Al Jazeera's Steve Chao reported on September 17.
He first meets Kouta Kinoshita, an independent journalist whom I have quoted several times here and who has been spearheading the grassroots effort to measure the radiation levels in many parts of Tohoku, Kanto, and now in Chubu and Kansai and beyond. He has also urged from the beginning of the crisis for people to leave Tohoku and Kanto, including Tokyo, as the contamination levels there are much more grave than the national or municipal government has admitted. In the interview, he says there are many spots in the Tokyo Metropolitan area where the radiation levels exceed those in Chernobyl where people had to evacuate.
Kinoshita's blog (in Japanese) is full of anecdotal but excellent information of change in people's health in various parts of Japan. Some of them may be just rumors, but many write their own experiences in the comment sections.
Then a mother and her young daughter who live in Tokyo. She says her daughter has been having symptoms that she never had before the accident: severe joint pains, fatigue, deep rings under her eyes, diarrhea. The mother says the daughter got better right away when they temporarily moved from Tokyo for the summer.
Then he goes to see one of the government researcher, Toru Kikuchi, sporting his glass badge for radiation monitoring, who assures him and the Al Jazeera audience that it's all just psychological, and that the radiation is not much different from before the accident.
Amazing. Not much higher? What planet does he live on? I think this is the same Mr. Toru Kikuchi who said the following back in April (from Mainichi Daily English article dated 4/13/2011, which has since been removed; I got the copy from this blog):
In its announcement, the Japanese government said that 370,000 to 630,000 terabecquerels of radiation are estimated to have been released from the Fukushima plant. Regarding that amount, Toru Kikuchi, general director of the Japan Association on Radiological Protection in Medicine, said that “compared to contamination caused by atmospheric nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States and the Soviet Union since the 1950s, the amount of radiation is very small.”
Kikuchi is with the Jichi Medical University Radioisotope Center. Jichi Medical University is a private university, but Al Jazeera is excused for calling him "government" researcher as he has helped the government promote the notion that it's all in people's head, the radiation.
30-Day free trial by following the link.
Tokyo Time
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48 comments:
The highest Tokyo value at the Radiation Defense Project's Nationwide Soil Testing Project (that you are linking to) shows a single Tokyo measurement in a plantation area in Edogawa-ku (out of over 30 measurements) in the Preferred Relocation Area band ("citizens are given the right to evacuate") of the Chernobyl evacuation zones. The value is derived from a Bq/kg value (3693Bq/kg) converted by a factor into Bq/m^2.
"The levels there [in some areas of Tokyo] are the same as in parts of Chernobyl where people had to evacuate." Kinoshita quote in the clip
Not my view, just sayin'…
I think mentioning the woman and daughter is a disservice for us who are trying to raise awareness for the severity of this accident. Without any tests done on the girl, it's purely anecdotal. Those symptoms could be attributed to a whole pile if causes, and it extremely unlikely symptoms would appear so quickly at these doses.
I'm very concerned for my children, and highlighting this woman and her daughter makes concerned people like us look ridiculous.
>I'm very concerned for my children, and highlighting this woman and her daughter makes concerned people like us look ridiculous.
Sorry your comment is incomprehensible. A concerned mother make you, a concerned parent, look ridiculous? What am I missing?
> it extremely unlikely symptoms would appear so quickly at these doses
A triple meltdown is also extremely unlikely.
But yeah, could be other reasons (if so what could trigger multiple symptoms at once), could even be psychological (does it matter?) - remember, we're in unknown territory.
No, I agree.
The situation is dire...that should be a given--but for ignorant people, who only follow this story occasionally--that child is not the best representative for demonstrating the effects of radiation.
Anyone can claim joint pain and being tired--I believe this mother and she's probably correct--but if people are going to be moved to get involved--they can't just say someone is tired...
I support Japan...this is an absolute despicable nightmare--SOLELY CAUSED BY TEPCO, THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY, GE, and JAPAN'S GOVERNMENT--THIS NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED...but these entities pay people to try and discredit claims...so, if the citizens want to fight for their rights, they better document the most severe cases.
U.S. is protesting nuclear power in NYC and Nationwide on October 1.
Please help support Japan and shut these horrible plants down!
STAND WITH JAPAN!
