Monday, February 20, 2012

Hardly Any Coverage in Japanese Mainstream Media About 2/20 Fukushima I Nuke Plant Tour

Asahi Shinbun online has 4 lines and one small picture.

Yomiuri online has a decent length article but hardly any new insight or information other than "1,500 microsieverts/hour" radiation near the reactors and that the reporter's cumulative radiation exposure from 4 hour-plus spent on the plant was 79 microsieverts.

Well, they saw the plant last November and the situation has hardly changed, "cold shutdown state" or not.

But many people in Japan saw the plant and the surrounding areas like Tomioka-machi, Ookuma-machi for the first time in the video at Nico Nico News. Nearly 100,000 people checked in to view the unedited video yesterday, while many registered users couldn't check in because the priority was given to the paying "premium" members when the place got crowded.

It was good that the independent journalists demanded access, and TEPCO relented.

For the links to the video, see my previous post.

5 comments:

Karen Sherry Brackett said...

1uSv = 0.1mrem
79uSv = 7.9mrem over 4 hours x 6 = 47.4 mrem/day
47.4 mrem/day x 365 days = 17,301 mrem / year.

International Standards allow workers to be exposed to 5,000 mrem/year in proper protective gear. These journalist were not properly protected and TEPCO's measurement tactics using plastic covers to shield the actual data makes this 1,500 uSv/hour data = complete fiction.

Anonymous said...

nobody uses rem anymore except some americans.

Karen Sherry Brackett said...

Tis true. We are Remicans.

Anonymous said...

Some pictures here at mainichi:
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/photospecials/graph/fukushima/index.html

However rather LQ - anyone has HQ ones on the reactor buildings from the trip?

Atomfritz said...

@ Karen

The plastic covers are necessary to avoid contamination of the counters, which would render them useless.

And please don't accuse LaPrimavera of being corrupt or censoring.
As far as I can tell, he seems honest and sincere.

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