Tag Archives: fukushima radiation “three mile island” chernobyl hiroshima

Fukishima Radiation Release – in Perspective

Fukushima Reactor-1 after the hydrogen explosion

There has been much written on Fukushima and sadly much of it is ill-informed and misleading.  Here we take estimates of radiation release from the most authoritative sources and calculate various radiation equivalents:

  1. Radiation release is listed in Peta 10^15 becquerels and becquerels.  You are naturally radioactive at 5kBq and a banana is about 150 Bq.
  2. Hiroshimas –  total radiation release in multiples of the radiation release from the Hiroshima fission blast (89 TBq)
  3. Mega-tonnes  – the mass of TNT equivalent in fission explosions required to produce the same amount of released radiation
  4. Radium  – the weight of Radium in tonnes required to produce the  same radiation release

A comparison using various metrics for the release of radiation from various accidents and weapons testing