Spent the last two hours trying to weed out the alarmists, to find, what appears to be the best information available right now. I am far from being an expert on this subject, just trying to use my common sense right now.

The Fukushima nuclear plant lost containment integrity and is leaking radiation

by: Maggie Gundersen

Sat Mar 12, 2011 at 10:20:52 AM EST

Radioactive smoke after the explosion appears to be heading out to sea.

What type of protection do people need? Some photos from Reuters show police and other emergency personnel wearing gas masks. The gas masks will not protect against any radiation. The particles are atomic sized and nothing the emergency personnel are wearing can protect them. The people surrounding the plant and all emergency workers there are also enveloped in a cloud of gamma radiation.

In the US, in about a week, it is possible that a cloud of radiation might reach California, and in 10 days hit VT. Wash your food and take potassium iodide (not now, wait a week until the cloud is near). Potassium iodide fills your thyroid with iodine so that it will not absorb any iodine from the radioactive cloud.

What has happened is that the nuclear fuel cladding is cracking and releasing the radiation held within the nuclear fuel pellets. Fuel pellets are the size of the joint in your pinky and there are tens of thousands of them within every nuclear reactor. The volatile radiation in the form of xenon, krypton, iodine, cesium, and strontium is already being released as a gas through the relief valves in the reactor and out the leaky containment. If you have ever used a pressure cooker, you have seen the relief valve on the top of the pressure cooker, and the feature is similar to the open valve on the top of the reactor, and that valve is fully open right now.

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Dr. Chris Busby has posted the following notice (4.00 / 1)

Dr. Chris Busby of Wales, is the foremost radiation specialist in the world. He is a member of the Low Level Radiation Campaign and the European Committee on Radiation Risk and has conducted the epidemiological studies on Chernobyl and Sellafield.

His publications can be found here.

Urgent : 12th March 2011; London
Alert: the potential health consequences of the explosion
at the Fukushima reactor in Japan
Joint Press Statement from the Low Level Radiation Campaign
and the European Committee on Radiation Risk

The evidence is now overwhelming that there has been a significant explosion
accident at the Japanese Fukushima nuclear plant following the loss of coolant to the reactor. The reactor is of the Boiling Water type, which is the same type as the Chernobyl reactor. The detection of high levels of radioactivity and of Caesium-137 near the plant makes it clear that fission radionuclides are being released to the atmosphere.

The quantity of radioactivity, which has been or will be released is not yet
known. However it should be appreciated as a matter of extreme urgency that the health consequences of exposure to this type of radiation is extremely serious and that the level of exposure cannot be accurately assessed by making radiation measurements based on absorbed dose. The authorities are already, and will continue to, downplay the potential risks on the basis of a false radiation risk model, that of the International Commission on Radiological Protection. This is an exact replication of the responses to the similar Chernobyl explosion and is driven by the bias in these agencies and authorities towards nuclear energy. The radionuclides released in the Chernobyl accident are the same radionuclides being released from the Fukushima plant. The effects of the Chernobyl accident radioactivity releases have been seen to be devastating and continue to affect the health of the exposed populations as far away from Chernobyl as Europe and the USA. The reason that Geiger absorbed dose type of readings (milliSieverts) cannot be employed as measures of risk is that these
kinds of radioactive substances act from within the body or by binding to DNA, thus the dose to the local tissue or DNA can be enormous whilst the average dose recorded by the Geiger counter may be quite low or even barely detectable.

If significant amounts of radioactivity from the Fukushima plume approach
populated centres in any country (e.g. the western USA) the advice from the
European Committee on Radiation Risk Action Team is as follows:

1. Do not believe the assurances of the radiation protection advisors working for the government. They are false, biased and based on an obsolete model. This is a potenbtial Chernobyl level event and must be seen as extremely serious.

2. Try to obtain if possible a Geiger Counter or similar radiation detector or readings from someone who owns one. If the readings increase to more that twice the normal background in your area or to a level of more than 300nSv/h (300nGy/h) then:

3. Get away as soon as possible to a clean area or if not possible stay indoors and keep all the doors and windows closed for at as long as the radiation levels are higher than normal. Try to keep the house sealed as far as possible.

4. Drink bottled water, use only tinned milk. Await further bulletins from
http://www.llrc.org and http://www.euradcom.org

Contact: Prof Chris Busby, Scientific Secretary ECRR +44 7989 428833; +44 1970630215; Email: Mireille de Messieres: admin@greenaudit.org
Richard Bramhall, LLRC +44 1597 824771; bramhall@llrc.org

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