Important to remember, talk of “radiation levels” is somewhat meaningless without context – what kind of radiation? what kind of nuclide involved? (long lived or short lived, bio-available or not..)
The piece briefly mentions ocean contamination. We have been continually told about land based measurements, while the majority of the contaminants have been carried out to sea by the prevailing winds, where, we are told, they will go “away”.
Except, in the Biosphere, there is no “away”.
NYTimes reports continuing concerns about spent fuel pools:
The storage pool at Fukushima Daiichi Power Station’s No. 2 Reactor, which holds spent nuclear fuel rods, was spewing steam late Tuesday, forcing workers to divert their attention to dousing the reactor building with water. If unchecked the water in the pool could boil away, exposing the fuel rods and releasing large amounts of radiation into the air.
“We cannot leave this alone and we must take care of it as quickly as possible,” Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told reporters.
> …continuing concerns about spent fuel pools…
But all over the tubes people are performing post-mortems as though the reactors were now completely repaired and pumping juice back to the grid.
The main conclusion that is trying to be pushed appears to be: “Japan is not a glowing nuclear wasteland therefore nothing bad happened at all.”
well, with any luck, things will not get worse, but that still means weeks or months of slowly leaking radiation. Even if they cover it with concrete, the waste will continue to seep into ground water, and the ocean, for many years.
Let’s hope the worst is over – but looking at the latest reports, there’s still plenty of ‘excitement’ going on – even though it’s largely vanished from the MSM front pages.
Hard to tell astroturfing from those in genuine denial, but it’s been morbidly fascinating watching the twisting and ducking that’s been performed by the nuke fan club!