The Japanese Radiation Cartoon Meltdown

The Japanese Atomic Energy Agency only wanted to “make the hard words used in the nuclear power industry” clearer. It was only trying to help the ladies understand nuclear energy with an online cartoon of a fist-waving woman yelling at a frustrated man.

“If we compare radiation and radioactivity to a quarrel between husband and wife,” the text explained, “angry voice of the wife is ‘radiation,’ the excited state which the wife is in and which causes her to shout angrily is ‘radioactivity,’ and the angry wife shouting to the husband is ‘radioactive material’ itself.”

Published in 2010, the page was taken down Monday. “This discriminates against women, which is inappropriate,” said a spokesman, who may have caught a little "radiation" at home. Japan’s reactors are still offline after explosions and meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, site of the worst accident since Chernobyl in 1986.

Tokyo Electric Power admitted last month that more than twice as much radiation was released following the accident than regulators estimated. No word on how many angry wives that adds up to, but one female theoretical physicist was moved to tweet, “JAEA, what’s the matter with you?” Hardly glowing praise.