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Comment by veidr | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, well, it's easy to make bets on events that will still be playing out hundreds of years after we are all dead, isn't it.

Radioactive contamination of the food supply, the oceans, and tens of thousands of people exiled from their hometown for the rest of their lives.

17 injured and 11 dead rig workers is easily comprehended and instant. Doesn't really mean that disaster was worse, though. Just easier to contemplate.

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I thought the surrounding community was exposed to a level of radiation which cannot be shown to cause adverse effects?

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Radiation dose in the exclusion zone is two red squares; the minimum for an increased cancer risk is eight red squares.

Last I saw, the Fukushima radiation had already dispersed to below the noise level.

The more potent chemical toxins pouring into the gulf will likely be killing people for a while, though.

Yeah, well there are still people living very close to Chernobyl and who don't die from instant cancer every year. We have no real knowledge of how medium levels of radiation cause safety/health issue. We know very high levels of radiations kill, and low levels or radiation don't kill much, but we have very unreliable data in between, and we know for sure it's not a linear effect.

>Yeah, well, it's easy to make bets on events that will still be playing out hundreds of years after we are all dead, isn't it.

Is that why you lead off with a fine example of it when you said that Fukushima was "about 100 times worse" than New Horizon?

>>hundreds of years after we are all dead

>>Radioactive contamination of [...] the oceans

Sigh... bad scare mongering.

How many percent has the background radiation in the Pacific ocean increased by Fukushima?

(Hint: radioactive water is very, very diluted after much less than one century. :-) )

Sure, once it's perfectly stirred every glass of water from the ocean contains radiating Fukushima atoms. You just have to make sure none of your cells is currently on the edge to switch to cancer mode.

Please read up about e.g. statistics, [radiation] risks and Avogadro's number.

This cool xkcd link was posted just next to my GP comment: http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Look especially at the the varying background radiation levels -- and minimum level of radiation that has been proven to increase cancer risk. (And if you're trolling, go to the gym instead.)

Did all that years ago, didn't come to the conclusion radiation and cancer are unrelated. But, if you think a higher mutation rate is a good thing go ahead, I think Tepco is currently looking for that kind of worker.

I'm not saying that it's not a problem, but we have been conducting underwater nuclear tests, and dumped an incredible amount of nuclear waste in the ocean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_w...). And we're still alive. Even if we proceed to dump all of Fukushima in the ocean and just forget about it, it will still be extremely diluted and less than what is already there.

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