Nuke radius

[cmailliard]

I thought the Mt. St. Helens eruption disproved that theory, as the blast wave hugged the ground and decimated trees on the far side of the hills for miles around.

It really depends on distance here, blast waves are pretty powerful. The three things that protect against radiation are Time, Distance and Shielding.

Time - If we know the dose rate, using exposure limits we can know how long to safely stay in an area

• Working in the nuclear industry is 5 Rem/Year
• Mitigating an Incident is 10 Rem/Event
• Saving a Life is 25 Rem/Event

Distance - The further away you are the better you are (duh!) It is the greatest way to protect yourself

• Alpha Particles only travels a few inches to a foot or so - I demo this in my Hazmat/WMD classes with Uranium Ore (yeah, you can buy that on Amazon) and a detector
• Beta Particles can travel several yards
• Gamma, well it's kinda like the Energizer bunny

Shielding - What will stop these types of radiation

• Alpha - a piece of paper or your skin (you are contaminated so you better decontaminate yourself)
• Beta - Need a bit more, a hazmat suit will protect you
• Gamma - Lead or other dense material (lots of concrete)

Everyone thinks Alpha is not bad because it can stopped by a piece of paper and does not travel far. The problem with Alpha is, it is very ionizing, meaning it does a great deal of damage if you are exposed (it is in your body). Breathing it in is the most common way to become exposed. An N95 (P100 is better) will do real good job at filtering Alpha and Beta.

There is a nuclear reactor in the Denver Metro area, not many people know about it. Let's see if someone here knows where. I am sure there is at least one person.
It is used in a pretty cool way, it is about 6 feet in diameter and about 20 feet deep (at least the pool). It has about 25 fuel rods IIRC. When it is on it is the coolest color blue you can ever imagine.

On Nuclear Secrecy, read his blog, he has so much awesome information about radiation. Read about the Demon Core, pretty interesting stuff.

Here are some fun sites
Dose Calculator - Living in Colorado sucks
Dose Chart - Fun to look at and see how much radiation really is bad
Dose - It is worse than trying to figure out electricity, at least for me. This page does a decent job breaking it down