodine in the environment would be negligible, even in the immediate plant area. Cesium would obviously stick around a while longer, but still keep in mid that there wouldn’t be much of either of these materials even released. Now take into consideration a few thousand miles of Pacific Ocean, and you can easily see that iodine and cesium from Japan is of no concern to California.
In fact, if all the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi were to blow up (Not. Gonna. Happen. Period.), the uranium, plutonium, and all the other odds and ends in the reactors would not be a concern for the safety of California residents.
Update:
Here’s a map showing the per capita dose of radiation to thyroids in rads resulting from nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site from 1951 to 1962. Note that this is above-ground testing. Note also that the activities spewed all kinds of fission products and fuel over a wide area and well up into the atmosphere. Note also that these explosions irradiated all kinds of local materials, flora, and fauna, which was also hurled up into the atmosphere. Note also there were many separate explosions conducted at the NTS (between 200 & 300).
None of these things have the remotest possibility of happening in Japan.
Here’s some help putting this in context. There have been reports of radiation levels near the reactors being 1,000 times normal. Normal is about 5 microrems per hour. 1,000 times that is 5 millirems per hour near the plant.
From our map above, we see that the highest dose is about 16 rads over an 11-years period. This is approximately 320 rem or about 30 rem/year. Let’s return to the area immediately surrounding the plant in Japan. If one were to remain in the area where the radiation levels are 1,000 times normal, that person would be receiving a dosage equivalent to about 40-45 rem/year, or about 50% more than the PDB’s immediately downwind of the Nevada Test Site did.
Let me restate: They would have to stand there, sufficiently close to the reactors (within a hundred meters or so), for about eight months to receive the same dosage as the people of Southwestern Utah did each years for 11 years.
Wednesday Surgeon General Regina Benjamin Is An Idiot Open Comments
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[…] this up from Vanderleun’s fascinating Tumblr, KA-CHING: Fallout exposure by state during […]
Darren, fwiw, I suspected that you were joking. A women can be both feminine and independent. They always have been.
Update on the bully body slam: If you’re wondering how bullies become bullies, perhaps we’ll find a clue here: The emotional mother of Ritchard Gale, Tina, told the Seven Network last night that she and her family have been victimised by the footage, which has spread worldwide. She also demanded an apology from the victim. “We don’t need this posted… Read more »
And a beer.
Make it snappy.
Umm, it’s hard to know when a man is joking about such things. 🙂
Except Pyro, of course — I think he really wants his sammiches.
Get it right next time. 😉
I want them to nurse babies while their men fix the tires.
(I hope you know I’m very much joking 😳 )
#105 Darren Nope, I don’t agree, but if you want your daughters to be unable to fend for themselves, should they have a flat tire on the road, well, that is your prerogative. Actually, things have changed since the olden times of which I spoke. Now both men & women can stay safe in the car and use a cell… Read more »
GJT #103;
Ditto.
mharper #90;
Changing tires is man’s work. Women should, like, nurse a baby while the man makes the adjustments. 🙂
I am watching the “Criminal Minds” spinoff. Oh, gag me now, Janeane Garofalo is on the cast. I think I’ll stick to Law & Order from now on.
I heard this today, Hugh has been awesome! Hugh Hewitt To GOP Appropriations Committee Member Jack Kingston: ‘Do You Think We’re Stupid?’
Younger daughter is downstairs working very hard on a performance piece with only 10 days of runway left. I advised her that if she could devote 2 hrs practice per day, she could pull it off. It’s gonna be close, but she’s getting there. One of the rehearsal/practice techniques I’ve picked up from various folks/groups over the years is that… Read more »
93, WB
A few decades ago I hired a female instrument fitter. This gal was drop dead good looking and only stood about 5’2″.
Her hubby was a member of the Bandidos and yes she could kick-start her pink full dress
hog.
Simple
is this #100?
YESSSS
#98 Pyro
Those are Aussie wimmins, ‘burner, they’re not gonna make you a sammich or bring you a beer.
In the meantime, you wimmins are gettin’ uppity.
Now get along and make me a sammich and bring me a beer.
#95 bob
It’s right up there with baseballs and garden irrigation tubing, brass doorknobs, and chrome-plated trailer hitches.
Dudes release some chickens into their school and get arrested???
That would have barely registered as a prank way back when….
#93 Aw go ahead WB, I figure even Hammie’s grammie has already heard about the negative exhaust pressure method of Harley starting.
#89 Both daughters have been “trained” on things like putting on the spare and checking oil and other vital fluids. She knows that it’s much easier/quicker to call for the assistance of Mr. Big Red Tank than to put the spare on. In the past I’ve gone with her to get her car serviced. I figured she’d want me to… Read more »
I could go with a statement about wimmins starting Harleys that makes a someone’s capabilities in another arena, but Granny Hamous might faint.
