Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Full Map of the Cesium Counts

I do not think the good people at the Tokyo Shimbun will mind too much if I offer a jpeg of their October 7 printout of the Cesium 134 and Cesium 137 counts of the Kanto Area, with a legend and color scheme that at least makes some kind of sense.



As the map shows, the town of Iidate, which was not a part of the original evacuation zone, just got plastered. So for several days after the disaster, the populace of the town went about their business, without precautions, though their environment was more sullied than most of the area within the 30-to-20 band where folks were advised to not leave their homes due to fallout. I would not surprised if "Iidate" does not become a metaphor for a total governmental failure (the SPEEDI data available to the Prime Minister's Office at the time of the disaster showed that the town was in danger. Nobody at the Kantei knew what to do with the data, however.)

Stunning also is the tongue of light green extending from the Miyagi border to the border of Tochigi, engulfing the major cities of Fukushima and Koriyama -- the prefecture's agricultural and industrial corridor. What a mess.

As for the other prefectures, well, the highland and alpine areas of Gunma and Tochigi are contaminated, even though they be 100 to 180 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, while the plains and lower hills are spared.

As to what happened to the area southwest of Tsuchiura, goodness knows. Must have been an unfortunate front of rain.

For a large reproduction of this map, click HERE.

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3 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:33 PM

    The dark red and much of the orange zones are at least as heavily contaminated as the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. It makes the original US recommendation for its citizens to stay at least 80 km away from the reactors look pretty reasonable.

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  2. Anonymous8:57 PM

    The unit of measurement, as always, leaves me floundering Anon. Do you have somewhere that helps me understand what the red means other than "scary".

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  3. Anonymous10:22 PM

    The closed zone (Zone of Alienation) around Chernobyl, where no-one is still allowed to live, covers areas contaminated with more than 1.44 million becquerels/square meter of radioactive cesium. The Zone of Permanent Control, where people are required to undergo regular health checks, is contaminated with more than 550,000 becquerels/square meter.

    The dark red area on the Fukushima map is contaminated with over 3 million becquerels/square meter. The orange area is contaminated with 1-3 million becquerels/square meter.

    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists notes this in an article on the consequences of Fukushima, without giving the actual figures:

    http://bos.sagepub.com/content/67/5/27.full
    (scroll down to just below the map)

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