Stuff You Should Know - How a Nuclear Meltdown Works

Episode Date: March 22, 2011

The recent disaster in Japan has caused massive damage and killed thousands -- but that's not all: The Fukushima nuclear plant may possibly be on the verge of a meltdown. Tune in to learn how meltdowns work, and what a meltdown would mean for Japan. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The War on Drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind The War on Drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And on the prime example of tax. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government

uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty, exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Standing at 8 feet 2 inches tall, Charles Byrne was the tallest man in the world. In fact, it earned him the nickname the Irish Giant. And when Charles arrived in London in 1782,

he caused quite a stir. But by May the following year, death came calling for Charles in the form of tuberculosis. And while most people were ready to mourn his passing, one man was plotting with gleeful excitement for a chance to dissect the Irish Giants remains. This January Grim and Mild Presents will shift focus from the great wide world around us to the universe inside us all, in a journey that will span thousands of years and countless borders we plan to unpack the dark and twisted history of healing medicine. So wash your hands, set out your tools, and prep for surgery. Grim and Mild Presents Bedside Manners is available now. Find Grim and Mild Presents wherever you listen to podcasts.

Learn more at GrimandMild.com slash presents. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And that makes this Stuff You Should Know kind of a special edition, really. We don't usually, like, hop on news stories. Yeah, you can't ignore this stuff. And I guess probably releasing something like a full week after it happens is not hopping on, but still.

No, it's people who have concerns and there's a lot of information flying around. Everyone's trying to explain this thing in the simplest terms. And since that's what we do for a living. Yeah. We figure we should do it. Yes. So that's what we're doing today. We're going to talk about nuclear meltdowns and how it pertains to the crisis in Japan, right? Yeah. And it's a lot more basic and simple than I thought. Yeah. I was intimidated going into this. And then I was like, oh, well, that's not too hard to understand. Yeah, it is nuclear science, but it's kind of approachable nuclear science.

Agreed. So Chuck, let's talk about catastrophe modeling. It's a type of risk modeling that insurance companies love. It's how they figure out why your insurance should be less than say somebody else of the same age, weight, height, that kind of thing who lives in California, right? Right. My former self. Yeah. So you can actually take a catastrophe model and plug in every variable you can think of. And what you'll spit out is basically a curve, a graph of probability. Sure. Of an accident happening. Right.

And then say like the level of damage that will happen. Okay. So if you do this over like say a 10,000 year catalog, you can figure out how often say 9.0 earthquake is going to hit Japan. Gotcha. And you can figure that out by choosing a probability. Let's say there's 4% probability of a 9.0 happening. You can find that that pops up maybe 40 times over a 10,000 year scale. And what you have then is that that's a 1 in 250 year probability. Okay. That's where they get the predictor. Yeah, exactly. And that's why power plants are, that's how they're built to withstand

something like a once in a 250 year quake. Saying it could happen in this area. So we need to account for it. Right. And it's based on the dynamics, the geophysical dynamics of an earthquake, of a 9.0 magnitude, right? Because you've got all that plugged in the model. You figure out how much, how bad it's going to be, how often it's going to happen. And then you build accordingly. And these, the plants on the north coast of Japan, the Tepcos Tokyo Electric Power Company, right? Right. They're Daiichi and Daiini plants, number one and number two plants in Fukushima were built

to withstand a 250 year quake, which is exactly what they got on March 11th. Yeah, they were, and they withstood it. They did. Everything went fine. Uh-huh. They shut down the reactors, which is what's supposed to happen. Too sweet. The problem was it withstood an earthquake, a huge earthquake, possibly the most massive earthquake that's ever hit Japan, but it didn't withstand the tsunami. This model, whatever the model it was built for, did not predict the tsunami.

It didn't take it into account. And that's why we have this crisis right now, right? Yeah. So we should probably also mention that the focus right now is on, you know, this nuclear, potential nuclear meltdown. But I mean, the tsunami is up to like, I think, 15,000 dead and missing now, just from the tsunami alone. Are they calculating the tsunami different from the earthquake as far as that goes? I read tsunami. Okay.