91 Ted
A real woman can kick-start her own harley.
Simple
#90 Mharper I remember reading a “short” in the Reader’s Digest about a daughter who had received instruction from her father on this basic car care. She was at school when she discovered her flat tire. Opening her trunk, she pulled out her apron and sleeves and changed her own tire. By the time she finished, she had several requests… Read more »
Bob & TT
In the olden times, this practical knowledge was imparted to sons but often denied to daughters. Soon after I became a young bride, I asked my husband to show me how to change a tire. I had several occasions to apply the knowledge and it was always treated with incredulity when I arrived at the destination.
#82 Bob and the flat tire Lovely was taught a long time ago how to change a flat tire (and drive a backhoe, btw, though that was years ago when she was about 12 years old and I wouldn’t trust her behind the wheel of one of those anymore). One of her sorority sisters found two of her tires slashed… Read more »
53 Sarge,
It was just an unqualified observation that I made. I have noticed a general change in the tone of your postings. This was not intended as an insult or slight, but rather the opposite.
Simple
#85, Nope.
My brother has an iPad that’s pretty cool, and now I hear that they’ve come out with iPad version 2 that’s even cooler. I wonder when Apple with target the Muslim market with…
Wait for it…
iMam.
It’s time for a musical interlude….
DISH Remote Access – First on iPad
Is there anything iPad can’t be programmed to do?
Tuesday’s vote served notice that the public is thirsting for widespread reform at County Hall, long dominated by entrenched politicians and insiders. County Commissioner Natacha Seijas was similarly recalled Tuesday in a resounding defeat. For 18 years she represented a district that includes Miami Lakes and Hialeah and was widely regarded as the most powerful politician on the commission. But… Read more »
bob #75;
Good job, bob. You win and ice cube from my freezer. Can I get a mailing address?
A few days ago, older daughter texted me to say that she got off work that evening to find one of her (new) tires flat. Once again, I hauled out the handy red air tank and it got the tire up pronto. This time, I insisted that she do the task solo while I observed, and also merely observed when… Read more »
#60 SD I totally missed it. But, damn, are they cleaning house down there in Miami/Dade or what ? But voters responded by handing the mayor a humiliating defeat: Nearly nine of every 10 voted to remove Alvarez from office. “The voters have spoken and a time of healing and reconciliation must now begin,’’ Alvarez said in a statement Tuesday… Read more »
#60 texpat, Check out my #27
Chomsky is like some shaman high priest to the faux intellectuals of the Left. He first made his name, when I was a boy, when millions of American parents were buying their kids sets of Mort Adler’s Great Books of the Western World and the Syntopicon. Adler hired Chomsky as a senior editor. I still have my copy of those… Read more »
You can’t make this stuff up President Obama speaks at an event AP Photo Close President Obama’s only event at the White House that isn’t closed to the press on Wednesday is a ceremony in which he’ll accept an award for being open to the press. According to his public schedule, Obama has four behind-closed-doors meetings from 10 a.m. to… Read more »
Is there anything not on youtube anymore?
Why does anyone even acknowledge Chomsky? What has he actually done that matters to a non-propellerheaded linguist?
Is he just another Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian, but a lot harder on the eyes?
#64 Darren, been there, done that, got the t-shirt, washed it, dried it, folded it and put it away. The challenge to bob42 is not to attack Obama’s DOJ but to do so without also including Republicans and conservatives in that critique. I other words, can bob42 attack Obama and his administration without also mentioning critiques against Republicans and Conservatives… Read more »
Don’t be dissing Izzy’s hero, Texpat.
The MIT linguist and famed Leftist, Noam Chomsky, proposed Fascism as a solution to Americans’ refusal to accept global warming in a book he published a few years ago. This may be a testament to the fact no one actually reads his books or at least can’t bear to finish them. However, if you go to page 388 of Chomsky’s… Read more »
wagon #67;
AND adding data to back up your agreement. Excellent!
Hamous #66;
Explains why he could run so fast.
Miami Hurricanes: The Teasips of the East
Is there lots of dust or pepper floating around in here? Something’s getting in my eyes.
Continuing with a little Gator history – Alvarez’s quarterback at Florida was John Reaves (who played for the Oilers in the early ’80s). In the last play of his last game of his last year he broke an NCAA passing record when the entire Gator defense laid down on the field and allowed Miami to score. Florida recovered the onside… Read more »
#65 darren
yep
Merely agreeing with you.
#60 Texpat When I was in elementary school one of my sports heroes was a Gator wide receiver named Carlos Alvarez (nicknamed The Cuban Comet). His family escaped Castro’s Cuba when he was a boy. He was drafted by that “semi-professional” team located at the terminus of I-45 but chose to attend Duke Law School instead and graduated summa cum… Read more »
wagon #63;
And wasn’t Dr. Leher arguing that there’s no reason to set panic?