Jdietz

top right hand side of the graphic states the units in microGray/h = microSievert/h

Edit: Tyways beat me to it.

Irradiated food is not the same as food contaminated with radioactive particles, the former doesn't re-radiate anything after treatment, it's just sterile. The latter will

radiate you from the inside while it passes your body, and you may even incorporate some of the radioactive isotopes.

True, at these levels it won't be much, but I'd prefer irradiated food over this stuff

From midnight's press release http://www.tepco.co....11031905-e.html

- At Units 5 and 6, in order to prevent hydrogen gas from accumulating within the buildings, we have made three holes on the roof of the reactor building for each unit

It looks like they finally went from reactive to pro-active.

Elcent, from prior reports, some of the monitoring equipment in areas around the plants and along the coast in tsunami affected areas are either non-working and/or without electricity... I don't find that all that hard to believe, under the circumstances, since many many things in those areas are non-working right now... If you have some evidence information is being censored, please do share it here.

There's a great live map (you need to zoom in to see details of specific areas or places) The range is from 0 - 749 nGy/h

Not surprisingly, Miyagi and Fukushima are completely N/A, as every single reading is Under Survey, also known as censored.nGy/h (nano- Grays per hour)Ishikawa is reported also as Under Survey.

... says the sooth-sayer.

Things like this run easily on 1.5 v batteries and don't need power electric. Proof enough?

Funny enough though those battery operated thingies don't connect all that well to the automated data gathering at SPEEDI, the place where your automated map gets its underlying data from.

http://www.bousai.ne.jp/eng/

I am using the same data as your doomsday map, and arrive at a largely different conclusion:

over the last 3 days, the HIGHEST reported level, at Ibaraki has been dropping by around 100nGy/h per day.

If I would have to produce a danger map, I would color everything below 1 μSv/h as 'mostly harmless', seeing it would take around 3.5 YEARS of constant radiation to even get a 30mSv dose, or 17 YEARS to get at the 150mSv currently used as the allowed level for plant workers.

NONE of the reported levels even come close to 1 μSv/h, Ibaraki is currently at 662nGy/h (0.6 μSv/h), all other reported levels are at least an order of magnitude lower.

Radiation cloud movement

Actually: A simulation of the movement of a radiation cloud, assuming that the reactors are continuously spewing out radioactive particles at a constant rate. Not based on any real data except extrapolated wind.

it covers from the 12th to the 17th and I guess it's made with actual data, even with low radiation which was/is sneaking out of there. This also explains the low radiation in Tokyo.

IIRC that map is the same one posted on the 13th, hasn't been updated since. It's a model based on a 'make it pretty' amount of particles (constant at 0.1*10^19 units), the real winds of the 12th and 13th, and forecasts through the 17th. It was on some German language website, need to go back a lot of pages to find it again.

Data is updated every minute so each time you visit this page you should see the graph update. Units are in uR/hr. Highest levels detected during March 15 Fukushima incident 36uR/hr about 3x normal background levels. graph here click

Thanks for that, new one to monitor

Yet another new unit, microRad per hour. To convert to 'our standard' microSievert, divide by 100.

Radiation cloud movement

Actually: A simulation of the movement of a radiation cloud, assuming that the reactors are continuously spewing out radioactive particles at a constant rate. Not based on any real data except extrapolated wind.

Some very interesting reading and analysis of the current situation, without the usual hyperbole here: http://mitnse.com/

Information about the incident at the Fukushima Nuclear Plants in Japan hosted by http://web.mit.edu/nse/ :: Maintained by the students of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT

In other good news, it looks like the reported SPEEDI radiation levels are falling across the board.

http://www.bousai.ne.jp/eng/

Ibaraki is down from 950+ two days ago, to 860 something yesterday, to 761nGy/h right now. That station has continuously reported the highest levels, at least 10x the other sites. All other numbers also look lower.

SPEEDI reports levels in nGy/h, divide by 1000 to get MicroSievert/h (μSv/h)

Hydrogen explosions merely damaged the outer structure in reactors #1, #3 and #4, and the torus at the bottom in #2

The containment structure you see around the reactor vessel is mostly intact (reports of possible cracks in #2 and maybe #3 reactors)

2nd day of SDF water injection completed

http://www3.nhk.or.j...lish/18_28.html

Interesting tidbits:

- Speaking to reporters, the chief of staff of the Air Self-Defense Force, Shigeru Iwasaki, said SDF members who engaged in the operations were exposed to no more than several millisieverts of radiation.

- Later on Friday, elite units from the Tokyo Fire Department are to discharge more water at the plant.

Sorry mate, you lost me: were you having a go at me or something?

No not you, if you read back a bit, there was a name-calling post I was referring to. Didn't want to waste a post to it, so included it in my first reply.

Edit: was referring to this one:

Well I appreciated it, thanks Elcent.

At least it's a change from the usual copynpaste news articles which none of us really need because we know where to get news if that's what we want.

It would be good if attempts to DISCUSS the news weren't squashed by the bombardment of news pastes by the self nominated thread nazi.

