FUKUSHIMA: Yes there is a cover-up, yes there is overblown hysteria, and yes there are agendas on both sides

As Tepco gets out of its depth in Japan, some bloggers get out of their depth on radiation

From March 2011 to August 2013, professional photographer and amateur rad-level observer Ken Rockwell observed the California cpm level rise from 18 to 30. It’s a rise, but not a serious one…this is roughly on the scale of a small leak from Sellafield: disturbing, but not dangerous. But now Ken isn’t measuring the cpms, and he doesn’t answer his email much, as far as I can tell.

This from a regular Slogger last night:

‘…..I have a screen shot that shows how the whole country [USA] got lit up for Christmas… its been over 300 cpm’s in LA for over 4 days now… those people alone are going to be at peak exposure for a lifetime within a few days… 100 is alert, 150 is shelter or leave level… Montana 500, Idaho 550… and the worst part is all the sites that were reporting the elevated levels are slowly being extinguished and then another site magically pops up next to them reading like 15 CPM’s (what a joke!!! the FDA must be taking action)… meanwhile bald eagles are dropping out of the sky dead… and all the starfish are melting? This whole mess has been massively covered up but they said that 2014 was when the plume of shit in the water would arrive on the coast and here we are… and it’s only just gotten STARTED… 150-200 on the east coast as well…’

The American Nuclear Society’s radiation measurement page on its website hasn’t been updated since June 12th 2012.

The website tested marine animals and fish last April and found the radiation levels “on a par with what you’d get from eating a banana”.

So here’s the problem: it’s five months since a regularly recorded and verifiable rad-level survey (as far as I can see) was done in the US.

Websites in the ‘alternative’ blogosphere, however, are saying that current levels range from 150-500 cpms from San Diego to Montana. So has it got much worse since last August?

The privately-owned Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center runs a real-time map showing US radiation hotspots. This is a page capture I took of the Western USA earlier this morning :

The black & yellow nuclear signs show ‘rising’ radiation levels, and the red & yellow ones ‘Level 3 radcon alert’. There is a Level 4 code (black and brown) labelled ‘concern’. There are none on this map. In fact, there are no radcon L4 spots anywhere across the US as of today, 4th January 2014. But there were on 12th December 2013:

As we can see above, four black/brown symbols were around then. Now they’re not. This is not consonant with a rising level of Fukushimi radiation, nor with danger to human life.

At the alternative blogsite WND, this was reported as follows: ‘Radiation alerts hit U.S. cities – Fukishima cited as suspected source of increasing threat….’ That’s not true: if anything, it’s falling. There are then several paragraphs of hysteria, followed by this lame ending: ‘They were listed at Radcon 4, only one step from an alert, the map showed.’ Right then: one step from an alert, but not an alert as suggested in the headline.

I remain sure that there is a major problem at Fukushima, and the latest reliable input I have from Japan is that the emergency is far more dangerous and out of control than either Tepco or the Abe government are suggesting. The USS Reagan case also looks increasingly ominous. But the above observations render the current US situation what I would call ‘confused’ rather than conclusive either way.

Genuine attempts to get at the truth of all this aren’t going to be helped by sloppy reporting and half-baked projections. I think there are signs that Washington is understating the danger. I also think that some sites with entirely different agendas show signs of overstating it. I’m becoming more convinced with every week that close exposure to Fukushima without protection is a death sentence. And I now think the OIC should give all the brown envelopes back, and move the Olympic Games. However, based on what I’ve been able to verify over the last two days, nobody is being “fried” in the US right now…or anywhere near it.

Last night at The Slog: The art of being careful with one’s comparisons