Meltdown

Paper, aluminum, lead stop alpha, beta and gamma radiation

An abiding memory of my teenage years was the Chernobyl disaster and how it guilted some UK officials into admitting that yes, there had been a teensy weensy bit of a radiation leak at Windscale near to where I used to go on holiday every year...

So the lack of information about that Japanese reactor is scaring me. I'm still recovering from hearing the sound of an atom bomb test in the Pacific on jliat's webpage (listen if you dare: the sound made me jump out of my seat).

The Japanese government is advising people to stay indoors. That sounds reasonable as highly dangerous alpha particles can be stopped by relatively thin layers of substance (see above), but if there is radiatioactive dust blowing around, I wouldn't be too happy to stay indoors myself anywhere near to the event...