Rain Comes to Korea - Is It Radioactive?

I woke up this morning to the sight of clouds rolling over Busan from the southwest, as predicted by meteorologists a few days before.

Clouds moving over Busan on Thursday morning, from the southwest.

  

The citation of the central article in the scan above is as follows:
Lee, Geunyeong.  (2011, April 5).  "'Radioactive material could be delivered directly to the Korean peninsula on the 7th of April'".  Hankyoreh, volume 3, number 7191, p. 1.
or in Korean:
이근영.  (2011년 4월 5일).  "'방사성물질, 7일 한반도 직접 유입될 수도'".  한교레, 3판, 7191호, 1면.


Early in the morning, news outlets reported that rainwater on Jeju island, an island located just to the south of Korea, contained radioactive materials, but in quantities smaller than maximum acceptable concentrations for drinking water in Canada.  Later in the day, it was reported that concentrations of radioactive materials in today's rain are not harmful to the human body, but no data was provided to substantiate this claim.  Later in the evening, in yet another article, concentrations of radioactive materials in rainwater collected on Wednesday and early Thursday were reported, but no information was provided about the rainwater that fell throughout the latter part of the day on Thursday.  Information about Thursday's rain, the article reported, is to be announced to the public tomorrow. 

On the web-site of the Korean Institute for Nuclear Safety (KINS), concentrations of radioactive materials in the air at Jeju island were reported throughout the day, but I could only find information about concentrations of radioactive materials in the rainwater until 6AM today.  The good news is that concentrations of radioactive materials in the air have fallen to undetectable levels over the course of today.  But I would really like to know why information was not provided in real time about the radioactivity of rain water?

In the process of searching for this information, I discovered that there is probably an error in an article published yesterday on the KBS web-site.  In this latter article, it was reported that a a maximum concentration of 0.758 Becquerels per cubic meter of radioactive materials was measured in the air in Korea earlier this week.  Today, I found a document on the KINS web-site that indicates that the actual concentration was probably only 0.758 milli-Becquerels per cubic meter, a value 1000 times smaller than that reported in the KBS article.  So it appears that some journalists are still making errors when reporting the units of radioactivity measurements.  I think this is a relief, as 0.758 Becquerels per cubic meter of air could be a dangerous concentration of radioactive material, according to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

I also found an article, published today, that is critical of the Korean government's handling of the possibility of radioactive rain falling on Korea.  This article criticized the Korean Meteorological Agency and the Korean Institute for Nuclear Safety for issuing contradictory statements, over the course of the last few days, about the likelihood of radioactive rain falling on Korea.  I'm not sure that I agree with the specific criticisms that are raised in this article, but I cannot understand why measurements of the radioactivity of the rainwater could not have been published every few hours throughout the day, today.  This would have alleviated people's anxiety about the possible radioactivity of the falling rain, and allowed people to avoid being exposed to it if the rain was significantly radioactive.

Tomorrow, I'll be looking for the measurements that were promised today.