Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima

by Jim Mahaffey

If the person sitting next to you seems concerned with the radioactive fish from Japan, the air over the Tokyo Olympics heavy with fallout, or the contaminated junk that washes ashore in Oregon, then caution him or her not to eat a banana. It is crawling with potassium-40, a naturally occurring radioactive nuclide that spits out an impressive 1.46 MeV gamma ray. Neither radiation dose, from eating a banana or a bluefin tuna contaminated with cesium-137 (0.662 MeV gamma), is considered to be the slightest bit dangerous. In fact, tuna fish have been contaminated with radioactive cesium for the past 60 years or so, ever since the oceanic nuclear weapons tests from long ago, and it is used as a radioactive tag to trace migratory routes. The destruction of the Fukushima I nuclear plant may have added to the countdown period when all the detectable cesium-137 will have decayed away, but the danger remains indetectably slight.