Elcent, from your post, it's not at all clear where these readings were taken, or what they're supposed to represent... If the graphic itself isn't clearly self-explanatory, you as the poster have the duty to provide the explanatory information for those reading here.

compare from April/May 2010 and today

http://park30.wakwak...iger_index.html

Tokyo Geiger Counter Japan Live: Tokyo Geiger Counter Live

I will try to interpret the graphs.

The bottom one is from December 2010, before all the trouble, and shows a Mean value of 14 cpm (counts per minute), which translates in around 0.14μSv/h. Normal background radiation can be anywhere between 0.10-0.30μSv/h depending on your location.

The top one is from the last couple of days, and shows a mean value of 18cpm, so around 0.18μSv/h, just a tad elevated but well within the normal background radiation variation.

Doesn't seem at all worrying to me. You do see a nice one-shot peak today around 14:00 of 33μSv/h maybe the start of spraying?

Compare this with a peak of 27μSv/h at the 'normal situation' bottom graph, and you'll agree that at this particular site there is nothing much happening.

IAEA has posted an update to their web site today, including on the issues with Reactors 5 and 6.. But nothing about worker radiation exposure.Japan Earthquake Update (18 March 2011, 06:10 UTC) Temperature of Spent Fuel Pools at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant - UPDATED

Unit 4 13 March, 19:08 UTC: 84 °C Unit 5 17 March, 03:00 UTC: 64.2 °C 17 March, 18:00 UTC: 65.5 °C Unit 6 17 March, 03:00 UTC: 62.5 °C 17 March, 18:00 UTC: 62.0 °C The IAEA is continuing to seek further information about the water levels, temperature and condition of all spent fuel pool facilities at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

http://www.iaea.org/...miupdate01.html

The IAEA can only confirm that they received the data but didn't measure itself. Normal temperature should be around 25 degree C.

IIRC normal temperature is around 40C, temperatures now around 60C, and increasing by around 5C per day, reaching boiling point in about 7-8 days. After that, if the pools are full, there is still 15x15x15 meters of water to boil off, so no immediate danger there.

Edit: This is for the #5 and #6 plants, #3 is boiling (or close to boiling dry), #4 is next.

Without citing the source, a Swiss daily newspaper reported in its ticker with the time stamp 07:58 UTC that a representative of TEPCO told AFP that the Prime Minister's order that TEPCO must not withdraw its workers from the site means that these workers have to expose themselves to radiation and "die". "The question is not whether TEPCO collapses, but whether Japan collapses", Prime Minister Kan reportedly said.

Don't know how to search the AFP site for this.

If this is true, I would recommend to have the workers pulled out and instead have the PM and the TEPCO board of directors take their place.

BTW I'd think the engineers on the ground wouldn't have to be ordered in but will go willingly knowing very well what's at stake.

The (Air Force) personnel were scrubbed down with soap and water, then declared contamination-free.

Sounds like a job some Thai professional women would be good at. I bet the aviators wouldn't mind.

Just wondering: The core reactor containment vessels are metal, are they not? If you dump cold water on super hot metal of a car motor, you crack the block. I assume the experts on the scene have their bases covered, ...though they appear to have done some bloopers thus far.

The Steel core (10cm+ of steel) is covered by a concrete containment structure. No worries on it cracking by spraying water.

T @BreakingNews: Chicago mayor says passengers on flight from Tokyo had set off radiation detectors at O'Hare - Chicago Trib Tokyo flight triggers O'Hare radiation detectors - Chicago ...‎ -

http://www.chicagobr...0,4216493.story

edit to add, not that I am overly worried by this development but wondering about flights landing here from Japan? Any monitoring being done?

OK Thread Nazi is Back again (in reply to one of the more sour posts)

- We try to get sources as there is a lot of misinformation / misquoting / misunderstanding of what radiation levels / units mean.

- We do have a couple of real experts on this site, which helps a lot of getting a grip on the current situation

- We also try not to allow pro/anti nuclear energy politicking as this only detracts from the ongoing situation

- Also a lot of "news" agencies, especially foreign ones love to cherry pick the news or use laden terms to further push their agenda.

In reply to this post:

- Yes, there is radiation monitoring done here in Thailand on all flights arriving from Japan

- There are KI pills being distributed to travelers to Japan or coming from Japan when needed.

Source: BKK post.

You can extend a tourist visa anywhere, you are a tourist, right, so you are expected to travel around.

nm

Good morning again, now almost one week after the Quake, and still no 'earth-shattering *kaboom*'

One observation about sending in robots / drones / remote toy helicopters etc.:

Unless these things are specially radiation shielded, their processors and other electronics will be interfered with by the high radiation levels, and they will end up inert blocking the path even more, or worse, start to behave erratically, possibly destroying even more. See how satellites are hardened to keep functioning, and that is at a way lower radiation level than inside a plant.

If you want to take a trip to Bangkok, many places in Chinatown selling all kinds of plastic containers (bags, boxes, bottles) in smaller amounts.

If it's a CD, try if you can find an old CD drive (not DVD), the lower speed the better. They usually read marginal disks a lot better.

21:32 Kanto earthquake Japanese Scale J4, Magnitude M5.8, no Tsunami warning. Epicenter Chiba depth 40km.

Thanks for looking in to it!

Monty one is an inline image from another site, not a local upload.