On Mar 17, 1:57?pm, sf wrote:
Has everybody somehow forgotten all the radiation released during
aboveground testing in the 1950s and (IIRC) 1960s? I'd wager
there was much, much more radiation involved, yet here we
still are.
Ah, here are some statistics, gleaned from
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3193136
A useful statistic in measuring how bad a radiation release is is how
many curies of 131I were released. 131I is an efficient carcinogen.
Three Mile Island released 20 Ci of 131I.
Chernobyl released 7x10^6 Ci of 131I
Above-ground nuclear testing in Nevada released about 1.5x10^8 Ci of
131I.
Obviously, there was more testing going on than just in Nevada.
Still, the Nevada tests ran over some years, while Chernobyl
happened pretty much all at once.
Cindy Hamilton