The above sounds outrageous but the Fukushima disaster may just be starting.  On October 2nd, 2011, plutonium was found lying on the ground up to 30 miles away from the reactors, evidently being blasted there when the spent fuel pool of reactor #1 was destroyed in a hydrogen explosion on March 14th.   On Dec. 13, 2011, the entire south wall of reactor #4 collapsed and the spent fuel pool on the 2nd floor may literally fall to the ground and be impossible to contain or cool. And on April 3, 2012, 14 months after the disaster, the level of Cesium-137 is 200 times greater than at Chernobyl!!!   If the spent fuel fuels fell because of another earthquake, "It would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is an issue of human survival."  (Mr. Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment at the U. S. Department of Energy)

The radiactivity in Japan is getting worse! The Nojiri River runs some 130 kilometers away from the damaged Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Fish samples caught in the river in mid-March registered 119 to 139 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram. Last year, fish samples in the same river measured only around 50 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram.   

Tepco estimated on March 29, 2012 decommissioning the three crippled reactors will take 40 years.  Reactor 2 radiation too high for access even for robots. Radiation inside the reactor 2 containment vessel at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant has reached a lethal 73 sieverts per hour. Exposure to 73 sieverts for a minute would cause nausea and seven minutes would cause death within a month, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. And TEPCO has not even examined reactors 1, 3 and 4 a year after the meltdown!

(Information on the Japanese reactor disaster is disappearing or being retroactively revised.  As a result, I'm not going to edit this page too extensively to remove old material.  The time line of events and the record of my radiation readings could become important as a reference point because the narrative is changing and history is being rewritten. In short, we have been lied to.  As an example, the day after the quake (3.12.2011) we were told the nuclear plants were built on bedrock. On 4.21 the news was that underground streams were flooding the basement of the reactor buildings.  And on 4.23 came the announcement that TEPCO was considering putting walls down 50 feet to an impervious layer. Is there any bedrock at all under the buildings? Were those nuclear plants built on the beach or landfill? (5.10 - Reactor #4 is leaning and in danger of falling over!)  You can skip over the news to my radiation readings by clicking here > present readings.)

SITE with news links to the Japanese nuclear catastrophe.  Daily news from Japan in English - NHK World  -
Energy News.     NKH World.  ----  To understand how a tsunami could destroy sturdy nuclear reactor buildings, think of a tsunami as an avalanche over flat land - an extremely heavy moving debris field, not "a" wave. 

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant Hi-Resolution Photos        Excellent map of Fukushima reactors and radiation hot spots. 4.25

Estimating Radioactive Contamination from the Accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant    April 2nd, 2011

Closing Ranks: The NRC, the Nuclear Industry, and TEPCO are Limiting the Flow of Information

4.19.2011 - TOKYO TEPCO stated, "We do not measure the level of plutonium and do not even have a detector to scale it." Ironically, the next day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano announced that "plutonium was detected".

Now the Japanese government has moved to crack down on independent reportage and criticism of the government's policies in the wake of the disaster by deciding what citizens may or may not talk about in public. A new project team has been created by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, the National Police Agency, and METI to combat "rumors" deemed harmful to Japanese security in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

The government charges that the damage caused by earthquakes and by the nuclear accident are being magnified by irresponsible rumors, and the government must take action for the sake of the public good. The project team has begun to send "letters of request" to such organizations as telephone companies, internet providers, cable television stations, and others, demanding that they "take adequate measures based on the guidelines in response to illegal information. "The measures include erasing any information from internet sites that the authorities deem harmful to public order and morality."

4.23 - Tokyo Takes Over PR From Plant Operator. TOKYO-Japan's government said it will largely take over speaking for embattled Tokyo Electric Power Co., after six weeks of nuclear crisis at the company's Fukushima Daiichi power complex have often generated conflicting reports from the government and Tepco. We have decided to make announcements as unified as possible," said Banri Kaieda, minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, which oversees Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, or NISA. Rival government agencies, too, have given mixed messages.

5.1 - Japan Prime Minister to study setting up "alternative capital" away from Tokyo

5.6 - Email from Japanese gov't officials says high density radiation will be released May 8 if situation continues. Minutes of meeting between TEPCO and the government on the 1st May. "If the current situation continues, high density radiation will be released on the 8th May." "Mr Hosono said: It is very important to go to the next step regarding the installation of the heat exchanger machine. For the concerned parties, be careful of the sharing of information with high sensitivity so that the same mistakes aren't made again like the release of the radiated water previously.

5.20 - "A Massive Cover-up": Texas officials directed staff to change test results that showed drinking water exceeded EPA radiation limits.  HOUSTON- Newly-released e-mails from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality show the agency's top commissioners directed staff to continue lowering radiation test results, in defiance of federal EPA rules.  The e-mails and documents, released under order from the Texas Attorney General to KHOU-TV, also show the agency was attempting to help water systems get out of formally violating federal limits for radiation in drinking water. Without a formal violation, the water systems did not have to inform their residents of the increased health risk.  "It's a conspiracy at the TCEQ of the highest order," said Tom Smith, of the government watchdog group Public Citizen. "The documents have indicted the management of this commission in a massive cover-up to convince people that our water is safe to drink when it's not."