Here's the info:
http://www.prleap.com/pr/181214/
I am in Kansai, I was concerned for my child after nosebleedings (especially when it happened after we ate beef, and we knew it could have been highly contaminated only AFTER one month). So I asked around for testing, I wanted the WBC to have a complete check. The hospital said all WBC of the prefecture were sent to Fukushima, then they called the prefectural gov. after my insistence, they adviced us to go to Fukushima to do the test...This is sheer joking with people, isn't it? I was appaled...The feeling is that it is fobitten to show and express concern over radiation, and if you do, you are targeted and looked down, or simply ignored, just a feeling eh.
Anyway, I agree the mother in question should have tried to substantiate a little more the reasons of her concern (has she got a geiger counter showing high numbers? Has she bought food from Tohoku or her daughter's school does? Has she asked other mothers in the same area? Etc). The way her concerns were reported leads to think she and her daughter are surely under psychological stress, more than under a real health threat.
For those who are critical of the mother in the video for not substantiating her fear, for all we know she may well have done that, and Al Jazeera may have decided to edit that out or didn't ask. Who knows. Just don't judge only by 3 minute news clip. Besides, the mother would know that her daughter didn't have rings under the eyes before Fukushima. It's unscientific not to consider the effect of radiation, IMHO.
I think I have had enough Busby video links in my SPAM filter. Is there some kind of campaign going on?
I saw this link as well, which claims:
Experts say Fukushima 'worse' than Chernobyl
I watched the video a couple of times and no where in it could I find the "expert" who says Fukushima is worse than Chernobyl.
It also says:
At least one billion becquerels of radiation continue to leak from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant each day even though it is now more than five months after the March earthquake and tsunami that damaged the facility. Experts say that the total radiation leaked will eventually exceed the amounts released from the Chernobyl disaster that the Ukraine in April 1986. This amount would make Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster in history.
But this is absurd given it would take decades at the present rate to catch up with Chernobyl.
I agree Fukushima is worse than Chernobyl in many respects, but the kind of Yellow Journalism we see going on these days is appalling. I found the AL JazzEarache report to mostly rubbish.
People are falling for all sorts of nonsense, and I have heard reports that Tokyo will have to be evacuated, which is just a misreading of Kan's recent statement that during the March crisis he contemplated evacuating Tokyo!
In the meantime, check out this article please:
Japan’s Nuclear Disaster: Radiation Still Leaking, Recovery Still Years Away?
by Richard Wilcox / September 19th, 2011
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/09/japan%E2%80%99s-nuclear-disaster-radiation-still-leaking-recovery-still-years-away/
la primavera: I was going to say that she may have had her good reasons for her statements and it may be just the video showing only those facts...however they should have paid more attention on that, just to make the message more reliable and based on some evidence, or at least on some little research from that mother.
Just to specify: I don't expect anything more dramatic neither I want to minimise psichological stress, in fact, I perfectly understand that mother and I am grateful to her for expressing her fears openly.
I am just seeing things from the standpoint of the common people watching the video...who don't know anything about radiation or about Tokyo's situation and think everything is ok now...by watching a mother concerned because of those sympthoms they may believe it could be just an overreaction of a single person under psychological stress instead of ALSO real possible threat coming from radiation...I hope I made clear my point.
Thank you very much for reporting about the increasing health problems observations and the concerns the people will inevitably have.
Nosebleeding, pains and energy-lessness is a sign of low radioactive poisoning and has been observed regularly in conjunction with former nuclear pollution.
This usually hits the weakest peole first, the young and the old.
However, it will take some time until these things and the more "clinically relevant" phenomena like spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, reduced birth weight, children cancers etc will be reflected in the statistics, making a correlation between the nuclear accident undeniable even for the most staunched nuclear advocates.
But we probably will have to fight against a wall of silence until this knowledge becomes common sense as it is already in Germany, for example.
The nuclear industry knows it will be dead when the truth comes to light and so they fight and use their paid puppets in parliament and government as long they can.
"The highest Tokyo value at the Radiation Defense Project's Nationwide Soil Testing Project (that you are linking to) shows a single Tokyo measurement in a plantation area in Edogawa-ku (out of over 30 measurements) in the Preferred Relocation Area band ("citizens are given the right to evacuate") of the Chernobyl evacuation zones. The value is derived from a Bq/kg value (3693Bq/kg) converted by a factor into Bq/m^2."
- if you scroll down the front page of this very blog, you'll find reliable lab results showing 63,000 Bq/Kg, 42,000 bq/kg, 35,000bq/kg all in Yokohama. It's not that the radiation is not there, it's just that the authorities are doing their best to avoid a comprehensive survey.
