Think of the reactor core as a light bulb. The light emmitted by the bulb isn’t blown or affected by the wind in any way. Radiation emitted directly from the core is very dangerous to those who have to be close to it and deal with it.
Fallout is the real danger here but fallout is dust, smoke, and steam that have been radiated and are carried by the wind. Fortunately those things have been pretty limited and haven’t been thrown miles into the air.
Chernobyl was many orders of magnitude worse than what we see in Japan. That reactor fire was hidden from the world for a long time and was a particularly dirty fire that dumped tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
In this case the Japanese have real reason for concern but its unlikely that we’ll get much in the way of measurable fallout here.
Good and thanks for the good explanation. It sounds right to me.
Thanks for the explanation
” Think of the reactor core as a light bulb. The light emmitted by the bulb isn’t blown or affected by the wind in any way “
I was starting to think that I was the only person still alive who took Freshman High School General Science....
Wish I had taken notes. An expert on Neil Cavuto was talking about Chernobyl which was x times greater. Hopefully another freeper was watching and retained all this. He said 1,000 people developed leukemia from the fallout from Chernobyl; 998 of those people were treated successfully for it!
Yesterday I was driving and heard another expert—perhaps on Michael Medved?—saying Napalm contains petroleum and so does petroleum jelly. The likelihood of petroleum jelly turning into napalm is about equal to this container becoming a nuclear explosion.
No doubt someone out there can translate all of this! :)