5.21 - Fukushima plant probably began spewing radiation within hours of earthquake: data, National Post, May 21, 2011: Data released for the first time this week show three of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors probably began spewing radiation within a few hours of Japan's devastating earthquake [...] Yet for the first days of the disaster, the plant's operators and Japan's nuclear safety regulators studiously avoided using the word "meltdown." They repeatedly said they believed the reactors' fuel rods were still intact and safely contained inside their zirconium sheaths. In reality, the rods in the core of the No. 1 reactor had fully melted by the morning of March 12 and had fallen to the bottom of the reactor's pressure vessel.

5.30 - Fuji TV Poll: Over 80% of Japanese voters do not trust government's information about Fukushima.

6.7 - US And IAEA Knew Fukushima Had Meltdown Within 3.5 Hours Since March And Hid It From The Public. The extent of one cover up after another over the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in amazing. Revealing facts to the public weeks and months after the fact is paramount to a cover up at the least. Today we learn that top US officials and the IAEA was presented with data that showed the Fukushima nuclear reactor suffered a nuclear meltdown within 3.5 hours of the Japan earthquake but didn't inform the public over the last 2 months because they were waiting for TEPCO to officially confirm the data.

6.11 - Blame the victim! -  Head of Fukushima health study: 100 mSv/yr OK for pregnant moms - "Effects of radiation do not come to people that are happy. They come to people that are weak-spirited."

6.15 - Japanese media blackout of words: MOX, plutonium, and meltdown. "There was a blackout in the media of the word," he says in an interview this month with the Foreign Correspondents' Club magazine, "No. 1 Shimbun." In April the head of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, Takashi Sawada, also said that fuel rods in reactors 1 and 3 had melted. Yet, it took over two months for newspapers and TV here to begin using the word.

6.21 - Canadian newspaper tries to get soil tested for radiation - Private companies, gov't agencies, and universities all refused to get involved.

6.23 - Idaho DEQ administrator on radiation from Fukushima: "I'm not saying it's not a big deal - It is."  "If you can avoid it, avoid it."  Idaho Paper: EPA's "RadNet monitors were shipped out of Boise Tuesday" - Don't expect an update any time soon.

6.30 - Leaked emails show British gov't worked with nuke companies on PR campaign to downplay Fukushima - Degree of collusion "truly shocking."  British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known. Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse [...]

7.26 - "Shocking": Japanese Nuclear Emergency Director says local residents have no right to avoid radiation exposure -Gizmodo. This footage, from a recent meeting of indignant Japanese citizens and feckless Japanese government types should be a little shocking. Sadly, it's just more of the same - ineptitude and inaction. By denying the right to avoiding radiation? OK, shocking. [...] One Fukushima resident asks, "As other people do, people in Fukushima have the right to avoid the radiation exposure and live a healthy life, too. Don't you think so?" A Nuclear Safety Commission Of Japan rep, when pushed to go beyond his canned non-answer, deadpans "I don't know if they have that right." The crowd reacts as you would expect when told they nuclear-threatened welfare isn't a concern. [...]

7.7 - Faked: Japan nuke company caught using employees to ask questions during televised hearing - Told to impersonate private citizens who want reactors restarted.

7.29 - Japan gov't told power company to deceive public by staging questions during nuclear forum. Chubu Electric Power Company says the government's nuclear agency asked it to make sure that questions in favor of nuclear power be asked at a government-sponsored symposium in 2007. In a report submitted to the government on Friday, the utility said the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency requested that it gather participants and have local residents pose prearranged questions at the forum held in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan. [...] The revelation comes after Kyushu Electric Power Company came under fire for submitting fake e-mails in support of a restart of idled nuclear reactors in a government-sponsored meeting for local residents in June.

8.10 - Public anger "exploding" as Japanese discover more about gov't downplaying spread of Fukushima radiation, health dangers.