@Clio
I think I agree with your concern. The thing I like abt this site is it concentrates on verifiable evidence. There are a lot of unverifiable stories flying around. Many may be true but until they can be proven, I think its best to put them to one side.
Remember the official line is that anyone who argues against is dealing in baseless rumours. Deal with facts, and the argument is compelling.
Anon @10:55pm - "Sorry your comment is incomprehensible. A concerned mother make you, a concerned parent, look ridiculous? What am I missing?"
You might be missing some comprehension skills. I'm a concerned parent, but I don't go putting my children on the news saying they have radiation sickness without getting their urine tested for verification. The symptoms she described fit many virus and bacterial infections. My daughter gets that all the time (before the leak and after, both.)
Like another poster has stated, let's stick to the facts at hand, and not get lost in anecdotes. Nay-sayers love to pull it apart and it makes all of us look silly. There are many people besides the government who are putting intense pressure on us to take the 'official line' that there is 'no health danger.'
And I think if the woman in question did get her daughter tested, they would have put that in the news report.
@James: thanks for pointing that out, I mixed up as Bq/m^2 in that post. If you use the same factor 65 for this, the number becomes 4.000.000Bq/m^2 which is way above Chernobyl zone 1 level. That's enormous! I cannot believe that the air radiation is just 1.8µSv/h though. I am getting half that with ~70.000Bq/m^2. Is there a mistake somewhere?
Also why would it only be on roofs, not on the ground level?
Nonetheless, if it is like this in Yokohama, east Tokyo like Edogawa, Arakawa-ku will be even higher.
The problem with the Yokohama readings is that they come from places where the dirt is concentrated and cesium has accumulated, and so saying that the becquerel count of the soil from drain pipe of an apartment in Yokohama is comparable to the soil in Chernobyl, is misleading. Dirt from a drain pipe is one thing, but it would be completely different if all of Yokohama had 63000 becquerels. (Maybe it does, who knows, I'm just saying that we should compare apples to apples - hot spots to hot spots, and average soil readings to average soil readings.
@Kyotoresident
"Remember the official line is that anyone who argues against is dealing in baseless rumours. Deal with facts, and the argument is compelling."
Yes this is the upsetting side of the situation, they tend to target those who are concerned like affected by some sort of hysteria, baseless hysteria of course; this is why we should carefully address facts supported by evidence.
You are right, this site is really a good source of unbiased information and even exchange between us.
anon 5:00am
At the hospital where I went they told us they could not do the urine test neither, and did not know where we could have done that. This is appalling to me. It could be the same in Tokyo but I don' t know.
I think I just scared the people at the hospital as in Kansai the perception is that this place is absolutely safe (and they may be right as far as the air and water are concerned, not the food however) and nobody ever required that!
A/w I agree with what you said.
@Clio: I have seen results on the web by Riken http://riken-ac.com/. Urine test reported to cost ~¥22.000. Good luck.
@anon 6:42: I strongly suspect that the analysis are from drains or other hot spot. This absolutely needs to be disclosed. The same goes for readings taken on ground or at 1cm (which you shouldn't do in Sv anyway). It takes away the credibility. I have measured drain pipes in Chiba at close distance and got 25µSv/h. I have soil sample if anyone wants it.
According to Radiation Defense Project's Nationwide Soil Testing Project page all areas in Kanagawa (where Yokohama City is located) show ground contamination values lower than Chernobyl Zone 4 (lowest, >37.000Bq/m^2). One value shows 150.000Bq/m^2 (2236Bq/kg), placing it into Zone 4. So I would say the situation in Yokohama is not as bad as the rooftop samples would lead us to believe.
In that sense it is true to say that measurements and sample selection should not be done in a half-arsed way.
"The nuclear industry knows it will be dead when the truth comes to light and so they fight and use their paid puppets in parliament and government as long they can."
Those PR efforts also utilise these types, as 1:57 AM said, ".. all sorts of nonsense, and I have heard reports that Tokyo will have to be evacuated, which is just a misreading of Kan's recent statement that during the March crisis he contemplated evacuating Tokyo! "
Solar and wind will replace the nuclear industry. The change is happening. We no longer have to tolerate be physically or psychologically terrorized by our utility companies. And after TEPCO get sued...its executives should be held criminally responsible for this entire mess.
*gets*
"...caused by atmospheric nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States and the Soviet Union since the 1950..."
