Nevermind, now from Japanese sources I'm finding numbers in line with what you're saying (about 2mSv per hour on average).

But I don't know what's going on with the news in English. EVERYONE in English has been reporting that Tuesday morning levels reached 400mSv since then, and the BBC and others are still reporting 1,000mSv as the level reached this morning.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12755739

Scary picture of reactor #4:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/16_25.html

It's nothing like Chernobyl, no matter how you cut it. It is what it is, which is already difficult to identify, no need to equate it with a notorious yet surprisingly nebulous and controversial event like Chernobyl.

I think the Chernobyl comparisons are desirable for certain media elements not only because it's archetypal nuclear disaster, but because it feeds into the emergent metanarrative of suspicious residents being lied to and kept dangerously ignorant by scheming, nefarious officials.

The problem stands on its own without comparison to Chernobyl and is probably more easily understood and processed by concerned residents and their friends and acquaintances around the world by explaining it as it is, rather than colouring it with lurid, ambiguous associations.

IMHO.

can anyone find who to email to correct the BBC? i can't find a link anywhere!

edit: found it. it said they rarely check their inboxes though...

Kaori Shoji comes through with her "Getting through the earthquake/tsunami/blackouts" vocab article in the Japan Times:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/e...316ks.html

EDIT: Oh goody. They've evacuated all of the workers. Good for the workers, not so much for the reactors.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/16/...evacuated/

As the article noted, it's too bad the roof didn't blow off of 4, then you could do heli drops of water on the cooling pond. Dumb design to have the cooling pond not inside of a containment chamber, but it's an old 1970s era reactor.

EDIT 2: Now CNN is reporting that the workers are coming back. Yay.

IceCream Wrote:edit: found it. it said they rarely check their inboxes though...

Something so ironic about that! Thats like 911 operators answering the phone rarely.
--

I've noticed on the NHK ustream, that a lot of the Japanese seem to really like Edano. Some of the comments I see make it almost sound like people that can talk and actually explain shit so other people can understand, is a rarity in Japan. Reporters on the other hand seem to catch a TON of shit.

rich_f Wrote:EDIT: Oh goody. They've evacuated all of the workers. Good for the workers, not so much for the reactors.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/16/...evacuated/

Is this the same news that's been flagged as false by Joi Ito and others? e.g. https://twitter.com/HirokoTabuchi/status...7286189056 & https://twitter.com/Joi/status/47895106853937152

Tangent: And according to Jake Adelstein, the yakuza, self-serving or otherwise, are apparently doing a good job getting supplies to the needy? https://twitter.com/jakeadelstein/status...9414091777

something a tad more lighthearted amidst all the disaster talk....
fox discovers nuclear reactor in japanese disco!
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201103140036

LazyNomad Wrote:

zigmonty Wrote:The majority of the media seems to fundamentally (or deliberately) not understand what's going on.

May I ask you why do you think you are any more competent in the issue than the majority of the media?

Err... Well, for starters, i'm an engineer (electrical, not nuclear). I've taken university-level physics subjects (was doing an engineering-physics double degree at one point, until i decided the physics component wasn't marketable enough to be worth it). I will gladly defer to actual nuclear experts, but it really doesn't take much knowledge to know much of the media reporting is factually wrong (although there *are* many well-investigated articles). It takes far less knowledge to know someone is wrong than to know what's right.

Another telltale sign is when the talking heads simply don't have expertise in the field in question. One guy i saw interviewed (with alarmist views) was a medical doctor, which would be fair enough if he were talking about the effects of radiation sickness, etc, but he was commenting on safety systems and the effects of a meltdown on a reactor. That screams to me that they either can't find a more appropriate expert or can't find one who's willing to say what they want them to say.

Don't get me wrong, the situation is serious (potentially life threatening), but factually incorrect media reports with hysterical, baseless references to Chernobyl do no one any good (except drive ratings...).

I think it's been a combination of poor distribution of information by the Japanese government and TEPCO, and poor gathering of information (or over-delegation of their job to other agencies) by Western news agencies.

Sort of the intersection of the two circles in a Venn Diagram, IYKWIM.

Edano and TEPCO seem to have news conferences non-stop, and the western media are pretty much relying on NHK-World to attend them and translate, or so it seems, while the talent is all standing on rubble piles to talk to the camera and look serious.

Dunno how they really get the info from the gov't, but I see so much NHK-W on their broadcasts, it's kind of silly.

If the facts being released were really crystal clear, I don't think people would be so panicked, *even in Japan, where they understand what's being said.*

rich_f Wrote:If the facts being released were really crystal clear, I don't think people would be so panicked, *even in Japan, where they understand what's being said.*

From my point of view in Tokyo, nobody's really "panicked" around here. People are generally a bit worried, sure, who wouldn't be? Not panicked...

The BBC is definitely slooooooooow at correcting mistakes. Even yahoo.com took down the 1000mSv thing within an hour.

nest0r Wrote:

rich_f Wrote:EDIT: Oh goody. They've evacuated all of the workers. Good for the workers, not so much for the reactors.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/16/...evacuated/

Is this the same news that's been flagged as false by Joi Ito and others? e.g. https://twitter.com/HirokoTabuchi/status...7286189056 & https://twitter.com/Joi/status/47895106853937152

See, this is exactly what i mean. Now, is the plant abandoned or isn't it?