9.8 - Japan's prime minister at the height of the nuclear crisis has said he feared the country would collapse [...] In candid interviews with Japanese newspapers, Naoto Kan, who resigned this month, said that at one point he believed the disaster could become many times worse than Chernobyl. "It was truly a spine-chilling thought," he told the Tokyo Shimbun, adding that he foresaw a situation in which greater Tokyo's 30 million people would have to be evacuated, a move that would "compromise the very existence of the Japanese nation". In the first week of the crisis Tepco played down speculation that fuel rods had melted after the quake and tsunami crippled the reactors' cooling systems. "The power was totally lost and there was no cooling capacity," Kan said. "I knew what that meant and I thought, `This is going to be a disaster'."

~~~~~ Radiation news ~~~~~~~

4.3.12 - Fukushima Daiichi Site: Cesium-137 is 200 times greater than at Chernobyl Accident

Japan's former Ambassador to Switzerland, Mr. Mitsuhei Murata, was invited to speak at the Public Hearing of the Budgetary Committee of the House of Councilors on March 22, 2012, on the Fukushima nuclear power plants accident. Before the Committee, Ambassador Murata strongly stated that if the crippled building of reactor unit 4-with 1,535 fuel rods in the spent fuel pool 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground-collapses, not only will it cause a shutdown of all six reactors but will also affect the common spent fuel pool containing 6,375 fuel rods, located some 50 meters from reactor 4. In both cases the radioactive rods are not protected by a containment vessel; dangerously, they are open to the air.

This would certainly cause a global catastrophe like we have never before experienced. He stressed that the responsibility of Japan to the rest of the world is immeasurable. Such a catastrophe would affect us all for centuries. Ambassador Murata informed us that the total numbers of the spent fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi site excluding the rods in the pressure vessel is 11,421 (396+615+566+1,535+994+940+6375). I asked top spent-fuel pools expert Mr. Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment at the U. S. Department of Energy, for an explanation of the potential impact of the 11,421 rods.  If the spent fuel fuels fell because of another earthquake, "It would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival."

3.30.12 - California Slammed With Fukushima Radiation
The Journal Environmental Science and Technology reports in a new study that the Fukushima radiation plume contacted North America at California "with greatest exposure in central and southern California", and that Southern California's seaweed tested over 500% higher for radioactive iodine-131 than anywhere else in the U.S. and Canada:

Projected paths of the radioactive atmospheric plume emanating from the Fukushima reactors, best described as airborne particles or aerosols for 131I, 137Cs, and 35S, and subsequent atmospheric monitoring showed it coming in contact with the North American continent at California, with greatest exposure in central and southern California. Government monitoring sites in Anaheim (southern California) recorded peak airborne concentrations of 131I at 1.9 pCi m-3

3.29.12 - Tepco estimated decommissioning the three crippled reactors will take 40 years.  Reactor 2 radiation is too high for access even for robots. Radiation inside the reactor 2 containment vessel at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant has reached a lethal 73 sieverts per hour. Exposure to 73 sieverts for a minute would cause nausea and seven minutes would cause death within a month, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

3.28.12 - `Fukushima reactor in crisis again'  TOKYO: A new probe at Japan's crippled nuclear power plant has found fatal radiation levels and hardly any cooling water inside one of the reactors, renewing concerns about plant's stability. The operator of Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant says an endoscopic examination on Tuesday detected radiation levels up to 10 times the fatal dose inside the No. 2 reactor's contain chamber, suggesting challenges ahead in shutting down the facility. The probe also found the containment vessel had cooling water up to only about 2 feet from the bottom, far below the 10 meters estimated when the government declared the plant's stability in December. Plant workers also reported fresh leaks of contaminated water from a water treatment unit.

3.8.12 - Fukushima plant still needing great care a year after tsunami. TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A year after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was ravaged by a huge earthquake and tsunami, Japan continues to face the challenge of keeping the complex under control without much knowledge of what is actually happening inside the three crippled reactors.

Reactor No. 1 - Core melted after loss of power supply, 392 fuel assemblies stored in spent fuel pool, building housing the reactor damaged by hydrogen explosion on March 12, building cover completed on Oct. 28, achieved state of cold shutdown on Dec. 16.

Reactor No. 2 - Core melted after loss of power supply, 615 fuel assemblies stored in spent fuel pool, achieved state of cold shutdown on Dec. 16, industrial endoscope passed into reactor on Jan. 19, malfunction of thermometers confirmed in February.

Reactor No. 3 - Core melted after loss of power supply, 566 fuel assemblies stored in spent fuel pool, building housing the reactor damaged by hydrogen explosion on March 14, achieved state of cold shutdown on Dec. 16, work to remove debris from upper area of building continuing.

Reactor No. 4 - No fuel rods in core, 1,535 fuel assemblies stored in spent fuel pool and stably cooled, building housing the reactor damaged by hydrogen explosion on March 15, supporting structure under bottom of pool installed as countermeasure against aftershocks by July 30, work to remove debris from upper area of the building continuing.

3.7.12 -  March 11th mega quake triggered 80 other quakes.  A Japanese seismologist says the March 11th earthquake triggered about 80 separate quakes, one of them as far as 1,300 kilometers away from the original quake's epicenter.

12.13.11 - Confirmed: Fukushima disaster contaminated ocean with 50 million times normal radiation, leaks still ongoing http://www.naturalnews.com/z034395_Fukushima_cesium_radiation.html

Things are suddenly heating up again with Fukushima. As we reported yesterday, the southern wall of Fukushima reactor #4 apparently collapsed over the past few days, calling into question the structural integrity of the remainder of the containment building http://www.naturalnews.com/034387_Fukushima_nuclear_reactor_collapse.html

