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I currently live in Japan with my family. A couple of years ago I taught English to engineers at a nuclear power station in Japan. The individual engineers struck me as very smart, capable and decent people. However, what I witnessed of the system, with its cosy relationship between the government and power companies, a desire to relax safety checks, the employment of large numbers of temporary laborers for maintenance work during outages, etc, was profoundly unsettling. I now hear that at least one of my ex-students is scheduled to take their turn at Fukushima.

@borrrden Why wouldn't people spend at least part of the day outside, given that it was outside the evacuation zone. People would go on living like nothing happened. No one was told to go inside so far outside the plant. We still have readings of 100 uSv /hour 30km from the plant, that would be 2.4 mSv / day, and it's been 12 days already. And that's just where they have readings.

once again "wont pose immediate threat" WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!

And if they have 100 uSv /hour just from air samplings, how many have eaten contaminated food/milk/water before the government tested it? Again in Iitate village YESTERDAY they found 1,170,00 Bq / kg of Iodine in soil, 163,000 Bq /kg of Cesium.

That article about the infants is crazy. The worse this gets, the less everyone covers it. Even the Reuters liveblog is now gone. WHY ISN'T ANYONE COVERING THIS STORY???

@sgl - The story will be covered heavily again when things go further south.

@borrrden We have Japan's Nuclear Safety Technology Center performing a simulation; given they know wind conditions and radiation levels at the plant they have some pretty good data for at least "realistic" assumptions. And we have seen massive radiation at least 30 km from the plant today. You think it realistic that 0 infants in that huge area were exposed to 100 mSv that last 12 days?

@Jojo I am not in a position to say what is realistic or not, and neither are you.

@borrrden It's a very safe bet that some infants have been exposed to 100 mSv. I'm going to believe Japan's own Nuclear Safety Technology Center and Edano himself.

@sgl - Nah, the only dead babies that make the news are abortions.

@Jojo - Calm down. We're on the same side. I'm saying that with the average main gate readings, it's hard to fathom such high doses so far away. Either TEPCOs readings are faulty/bullsh*t, or those readings are outliers and consistent readings will show lower doses.

@Hank Scorpio Tepco has to be bull. How can you get only 1/2 the radiation readings 30 km away? Makes no sense.

@Jojo - Wind patterns could explain a lot. If you compare that one reading to the rest, it's an outlier.

@borrrden Right. They measured the air next to the spinach. The air readings were 103 uSv/ hour next to the elevated readings of the spinach itself.

@Jojo - Page 5 is soil readings, not air readings. The uSv/hour and contaminant levels of I-131 and Cs-137 are accumulated. That particular reading appears to be taken from a particular hot spot which has gotten a heavier dose than most, probably because it lies within the center of a particular wind pattern.

@borrrden It didn't specify. All of the uSv/ hour I have been seeing were air measurements, everything else was in Bq /kg or Bg/L or Bq/m3.

@borrrden OK. In any case, 100 uSv /hour of soil measurements will give you the same dosage. It's still 100 uSv. Or, 1 mSv per 10 hours.

@borrrden That's not correct. A Sv is a dose, the effect of ingestion/inhalation/environment has already been factored in. 1Sv = 1Sv.

@Hank Scorpio Are you sure about that? Just because something contains that much power doesn't mean you will absorb all of it by standing near it (because it emits it in every direction).

@Jojo Are you just using the same number again? Or did you find something else?