So possibly. Because I read 7,000, but that might just be, maybe there's different numbers. That could, no, I think that's just dead. This is like 15,000 dead and missing. Oh, okay. So, yeah. But now you've got an earthquake that just knocked down a bunch of stuff. You have a tsunami that took out entire towns, and then you have this nuclear crisis that's unfolding. And, you know, this is going to release in a few days. So we'll have to make do with the information that we have, right?

Yeah. Unless something like really, really big happens between today, which is Thursday and Tuesday, we might have to come back in and like doctor it up a bit. Right. But this is what we're going with for now. Yeah. So Chuck, let's talk a little bit about how, if you walk around a nuclear power plant, what are you going to find? What's going on there? Well, it's pretty easy actually. And this is something that I didn't know because I didn't know a whole lot about nuclear power at all until this happened.

And basically what a nuclear power plant does is it creates one of the oldest models for creating energy, which is steam powered turbines. Right. And how they do that, they basically use nuclear fuel, which these days is enriched uranium. Mm-hmm. The uranium atom split creates a lot of heat. Neutrons flying around also creates, is created by that process. Right. And this heat boils water in the case of these reactors. These are water boiling reactors.

And we'll talk about more of the Mark I here in a minute. And it produces, basically boils this water, produces steam. That steam drives a turbine, generates power, about a gigawatt of electricity at full power, which is a lot. Right. And that is a tremendous amount. And at full power, the heat that's being put out, Marshall, who wrote a really cool, he's the founder of the site. He can still got it. Yes. Yes, he does. He wrote a very incredible article in record time called How Japan's Nuclear Crisis Works. But he said that this puts out the heat that's akin to about a billion watt bulb

when it's at full power. It's hot. The thing is, obviously, you don't always need your nuclear reactors to be running at full power. So what you do is you modulate how much heat is being put out by using what are called control rods. Yeah, sort of like the throttle on your gas. Right. But instead of, yeah. But the control rod is basically something like maybe a boron enriched length of metal that is inserted into the fuel rod core, right? And if you pull it

out a little bit, then it heats up. If you push it in a little bit, it heats down. So and by heat, I guess I could say it powers up and it powers down, right? Yeah, because it's attracting the neutrons. Right. And the neutrons are what basically make the splitting of the atom happen. And that's the problem there is it's self-sustaining. So if you didn't have these control rods, it becomes, you know, its own living reaction. Well, it'll just, it would just keep going.

Right. It would keep going as long as you can, as long as you could keep it cool and just be running at max power all the time. Yeah. Right. Now, when an earthquake hits, one of the fail safes designed into any nuclear reactor is that the control rods are going to get jammed in all the way, which is called scramming. And when the, when the reactor is scrammed, all the control rods are shut down or all the fuel rods are shut down because there's these control rods just accepting all the neutrons. And like you said, the neutrons are the active ingredient in nuclear fission because they're

just making all the atoms in the surrounding area unstable. Yeah. But it's important to point out that even when they're fully inserted and it's shut down, it's still creating heat. And here's the problem. Small amount of heat, but it's enough heat if left unchecked to potentially cause what's called a meltdown. Right. So this heat that you're talking about, Chuck, is called decay heat. Yeah.

And I've read places where it lasts a week. I've read that it lasts for a year. And I think it actually lasts for a year. It takes a year for a fuel rod to actually shut down to, to go to a cold shut down state where like it doesn't need to be cooled any longer with water. Right. So when you scram something like they did on March 11th, it's not just going to cool down right away. And that's the problem that we're dealing with right now is this decay heat, which like you said is still, it's, it's a ridiculous amount of heat and it requires tons of cooling, right? Which normally should be fine because the Daiichi plant with reactors

one through four have cooling systems and lots of them, right? Yeah. It's a closed loop. So what happens is the water boils and creates a lot of pressure. The pressure is released via steam and the steam actually gets cooled, condensed and reused like a closed loop air conditioning system, not a whole lot different. And the water is recirculated, that water is recirculated back through the system with these electric pumps. Right. And those electric pumps are the key to keeping everything cool. And the problem, well, we'll get to the problem. They have a lot of fail safes in place because, you know, they don't just plug the pump into the wall and say, all right, we're good to go.

