The psychotic reaction to radiation by the butt-ignorant media is one major reason we don't have a reasonable nuclear power industry.

The release of radioactivity was first thought to be 60,000 becquerels (a unit of radioactivity.) Turned out it was 90,000. This is about a billionth of the legal limit for such releases in Japan.

This is an astoundingly tiny amount of radiation. For the record, it takes 3.7 x 10^10 becquerels to make ONE curie. A curie is approximately the radiation emitted by 1 gram of radium.

The radioactivity of an adult human body is 7,000 bequerels.

But hey, that 50 percent greater bit makes a nice, scary headline, doesn't it? This is nuts.