Protective clothing no longer needed to walk near Fukushima plant

--"people wearing casual clothes and no dust masks walk under cherry trees in full bloom."

Sounds like a perfect place for Tepco executives' offices. And LDP headquarters.

So essentially they are saying that they have built a combini nearby, and everything now appears normal.

I will not be strolling around near melted cores of nuclear reactors managed by liars who are chummy with the press and government.

And the 7-11 nearby isn't gunna change my mind either.

This reads like Pravda or other state/sponsored media. Would love to see Kyodo do spot polls on the street, you know considering people here mask themselves before facing reality let alone dystopia.

At the same time, they've also neutralized North Korea, reversed the birthrate, balanced the national budget, completed construction on the 2020 Olympic Village, enforced nonsmoking areas around the country, and have come to a solution to the US military bases in Okinawa that is both fair to the citizens and maintains security in the region.

Well done!

Must be that special kind of Japanese radiation.

Must be that special kind of Japanese radiation.

Lol! Best comment yet!

bull how stupid do these people think the Japanese government think their citizens are why not run tours all over the plant

Pravda indeed. Disgraceful lies and propaganda from Kyodo, doing the LDP and Big Nuclear's bidding.

Japanese people aren't stupid they are playing the same nuclear energy is safe card with the cleanup. Truth of the matter is the radiation inside the plant is so high they can find a "robot" that last longer than 40 mins.

I read an article similar to this on Facebook. If this is not fake news it is the closest thing to it.

zichi Today  11:22 am JST

Guess someone didn't proof read the post. Guy's 150 micro sieverts per hour is a gross error because 0.150 would be too high? 

Where is the error? .150μsv is about the radioactive exposure of eating a banana or living within 50 miles of a coal-burning power plant. It would be wonderful if the hill's exposure was that low, but I think that's unrealistic to expect of a nuclear power plant disaster and on the scales of exposure we're talking about, even 150μsv is not horrible. If you spend two years living in a stone, brick, or concrete building, you are getting about the same exposure. If you fly back to the US and back over spring break, you're getting double the exposure.

There are still too many areas with hotspots up to 10 microsieverts per hour.

That's about the average background radiation a person typically gets in a single day. So while a hot spot 24x the normal background radiation is definitely not a good thing, it's hardly a serious health risk.

https://www-tc.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/files/2011/03/radiation.png

The radiation level near the reactors is 1 sievert per hour, higher inside the buildings and even higher inside the reactors themselves.

Which is probably why no one is recommending you hold your cherry blossom viewing party inside the reactor. Though I be some Cherenkov glow would make a fantastic contrast to sakura pink.

> thepersoniamnow Today  07:04 am JST

So essentially they are saying that they have built a combini nearby, and everything now appears normal.

No, they're not saying that and the article spells out explicitly several ways that "everything" is definitely not normal. Let's not misrepresent a report of progress as a report of the job being finished just because you dislike the nuclear industry.

At no time since 3/11 outside of the nuclear plant has the radiation level ever been that high anywhere any time.

My understanding is that the article refers to areas "within the facility". I.e. the fenced area of the nuclear plant. What is being reported is that conditions have improved for those working at the site. The 150 microsieverts per hour on "the hill" refers to a point 80 meters from the reactor building. The article is pretty clear that this location is still not safe for prolonged exposure (" As long as people stand on the hill for 10 minutes with a helmet and a dust mask"). It's perhaps a little unclear about the Tokyo to New York flight. I think it means an hour on the hill is the same exposure as a flight to New York. I'm not sure why the article is seen as propaganda. Is it hiding anything?

The dust mask I can understand, but why do you need a helmet to stand on the hill? There are no buildings around...

zichi Today  12:29 pm JST

the original post shown above and elsewhere states the level is 150 microsieverts per hour which converts to 1314.87192 millisieverts per year.

Given that no one is proposing anyone stay on that hill for a year, I don't see what point there is in converting units other than to make the numbers seem higher.

What matters with radiation is exposure. For example, a chest x-ray is about 20 μsv, but it lasts about a second. If we converted that exposure to a year-long duration, no doubt it would seem terrifying, but it would also be meaningless because no one is going to sit in front of an x-ray generator for a year.

They're saying that place has a radiation level of 150 μsv per hour, but are also saying people shouldn't stay there for longer than 10 minutes. So for people who go to the hill following directions, their exposure is only going to be 1/6 of 150 μsv, or 25 μsv - about the same exposure of that chest x-ray.

The amount of radiation received Tokyo to New York: 0.55 mSv per 100 block hours

I found a link with those figures. Interesting. The links below describe a 0.1 millisievert (100 microsieverts) and 150 microsievert exposure respectively on a Tokyo - New York flight. Why the differences?

http://www.traveller.com.au/flight-risk-how-much-radiation-do-planes-expose-you-to-1a54m

https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/13877/to-how-much-radiation-are-you-exposed-on-a-transcontinental-flight

But a photo in the original article shows the exposure for the reporters was 0.04 millisieverts and not 40 microsieverts.

I'm having trouble following, zichi. Are 0.04 millisieverts and 40 microsieverts not the same thing?

A frozen underground wall has had only limited effects to prevent groundwater from flowing in the reactor and turbine buildings

Really? By the end of March the daily flow was less than 20 tons per day as compared to about 400 tons per day before the ice wall. A reduction to 5% sounds like a lot more than "limited effects".

If the level is correct then no one without full protective clothing should be there.

Radiation levels never required protective clothing, unless you consider glasses as clothing. Protective clothing is worn to keep radioactive particles off the individual not as some kind of protection from radiation.

zichi Today  07:22 pm JST

You don't understand that there is not an actual hill in the plant or even in the area of the plant and I provided you with a link to a photo to show you that, but you didn't look at it.