Right. Because that would be bad if the power went down. There are backup electric pumps. There are backup. If the power goes down, you can actually, because I believe it's using its own nuclear power to generate, to operate these pumps at first. Right. This is an electricity generating nuclear power plant, right? So it's running itself. But once the plant shuts down, which is what they did, they say, okay, we can grab electricity from the grid. Right. But the grid shut down, which is bad. Yes, that really quick shut the grid down, too. And pretty much right after the control rods were scrammed into the reactors.

So they have another backup. They're like, all right, we got these diesel generators, which are diesel generators are great. They do a great job. Tsunami comes in, water on top of electrical, or I'm sorry, diesel generators makes them to not operate. Yeah, they were submerged. They weren't designed to operate in submerged conditions. And then they said, all right, we've got all these backups in place. The final backup we have is a battery system. Yeah. Battery system kicked in. It worked great. But the problem is it only works for a little bit of, you know, like how many hours? I don't know if it said a few several hours. Yeah. Because the idea is that the battery system is in dire emergency until you get the

grid back going, which shouldn't take that long. Right. Now, also, transportation was knocked out. Supply routes are knocked out. There's no power. They try to get more diesel generators there, but they just couldn't get them in time. Right. So we have a nuclear power plant without power to run these cooling systems. And these are boiled water reactors, which means that the water, you know, like you said, Chuck, it gets its energy or it creates electricity by boiling water. Yeah. Now, these fuel rods are so hot, even with this decay heat that the moment water hits them, even boiling water, the boiled water is keeping them cool. They're so hot. Yeah. They just have to remain underwater. Let's just keep them underwater. That's the key. The problem is,

is they create tons of steam. And that steam is what runs the turbine. And then after it exits the turbine, like you said, it's condensed and then reused as coolant, right? Right. But if those pumps aren't working, all it's doing is producing steam, boiling off water and basically getting rid of the only coolant source they have. Yeah. And if water gets hot enough, it actually something called thermal isos takes place. And that's when it breaks down down into constituent hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Yeah. Or in this case, hydrogen gas. Right. Which is really, really explosive. And that's, that's actually a pretty normal byproduct of even like the proper functioning of a boiled water reactor plant. Yeah. So they have procedures in place to

vent steam normally, but they burn the hydrogen off in a slow controlled burn. Right. When they're venting it to reduce radioactivity and to, you know, keep explosions from happening. Sure. Then you may be wondering, why would they design a system with that uses water to cool and nothing else? Right. The point, the whole reason that somebody ever designed the Mark 1 boiled water reactor is that it's actually has a failsafe built in. The fact that it uses water as a coolant and what's called a neutron modulator, which keeps that thing from going like out of control past, you know, just to sustain max power nuclear fission is whatever you're using as a neutron modulator or moderator. I'm sorry. So as long as the neutron moderator there,

you can have fission, nuclear fission. But if the, if you can't get the control rods in in time, right, and the coolant goes away, the fuel actually won't be able to continue in a fission state because the neutron modulator is not there. Right. So you don't have the coolant, but at least you don't have a meltdown from nuclear fission, right, which is really horrible. Right. So that's why they have this boiled water reactor. But the problem is this water served as a failsafe and it's Achilles' heel. And in this case, Josh, the hydrogen gas we were talking about, the normal reaction got worse because the water boiled away. These fuel tubes were now exposed to air. They got really, really hot and started cracking. And the little uranium fuel pellets,

I think they're the size of a Tootsie Roll, is that right? They overheated and cracked and allowed water to get in there and water's not supposed to be in there. And that's where you had this massive hydrogen gas explosion. Right. And I think was it one of them? Yeah, a reactor four. Or two of them. I think it was several different reactors had this explosion within the reactor building itself. It wasn't like the whole thing exploded. It was contained within the building. They hope. They think not really. Exactly. So we're still getting news at this point because there's a small number of people on the ground and they're not all on the phone with Anderson Cooper. Right. So the information on the inside isn't that readily available right now.

