I also was in Pa many times during the early 70's and went to see TMI from across the river a while after the release, a couple of months later IIRC. I worked in carnivals for Inners Amusments at the time and WE played Hershey Pa at the Italian Club. Back then folks on the show talked about Stronium 90 in the milk being used in the chocolate Hershey Bars which seemed to be known to many I talked to in the area at that time. I gave up Hershey's candy for a few years but have since gone back to them. (NOW I'm hoping I didn't ding YOUR family for the rent back then as I worked in some racket games)

I completely AGREE with what YOU're saying about INGESTION as opposed to proximity as the REAL danger.

What truely entertains me is the "old saw" "its about what ya git from an xray". What such folks DON'T mention is an xray at a radiologist's is a flash dose whereas one doesn't stand around getting xrayed 24/7. Ergs/sec isn't much but when its in YOUR environment or inside YOU, well---???

This paragraph here:

"We stayed in the house. It was blue. You couldn’t see anything or nothing. And we were scared. Everything was blue. Everywhere was blue. Couldn’t see the buildings or anything. It was just heavy blue all that time. We closed up our doors. We stuffed rags underneath the door so this wouldn’t come in. But I think it was all the way in."

I just wanted to check my understanding: Everything she saw had a blue tint to it after a nuclear accident? Or that there was a big blue cloud outside?

If either one is an accurate recollection, that's absolutely insane.

You don't seem to be aware of radiation hormesis -- the discovery that small increases in nuclear radiation can be beneficial. In other words, if your starting dose is small enough, increasing your radiation exposure can improve your health. Radiation hormesis isn't mysterious. We have repair systems inside our cells. The right amount of radiation, by causing damage, will activate these repair systems and cause them to do a better repair job than when less activated.

You don't seem to be aware of radiation hormesis -- the discovery that small increases in nuclear radiation can be beneficial. In other words, if your starting dose is small enough, increasing your radiation exposure can improve your health. Radiation hormesis isn't mysterious. We have repair systems inside our cells. The right amount of radiation, by causing damage, will activate these repair systems and cause them to do a better repair job than when less activated.

This
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12755739
from the BBC is perhaps the worst news I've read in fifteen years of uniformly horrible news :

"Mr Edano also said that the radiation levels were now falling from 1,000 millisieverts on Wednesday morning to 600-800."

One sievert.

This article completely debunks the radiation hormesis thesis, as well as explaining away other myths: Nuclear propagandists lies exposed and debunked.

The IAEA 25 year report on Chernobyl, despite attempting to put the best face possible on the data is still chilling:

While the number of casualties caused by Chernobyl might be a cause for debate, the following consequences, as detailed by the ÍAEA report entitled "Chernobyl's Legacy" are incontrovertible:

* Contaminated area somewhat larger than the Netherlands, equal to the combined areas of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
* 100 year minimum exclusion zone the size of Utrecht or Rhode Island.
* 5 million people reside in contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
* 336,000 people were relocated.
* Many food sources contaminated for at least 60 - 100 years.
* Continued budget expenditures of 6% after 25 years while still not providing meaningful payments to those affected.

Of course, anything by Helen Caldicott is excellent on this topic.

What does "400 millisieverts of radiation were detected" mean? There's no time unit. You could say an x-ray, for example, gives you 1 millisievert, but that's the total over the period of the x-ray. But for radiation in the environment, I think the only meaningful quantity is sieverts per unit time. Is it 400 millisieverts per second, per hour, per year? Without the time unit, it is meaningless.

Joel,

The BBC article now says "Levels of radiation outside the plant have now fallen from 1,000 microsieverts an hour to 600-800 - about the equivalent of two chest X-rays, say officials."

Hopefully, what you read was a mistake (although it didn't have a time unit either - it was evidently supposed to be hours).

To answer my own question, evidently the 400 mSv referred to is per hour, as is the TMI number quoted. However, the TMI number was measured a third of a mile from TMI, whereas the 400 mSv value is "around the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s No. 3 reactor," which might be a lot closer than that at TMI.

Americans ought to eat better and exercise more

also -

stop smoking

drink alcohol only moderately, if at all (and moderation is having only one or two drinks at a sitting - NOT a six-pack once a week)

@James Cape - it's more insane than you think. There was a blue cloud EVERYWHERE, even inside. I had to think about this but it's very explainable. I will write a post about it tonight.

(HINT: it's the same thing as the blue color in irradiated gemstones in the previous post.)

Yes, the blue color is easily explained and not a good sign at all. I'll let Aaron explain.

Mike :

I assumed that the millisievert numbers were the levels encountered by the remaining cadre of reactor operators at the time they were evacuated, and thus were measured at some place near one of the reactors at which we would wish those operators to be working.

If the facility is getting so hot that the operators cannot enter, then regaining any sort of control of the situation becomes problematic.