From http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/genpatsu-fukushima/

Quote:このため、東京電力は、午前１０時４０分すぎに作業員を安全な場所に退避させていましたが、放射線の数値が下がったことから、午前１１時半には退避を解除したということです。

So they evacuated for just under an hour then returned? It's not clear where that "安全な場所" is. Could it just be a building at the plant itself?

it's a pretty huge mistake, as well. i honestly can't beleive that nobody has bothered to employ contract translators, given how long this has been going on now. And saying that, the information was even corrected on NHK World, so they really have no excuse. They seem to rely on one news agency, Kyodo for all of their information. Often they seem to miss pretty big things, and then misreport other things. rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRR lol

zigmonty Wrote:From http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/genpatsu-fukushima/

Quote:このため、東京電力は、午前１０時４０分すぎに作業員を安全な場所に退避させていましたが、放射線の数値が下がったことから、午前１１時半には退避を解除したということです。

So they evacuated for just under an hour then returned? It's not clear where that "安全な場所" is. Could it just be a building at the plant itself?

I was reading on Mainichi News (東日本大震災：福島第１原発３号機　格納容器が損傷か) and they have this line: 「社員は、中央制御室の電源に使うバッテリーを、中央制御室に運んだ後、４号機から北西に約５００メートル離れた災害対策本部のある免震重要棟に戻る際に炎を見つけた。」 which with my haphazard JP skill and Rikaichan, makes it sound like the evacuation place is some 500 meters northwest of reactor 4. In addition it sounds like they can haul the "control room"/monitoring stuff around with them(?). The last bit in the line I don't follow well but I think it means they came back and discovered the (most recent) fire.

I recently heard on NHK that they are using SDF helicopters to drop water, on what I don't know, I just know they were using helis again.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/paul-atkin...1611771235

If the worst happens, British Experts believe it'll affect a 30m radius.
Other stuff written in there, saw it linked on teamliquid, thought i'd repost.

Reuters has had pretty good coverage. http://www.reuters.com/places/japan
They seem to have someone who understands japanese, and you can leave a public comment very easily if you think they made a mistake.

The latest picture of the plant is also scary: http://images.scribblelive.com/2011/3/16...30_500.jpg (Reuters)

It looks like it suffered an air raid.

Out of curiosity. Is the UStream/Nicovideo stream for NHK something they only recently setup for the disaster? I'd love for Ustream restream to stick around, it is pretty good listening practice.

I recommend Al Jazeera for reliable, trustworthy, first-hand news. Japanese media is downplaying everything to keep the people calm, and most Western media is hyping the shit out of it because, well, that's just how they roll.

vix86 Wrote:I recently heard on NHK that they are using SDF helicopters to drop water, on what I don't know, I just know they were using helis again.

There was also a plan to use US military water trucks? And questions over the weather permitting helicopter stuff?

福島第一原発　地上で米軍車が放水へ section of http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/genpatsu-fukushima/

Quote:北澤防衛大臣は、１６日午後、記者団に対し、福島第一原子力発電所の３号機と４号機を冷却するため、アメリカ軍の放水車を利用して地上から放水が行われるという見通しを示しました。

Quote:そのうえで、北澤大臣は「地上から放水を行い、その効果を見ながら、より強力な放水が必要であれば、ヘリコプターからの放水に切り替える」

Quote:ただ、実際に上空からの放水が行えるかどうかについては、「現地の天候がふぶいており、ヘリコプターの飛行を決断できないので、もうしばらくたたないとはっきりしない」と述べました。

Edit: Apparently the helicopter's taken off.

the basic fact of it is that no news organisation has any more information than any other, in terms of hard facts. So you're really best to watch the news right from the source if you can, and then look for expert opinions elsewhere.

As it is, pretty much all the interviews today have been an absolute joke, apart from when Edano spoke (and even he got some of it wrong).
The rest of it has been filled with don't knows, maybe's, don't have the information, we're not sure why the water level should be going up but the pressure has sank, or Tepco guys getting angry at the press because they basically have no clue even if anything's on fire or not. They don't know if fireengines have arrived, or why they haven't. Flicking through bits of paper trying to find information that isn't there. Tepco didn't invest heavily in a media relations department, it seems...

IceCream Wrote:the basic fact of it is that no news organisation has any more information than any other, in terms of hard facts. So you're really best to watch the news right from the source if you can, and then look for expert opinions elsewhere.

Thats the problem though. The only real source for info is TBS/NHK and the major news orgs in Japan (Asahi/Yomiuri/Mainichi/etc). TEPCO's own JP site is behind by quite a bit in terms of information. I will note that I have noticed the amount of new info has slowed in pass few days, this either a) means they are holding back more and more on the actual situation or b) things are slowly getting better/stable.

BBC/CNN/etc (save maybe Al'Jazeera from what I hear) are behind by almost a day in terms of new info though.

I am very grateful for Ustream and Twitter these days, I must say.

IceCream Wrote:the basic fact of it is that no news organisation has any more information than any other, in terms of hard facts. So you're really best to watch the news right from the source if you can, and then look for expert opinions elsewhere.

Yeah... the real scary thing is how little the operators know of what's going on (or at least, that's the impression that's being given).

As for news (for someone not living in japan), NHK's website seems good. Japanese if you can read it, the english version is still better than CNN, etc though.

SBS news in australia just retold the story of Chernobyl again, and added a short piece on the atomic bombings in WWII. WTF!

http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/jap...e2011.html

It's updated with many useful schedules and maps for residents, from what I can see.