So there were several explosions. Chuck, I think it was like reactors one and three had explosions from this hydrogen gas. They were venting it. They didn't burn it off properly. Right. And the hydrogen built up and up and up. And you remember you need to keep these things wet. You have to keep them underwater under any circumstances whatsoever. They have to be cool constantly. They have to remain underwater. So without these backup generators, without the battery power generators, without their normal electricity, without anything, they finally decide we need to flood these things with seawater, boron enriched seawater. And it was a chemical reaction between the seawater and the hydrogen that caused these explosions. Oh, it was. Yeah. Which we should

say this is very, very, very, very important. That was a conventional chemical explosion. Right. Yeah. It was not a nuclear bomb. Right. It's not possible for a nuclear reactor to blow up like in a nuclear explosion. It's not possible. The danger like with Chernobyl and anything is leaking radiation. It's not like a Hiroshima type of event. Right. So that happens to create a nuclear bomb. What you have to do is take radioactive material that in a subcritical state, which is like what you might have in your front pocket right now, Chuck. Right. Right. It's just plain old lump of uranium who cares. Right. And you have to explode it so fast to create a chain reaction that uses up all of that subcritical material that it skips over the critical stage and goes

right into supercritical. Right. The precision that that requires makes it that there's probably like five people on the planet right now that know how to build a nuclear bomb like that. Right. You can't just do that with fuel. The big threat is the melting of the fuel. Right. Right. And so they flooded it with seawater to which ruins the reactors forever, by the way, we should mention. But that's a better scenario. And apparently these are 40 year old reactors that were not on its last legs as far as they were about to break, but they were near the end of their operating lifespan. Do you want to hear something horrible? No. Reaction number one went online on March 25, 1971. So it should have gone. It should have been decommissioned on March

25, 2011. Oh, really? There was actually a date. There should have been, but apparently TEPCO applied for and received a tenure extension on its operating licenses for those interesting. Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss y'all. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts

as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for that. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Standing at eight feet, two inches tall, Charles Byrne was the tallest man in the world. In fact, it earned him the nickname the Irish giant. And when Charles arrived in London in 1782, he caused quite a stir. But by May the following year, death came calling for Charles in the form of tuberculosis. And while most people were ready to mourn his passing,

one man was plotting with gleeful excitement for a chance to dissect the Irish giant's remains. This January, Grim and Mild Presents will shift focus from the great wide world around us to the universe inside us all in a journey that will span thousands of years and countless borders we plan to unpack the dark and twisted history of healing medicine. So wash your hands, set out your tools and prep for surgery. Grim and Mild Presents Bedside Manners is available now. Find Grim and Mild Presents wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more at GrimandMild.com slash presents. So we have some information here. What does this all mean to the world at large? Well, here's the big problem. Like we said, the fuel isn't going to explode, but it's going to

melt, right? And you said, Chuck, that these little fuel pellets in the fuel rods are like the size of a tootsie roll. Yeah. And about the shape, right? If it melts, when this stuff hits air, it begins to melt. And if it melts, it will no longer be able to be cooled because it's going to be a big, flat, dense glob of nuclear fuel that's melting. And collecting inside of this containment vessel. Right. So the operative word is containment vessel. Right. This extremely hot nuclear fuel that's forming a pool can conceivably melt through the containment vessel. Yeah. And once that happens, if it when it encounters the concrete barrier, this, which is like the fail safe of fail safes, it should not be able to melt through that. It's possible it could. And if it

does, then you have nuclear fuel in the environment. Yeah. And that's when it's beyond catastrophe level. Yeah. And that's a containment vessel that's completely functional and intact. And we don't know what kind of damage these explosions have caused. They might be compromised from the inside to make containment even more difficult. Right. Who knows at this point. So the explosions were kind of jarring, you could say, right? The explosions that reactors one and three. Yes. There was a fire at reactor four. But apparently one of the big problems is a bunch of spent fuel that's no longer being cooled at reactor two. And while when this fuel melts, it can catch on fire. So vapor is bad enough. Right. But if it catches fire, smoke is what's really going to get you. It will

create and carry further radioactive particles that has a much longer half life than the stuff that's going to come out on the vapor. Right. That's the threat. That's a big threat. It is a big threat. So we mentioned that it was the Mark one boiling water reactor that that was over there. GE made these General Electric in the 1960s. They went online and I think 71 you said yes, which is a long time ago. The United States has 23 of these reactors right now at 16 locations, including Oyster Creek in New Jersey, Dresden near Chicago, Monticello near Minneapolis. No reason to freak out right now because well, here's the deal. These these Mark one boilers are are under scrutiny right now. The New York Times ran a piece about these apparently in 1972,

