A few more comments about the situation in Japan...
News reports about the nuclear crisis in Japan have sometimes erroneously reported the radiation levels experienced either at the Fukushima nuclear plant or elsewhere in the country. For example, on Sunday, I was quite startled to stumble upon a report in the Korean press claiming that radiation levels of the order of 1000 millisieverts per hour had been recorded at Fukushima. Such radiation levels would indeed be startling, as a lifetime exposure of 300 to 400 millisieverts is considered high. If radiation levels of 1000 millisieverts per hour could be measured, it would mean that radiation levels at Fukushima are extremely high. However, radiation levels recorded at locations further away from the Fukushima plant, such as those published by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology or by the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, were not consistent with levels of the order of thousands of millisieverts per hour at the Fukushima plant. Rather, they were consistent with levels of the order of thousands of microsieverts per hour, which are high but much less extreme radiation levels.
Radiation levels were misreported in this way in other news outlets. For instance, reporters at the Guardian misreported microsievert levels as millisievert levels in one of their blog posts about the Fukushima crisis. This is purely speculation, but I wonder if these errors may have been the result of mistranslations of information originally reported in Japanese.
If you are seeking information about radiation levels in Japan, real time data about radiation levels everywhere in the country can be found on this map. In Korea, information about radiation levels in the country can be found on the web-site of the Integrated Environmental Radiation Monitoring Network.
In the last few days, some Japanese broadcasters have done a very good job explaining the situation at the Fukushima reactor to the public. On Sunday, I was amazed by a live broadcast on NHK during which an expert in nuclear technology explained in detail the problems still plaguing the Fukushima plant. Sitting beside a realistic looking model of the nuclear reactors at Fukushima, he pointed out the specific locations of problem areas in the various reactors, including the spent fuel pools that require watering from the outside, as well as the location of the reactor cores that, it is suspected, could be overheating or have been damaged. In spite of their criticism of the Japanese government in recent days, I can't help but wonder if western governments would so transparently communicate the details of a similar nuclear catastrophe to their citizens should one occur on their territories.
Finally, a few news articles have been published recently about the workers who are on the front lines of the nuclear crisis. Some people that I have spoken to are astonished by the bravery of those who continue to work at the Fukushima plant, as these workers are taking serious risks and perhaps even risking their lives. These workers remind me of the mine rescuers that would not hesitate to go underground, at the risk of their own health and lives, in order to rescue the victims of accidents that sometimes occurred in the mines of Sudbury, near where I grew up. Though few such accidents occurred in the years during which I was living in Hanmer, I heard stories from my father and from other miners about the men and women who trained for, and who had in the past carried out, mine rescue operations. From these stories, I came to believe that these people, when called upon, found the courage to risk their lives in rescue operations because they believed that they were acting in some greater cause. They also hoped that those needing rescuing would not have hesitated to try to rescue them, should their fates been reversed. On Sunday, one of the individuals still struggling on at Fukushima explained his motivations for doing so on NHK's news broadcast. He said that he understood that he was facing serious risks, as did his wife, but they both felt that something bigger was at stake, and that he should stay at Fukushima to help "save Japan". I have a lot of admiration and respect for this man, as well as for his wife.
Over the last few days, emissions of radioactive materials from the damaged reactors have increased, then regressed, and the IAEA has reported that the situation at Fukushima is progressing positively.
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