Hand counted from CRIIRAD page, total is 2700 atmospheric nuke tests until 1965. Total today near 12.000. No small matter... See more at http://wp.me/pwIAV-19
However, Chernobyl is still bubbling danger under its leaking sarchophagus. No such (?) leak danger in its Fukushima three total plutonium meltdowns... We are lucky arent we: rad pumping into upper atmosphere - ongoing unhindered malthusian depopulation effort next 25 yrs?
.
Whatever happened to water-wheels and windmills ?
We used to grind our wheat into flour all over the world using these simple, continuous methods.
Instead of having all the power generation concentrated in one place, we should distribute the power generation all over, in small manageable turbines.
How much power could one water-wheel on a river generate ?
ANECDOTAL evidence abounds in Japan, particularly big cities like Tokyo, that when concerned parents take their kids to their doctor (often armed with the radiation measurements that they did with their personal survey meters) and mention the forbidden word "radiation", the doctor dismisses them as "hysteric" and laugh at them in their face.
Personal experiences and their sharing is very important in a democratic society.
The government and mass media suppress criticism and free information, defaming it as hystery and baseless rumors.
Even in Germany almost all relevant information about nuclear things, measurements, health effects etc are classified (we have no FOIA).
So these "baseless rumors" aka "anecdotal" information are very important because they make the people aware that both major parties are lying like the mass media.
First there were only "baseless rumors", all politicians and mass media said nuke is safe and we need it.
But more and more people gathered, searching for changing this destructive path to a nuclear state.
Our Green party was born three decades ago from this antinuclear movement.
Some months ago it won the elections in Baden-Wuerttemberg in southwest Germany.
Now the nuclear plants in this state have been shut down and are on their way to decommission.
It will be a long and hard way, but I am sure that many Japanese will also prefer a clean and healthy Japan instead a polluted country where all have heated toilet seats but are sick.
The only thing that needs to be done is to make people start thinking and eventually act.
(Thank you, Ex-SKF and all other Japanese grassroots activists. You are on the right way! Please continue making people aware.)
If radiation checks cannot be done in Japan, how about travelling overseas such as Australia or Singapore for checks?
ex-SKF,
You are witnessing open breaches of normal etiquette with ".. the doctor dismisses them as "hysteric" and laugh[s] at them in their face."
One of the more noticeable features of this societal breakdown. Do your doctors have their version of the Hippocratic Oath?
Unfortunately, there are very few rules of etiquette when it comes to doctor/patient relationships in Japan. The doctor is above question, and showing contempt for patients is a sad relic from a previous age that still persists in some doctors' offices, particularly in rural Japan. It is gradually disappearing. Mind you it would be ideal if there were some network of clinics that had detection facilities like whole body counters and urine analysis capable of handling radionuclides.
Lol,doctors deal in lumps and bumps they have little to no training in radiation etiology.
".. and showing contempt for patients is a sad relic from a previous age that still persists in some doctors' offices, particularly in rural Japan."
Are we getting our share of cultural lessons w/this disaster, or what?
Thank you to all who live in or are visiting Japan.
Respect for others, how could a doctor not integrate that into his/her manner?
"I would say the situation in Yokohama is not as bad as the rooftop samples would lead us to believe."
Are you saying that the correct way to map contamination is by avoiding sampling areas in which radiation may have been deposited? That's J government logic.
Do you have any evidence that contamination testing in Chernobyl generated evacuation figures by avoiding hotspots to generate favorably low estimations?
Obviously the whole of Yokohama is not contaminated to the same level as Pripyat, but some of it clearly is. It might be possible to decontaminate those hot-spot areas to bring down the overall problem, but the government would rather spend money spreading its overly optimistic message on facebook.
Actually if you think about it, the roof makes a pretty ideal place to sample - you are taking a roof-sized snapshot of the fallout without other erosion, traffic and soil transport factors to contend with. Some of the cesium might be concentrated in the corners where the water pooled, but all of that cesium fell on that roof (unlike an urban gutter which concentrates runoff from a whole city block).
Why do the chernobyl maps look like crazy jagged leopard spots while the Japanese maps all have nice reassuring concentric circles? Because the Japanese are not 'surveying' contamination, they are guessing it from a few carefully picked samples.
@James: no, I and the other commenter are saying that sampling at areas that have high accumulation is not representative for a wider area, like a whole city or neighborhood. Of course those hotspots are still important and need attention, but even if it is a roof we don't know what areas of the roof, drains etc. Of course it fell evenly, but the water carried it to a single place, thus the high concentration. As I said, I have measured these types of places before and it is very common.