right after they built these things that identified weaknesses and said, hey, we should discontinue this because there's some safety risks. One of the safety risks was a smaller containment design, which they said in 1972 might be more susceptible to explosion and rupture from a buildup of hydrogen. Well, so that seems to be what happened here in Japan. Obviously, GE is not on the hook or anything. They, you know, once you take control of your nuclear power plant as a nation, it's yours. And it's not like you can call up GE and say, hey, jerks, you know, what about all this? So Japan was responsible for, you know, care and upkeep of their own thing. And apparently the Mark ones in the United States

have undergone a lot of modifications over the years, one of which is a change to the Taurus, which is a water filled vessel that encircles the primary containment vessel. So there's all these things in place in the 70s and 80s that the US put in place at our mark ones that they say will prevent something like this. I don't know what was going on in Japan if they were modified at all over the years. I'm sure that'll all come out. Well, apparently it's starting to apparently some at least one GE engineer for the mark one resigned because he thought the mark one was so flawed and apparently GE wasn't doing anything about it. This was in the early 70s. Yeah, but some GE whistle blowers blew, well, blew the whistle on the Fukushima plant,

because apparently they falsified records before. Really? They used dishonest practices in monitoring their own radioactive output. Right. And there was a lack safety culture, basically, by the company's own admission. It's interesting to see what ramifications is going to have a nuclear power because there was a pretty good track record for a couple of decades and a lot of people. It's starting to come around again. Well, yeah, and saying this is actually a green fuel producing technology because it doesn't produce carbon. And we've got a good track record and it's pretty safe now. And these things are like super safe. They can withstand all these different things. What they couldn't withstand was a

combination in Japan's case of these things, like earthquakes and tsunamis. Well, Chuck, it had a good 20 year run where it was starting to gain traction again, nuclear power was, because it was trying to emerge from the shadow of Three Mile Island, right? The partial fuel melt, which is the correct term, meltdown is not actually used in the industry, we should say. Oh, really? Yeah. But partial fuel melt in 1979 in Pennsylvania. That's right. And that was, like you said, Three Mile Island, which is categorized as a level five disaster. Which had local consequences. It was like the fuel melted and pooled, but it didn't escape the containment vessel. But some radioactive material was released into

the surrounding area. Right. But it scared the tar out of everybody. Yeah. Well, China syndrome didn't help much. Yeah, that's true too. And so this disaster in Japan right now is categorized. I've seen it as a six. I've seen it as a five, depending on who you ask. But either way, it's not a good situation, obviously. Right. So what we do know is that as it stands right now, at least, it's not a Chernobyl. And Chernobyl was a level seven, which is as bad as it can get. Yeah. And Chernobyl was a different scenario as well. Definitely. So there were a lot of differences. Remember, we talked about water being a neutron modulator? Yeah. Well, Chernobyl's design used water as a coolant, but had graphite as a neutron

modulator. When their system failed, the graphite caught fire and spewed radioactive smoke, which you'll remember is the worst stuff to have into the atmosphere for 10 days before they got a hole of it. Yeah. And they also tried to keep it quiet, which isn't a wise move when you're talking nuclear meltdown. No, it's not. And by all indications, Japan has been very forthcoming here. They're trying to get good information out. Oh, really? They kept this. They kept the fire at reactor for quiet for enough hours that it ruined their credibility, basically. Oh, really? Yeah. So no one's quite sure. Plus, Japan's like, we just need a 12 mile radius between 12. 12 miles. Get out of there. 12 and 19 miles. Seal up your home. Right. And the U.S. is like,

we say 50 miles and any American that shows up at Narita Airport gets a free flight out of here. Really? Yeah. So the Japanese are probably saying, listen to the guys in America. No, they're not broadcasting it. Well, no. Americans are getting broadcast over there. Well, the citizens, if they knew this. Right. What about Facebook and social media? I'm sure it's getting out like that. But apparently, like the Japanese media, they're known to not really criticize the government. It's just not their culture. Yeah. I got a really good friend in Tokyo and he's gone to Osaka right now with his family, two small kids. He's not trying to be panicky, but he's also got two small kids and he's just kind of plain and safe right now.

