Nothing illustrates the incredibility of some of the radiation reports about Japan in the popular press than the case of Iitate, Japan.
Today The Wall Street Journal is reporting here that the radiation level at the main gate to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant is 144 microsieverts per hour. Inside the grounds of the plant, high level readings have been reported in reactor and/or turbine buildings all the way between 200, 300, and 400 millisieverts per hour on the lower end to as much as 1000 millisieverts per hour or more at the higher end, readings worlds away from microsieverts per hour (1 millisievert per hour is the same as 1000 microsieverts per hour).
The main gate is exactly one kilometer distant from the reactors, while the west gate is just slightly farther out.
This means that despite the catastrophe unfolding at the water's edge, a kilometer away the radiation levels drop dramatically. It doesn't mean they are safe, but the decline is dramatic with distance.
Compare that observation with the report by Kyodo News (which we detailed here) in which the spokesman for the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency is quoted as saying radiation levels in Iitate, Japan, 25 to 30 miles away, were at 25 millisieverts per day, or 1.04 millisieverts per hour, if one spent a maximum of eight hours outdoors. In microsieverts per hour, that would have to be 1,040.
The following map (source) of today's conditions shows that that statement must be in error, and wildly so:
All the readings in the affected area displayed here are measured in microsieverts, and very low measurements are reported.
There is only one line of contamination running northwest of the reactors where there are reports of relatively higher readings, the highest of which is around 70 microsieverts per hour, still much lower than at the main gate to Fukushima, and nowhere even remotely in the vicinity of 1,000 microsieverts per hour.
