Mirage_GSM wrote:
I'd be very interested to hear your opinion. An acquaintance of mine used to live about 50km south of Fukushima, but she has since moved away from there.
I'll be writing based on the facts from the authorities and news reports...
*Radiation
Radiation level and fallout measurements are reported on a real time basis on government websites.
http://www.mext.go.jp/english/radioacti ... /index.htm
There were two major spikes in radiation level due to several incidents after the earthquake. (Intentional discharge of pressurized air in the reactor, explosion in the housing of the reactor)
However it's been a few weeks after those events, and we can see that the radiation level has pretty much come down to normal level in Tokyo. (Less than 0.1 microsieverts / hour)
http://mextrad.blob.core.windows.net/pa ... yo_en.html
The readings in Sendai is about 5 times the normal level, but this is still far from causing any health concern.
http://www.mext.go.jp/component/english ... 040624.pdf
The figures are considerably high in the surroundings of Fukushima power plant.
Government has issued evacuation notice to 20km radius around the plant, however certain areas (especially north-western direction) are showing high radiation level outside this radius, possibly due to wind direction.
http://www.mext.go.jp/component/english ... 040819.pdf
In my opinion you would want to avoid staying in places where the reading is over 5 microsieverts/h.
*Power plants
The authorities are working 24H to bring the situation under control, but the outlook is still unpredictable.
The radiation level is extremely high around the premise which makes all the repair task difficult for the workers.
It may take months or a full year to actually stabilize these reactors to safety, then only they can be dismantled (which is a process of 10s of years)
Major radiation leakage to the atmosphere is not observed after March 21 as per the readings mentioned above.
However we still can't rule out the possibility of further reactor breach, although they are doing their best to avoid such event.
Some amount of water used for cooling the reactor which was highly contaminated went in to the ocean.
They decided to contain such water in containment tanks, but in turn they had to dump the low-radiation water in those tanks to the sea to make space.
This was unavoidable under the circumstances but deeply regretted.
I don't think Japan would ever think of building new nuclear plants after an event like this.
The assessment so far would be "worse than Three Mile Island, better then Chernobyl" but how much radioactive material was actually released is not known yet.
We should still keep a close watch on the amount of discharge.
Regrettably the whole incident is raising concern in the world. I seriously hope the situation gets contained as early as possible.
*Impacted areas and damage
Earthquake damage was big, tsunami was devastating.
Coastal area of Pacific side of Norther Japan is totally wiped out by tsunami, as far as 4km inland.
About 15000 people reported dead, about the same missing. More than 150000 people displaced and still taking refuge in shelters.
Rebuilding these areas will be a long and tough task.
*Life in Tokyo
The impact of earthquake in and around Tokyo was mixed.
The shake was unusually big but we didn't see any building collapse. No riots or panic.
Trains stopped for the entire day and people had to walk from their office to home.
Power shortage was announced due to the power plant failure, and streets in the night became considerably darker.
All the TV stations went into crisis report mode and MadokaMagica airing got postponed indefinitely. Damn.
This has pretty much come back to normal within a few weeks and people are resuming normal life here.
I've heard that some reports overseas suggest Tokyo has become a ghost town...totally untrue...
The radiation spill did cause a lot of confusion, but mass panic seems to have been avoided.
The level observed would "pose no immediate risk to health"...government spokesman loves this phrase
(Which is scientifically correct but people are getting really skeptical)
*Prospects?
We need to decrease power consumption by 25% toward the Summer season...obvious impact to the economy and public life.
Very little time to prepare.
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