Right. So we should talk about radiation, I guess. Yeah. It's actually small kids that are at the biggest risk about this. Always are. With radiate, how do you measure radiation, Chuck? You measure it, Josh, with a unit called a millisievert and it measures the absorption into the human body specifically, not like how much is in the air. This is how much you're absorbing, how much is dangerous to you. So you can measure it in millisievert or microsievert, but the one that's like when you get to one severt, which would be a thousand millisieverts or a million microsieverts, that's when you are in big trouble. Yeah, there's 1,000 microsieverts in a millisievert and then how many millisieverts in a severt?

A thousand. A thousand. Yeah. So one severt, I think, gives you a 10% chance of dying in 30 days and that's just bad. That's ridiculous exposure. I don't think anybody's recorded at any levels like that, right? Yeah, but let's put this into perspective. Right now they're saying in, you're probably hearing on the news, like 167 times the average annual dose that a human gets because we get radiation, I think Americans get 6.2 millisieverts a year through medical diagnostic procedures, dental x-rays, flights, flying in an airplane, smoking, going through those full body scanners, smoking one and a half packs of cigarettes a day, 13 millisieverts per year. I am radioactive. Yeah, well, you're getting it out of your system, buddy. Yes, I am, but I still

probably am because radioactivity is cumulative, which is why they break it up into millisieverts per hour or millisieverts per year because after a little bit of time your body can process this stuff or the half-life of it is spent and it's not deadly any longer, right? Right. But the big problem is when it is still in full bore, a radioactive material, and it's absorbed through your skin, you can breathe it in, you can get it into your tongue, your ears, your eyes, your hair everywhere, you can absorb this radioactive material. And apparently one of the biggest threats or the biggest known threat is, like I said earlier, iodide 131, right? Iodine, right? Iodine 131. So that's important because iodide is actually counteract the effects of radiation,

and people are snapping this up. Apparently, drugstore.com is sold out of iodide right now. Right. And fake iodide is even being sold. There's warnings now about buying fake iodide. I know, and people are eating iodized salt, and I think the salt council came out and said that's not going to do anything for you. The reason people are eating iodide and buying iodide salt tablets, which they should frankly be sending them to Japan. You don't need them here in the US. They actually do need them in Japan. Yeah. With iodine 131, it's a radioactive byproduct of nuclear fission, right? Yeah. Or uranium specifically. And when you absorb that, your thyroid gets this big fat, heavy dose of it. And the thyroid is responsible for some very

fast dividing cells. So once a cell is compromised in your thyroid, that radioactivity is going to spread like gangbusters through your body, especially if you're a kid because you have faster than normal dividing cells anyway, right? Yeah. So that's why thyroid cancer tends to go up in cases of radioactive exposure. Right. If you take iodide, your thyroid actually is going to get as much iodide as it can, but it has a saturation level. Right. So if you expose it to iodide, before you're exposed to radioactive iodine 131, your thyroid's going to be full up and be like, sorry, no more room for iodine here, radioactive or otherwise. Right. And even better, iodine 131 has a half-life of eight days. So all you have to do is basically make sure your thyroid's full

of iodide for eight days in your set. Right. And if you're worried here in the U.S., there's been stuff on the news about the radioactive plume crossing the ocean. Apparently the nuclear submarine, the Ronald Reagan, cruised right on through it the other day and the material was removed with soap and water and it's contamination free. And they said basically this steam that's coming across the ocean is less dangerous than living in Denver, Colorado for a year. Because when you live at high altitudes, you have less atmosphere to block radiation. And just living in Denver, Colorado means you have more radiation than the average American. Right. Plus. But it's still a very small amount. So I'm not saying people in Denver should be like, oh, I need to move.