Photos of the failed structure have emerged on Enenews.com, where a report explains that a once-intact wall is now essentially "missing" and that further degradation of the structure could lead to mass evacuations in Japan ( http://enenews.com/report-confirmed-wall-reactor-4-lost-south-side-photos ). As this report is still not confirmed by other sources, we continue to take this with a sense of caution here at NaturalNews. We will continue to monitor the situation and report any relevant developments.

50 million times higher radiation levels  What has hit the mainstream media, however, is a report entitled Impacts of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plants on Marine Radioactivity, authored by Ken Buesseler, Michio Aoyama, and Masao Fukasawa.

This report, published in Environmental Science & Technology, reveals that levels of radioactive cesium reached 50 million times normal levels in the ocean water off the coast of the Fukushima Daiichi facility. Even more concerning, the abstract of this paper concludes, "... the concentrations through the end of July remain higher than expected implying continued releases from the reactors or other contaminated sources, such as groundwater or coastal sediments."

11.2 - Remember Fukushima? It's Back. The problem with sweeping unresolved problems, especially of the unstable gamma decay variety, is that they tend to pop up at the most inopportune of times. Such as during global coordinated fiat ponzi bailouts. Kyodo reports that according to TEPCO a fresh fission reaction has restarted at Fukushima Daichi, and that boric acid is being injected to control a "possible nuclear reaction." Hardly the encouraging news that the world needs right about now. From Kyodo: TEPCO finds sign of fresh nuclear fission at Fukushima reactor Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday there may be signs of fresh nuclear fission in the No. 2 reactor at its quake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant and that it has begun injecting boric acid to control a possible nuclear reaction.

There has been no change in the temperature, pressure and radiation levels at the reactor, whose nuclear fuel is believed to have melted when the cooling system failed following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the utility known as TEPCO said. Gas samples taken Tuesday from inside the reactor's containment vessel may contain radioactive xenon, a gas typically generated by nuclear fission, the company said.

10.5 -Fukushima - Radiation now 5 times higher than July levels - School building with 150,000 Bq/kg nearby.

10.2 - Plutonium detected outside N-plant site   (Extremely important! Japan may well have been producing fuel for a bomb. The #1 Reactor was not supposed to contain any plutonium!  A release of plutonium of this magnitude is unprecedented.) 
Plutonium believed to have been released from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after the March 11 earthquake has been detected outside the power plant site for the first time, it has been learned. One of the spots found contaminated with the hazardous substance is 45 kilometers (30 miles) from the plant.

9.29 - Fukushima shocking truths: Historical radiation dump, cover-up, the unborn
.... Professor Chris Busby recently reported that children are not being protected nor tested for radiation. He also stated why workers are taking contaminated materials from Fukushima and spreading them all over Japan and burning them. (See end of embedded Youtube on this page left.)

Professor Busby says the testing done in Japan is so substandard that his car air filter testing for radiation indicates higher levels than what testers are saying children who are tested show.

"The car breathes air the same way the child breathes air."

"We need to do something about these children who are being contaminated," Busby said, "take them somewhere where it's reasonably safe.'

He explains, however, that there is nowhere to take them since contaminated material is being deliberately spread throughout Japan and burned, thus releasing radioactive material in the air.

The "sinister and horrifying" reason for trucking the radioactive material from Fukushima to all over Japan to be burned, said Professor Busby, is that eventually, when Japanese children start to die to leukemia, from other cancers, from heart disease, their parents are going to want to go to court and sue the government. To do that, the parents will need to say the children were contaminated.

Since cancer rates will have escalated throughout the nation, there will be no control group with no contaminated materials to compare with the high cancer rates, so there can be no successful lawsuits according to Professor Busby.

"The aim is to destroy all of Japan, to increase the cancer rate throughout Japan so there will be no control group to which you can compare these children in the Fukushima area."

The same burned radioactive contaminated material going up into the air is also being carried by the jet stream to the United States, as nuclear specialist Arnie Gundersen has formerly explained, calling the lethal practice, "kicking the can."

"It eventually ends up into the Pacific Northwest, either into B. C., Oregon, Washington or California. The process of burning the radioactive material means they're kicking the can down the road."

9.28 - Fukushima worker: "Danger has reached a point that nobody has ever experienced" - Strong possibility nuclear fuel melted through protective sheath.  Confessions of a workers' discovery of 10,000 mSv yet! After another refused work.

9.28 -  Fukushima's Contamination Produces Some Surprises at Sea By DAVID JOLLY

... Off the coast, the early results indicate that very large amounts of radioactive materials were released, and may still be leaking, and that rather than being spread through the whole ocean, currents are keeping a lot of the material concentrated.

Most of that contamination came from attempts to cool the reactors and spent fuel pools, which flushed material from the plant into the ocean, and from direct leaks from the damaged facilities.

Japanese government and utility industry scientists estimated this month that 3,500 terabecquerels of cesium 137 was released directly into the sea from March 11, the date of the earthquake and tsunami, to late May. Another 10,000 terabecquerels of cesium 137 made it into the ocean after escaping from the plant as steam.

The leakage very likely isn't over, either. The Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the plant, said Sept. 20 that it believed that something on the order of 200 to 500 tons a day of groundwater might still be pouring into the damaged reactor and turbine buildings.

