January 20, 2003

Nukes galor

Andrew sent me a cool link to information on nuclear weapons testing and issues. The cool part was that it had a bunch of links and pictures. This one is my favorite i think. The pictures got me thinking about how big of a chapter the tests are in nevada's history, and what a sad chapter that is. This is clearly indicated here, it shows thyroid cancer rates in the US (just to point at the obvious, the test site is just north of Las Vegas, right where all the red starts).

The connection is that the picture is from Operation Upshot-Knothole, and so is the map. The most interesting quote was:

"The effect on the downwind civilian population, taken together, was much worse. Upshot-Knothole released some 35,000 kilocuries of radioiodine (I-131) into the atmosphere (for comparison, Trinity released about 3200 kilocuries of radioiodine). This produced total civilian radiation exposures amounting to 89 million person-rads of thyroid tissue exposure (about 24% of all exposure due to continental nuclear tests). This can be expected to eventually cause about 28,000 cases of thyroid cancer, leading to some 1400 deaths."

And just in case you missed it, Operation Upshot-Knothole was a series of "underground tests".

All of this aside, i still think it would be cool to have a liscense plate with a mushroom cloud on it, i guess my principles aren't worth much.

Posted by cmorton at January 20, 2003 06:08 PM
Comments

I want that license plate too... did they stop printing them?

Posted by: Jamie on January 22, 2003 11:50 AM
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