Re: accident at a Japanese nuclear fuel facility

[Bjorn Sandstrom <sandstrom@ume.foa.se>]

At 07:11 1999-09-30 -0500, you wrote:
>But he said that a ``criticality incident'' may have caused the accident,
>which temporarily caused radiation levels to race up 4,000 times higher than
>normal.

To me, 4,000 times higher than normal seems a petty number to have caused
what later is described as 

>what would be Japan's worst injury from a nuclear accident.

My reasoning is that you need at least one or several Sv/h to call someone
heavily exposed. That also means that the normal dose rate level would be
in the 0,25 - 1 mSV/h region which to me seems way too high or am I missing
something here? 


     Dr. Bjorn Sandstrom         Tel: +46-90- 10 67 43
     FOA                      Mobile: +46-70-666 67 43   
     SE-901 82 Umea              Fax: +46-90- 10 68 03
     Sweden               E-mail: sandstrom@ume.foa.se
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