Aaron, thank you for being on this topic. It's making ATR a must-read these days.

Excellent post, obviously.

But it got me back to thinking and googling about the news reports I read when I was living in Taipei, that a bunch of buildings in the city had been built using radioactive steel from a nuclear power plant. Anyway, here's something new I learned about it from Wikipedia: "Some researchers from Taiwan claimed that the gamma rays from the cobalt-60 had a beneficial effect upon the health of the tenants."

Ah, found a better source, and one which makes me think that the BBC reporter confused units when both milliseiverts and microsieverts were used in different parts of the same official statement. If this is the case, Mike B. is right and I've been too alarmed.

This is the World Nuclear News take on Edano's statement, (which in the BBC account says "millisieverts")
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Second_fire_reported_at_unit_4_1603111.html

Earlier in the morning readings had ranged between 600-800 microsieverts per hour, but at 10am readings rose to 1000 microsieverts per hour.

Here's an article from somewhat later :
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Possible_damage_at_Fukushima_Daiichi_2_1503111.html

Radiation levels on the edge of the plant compound briefly spiked at 8217 microsieverts per hour but later fell to about a third that.
...
Japanese authorities told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that radiation levels at the plant site between units 3 and 4 reached a peak of some 400 millisieverts per hour. "This is a high dose-level value," said the body, "but it is a local value at a single location and at a certain point in time."

Later readings were 11.9 millisieverts per hour, followed six hours later by 0.6 millisieverts, which the IAEA said "indicate the level of radioactivity has been decreasing."

Remember when cigarette companies used to tout the Beneficial Health Effects of Tobacco Smoking? How regular smoking would improve the voice (and they had a real live opera singer giving a testimonial to prove it, too), soothe the nerves, etc?

Remember when being exposed directly to "radium" was touted as a miracle cure for just about anything?

Magical thinking never dies, but unfortunately cancer patients often do.

"Most Vulnerable U.S. Nuclear Plants"

here

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-16/nuclear-power-plants-ranking-americas-most-vulnerable/?cid=hp:mainpromo2

conti...

And the article in "The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists" is, to say the least, disappointing.....

here

http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/joshua-pollack/guarding-against-disaster-japans-tragedy-becomes-more-serious-

Joel Hanes, Mike B -

When I posted this, I was concerned that the numbers didn't mesh, but it was late (for me), so I put off checking. Thanks for doing the research on my behalf.

The Japanese article almost certainly should say "400 uSv", not milliSieverts, which sort of reinforces my point about its uselessness. This also meshes with the comment by Arnie Gunderson that the plant workers are receiving their yearly dose in seven minutes. I calculate the 5 rem yearly dose to correspond to an average of 119 uSv/hr.

So, by the very rude metric I present (and it's not the most sensible one - I think the total activity present in Bq is the sensible metric of how bad this disaster could be), this accident is only TEN TIMES worse than TMI.

In case it's not clear, though, my principal point is that the effects are dispersed and rather broadly distributed in depleted health and shortened lives. Fixing this error of 1000 actually doesn't change that conclusion at all.

i for one look forward to reading the explanation for the blueness

I hope the blueness we're talking about is not this blueness:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation

TEPCO's latest status chart claims about 2 millisieverts/hour measured at the facility boundary.

As a biologist radiation hormesis sounds like a load of horseshit to me. Sure, low levels of radiation might activate repair pathways - but most repair pathways are activated by sensing DNA damage, which leaves little actual room for a mechanism for improvement in health. That is, without the radiation, there is no damage, and no repair pathway activated. With the radiation, there IS damage, and the repair pathway gets activated to fix it - maybe. But in any case, you're just adding to your risk. And that repair machinery isn't then going to go into overtime and run around repairing every other broken thing in the cell. That's not how it works; it has to respond to the actual damage it detects. DNA is a big molecule, and proteins are dumb machines. They can only fix what is in front of them.

This is not good.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/17/japan-nuclear-crisis-deepens-radiation

Nishiyama added that radiation levels of 250 millisievert an hour had been detected 30 metres above the plant. On Tuesday Japan's health ministry raised the cumulative maximum level for nuclear workers from 100 millisievert to 250 millisievert. The US said it was using U-2 spy planes and a Global Hawk drone and using infrared cameras to assess the temperatures of reactors and storage pools.

"One of the problems with the ponds is that the water, as well as providing cooling, also provides shielding so workers can come up to the edge of the pool and see what state the fuel is in," said Richard Wakeford, an expert in epidemiology and radiation at the Dalton nuclear institute of Manchester University. "If the water goes you've got no shielding and it's like having a great gamma-ray searchlight shining into the sky and that is presumably what the helicopters are seeing. That makes life extremely difficult for those trying to deal with this.