Whistling Past the Graveyard

                

Seen above is a radiation dose chart depicting what excess amounts of radiation can do to the human body. Needless to say, the effects of same are not pretty, something rather disquieting to say the least while watching the nuclear fubar unfold in Japan.  Another interesting note is the fact mainline news is now saying the "worst is over and that the impact of this multi tiered meltdown will have little impact to the Japanese economy" even though 1, the plants supplied 30% of Japan's energy, 2, Japan has no natural resources and 3...

"Radiation 1,600 times higher than normal levels has been detected in an area about 20 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, International Atomic Energy Agency officials said Monday.

which means the...

Data collected by an IAEA team show that radiation levels of 161 microsievert per hour have been detected in the town of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, the officials said.

and

The government has set an exclusion zone covering areas within a 20-km radius of the plant and has urged people within 20 to 30 km to stay indoors."

But it's still ok even though.. 

"On Sunday, one measurement 58 km from Fukushima registered 5.7 microsieverts per hour, the IAEA said in data provided to reporters.

which means

... people would be exposed to the IAEA's annual recommended maximum radiation of one millisievert within about seven days.

and

The IAEA assumes that receiving more than one millisieverts per year, in addition to the dose from naturally occurring radiation, raises long-term cancer risk."

but the worst is over, right? Ah, perhaps not Grasshopper

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert

161 microsieverts/hour = 3.86 millisieverts/day = 1410 mSv/year

Yearly dose examples

• Sleeping next to a human for 8 hours every night: 0.02 mSv/yr[9]
• Cosmic radiation (from sky) at sea level: 0.24 mSv/year[7]
• Natural radiation in the human body: 0.40 mSv/year[7]
• New York-Tokyo flights for airline crew: 9 mSv/year[10]
• Total average radiation dose for Americans: 6.2 mSv/year[13]
• Smoking 1.5 packs/day: 13-60 mSv/year[11][12]
• Current average limit for nuclear workers: 20 mSv/year[10]
• Background radiation in parts of Iran, India and Europe: 50 mSv/year[10]
• Elevated limit for workers during Fukushima emergency: 250 mSv/year[14

Sounds like the BP drill all over again whereby the oil miraculously disappeared within 11 months just in time for Spring Break save for the inconvenient Washington's Blog post titled New Oil Spill in Gulf ... 100-Mile Slick putting forth little tidbits ignored by the media because it's "old news" not worthy of our attention while American Idol and Charlie Sheen's meltdown is. 

Oh, and by the way, the effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill did not magically disappear. Here is a roundup of some of the news from the Gulf of Mexico from the first couple of weeks of March:

Addendum: "As for Hitachinaka City, which according to SPEEDI has seen a surge in radiation over the past 24 hours, things are far worse: "Hitachinaka City, Ibaraki Prefecture, saw the highest radioactive values recorded, with 12,000 becquerels of cesium, iodine and 85,000 becquerels."