You mean the logrithmic one labeled "Arbitrary units"?

Interesting article in the WSJ -- I took special note of the GE retirees being called back to work the Japan disaster. There's much to be said for institutional knowledge that only comes with experience.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424..._LEFTTopStories

MARCH 18, 2011
GE Steps Up Aid in Reactor Crisis


Last weekend GE activated a command center in Wilmington, N.C., staffed with 70 engineers and technical experts working full time on the crisis. In addition, GE said it has tapped a network of more than 1,000 current and retired engineers. Retirees have been providing necessary historical information on the reactors, including walking through in detail the modifications made to the containment designs decades ago.

"A lot of our pensioners and longer career employees have had familiarity with that," Mr. Klapproth said.

Yep thats the one,

I was expecting the Log scale to go down the 1 part per million not 1 part per thousand.

To have some parts of California getting between 1 part per 10 and 100 of the radiation compared to a few hundred miles downwind from eastern Japan came as a bit of a surprise especially considering the distances involved and also considering the following link and the Estonian coal ship sample I mentioned earlier which was about 900 miles away from Chernobyl.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Radiation_levels_2

I'd be curious to see that model with readings that do down to 1 part per million. I'd be even more curious to see what 1 was, and I'd rent out a couple of body parts to get reading from the San Onofre sensors.

incidently, check out the chart refernced in "Needed scale and context for Fukushima" for reading at the front gate to the complex


Also, watch the EPA radnet reports. They don't give public access for realtime readings, but publish quarterly reports. It'll be good for an afteraction evaluation w/o the newsies histeronics.
http://www.epa.gov/narel/radnet/erdonline.html
pCi = PicoCurie

Actually I think you will find that its a matter of search and rescue teams discontinuing SAR operations, meaning search for living victims of the disasters - it has moved into the recovery phase, meaning corpse recovery. Frankly some SAR units don't do recovery (as well), and it is not a task I would wish upon my worse enemy. Add to this, resources such as food, equipment and gasoline to power that equipment are still extremely scarce in these areas affected by the disasters.

Rescue teams have to make this difficult decision - if they can't rescue, is their presence to perform recovery in a disaster zone outweighed by the literal cost of being in the disaster area? Japanese authorities may also put corpse recovery at a lower priority than other efforts, I dont know. But in no case that I'm aware of is any rescue team being pulled at all because of the risk of radiation, which I think is the premise of Pete's post.

Looks like it was less a failure of imagination than a dearth of responsible regulation and ineffectual oversight.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17...-accidents.html


Japan Nuclear Disaster Caps Decades of Faked Reports

By Jason Clenfield - Mar 18, 2011 4:52 AM ET

The unfolding disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant follows decades of falsified safety reports, fatal accidents and underestimated earthquake risk in Japan’s atomic power industry.

Unfortunately the attitude toward safety regulations and precautions discussed in the article is not unique to either Japan or the nuclear power industry. Example: Despite all kinds of studies and solid statistics, you will still find people talking on their cell phones while driving without seat belts.

It's hard to believe that these Japanese disasters have only been going on for one week. Psychologically it seems longer - at least it does to me.

Lono: That's one hang-up from using news sources that come from blogs that have a different emphasis. The people at ZeroHedge have a good understanding of economics, and they can pick up fast-moving stories, but they don't always have the background to interpret why things are happening. So the underlying reason behind events may be somewhat different than is stated in the stories.

Pete #2

WOW ... this is getting deep.

Check the following news article, again coming from the economics blog Zerohedge (quoting the Daily Mail), now showing the director of TEPCO crying openly about the situation.


http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tepco-d...ushima-disaster


And the start of the story says ...

"The Daily Mail has released a dramatic picture showing the emotional exhaustion of TEPCO managing director Akio Komori who is openly weeping as he leaves a conference to brief journalists on the true situation at Fukushima, following his acknowledgment that the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens. "A senior Japanese minister also admitted that the country was overwhelmed by the scale of the tsunami and nuclear crisis. He said officials should have admitted earlier how serious the radiation leaks were. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said: 'The unprecedented scale of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, frankly speaking, were among many things that happened that had not been anticipated under our disaster management contingency plans." This is precisely as Zero Hedge had expected would happen all along, following our recurring allegations of a massive cover up by the Japanese government. And furthermore as we predicted a week ago when we said that continued government lies and subversions would make the situation untenable once the population loses faith in the government, this is precisely what has happened."

I guess there's also an issue about whether people living in the vicinity of the plant received radiation doses that were much higher than they were being told.

So if I read between the lines - what they now appear to be acknowledging is that some of the employees at this nuclear power plant may have received lethal (or near-lethal) doses of radiation. That conclusion is backed up by a second comment in the media (sorry I don't have the link) where a Japanese official with their own nuke safety agency was quoted as being near-to-tears about the sacrifices being made by some of the workers at the power plant.

Clearly, there must be inside knowledge about the health effects on these workers that is not being told to the public right now.

Pete #2

Time to get your Geiger counters out, if you own one.



http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/18/jap...diation/?hpt=T2


Although it would appear the CTBTO has not yet released the recorded amount of radiation levels.

It would be useful to find out the actual Counts per Minute from the Geiger Muller tube and counter they are actually reading compared to normal background of 4-5 CPM when I was a school boy at nuclear physics class when at school.

The amount must have been somewhat reasonable considering that the CTBTO is able to determine the atomic species and ionizing radiation type to be able to say the sensor at Sacramento was actually detecting the Fukushima radiation release and wasn't from some other local naturally or man made occurring source.