[ RadSafe ] Nuclear Power Plant Effluents / EMP

[Richard L. Hess]

At 05:34 PM 2/24/2005, goldinem at songs.sce.com wrote:
>Bottom line, the controls are good enough such that no real person gets
>more than (typically) a hypothetical (repeat, hypothetical) 1 mrem per year
>living at the boundary of your US nuclear power plant.  I guarantee you
>this is less dose than from the coal burner down the road.

Or about what you get on one transcontinental airplane flight.
http://www.richardhess.com/rad/lax_chi.jpg (my monitoring of one flight)
Cal factor to mR is 1490 cpm/mR/hr.

>The ridiculous thought that nuclear plants are contributing to illnesses 
>by the release of
>Sr-90 is really, really bad science fiction.

But that is the popular mythology.

These numbers have to get out there. Not hand-waving, real numbers. People 
can be made to understand real numbers.

I do have a question: does nuclear fallout (or radiation release to the 
atmosphere) follow an inverse square law distribution, or does the nature 
of it and the distribution by wind make it more variable and potentially 
more concentrated?

I have another question: On another list someone suggested that a large 
nuclear bomb air burst could wipe out all the unprotected electronics in a 
continent. Anyone have good info about this? On that list they were 
referring to "EMT" which I always learned was  a type of conduit, while I 
thought this effect was "EMP"--Electromagnetic Pulse. And how does that 
differ from what we were exposed to from outer space a month or two ago?

Thanks for any unclassifed info you could provide.

Cheers,

Richard