RE: Doctor reflects on treating Tokaimura nuclear-accident victim

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@aecl.ca>]

According to the TOKYO, Jan. 24 (Kyodo) story you posted,

		<snip>....Ouchi, who died of multiple organ failure Dec. 21
at age 35, was 
> 	exposed to an estimated 17 sieverts of radiation when he and a
> fellow 
> 	worker poured too much uranium into a processing tank at a nuclear 
> 	fuel processing plant run by JCO Co., triggering a self-sustaining 
> 	nuclear fission reaction. 
> 
> 	The level of radiation Ouchi was exposed to is said to be almost the
> 
> 	same as at the blast centers in the 1945 nuclear bombings of 
> 	Hiroshima and Nagasaki and about 17,000 times the maximum annual 
> 	permissible exposure in Japan. 
		<snip>
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that the radiation
doses in the atomic bombings were quite a bit LOWER that those of Mr. Ouchi
-- on the order of half as much. Were there even any cases of ARS ? ...from
what little I know about it, I think that the burns from HEAT radiation and
building fires, as well as from the strong blast effects (collapsed
buildings, flying debris, etc.) were the predominant killers, with radiation
effects appearing only after many years (latency period for cancer
induction).

Jaro 
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