Your photo is not really all that useful so long as we don't know precisely which location is "the hill" from the article that visitors are permitted to be at.

So yes, the level of radiation within every area of the damaged plant needs to be known.

You say that as though anyone in this thread has argued otherwise. No one has.

 I am saying that the 150 microsieverts per hour stated in the article is probably a mistake and probably too high. If its correct then workers in that area would be exposed to about 450 millisieverts in one working year. Normal hours + overwork = 3,000 x 150 microsieverts per hour would expose them to 450 millisieverts.

If their work involves standing in that exact spot for 3000 hours a year, that would be alarming. Nothing in this article suggests however that it is the job of any plant worker to do nothing but stand on a hill in a mask and a helmet all year. Even with as ludicrously comic-book evil as people like to portray TEPCO, I think we all agree it's likely that they don't hire people to do nothing more than stand around and expose themselves (to radiation).

Nor does anything in this article suggest that that particular spot on the hill represents the general radioactive level at the plant overall.

I expect they’ll just use a different name?

If you have evidence this is happening by all means share it, but I think you'll agree that nuclear safety is an issue serious enough that no one should just make up information about it because it "feels right".

zichi Apr. 23  10:23 pm JST

That is the place mentioned in the post. 

And your evidence for this claim is...?

You do realize that I am saying the radiation level mentioned in the post must be lower than that? 

I do, but you're doing a rather poor job of making your case for it. Instead of laying out your arguments in a rational way, you threw out some claims without any real evidence directly connected to it and then every time someone questions you on them you toss out personal attacks about how little they understand or how little they listen to you. It makes you seem like what you want is a fight.

As long as people stand on the hill for 10 minutes with a helmet and a dust mask, there are no health effects, the operator said.

Thanks for confirming that there are health effect if you stand there more than 10 minutes, definitely not the place you want to live, radiations are poisonous and can kill you based on the level you are exposed, recommended only for those who are enjoying to breath hot particles.

@zichi - I think you'll find it was the VP of TEPCO, Matsumoto, who ordered the reactors to be built lower, to reduce the need to pipe cooling water from sea level to the 25m high GE designed facility. In a meeting which was minuted, he state that the role of TEPCO was to make money from generating electricity, not to use it to pump water uphill.

I have driven through the area many times. It is just no big deal, people.

I see a lot of people posting against bullying of people from Fukushima, but look at the posts above to see where the bullying comes from. Mostly, these dolts have never been to the Fukushima site, but they are just SURE that people will start dying any day now from some imagined menace. It is really awful and it ought to stop.

People in other areas of Japan might not know this, but radiation levels have been reported in local newspapers since late March, 2011. AT ANY TIME, somebody could have questioned those reports or investigated them, and frankly, a lot of people probably have, but no retraction has been forthcoming. The readings are accurate and scientifically valid. THey are the data of record. They show a rapid and regular reduction of radiation levels throughout the whole region. Believe the science. Or stick to your shaman ways and dubious hearsay.

The hysteria is entirely unrealistic and unsupported by official and scientific observations conducted through the area and reported by reputable sources from day 1. Once people understand that the nuclear hysteria is on a par with people who deny 9/11, Sandy Hook deniers, climate change deniers and other lowlife conspiracy theories, we can put this whole mess behind us and move on.

What is with the helmet? Birds falling from the sky due to flying death from radiation?

NRA, Japan’s nuclear watchdog, concluded on Dec. 26 that the wall has been ineffective in diverting the water away from the buildings. It urged TEPCO to tackle the problem with pumps not the ice wall.

Well in December the NRA had still not allowed Tepco to actually complete the ice wall. By the end of March, AFTER the NRA allowed the ice wall to be completed, the flow was less than 20 tons a day, down from 400 tons a day prior to the wall being built. That doesn't sound ineffective to me. That is over 34 Million gallons less per year that has to be processed and stored.

On the hill, the radiation level in the air was 150 microsieverts per hour, less than the amount of radiation received during a round flight between Tokyo and New York. As long as people stand on the hill for 10 minutes with a helmet and a dust mask, there are no health effects, the operator said.

As has been discussed before it does seem that 150 microsieverts an hour is extremely high,so it must be an error.However, another obvious error is to take radiation readings not on the ground but in the air!!!! Not being avians,the readings should be given at ground level to have any true meaning....,

However, another obvious error is to take radiation readings not on the ground but in the air!!!! Not being avians,the readings should be given at ground level to have any true meaning....,

Not being worms, the readings shouldn't be taken at ground level either. Typically general area readings are taken at waist level or about 1 meter above the gound.

However, another obvious error is to take radiation readings not on the ground but in the air!!!! Not being avians,the readings should be given at ground level to have any true meaning....,

This has been the Japanese trick from day 1 to hide the real levels, caught many time on TV, they always pointed their (highly directional) scintillator detector either toward the sky or keep it horizontal on a stand, parallel to the ground to be sure to never pick what has been deposited.

@Dom Palmer

As I walk on the ground, not above nor in the ground I propose that ground level is the place that radiation levels should be measured - you do see that, don't you?

It was fortunate that the disaster did not happen in (fill in the blank).

Is this unacceptable?

@kurisupisu

You walk on the ground, meaning you are above it. And the worry with radiation is mostly its effect on your organs, hence why the exposure limits are lower for your torso and head than they are for your hands and feet. Thus the scientists and regulations propose that chest height, approximately one meter ABOVE the ground) is the place that radiation levels should be measured - you see that, right?