If you don't know about it,
the Register is probably the best source of IT and technology information on the planet. It takes a very tongue-in-cheek approach to tech news, but it's generally solid information.
In today's issue, they're taking a poke at those who have little idea about radiation and its effects. In the process, they note the BBC's journalists are also pretty clueless in their use of langiage to describe the Fukushima incident.
From the Reg:
"The San Francisco Chronicle notes,
"some Internet sites continue claiming that dangerously radioactive ocean water from Fukushima is showing up along California beaches," and that's all anyone needs to get into a flap in the Golden State. It probably doesn't help that the BBC speaks of an
"incoming radioactive Fukushima plume" which is about to
"hit the west coast of North America".But the radioactivity which is to "hit" California will be utterly, completely minuscule. The water in the "plume" which scientists are "tracking" is so radiologically inert that in an entire tonne of it, just one lonely atom of caesium from Fukushima is decaying each second. For context, healthy human body tissues are around 50,000 times more radioactive than that.
"I know that the people in Japan are facing the worst of the conditions but I also worry about my children here in California," California resident and member of citizen action group "Fukushima Response" Maggy Hohle tells al Jazeera. "Will there be high levels of radiation in the air and will my children be able to swim in the Pacific Ocean in the coming years?"
Provided that you consider it safe for them to hug your enormously more radioactive body, Ms Hohle, you should also consider it safe for them to swim in the Pacific, yes."
The continued misinformation generated by ignorant or clueless journos around the world about the Fukushima incidents led directly to the halting of Nuclear projects in Europe, yet Nuclear power remains the safest form of energy production on the planet.
