#Japan's Nuclear Safety Committee Chairman: #Radioactive Fallout May Be Severe Enough to Cause Internal Radiation Exposure in Some Locations

"Now they're telling us" Part II. (Part I is my previous post, about Reactor 1 potential meltdown.) Government kills, by not sharing information. I'm sure the Committee kept refining and refining their simulation without telling anyone outside their Committee so when they presented it was neat and perfect. That's how these bureaucrats are.

From Asahi Shinbun (in Japanese, ink added; 11:34PM JST 3/23/2011), reporting the same press conference that Yomiuri Shinbun was reporting on:

Japan's Nuclear Safety Committee announced for the first time its simulation based on the SPEEDI [System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information, collected by Japan's Ministry of Education and Science] data as to the radiation level and the radioactive material fallout following the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident. According to the simulation, in the most extreme case where radioactive iodine spreads from the Plant toward northwest and south it is possible to have internal radiation exposure of the thyroid gland exceeding 100 milli-sievert in 12 days, even outside the 30-kilometer evacuation zone.

The Committee calculated the internal radiation exposure of the thyroid gland of a one year old child, considered the most vulnerable to radioactive iodine, under the extreme condition that the child has been outside from 6AM on March 12 till midnight on March 24. The Committee calculated the possible amount of radioactive iodine that has been released, based on the monitoring data from various cities and towns.

According to the calculation, the area where one (a 1-year-old child) would suffer 100 milli-sievert irradiation if stayed outdoors all day everyday for 12 days included Minami-Soma City, Iidate Village, Kawamata-cho (the last two produced vegetables with high radioactive iodine and cesium concentration) which are located northeast from the Plant, and Iwaki City, which is located south. 100 milli-sievert is the level where the decision is made whether potassium iodide should be administered. If indoors, the level would drop to 1/4 to 1/10.

Committee Chairman Haruki Madarame and his officials told the press that they assumed the extreme case in their simulation, and that there was no need for any immediate action.

The committee started to collect SPEEDI data on March 16, and started to do the simulation on March 20 when the wind turned inland.

The red dot in the middle is Fukushima I Nuke Plant. The red dot to the south of the first one is Fukushima II Nuke Plant. The dotted circle indicates the 30-kilometer evacuation zone (20-kilometer evacuation zone, and 20-30 kilometer "stay indoors" zone).

Tweet