Yeah. Exactly. They're also, it's not factoring in crime even. You get hit by a bus, you can get shot in Denver. Exactly. Or if you're a smoker, if you go to the dentist and get your head x-rayed, it's like you get radioactive radioactivity as a human being and a little more so as an American. I think that, yeah, I think we're, I think the media is fanning the flames of us losing our perspective as far as radiation hysteria goes. Absolutely. Yeah. What else is there, Chuckers? Well, this was just off the newswire about 20 minutes ago. They said that they have picked up some small amounts of radioactive material in Sacramento, but it was minuscule is what they're saying, not harmful to human health. And so people on the West Coast don't need to be freaking out

at this point from what we can tell. So people in Japan should be worried, but they're even saying in Japan, like, you know, let's see what we can do here. You don't need to be leaving the country unmasked. Yes. If you hear a report that there is radiation coming our way, ask, what's the level? If it's in microceverts, I would advise you not to worry. If it's in millisieverts, start to wonder exactly how many millisieverts. If it's 100 or less, then you are within EPA standards for radiation exposure. But you should probably consider maybe getting out of town for a little while. But I think maybe keeping a calm head and not buying up all the iodide tablets in the world is probably a good idea at this point. Yeah, I got one more little factoid that's interesting

for all the news agencies that are fanning the flames. Apparently, Grand Central Station, New York City, the granite there, and the uranium-lay stone used at the U.S. Capitol building supposedly give off enough radiation that they would not pass a nuclear power plant's licensing test. So they're pretty strict with the licensing. People walking around Grand Central Station aren't in danger of dying from nuclear radiation, so that just kind of puts it in perspective. Or are they? I wish we had that law and order duty. That was appropriate. Well, I guess it's about it. Do you have anything else, Chuck? No? No? Okay. Hopefully you guys have a better understanding of what's going on there. I know I do. Our hearts and minds are with everybody in

Japan. Keep thinking of them. Maybe send some money. Yeah. Maybe send some iodide. Send some life straws. Apparently, life straws are being sent over there in some of these rescue boxes. Yes, kind of cool. I saw that too. And there's always Red Cross, right? Yes. And I guess since that's about it. Oh, if you want to learn more, type in Japan's nuclear crisis in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com. It will bring up just a really great overview of what's going on over there. And since I said handy search bar, it's time for Listener Mail. Yeah, Josh, I thought it'd be appropriate today. You asked a few weeks ago about if you're involved in a program that's helping the world out, send it in. We got a few of these and we're reading

them periodically. And this seemed like an appropriate podcast to do so. So this is from Paul C. in Canada. And he's involved in a program in Northern Canada, helping to start up a project with a group of First Nation folks who are being super proactive about reclaiming and protecting their culture and language. And it's spelled T-L-I-C-H-O. So I'm going to go with Licho or Licho. Nothing that's good. I'm probably wrong. Are concerned that their traditional knowledge and ways of life are not being passed on to their young people who are leaving to find jobs and go to college. In response, they are creating a program to hire some of their dedicated young people for the summer to learn their traditional ways of life. We are looking for

some funding to get the program off the ground. We have applied to an organization called Small Change Fund. It struck me that you folks have a sizeable Canadian brigade in your stuff you should know army. And I'm hoping that you can help me spread the word about the Small Change Fund. I'm of course biased toward my program which is the Licho Summer Culture Education Program. That sounds like a good program. But the Small Change Fund website as a whole is really full of great worthwhile social and environmental programs all looking for small amounts of startup funding less than five grand. If you could mention the Small Change Fund website that is smallchangefund.org to your Canadian fans and everyone actually. I will gladly take

you guys fishing and give you all big high-fives when you come up to Yellowknife NWT which I think is Northwest Territory. I think it is. It's my guess. And do a podcast on the Northern Lights or work how caribou migration works or how to survive in negative 40 degrees for some others such a northern thing. So that is from Paul C. and that is the smallchangefund.org and his program is the T-L-I-C-H-O Summer Culture Education Program. So stop by and visit. Sounds like a good program. Thank you. It's Paul C. huh? Paul C. Thanks Paul. Good idea. If you have a good idea or you have a good idea on how to help Japan. How about that? Yeah specifically. Go on our facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Tweet it to us. S-Y-S-K podcast or send us plain old email to stuffpodcast

at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

The podcast and that's what you really missed brings you back to the choir room for a gloriously gleeky rewatch of all six masterfully musical seasons of Glee. Join cast members Kevin McHale and Jenna Ashkowitz for never before heard stories from the cast, crew, celebrities and you, the fans. From McKinley High to New York City, from the choir room to nationals and from the Super Bowl to a world tour. Listen to and that's what you really missed on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.