9.28 - ABC Australia: Former special adviser says Japan "too scared" to tell people the truth about Fukushima future. Former special adviser to Japan's prime minister and cabinet Kenichi Matsumoto has told the ABC that the government has known for months that many who live close to the Fukushima plant will not be able to return to their homes for 10 to 20 years because of contamination. [...] He says the government is simply too scared to tell Fukushima residents that they cannot return. [...] "The government should have conveyed the truth to the evacuees. But it felt scared; it feared telling the truth to the people." [...]

9.23 - Highest radiation levels in months inside Reactor No. 1 silt fence. 

9.22 - Mistake? Local Gov't: 330 Million bq/km of radioactivity found yesterday 50 mi. from Tokyo - Had been `not detected' for weeks - Now at March levels.

9.15 - Both cesium-134 and cesium-137 increase in latest San Francisco Bay Area milk sample.

9.8 - NHK: New estimate triples amount of radioactivity released from Fukushima reactors into sea. The combined amount of iodine-131 and cesium-137 is more than triple the figure of 4,720 terabecquerels earlier estimated by Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant operator.

9.6 - On March 11, at 22:35, the Cabinet received advice predicting that the fuel would be damaged and the pressure vessels would be breached. Forecast: exposure of top of active fuel (TAF): 21:40 (approx.) Forecast: damage to the reactor core(s) begins: 22:20 (approx.) Forecast: breaching of the pressure vessel(s) begins: 23:50 (approx.) [...] In other words, at approx. 22:20, damage to the reactor core(s) began, and a meltdown of the nuclear fuel would begin if the cooling system were not restored. Breach of the RPV was predicted to occur at 23:50. If the RPV were damaged, the containment vessel would also be damaged, and the containment vessel is only 3cm thick. The amount of time between the start of damage to the core and breaching of the RPV is predicted to be 1.5 hours. The 3cm-thick containment vessel would begin to be damaged within one hour at most. [...]

9.3 - Plutonium-238, 239, 240 detected at Fukushima playground on August 15 - TEPCO admits they consider it to be from triple meltdown.  As a result of plutonium and strontium analysis in the soil from the samples at the 3 periodic sampling spots collected on August 15, plutonium 238, 239, and 240 and strontium 89 and 90 were detected....

8.30 - "We've got to stop these sorts of reports coming out" - Int'l conference warns that media talk of Fukushima health effects "may be harmful." "We've got to stop these sorts of reports coming out, because they are really upsetting the Japanese population," says Gerry Thomas at Imperial College London, who is attending the meeting. "The media has a hell of a lot of responsibility here, because the worst post-Chernobyl effects were the psychological consequences and this shouldn't happen again."

8.27 - Professor: Radioactive particles from Fukushima like "poison gas" - Except it is going to kill you in a few years, not immediately (VIDEO).

8.25 - US nuke agency confirms "initial explosions at Fukushima were very likely ejections of core material": Analyst (VIDEO).
Paul Gunter, Beyond Nuclear: [...] What we have now been able to confirm through the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is that the initial explosions at Fukushima were very likely ejections of core material into the atmosphere and a vaporization of some portion of those cores [...]

8.23 - "We are basically recreating Fukushima all over again" - Clouds of radiation continue across to Pacific Northwest (VIDEO). Lots of serious ramifications from burning of nuclear waste. Material from Fukushima that was on the ground is now going airborne again. Towns now getting cesium redeposited on them by the burning of nuclear materia.l Clouds of radiation recontaminating areas deemed clean or low. Continues across to the Pacific Northwest

8.21 - The New York Times reports:  Large Zone Near Japanese Reactors to Be Off Limits TOKYO - Broad areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels, several major media outlets said Monday.

8.21 - Tokyo-area soil testing finds radioactivity up to Chernobyl relocation levels - 919,000 Bq/m .

8.19 - Gov't: South of Tokyo 12,400 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium found next to children's swimming pool - Radiation measurements nearly doubled over recent 5 day period.

8.17 - Tokyo sample had radioactivity levels higher than in Chernobyl exclusion zone - "There's a very, very high level of contamination even as far south as Tokyo."

8.17 - Gov't source says "I've heard about the steam coming out from the ground, and I am concerned" - "Some kind of reaction may be occurring underground" writes plant worker. [The same worker] also told [his contact] that there are 6 locations that exceed 10,000 millisievert/hr [10 sieverts/hr], unlike what TEPCO has announced.

8.15 - Neptunium-239 found in soil about 40 km from meltdown - "Several thousand becquerels" - Similar to levels detected at front gate of Fukushima plant. Neptunium-239, gamma emitter whose half life is about 2.4 days, decays into plutonium-239 whose half life is 24,200 years. I don't know how much longer Japan can continue to "Extend and Pretend", but probably much longer than anyone outside expects. We'll find out when this paper gets published.

8.13 - Tweets from Japan: "When we wash their hair, it comes off in a clump - It is really scary." Tweets from a nurse (guess) in a large hospital in Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture on August 10. Increasing number of patients with unexplainable decrease in white blood cells, headache, nausea. They are diagnosed for existing illness and undergo treatment, but they don't respond to the treatment at all. I've seen those cases in my hospital. I'm not saying they are all because of the radiation exposure, but I'm telling you what I'm seeing. When we wash their hair, it comes off in a clump. It is really scary. The doctor says, "I really wonder why the white blood cell count is down." Doctor, don't be so relaxed about it. There is going to be more and more people who don't respond to treatment.

