Reply #12: Don't worry, be happy [View All]

[robdogbucky]

Official: Fukushima radiation release falling

Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission estimates the amount of radioactive release from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant at around 1 terabecquerels per hour as of Sunday. A government advisor says he thinks the amount is gradually falling.

The commission announced its latest estimate on Monday, and compared the level to the 154 terabecquerels per day on April 5th.

Kenkichi Hirose, a Cabinet Office advisor in charge of the Nuclear Safety Commission, told reporters that he believes the amount of radioactive release has been declining judging from the current conditions of the plant...

When Japan raised the severity rating of the Fukushima nuclear disaster on April 12th, the commission announced its estimate that 630,000 terabecquerels of radiation had been released into the atmosphere from March 11th till April 5th. At that time, the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency offered its own calculation of 370,000 terabecquerels.

...The agency said its estimate is about one-tenth of what was released in the 10 days following the Chernobyl accident on April 26th, 1986, and the Nuclear Safety Commission's estimate is even higher.


Tuesday, April 26, 2011 12:50 +0900 (JST)

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/26_11.html



Crowdsourcing Japan's radiation levels

A group of motivated individuals have come together to create a community approach to gathering radiation data in Japan.

"..."We were getting frustrated with what was being reported in the media, what was being released by TEPCO, what was being released by the government," said Sean Bonner, co-founder of Safecast.org, which is currently partially self-funded, partially funded via a Kickstarter fundraiser.

"The information was just kind of unreliable, not updated frequently, no way to fact-check it... So, we just started thinking: What happens if we go get numbers ourselves? Like, is that an option?"

...Bonner said that one of the members of HackerSpace, a collective involved with Safecast, has family just outside the initial evacuation zone in Fukushima Prefecture. "They were told that the their area was safe, and so the guys from Tokyo HackerSpace took a Geiger counter and drove up there," said Bonner.

"And they're farmers, organic farmers, and they're in this area that they were told was okay, but the numbers were off the charts – they were high. And then 10 days later, that area was evacuated as well."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/04/201142317359479927.html