I believe that none of Yokohama or Tokyo contamination comes even close to Pripyat, as evidenced by Radiation Defense Project's Nationwide Soil Testing Project.
Only citing maximum values doesn't get you anywhere (nor does the opposite like the government does).
@James. How would any of us know what the true contamination level of Chernobyl is? The only thing we have to rely on is a soviet era map that people are now using as the gold standard for contamination. I think if the internet had been around in 1986, we would be seeing some mighty high numbers coming from Geiger counters around the Ukraine. (Not downplaying the Yokohama numbers, but just suggesting to James that the data from Chernobyl is laughably meagre compared to the individual testing and reporting going on in Japan.) If you haven't seen the contamination surveys from Japan, you haven't been paying attention. Whether you believe them or not is another issue, but disbelieving them while at the same time believing the soviet numbers would be an interesting leap of faith indeed.
One thing that the Radiation Defense Project could do is to compare Cesium-137 levels to Cesium-137 levels. Right now they are adding Cesium-134 and Cesium-137 levels in the case of Japan, and then comparing that to the limits established in the USSR on May 1991, which were just based on Cesium-137 levels.
@anon 6:36PM, you mean compare cesium-134 to cesium-137? If that's the case, thank you for reminding me. I was going to write a post. The cesium-134/cesium-137 ratio is different in Japan than that in Chernobyl. In Chernobyl, this ratio was about 0.5. In Japan, the ratio is between 0.9 and 1.2.
Primavera,
No, I was talking about the Soviet limits that Radiation Defense Project refer to in their document. Those limits (mandatory evacuation, right of relocation, etc...) were based on surface contamination by Cesium-137 only.
What Radiation Defense Project is using to make a comparison in the case of Japan is the sum of Cesium-134 + Cesium-137.
A way of comparing would be to add 50% to the Soviet limits, since, as you mentioned, the ratio of Cs-137 to Cs-134 was 2:1.
Of course, when the limits were established in Ukraine and Belarus, 5 years after the accident, the levels of Cs-134 would have been roughly around 20% of the original concentrations so a direct comparison it's difficult.
"as evidenced by Radiation Defense Project's Nationwide Soil Testing Project"
The project's map has a total of 21 tests for Kanagawa. Kanagawa is 2,415 km2. They are displaying 8 readings from Yokohama, and one is classed as a 'radiation control zone'.
Think of the roof as a microcosm - you could test the high spot in the centre and might get 1000 bq/m2, then you could test the drain in the corner and get 3,000,000 bq/m2. If it was your roof, and the government only tested the middle of the roof then on the basis of that single reading declared the whole of Yokohama safe, would you be satisfied?
"How would any of us know what the true contamination level of Chernobyl is"
The point I was trying to make with the comparison to to Chernobyl is not that the Chernobyl figures are accurate. Just that If we learned anything from that experience, we learned the fallout patterns when surveyed in detail are 'chaotic'.
"If you haven't seen the contamination surveys from Japan, you haven't been paying attention"
I should have made it clear that I was talking specifically about the greater Tokyo area here. I've seen them all - Gunma University, US-JP government arial survey, radiation defense network, safecast, Tokyo University, Japanese Communist party, Tokyo Metropolitan Government etc etc. I've also seen how they have developed over time, from an initial 21km strip NW from the plant to a massive band reaching from Miyagi to Shizuoka.
Fukushima is pretty well covered by a pretty crude ariel survey. They are now going house to house, because they understand that radiation does not fall in neat colour coded bands.
I've yet to see anything that comes close to the kind of detail though:
http://i52.tinypic.com/29pqnfa.jpg
11:37,
Congratulations to the German people. To have rid yourselves of this nuclear pollution is a mark of True Sanity.
5:17, your logic is good, rooftops are excellent places to measure. After, come down to ground level and measure what your intuition tells you to.
Medvedev's book on Chernobyl gives excellent accounts of the horror that it was.
People that should have known better were picking up pieces of fuel rods and super radioactive chunks of graphite WITH THEIR BARE HANDS!
I'm still not sure why we need to keep comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl. I know there is a need to raise awareness of this crisis, but Fukushima is it's own can of worms.
It's time to use Fukushima as the new benchmark. Not Chernobyl. And that benchmark is, sadly, government collusion, public health negligence, and most clearly pronounced in Japan: public apathy.