8.13 - Asahi: "Horrifying" that Fukushima meltdown equivalent to almost 30 times the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in WWII. Tatsuhiko Kodama, 58, who heads the Radioisotope Center at Todai, was called to provide expert testimony before the Lower House Health, Labor and Welfare Committee on July 27. Besides being a doctor of internal medicine, Kodama is also an expert on internal radiation exposure. His background made even more shocking the testimony he provided in the Diet. Kodama explained the horrifying results of those calculations at the committee session. "The equivalent of 29.6 times of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, or in terms of uranium about 20 atomic bombs, were released by the accident," Kodama said. "While the remaining radiation from atomic bombs decreases to one-thousandth of the original level after a year, radioactive materials from the nuclear power plant only decrease to one-tenth the original level."

8.12 - 166,000,000 Bq/m of radioactive iodine, cesium at 21,200,000 Bq/m detected by researchers 4 km from Fukushima plant -NHK.  Krypton-85 and xenon-131m detected in samples from Reactor No. 2 - Xenon-131m has half life of only 12 days.  The measurement of density of radioactive materials in the air inside the Reactor 2 Containment Vessel was delayed because there was water in the temporary sampling instrument that TEPCO installed outside the CV. It looks like they decided to measure the water anyway, as well as the air. According to the measurement, the air is more radioactive than the water inside the Containment Vessel, but less radioactive than the air inside the Reactor 1 CV. So the melted fuel is probably not even inside the Containment Vessel in Reactor 2 either.

8.10 - Tokyo man tests positive for over 7,000 Becquerels of radioactive cesium during whole body counter check - Never went to Fukushima.  A Tokyo citizen turned out to be internally exposed. A man from Tokyo went to Hokkaido for sightseeing. He had a whole body counter check to see if he's taken radioactive particles into his body. [...] Cesium137 ; 868bq Cesium134 ; 6373bq. The doctor asked him if he went to Fukushima, he replied no. He normally spent days in Tokyo. Now it's pretty rational to think most of the other people are equally dosed. [...]

8.10 - Fukushima fish radiation excessive, Greenpeace says. Radiology and marine experts from Greenpeace said Tuesday that four out of eight samples of various fish obtained last month at five ports in Fukushima Prefecture exceeded the government-set limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram of radiation.

8.9 - Unit 3 MOX likely melted through. MOX fuel that was believed to have been kept cool at the bottom of one of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant after its core melted is believed to have breached the vessel after melting again, a study said Monday. The study by Fumiya Tanabe, an expert in nuclear safety, said most of reactor 3's mixed uranium-plutonium oxide fuel may have dribbled into the containment vessel underneath, and if so, the current method being used to cool the reactor will have to be rethought. This could force Tokyo Electric Power Co. to revise its schedule for containing the five-month-old disaster.

8.8 - Radiation team "got out of there quick" when trying to identify isotopes outside evacuation zone: We "found things we weren't expecting at all."  It was here that we took our highest and most concerning readings of the day. The parking lot of the restaurant was active, but less than we'd just seen. But when we walked across the street - maybe 10 feet away, we measured over 20,000 CPM and 9 Sv/hr. We pulled out our SAM 940 to try and identify the isotopes and found things we weren't expecting at all. So we grabbed some samples to send to a lab for professional analysis and got out of there quick.

8.5 - Method for cooling Reactor No. 3 "isn't cutting it" - Using triple the water as No. 1 and 2; A `considerable' amount of water is missing target. [T]he amount of water pumped in daily to maintain the temperatures at these levels is about 216 tons for the No. 3 reactor, as opposed to 84 tons for the No. 2 reactor, which is about the same size and contains roughly the same number of fuel rods, and 91 tons for the No. 1 reactor, which is smaller. The question is, why is this discrepancy occurring? [...]

8.3 - Experts: Melt-through scenario means even higher radiation readings to come - Likely many more reports of deadly radiation in future. Tokyo Electric Power Co. reported its second deadly radiation reading in as many days at its wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant [...] "It's probably the first of many more to come," said Michael Friedlander, who spent 13 years operating nuclear power plants [...]

8.1 - "Highest radiation level since the start of the nuclear crisis": 10 sieverts per hour measured outside between Reactors No. 1 and 2.

7.28 - Bloomberg: "Everyone is being bitten by invisible snakes that will eventually kill them" says professor visiting Fukushima. Radiation can damage human cells and DNA, with prolonged exposure causing leukemia and other forms of cancer, according to the World Nuclear Association. Children are more susceptible as their cells grow at a faster rate. "It's all invisible. The trees are still trees, people are shopping, the birds are singing and dogs are walking in the street," said Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster's school of biomedical sciences, who visited Fukushima prefecture last week to provide information on health risks. "When you bring out the (Geiger) machines, you can see everything is sparkling and everyone is being bitten by invisible snakes that will eventually kill them."

7.24 - Fukushima Blackout: Cooling at SPF No. 3 stopped for 5 hours, still on backup power - TEPCO says no `major' change in temp.

7.22 - TEPCO redefines "cold shutdown" - Only bottom of pressure vessel has to be under 100 degrees celsius, not reactor-core coolant.  A cold shutdown is usually defined as bringing the temperature of the reactor-core coolants to below 100 degrees. But this has been redefined as bringing the temperature at the bottom of the pressure vessels to below 100 degrees and reducing the release of radioactive materials from the reactors [...]

7.21 - NHK: "High levels of radioactivity found extensively" - Japan says air 150 km from Fukushima plant is as radioactive as areas close to meltdown.

7.20 - Japan nuclear expert warns of further radiation releases from Fukushima - Risks should be explained to nearby residents
(VIDEO).  An expert says that radiation could be released from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in about 2 and half days if the injection of cooling water into reactors is halted for any reason. Naito says nuclear fuel levels at the plant have dropped below one-tenth of what they were immediately after the accident, but warns of remaining risks.

7.18 - Japanese Gov't allows cows to emit up to 100,000 CPM of radioactivity - Humans would be required to undergo full-body decontamination. Officials of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry have admitted they did not consider the possibility of cattle ingesting straw contaminated by radioactive substances emitted from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

