RO Waste Water Leak at #Fukushima: "1,800 mSv/Hr Enough to Kill in 4 Hours" Meme Spreads Internationally

New York Times joined the bandwagon of "1,800 millisieverts/hour radiation that would kill in 4 hours" with the article by the Tokyo Bureau chief published on August 31, 2013.

In addition, according to New York Times, it was TEPCO who said so.

Well, TEPCO is refuting the reporting by the Japanese media of "1,800 millisieverts/hour radiation that would kill in 4 hours", and nowhere in the information TEPCO has made available (in the "email alert to the press" section and "handout for the press" section) does the company even indicate that.

But that's not what "the newspaper of record" says.

Nowhere does the article say the radiation is beta radiation, and that it is dose equivalent for skin and eye lens.

From New York Times (8/31/2013):

Radiation Near Japanese Plant’s Tanks Suggests New Leaks

By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: August 31, 2013

TOKYO — A crisis over contaminated water at Japan’s stricken nuclear plant worsened on Saturday when the plant’s operator said it had detected high radiation levels near storage tanks, a finding that raised the possibility of additional leaks.

The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, said it had found the high levels of radiation at four separate spots on the ground, near some of the hundreds of tanks used to store toxic water produced by makeshift efforts to cool the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s three damaged reactors. The highest reading was 1,800 millisieverts per hour, or enough to give a lethal dose in about four hours, Tepco said.

(Full article at the link)

Bloomberg News Japan, on the other hand, decided to have a Japanese professor at Kinki University declare "1,800 mSv/hour exposure for 4 hours will kill people in 30 days if untreated" in its article on September 2, 2013. I don't know if this article has been translated into English yet. Again, no mention of beta radiation or dose equivalent.

Meanwhile, BBC Radio at least dropped the "lethal in 4 hours" part, and I just heard their news saying the 1,800 mSv/hr radiation is mostly beta radiation and with careful protection the workers could avoid most of exposure.

The Guardian sticks to the meme and says "The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), said radiation near the bottom of the tank measured 1,800 millisieverts an hour – high enough to kill an exposed person in four hours."

In the UK, "newspapers of record" are considered to be The Times and The Daily Telegraph.

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Post-"Fiscal Cliff" US: Blackrock Chairman "The Biggest Losers Are American People"

Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of Blackrock that manages $3.67 trillion assets, appears almost embarrassed at his colleagues on Bloomberg TV talking about "who won and who lost" in the "fiscal cliff" non-deal.

While his colleagues (Bloomberg columnists) yak-yak about Republicans as losers and Obama as winner getting "B" grade, Biden gaining more power etc., Mr. Fink says "Excuse me, but the biggest losers are American people."

1:40 into the clip, after a lively discussion of winners and losers on Capitol Hill and White House, Mr. Fink says:

I, I guess I wish we spent less time worrying about who's the winner and losers, because I think American population is the big loser in this... We have two more months of work in front of us to get something really sensible.... I am really afraid we're going to have the repeat of August 2011...

He doesn't manage the world-largest investment firm for nothing.

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#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Bloomberg's Blatant Lie About "Cooler Temperatures" in Spent Fuel Pools

Or do their Japanese reporters know what everyone else doesn't?

Bloomberg has an article today about Japanese Prime Minister Kan's latest, optimistic assessment that he sees "the light at the end of the tunnel".

Regardless of whether that's the light of the coming train's headlights or not, the Bloomberg reporters in Tokyo, Yuji Okada and Tsuyoshi Inajima, say the following in the article:

Kan’s optimistic statements are the strongest yet from a Japanese official amid the world’s worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. The battle to prevent a meltdown entered its 12th day as reports of radiation contamination at sea and on land multiplied. Cooler temperatures in pools holding spent fuel rods indicate the positive effect of thousands of tons of seawater sprayed over the reactors since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out reactor cooling systems.

"Cooler temperatures in pools holding spent fuel rods"??? Where the hell did these reporters get the data?

The latest press release by NISA (Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency) at 11:00PM on March 21 shows that they don't even have the measurement of temperatures of the Spent Fuel Pool water for the Reactors No.1, 3, and 4!

The temperature of the Spent Fuel Pool of the Reactor No.2 is listed at 50-degree Celsius, but in earlier press releases they didn't have the number for the Reactor No.2 either. The last measured temperature of the Spent Fuel Pool of the Reactor No.4 was 84-degree Celsius, at 4:08AM of March 14th.

So where DID the Bloomberg reporters get their data that the Spent Fuel Pool water temperatures have gone down?

Or are they simply looking at the thermal imaging released by NHK and saying, alongside the Defense Minister, that the temperatures are low and that must mean the Spent Fuel Pools' water temperatures are low?

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