Tabloid Edition

Algarve Golf

You can, if you would like, go and look at our new adventure, Algarve Golf.

It's a pretty simple concept. But banding together as a golf association we can begin to negotiate discounts from various of the golf courses in the Algarve.

And begin we have. Algarve Golf can already get you discounts on roughly half of the courses in the Algarve.

That's just on the green fees of course. We've also managhed to negotiate cut prices in various clubs, pubs and restaurants. There's even money off scuba diving and parachuting.

Over time, it looks like it's going to become a general all purpose money off card for those holidaying in Portugal. As well as doing what it's really meant todo: get money off green fees for memmbers.

 

Nuclear explosion in Japan

There's been a nuclear explosion in Japan.

The Fukushima reactor has blown up after the earthquake and the following tsunami.

As that article asks, what is actually going to be the effect of this? Are we about to see another Chernobyl type disaster? Or are nuclear reactors really as safe as their manufacturers say they are?

So, as far as we can tell at the moment, the radiation coming from the Fukushima explosion is 1/3,600,000 th of the radiation from the Chernobyl explosion. This isn't quite right for a number of complicated reasons (for example, we don't know how far the Japanese radiation will spread, what the total release will be and so on) but it does give an idea of the relative magnitude.

It is 0.00002% of the Chernobyl levels of radiation.

Another way of saying the same thing is that if you were standing at the reactor now you would, in one hour, receive the usual permitted level of radiation for an entire year. About half what you would get if you had a medical CT scan (which is 2,000,- 2,200 micro sieverts). This is of course a very, very, much lower level of radiation than at Chernobyl, where workers got in minutes amounts that killed them.

We just don't have enough information at present but we most certainly are going to find out. Is nuclear power safe or not?