7.17 - Reactor No. 3: Containment vessel not holding air pressure - Gas may be leaking from damaged part of container, says TEPCO (VIDEO). Tokyo Electric Power Company has injected more than 200 cubic meters of nitrogen into the [No. 3] reactor's containment vessel since Thursday evening. But it says the interior air pressure has increased very little.

7.15 - More radioactive cows: "New scandal appears to be much wider" - 70 km from meltdown (VIDEO).  Cattle at the farm in Asakawa, about 60 kilometers from the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear station, were fed with rice straw containing 97,000 becquerels of cesium per kilogram, compared with the government standard of 300 becquerels, said Hidenori Ohtani at the livestock division of the Fukushima prefectural government.

7.14 - Powerful typhoon to threaten Japan early next week - Widespread adverse sea impact possible for Fukushima plant.  More from AccuWeather: Dramatic strengthening of Ma-on could culminate in super typhoon status while over open water. Storms of the kind that Ma-on is likely to become can cause 10 to 20 inches of rain in Japan, bringing flooding and mudslides.

Dramatic strengthening of Ma-on could culminate in super typhoon status while over open water. Storms of the kind that Ma-on is likely to become can cause 10 to 20 inches of rain in Japan, bringing flooding and mudslides.

7.13 - Entire area of major city 60km from Fukushima meltdown to be decontaminated - Officials expect process may take 20 years.  Report: 50,000+ Bq/kg of radioactive cesium found in soil near Tokyo - "Terrifying" that sample was from side of street where children walk everyday.

7.11 - Expert: Appears that more nuclear fuel damaged at Fukushima than all other reactor accidents in history combined (VIDEO). At 1:02:00 in: During April, the people in Seattle could have just as easily been in Tokyo for the amount of hot particles that were there.

7.10 - Forbes. com: Leading biophysicist casts critical light on gov't reassurances that Americans were never at risk from Fukushima fallout.

7.8 - Japan nuclear group says vital info still has not been released, such as temperatures of the molten nuclear fuel and lower section of pressure vessels. The society notes that there is the possibility that the damage to people's health from radiation exposure has increased because the government, Tepco and other related institutions did not properly disclose information on the status of the nuclear accidents and the environmental contamination by radioactive substances.

7.7 - Trouble at Reactor No. 3: Unable to inject nitrogen in containment vessel to prevent hydrogen explosion.

7.6 - B. C. Canada sees spike in number of sudden infant deaths - "Why so many of those have come up this year, we don't know."  There have been 21 sudden infant deaths in B. C. so far this year, while there were 16 sudden infant deaths for all of 2010, Lisa Lapointe said Tuesday.  (See the placement of the jet stream for much of the time since March 12th for a clue.)

7.5 - All soil samples taken 60 km from Fukushima plant survey exceed legal limit - Minimum of 326,000 Becquerels per sq. meter. One location registered as much as 931,000 becquerels per square meter, surpassing the 555,000 becquerels per sq meter limit for compulsory resettlement in the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.

7.3 - "Unbelievable": Large city 60 km from meltdowns has 3-4 times radiation levels at which Soviets evacuated everyone - Hotspots up to 500-700 times normal (VIDEO). Hotspots up to 500-700 times what is normal. This is just unbelievable, at those levels of exposure this is certainly risking the health and lives of people. Soviets decided to evacuate everyone that was living in areas where radiation was 3-4 times lower than what is found in Fukushima City.

7.3 - Video of damaged spent fuel pool No. 3 reveals single bundle of fuel that is very near water surface - "There should be a lot of bundles" (VIDEO) Pretty clear to me and other engineers that have seen it that this might be a single fuel bundle. There should be a lot of bundles there. This should be under 25 feet of water, it's not. It's very near to the surface

7.2 - Prime Minister's former nuclear adviser: "There will be broader, more disturbing discoveries later this year" - "There will be a chaos." ....while there have been scattered reports already of food contamination-of tea leaves and spinach, for example-Mr. Kosako said there will be broader, more disturbing discoveries later this year, especially as rice, Japan's staple, is harvested.  "Come the harvest season in the fall, there will be a chaos," Mr. Kosako said. "Among the rice harvested, there will certainly be some radiation contamination-though I don't know at what levels-setting off a scandal. If people stop buying rice from Tohoku, we'll have a tricky problem."

6.29 - "Very high concentrations" of hot particles in Pacific NW during April, May - Includes plutonium and americium.  Hot particles have made their way across the Pacific, and at least the data for the Pacific NW indicates very high concentrations, the average person in Tokyo breathed about 10 hot particles a day, and the average person in Seattle breathed in 6.

6.28 - Japan `discovers' tons of radioactive water have been leaking into ground at Fukushima.  TEPCO halts water circulation due to leaks.

6.27 - Mainichi: "The melted nuclear fuel is sinking toward water under the ground."  The reason for the situation comes from politicians' delusion, grounded in their idea that the nuclear crisis is somehow being brought under control, and that the effects from radioactive material are minimal. But the fact is, the situation at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant isn't returning to normal. And we still don't know just how much damage environmental pollution from the crisis will inflict on people and their DNA. [...] Some of the reactors at the nuclear power plant have melted down, and the melted nuclear fuel is sinking toward water under the ground.

6.26 - TEPCO adding boric acid to No. 3 spent fuel pool to prevent situation which could lead to re-criticality.

6.25 - Resumption of radiation decontamination system "not in sight" - Unclear whether recycling of water can be carried out as planned. (In other words, the whole thing was a theory with unproven technology, not a real "plan of action.")

