Radiation safety: What you should know

You might be a little freaked out about 11,500 tons of radioactive water being dumped into the Pacific Ocean in Japan, where workers are still scrambling to stabilize an earthquake-crippled nuclear power plant called Fukushima Daiichi. In fact, the words "radiation" and "nuclear" give many people the creeps.

And that's partly because these are concepts that you aren't too familiar with; take a minute to learn the basics here. When you get down to the actual risks involved in the Japan nuclear disaster, things aren't so bad for the general public.