Re: Japanese Accident

[Kent Lambert <lambert@allegheny.edu>]

Mike Stabin wrote:
> 
> >  A small amount of radiation were released into the
> >environment, he said.
> 
> NO, it wasn't.  A small amount of radioactivity, maybe.  Or did they mean
> that a few alpha particles and six or seven gamma rays escaped into the woods?

True.  But I was reviewing a radiation protection textbook written by
two Ph.D. medical physicists (one certified by ABR, and the other a past
president of a local HP chapter) and a radiation technologist which had
the following caption under a picture of a nuclear weapons test mushroom
cloud, "The atomic cloud top which contains man-made ionizing radiation
ascended approximately 43,000 feet above ground."  Didn't the cloud
contain man-made radioactive material which emitted ionizing radiation?  

Kent N. Lambert, CHP
mailto:lambert@allegheny.edu