Fukushima; almost a year on

It’s almost eleven months to the day since a Tsunami overwhelmed the sea defences at Fukushima, Japan. Eleven months. Since then Germany started shutting down nuclear power plants, even though none of them are likely to be hit by anything like the Quake that hit a small area of Japan. Lots of people over here went into a muck sweat about it, chewing enough potassium iodide to make themselves much sicker than any Radioactive material from the damaged power plants might have done. More fool them. No doubt same will complain that every single sniffle they’ve had since has been radiation induced, despite XKCD’s amusing little graphic on the subject making a nonsense of such assertions.

The National post has some interesting before and after pictures of the area. Although there aren’t any shots of the three damaged power plants, the surrounding area is looking remarkably tidy.

If anyone’s interested in facts rather than rent seeking hysteria; The interim IAEA report can be found here. Of course a thorough cleanup of the reactor cores will take ten years, which is about par for the course, but with no attributable deaths (or even serious injury) to radiation poisoning, I’d say panic over. Not that any panic was justified in the first place. Chernobyl this wasn’t.