A Japanese video journalist has become one of the first to document the scene inside an exclusion zone around a radiation-belching nuclear plant. Cattle roam deserted streets as packs of dogs yap at one of the only humans they have seen since thousands of people were ordered to evacuate a 20-kilometre (12-mile) area around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi atomic power station.
The scene emerged in footage posted on YouTube by Tetsuo Jimbo, who drove and then walked to within 1.5 kilometres of the plant, the scene of the worst nuclear emergency since Chernobyl. Radiation monitors beep constantly, their pitch and intensity increasing as Jimbo gets closer to the power station, where workers are battling to cool runaway reactors.
YouTube link.
"Is it a bit risky?" Jimbo says in the video as a monitor indicates 94.2 microsieverts per hour of radiation in the air around him - meaning that he gets the same level of radiation in a day that people normally get in a year. At one point, the monitor indicates a level as high as 112 microsieverts, a level too high for people to stay for an extended period.
The footage was shot on April 3, showing Jimbo apparently 1.5 kilometres from the power plant, which has been releasing radioactive materials since it was damaged by the March 11 earthquake and deadly tsunami that killed more than 12,500 people and left nearly 15,000 missing. The 12-minute clip shows the journalist, who founded videonews.com and was accompanied by a colleague, driving through streets all but deserted since the government mandated the evacuation. Occasionally he drives past other cars, seemingly being driven by people in protective gear - possibly plant workers. Jimbo wore only a face mask.
3 comments:
He may have gotten the first footage of the area post tsunami, but at what cost to his health and life span?
They could have stayed there for days.
100 microsivert per hour is about 900 milliSv per year. That's too high on a yearly basis.
10 microsivert per hour is about 88 milliSV per year. Most people will not get cancer at this radiation level. Maybe as much as 1 extra out 100 may develop cancer sometime in life, but I regard that as uncertain numbers. Maybe fewer.
But it's the radiation locations that is important. It doesn't have to be 1,5 km from the reactor. The highest concentration are measured on spots 30 km away from the reactor. Living to 3 km from the reactor may not harm you at all.
That was eerie. That poor little hungry pit, the others didn't seem interested, but I wish they'd have taken him with them.
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