Meltdown, Getting To The Truth

March 13th, 2011 5:45pm CST
UPDATE 3/14/11 7:10am CST Please CLICK HERE to find information to donate to Japanese relief efforts.

HAT TIP to Louis who stayed up all night trying to get a response from ARS.
by F. Grey Parker

It's become very difficult to determine what the truth is coming out of Japan. It would seem that in an effort to limit panic, the Japanese government's management of the ongoing nuclear emergency is having the opposite effect.


Some are openly accusing the Japanese government of downplaying the severity of the crisis.

There also seems to be what we can only describe as some malicious mischief in the information stream. Yesterday, millions of people were alarmed, including here at The Hand, by a map alleging to show "projected" fallout from the Fukushima Incident. As we reported at the time, the map had appeared at the website of Beyond Nuclear and was quickly pulled. The map is now confirmed as inauthentic but the continued close monitoring of the situation and caution are more than warranted.

The map in question, multiple versions of which appeared to have been different from the one published at BY and republished by us (example here), bore the logo of a firm called Australian Radiation Services Pty, Ltd. in the lower left corner. We contacted ARS for comment regarding rumors that the map was not authentic. Today we received an official response from Dr. Joseph G. Young, Managing Director/Principal Consultant Health Physicist at ARS:

"It is a hoax."

Dr. Young did not comment on whether or not someone from within ARS had sourced the logo or if it was simply a clever third party.

Beyond Nuclear has this statement up at their site:

"Beyond Nuclear had posted a map of projected fallout pathways with the caveats that we could not contact the supposed creators of the map (Australian Radiation Services) whose logo was in the bottom left hand corner. While the data of the weather patterns from Japan looked plausible, see the Japan Meterological Agency site, the listed radiation doses were not verifiable as of the time given on our original post and we clearly stated this. After continuing to be unable to verify this information, we have removed this fallout projection map and suggest that interested parties refer to the Japan Meteorological Agency web page for recent weather patterns (animation for the past 3-24 hours) which was the intent of our original post and which was also supplied in our original post. Also see the Stormsurfing dynamic model of trans-Pacific weather."

Both the Japan Meteorological Society and Stormsurfing websites are valuable interactive tools that allow users to view real time wind and weather system patterns. We also recommend that Americans living on the West Coast book mark this site, Radiation Network, a real time tool that allows users to monitor radiation levels here in the United States. It is updated every 3 minutes.

Screencap of JMS website

Stratfor stands by their reportage of the official NISA statement on the Fukushima blast. NISA does continue to stipulate that the explosion "could only have been caused by a meltdown at the reactor core." The phrase "partial meltdown" has been used in the international media but there is no scientific consensus on the meaning of this wording.

The latest reports say as many as 200,000 have been evacuated and containment zones as large as 20km have been established around the reactors in jeopardy.

As we struggle to determine just what this all might mean for our health and welfare, it is grimly apparent that there is still a great deal of disagreement amongst scientists themselves.

From a just published Time Magazine online article:
"As an example of the controversy surrounding low-level radiation, the U.S. federal government can't even agree on a safe dose. The Environmental Protection Agency differs from the NRC  in that it advocates the more stringent standard for all radiation exposure from a single source or site at 15 millirem—rather than 100 millirem— a year. The NRC has a different set of guidelines following a severe nuclear emergency such as a meltdown or dirty bomb attack, however.  In these cases, the safety threshold increases to a 25 rem per 30 days—a huge increase and right on the threshold of when people begin to show physical signs of radiation poisoning after a single dose such as changed blood work (physical symptoms usually doesn't appear below 100 rem in a single dose). Areas receiving more radiation would be evacuated. When citizens would be allowed to return home following a clean-up operation would be decided on a “case by case” basis, according to an NRC spokesman speaking on background."