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Posted on March 14, 2011 | tags

 
 

World: UPDATE: What does “400 times annual legal limit” mean?

  • 400 the amount of radiation in the air, in milli-sieverts per hour, according to the given estimate
  • 40 the amount of radiation that is, in roentgen per hour – which, don’t get us wrong, is very high
  • 30k the amount of radiation in Chernnobyl had – which Fukushima doesn’t touch source
  • » This is an extremely large jump: One milli-sievert per hour is the legal annual limit for radiation in a year. Our earlier estimate showed a level of 8,217 micro-sieverts. 1,000 micro-sieverts equals 1 milli-sievert. So we went from 8,000 to 400,000 in a couple of hours. This is still no Chernobyl, but this is a huge jump. If it jumps to 1,000,000 micro-sieverts, it leads to radiation sickness – and then we’re in trouble.