But James you are still talking about color-coded bands as if the Japanese were trying to figure this out with crayons and play-doh, and you are still praising the detailed maps of the soviets. The map below is a highly detailed record of radiation readings that gives readings by neighborhood, and is a great supplement to the maps put out by all the places you mentioned. There is no information anywhere that would provide such a complete picture of Chernobyl, Kiev, or Minsk. One may bash the Japanese for being complacent, but there is a great deal of data out there being generated by various groups that is helping to give a complete picture. How anyone can compare this to the paucity of information regarding Chernobyl is astonishing.
http://www.nnistar.com/gmap/fukushima.html
I've seen the nnistar map, and I agree it's amazing - when I referred to the 'Gunma University' map, I was referring to Yukio Hayakawa's plot of the same data.
I'm not 'praising the detailed maps of the soviets'. Science didn't stop in 1986 - people from all over the world have been studying that area for 20 years now, and it would be absurd to ignore what they tell us, which is areas meters apart can have massively different levels of contamination.
Clearly I'm making my point about 'bands' vs 'spots' poorly, so here's a concise 2min video from the Wall Street Journal:
http://tinyurl.com/3ggjznk
"there is a great deal of data out there being generated by various groups that is helping to give a complete picture"
Yes there is, but the situation at the moment in Japan is that every time someone tries to add a datapoint that suggests things are worse than the official government line, they are shouted down - by their elected officials and by anonymous posters on the internet.
No one would have guessed looking at the current nnistar map that some poor dude would find 63,000 Bq/Kg cesium in debris collected from their roof guttering in Yokohama. But now they have, everyone's energy immediately turns to dismissing his lab results because they don't fit the limited picture we currently hold.
Obviously neither of us will be happy until there's more data available, but we have to be open to that new data, even if it the implications make us uncomfortable. I'll meet you back here in 6 months time, I'm sure we'll know more then ;-)
@Anon 7:38 regarding Radiation Defense Project's numbers, note they combine Cesium 134 with Cesium 137 to come up with a total number for contamination. The Soviets only used Cesium 137, so when Radiation Defense Project says that Yokohama's 145,340 bq/m2 equals Chernobyl level 4, it is incorrect. You need to use the Cesium 137 number by itself if you want to find out what level that number corresponds with.
Richard,
The power of denial was displayed at Chernobyl, and Japan's "apathy" is denial-based.
And that is quite something of an understatement.
radiation = radiation, let that burn its way in.
@Anon 22 sept. 7:38 AM
Thank you for the information, I will check on that.
@Anon 22 Sept. 11:43 AM
Apparently there are ways for having the tests in Japan: either going to Fukushima as they adviced me to do, or asking to private laboratories.
I just wanted to find a facility that could do it at Kyoto where I am.
However, I heard about people going abroad for more reliable tests.
"As seeing people live as if nothing is going on, I can’t help calling it madness."
Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute (KURRI)
6:19,
Madness it is, and it's the madness of social devices, faith in obvious absurdities.
Decontaminating soil w/your pre-school child standing next to you because you trust in the doctors. The doctors who laugh in peoples' faces, laughter powered by political culture.
And that culture overpowers physical forces that now only outsiders say will harm us. Absurd.
Choosing to live in the absurd Now as a social 'device' somehow suggests that choice is not a new thing.
Rest assured other cultures are demonstrating the same thing, including this commenter's culture.
"You need to use the Cesium 137 number by itself if you want to find out what level that number corresponds with."
I'm not convinced it is that simple, as the blog author's comment above points out that the ratio of 137 to 134 is much higher in Japan. The Soviets might have based the evacuation orders on measurements of the more stable 137, but when setting the limits they probably took account of the 134 as well.
So, first you'd have to know the dose figures from which the Soviet evacuation standards were derived, then recalculate new limits to account for the fact that there is twice as much 134 deposited per BQ of 137 in Japan.
Cesium 134's activity is 15x higher due to its shorter half life, so you might even have to do the opposite and halve the Soviet figures to make a fair comparison. It would depend on whether they based their calculations on a yearly integrated dose, as the Japanese are doing, or some kind of lifelong cumulative figure.
The upside is that after two years, Japan's radiation should have dropped much more quickly, and people might conceivably be able to return much sooner as the 134 decays away.
I'm just going by what I see here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chernobyl_radiation_map_1996.svg
where it notes the various levels derived from cesium 137 deposits.
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