Just in case you ever wonder about the worst-case scenario at Fukushima…
If all the plutonium at Fukushima burns and disperses into the atmosphere, a LOW ESTIMATE of the death-toll adds up to about 920,000,000 people, and that’s applying the nuclear industry’s own “myth-busting” refutation of Ralph Nader’s “alarmist” arithmetic.
A commonly cited quote by Ralph Nader, states that a pound of plutonium dust spread into the atmosphere would be enough to kill 8 billion people. However, the math shows that one pound of plutonium could kill no more than 2 million people by inhalation. This makes the toxicity of plutonium roughly equivalent with that of nerve gas.
And isn’t that soothing!
Plutonium is almost the same as oatmeal!
It’s only as toxic as nerve gas!
But there’s a heck of a lot of that plutonium-oatmeal stored at Fukushima!
The 1,458 tons of plutonium held as “Unirradiated new fuel at reactor sites etc.” includes 210 kg at Fukushima I-3 (TEPCO).
210 kilograms is about 460 pounds, and even if we accept the low-ball estimate of 2,000,000 fatalities per pound, that’s still an awful lot of people!
460 X 2000000 = 920,000,000 people.