Fears of Japanese nuclear radiation slightly silly

There's a nuclear reactor in Japan that is melting down. It is going to explode and the cloud of radioactive death ninjas will spew forth, slaying everything in their path. Those on the West Coast of the US should lock their doors, ensure that their houses are marked with the blood of a lamb, and maintain a strict diet of iodine pills in order to ensure they don't instantly sprout a third arm. (Illegal immigrants are exempt from the last one. Three arms means that many more hands for picking vegetables!)

At least, that's the picture it seems some people are drawing. With Geiger counters selling out in Paris and iodine pills running for $15 a pop in Vermont, it's clear that a great many people worldwide are deathly afraid of the effects of their exposure to the Japanese based radiation. Is it really so dangerous?

Probably not. Please direct your attention to this pretty chart put together by XKCD creator, Randall Munroe.

The basic message is this. Fukishima is dangerous inside and immediately surrounding the plant. Once you leave the immediate area (which has long since been evacuated), the threat of radiation drops to something almost non-existent. A single mammogram dwarfs the daily extra dose given by being nearby. Fun fact: The amount of extra radiation witnessed in your average near-Fukishima town is roughly equal to that gained by eating 35 bananas.

Better watch out for that grocery aisle.

Of course this disaster is not exactly a good thing. But Chernobyl it is not. Lest we forget this plant was hit with the largest earthquake in Japan's history, then with a massive tsunami, both of which could not possibly be predicted...yet glowing Japanese citizens did not ensue.

President Obama gets kudos for me for sticking by his plan, announced in February, to expand nuclear power in the US when it would have been all too easy for him to use the Fukishima incident to run and hide behind a windmill somewhere...probably in the dark, since the lights would be wind powered. This decision contrasts somewhat with his striking of the Yucca Mountain dump site early on in his Presidency. Still, a rational decision I approve of wholeheartedly (The nuclear part, not the let's drop 20 years of work on a safe storage solution for nuclear waste part).

I mean, France gets 80% of their power from nuclear energy. Since when do we let the French beat us in anything?