Danger Zone?

Cut Your Radar Some Slack. If There’s Any Radiation to Fear on Your Boat, It Will Come From Where You Least Expect It.

- Jason Y. Wood

I blame Three Mile Island. A lot of people reading this will probably point out they had fears dating back to before 1979, but that’s pretty much the earliest memory that cemented the word in my head: radiation. Yellow signs for “fallout shelters” pointing to the basements of our elementary schools, the made-for-TV movie The Day After, about the aftermath of nuclear war, and many other cultural signifiers wormed their way into my young psyche. There was no doubt about it, radiation was bad.

Now, looking back, one unsung victim was marine radar. What should have been Star Wars-level-cool technology was instead vilified with more stay-away-from-that remonstrations than a beat-up white van leaving a trail of empty candy wrappers around the perimeter of the playground.

“People hear the word radiation and it scares them because we’re sending out a little blip of energy and it’s energy that’s coming home,” says Eric Kunz, senior product manager for Furuno USA. “But it’s not the same kind of energy. Nuclear radiation is associated with change in the biological structure of a cell.”