6.24 - Radioactive dust from Fukushima plant hit N. America soon after meltdown: researchers. Radioactive materials spewed out from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant reached North America soon after the meltdown and were carried all the way to Europe, according to a simulation by university researchers. The computer simulation by researchers at Kyushu University and the University of Tokyo, among other institutions, calculated dispersal of radioactive dust from the Fukushima plant beginning at 9 p. m. on March 14, when radiation levels around the plant spiked. The team found that radioactive dust was likely caught by the jet stream and carried across the Pacific Ocean, its concentration dropping as it spread. According to the computer model, radioactive materials at a concentration just one-one hundred millionth of that found around the Fukushima plant hit the west coast of North America three days later, and reached the skies over much of Europe about a week later.

6.22 - "They lied to us": Radiation release comparable to Chernobyl - Total core meltdown in all 3 reactors - Worst industrial catastrophe in world history (CNN VIDEO). Michio Kaku on the biggest industrial catastrophe in history. [...] "In the last two weeks, everything we knew about that accident has been turned upside down. We were told three partial melt downs, don't worry about it. Now we know it was 100 percent core melt in all three reactors. Radiation minimal that was released. Now we know it was comparable to radiation at Chernobyl."

6.22 - Reactor No. 2 basement filled with radioactive "rust red" colored water measuring 430 millisieverts per hour at surface
(PHOTO).  TEPCO admits decontamination system at Fukushima "not working."

6.21 - City of 290,000 people 60 kilometers from Fukushima meltdown is in danger Extremely high radiation detected, along with Cobalt-60. More than 10 times the radiation limit. Even cobalt-60 was detected. Children should be evacuated immediately, but the government says nothing, pretending not to know anything.

6.20 - Japanese professor: Melted fuel has gone through containers and is sinking into ground below, as far as I can tell - Underground dam was being prepared, but TEPCO resisting. [...] The crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant is still not over. Far from it, there are signs that it is getting worse. [...] In a TV Asahi program on June 16, [Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute] made the following comment: "As far as I can tell from the announcements made by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the nuclear fuel that has melted down inside reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant has gone through the bottom of the containers, which are like pressure cookers, and is lying on the concrete foundations, sinking into the ground below. We have to install a barrier deep in the soil and build a subterranean dam as soon as possible to prevent groundwater contaminated with radioactive materials from leaking into the ocean."

6.20 - Japan's recovery from Fukushima to be measured in centuries, judging by Chernobyl (VIDEO).  When Japan was rocked by a massive earthquake and tsunami back in March, we told ourselves the worst was behind us. [...] But all these weeks later, the crisis is far from over. The crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is still leaking and, judging from the experience at Chernobyl, Japan's recovery won't be measured in years, but centuries.

6.19 - FOX affiliate in Seattle: Northwest sees 35% infant mortality spike post-Fukushima.

6.19 - Major Japanese Paper: Not clear what officials mean by `stability', when melted fuel may be outside containment vessel.

6.18 - Radiation hot spots found in Tokyo - 3.5 times limit set by Japanese law. Parents in Tokyo's Koto Ward enlisted the help of Tomoya Yamauchi, a radiation physicist at Kobe University, to measure radiation in their neighborhood. Local government officials later joined the act, ordering radiation checks of schoolyards and other public places and posting the results on their Web sites. An anonymous volunteer recently plotted the available 6300 data points on a map. And Yukio Hayakawa, a volcanologist at Gunma University, turned that plot into a radiation contour map. It shows one wide belt of radiation reaching 225 kilometers south from the stricken reactors to Tokyo and another extending to the southwest. Within those belts are localized hot spots, including an oval that encloses northeast Tokyo and Kashiwa and neighboring cities in Chiba Prefecture. Radiation in this zone is 0.4 microsieverts per hour, or about 3.5 millisieverts per year. That is a fraction of the radiation found throughout much of Fukushima Prefecture, which surrounds the nuclear power plant. But it is still 10 times background levels and even above the 1-millisievert-per-year limit for ordinary citizens set by Japanese law.

6.17 - Strange flashes followed by increased smoke/steam near Reactors No. 3 and 4 (VIDEO)  (From March 24th:  International nuclear experts believe that melted fuel in reactor No. 1 has caused a "localized criticality," which is a small, uncontrolled chain reaction that occasionally emits a burst of heat, radiation and a blue flash of light.)

Read this previous report from 5.27 - Ozawa: We may not be able to live in Japan someday - Radiation is going to be flowing out for a long period of time.  Some day we may not be able to live in Japan. There is the possibility that the power plant can reach the state of criticality again. If it explodes, it's a huge matter. Radiation is being leaked in order to keep the reactors from exploding. So, in this sense, it's even worse than letting the power plant explode. Radiation is going to be flowing out for a long period of time. This is not a matter of money, but of life and death for the Japanese. If Japan cannot be saved, then the people of Japan are done for.

6.17 - Japan Strains to Fix a Reactor Damaged Before Quake. (Damaged August, 2010)  "Precarious struggle" at another plutonium reactor in Japan: 6,000+ lb. device crashed into inner vessel, likely stuck - Removing it "fraught with dangers."  Three hundred miles southwest of Fukushima, at a nuclear reactor [60 miles from Kyoto, a city of 1.5 million people] engineers are engaged in another precarious struggle. [...] [A] 3.3-ton device crashed into the reactor's inner vessel, cutting off access to the plutonium and uranium fuel rods at its core. [...] [C]ritics warn that the recovery process is fraught with dangers because the plant uses large quantities of liquid sodium, a highly flammable substance, to cool the nuclear fuel. [...] [T]he fast-breeder design of the reactor makes it more prone to Chernobyl-type runaway reactions in the case of a severe accident, critics say. [...] "Let's say they make this fix, which is very complicated," Mr. Ban said. "The rest of the reactor remains highly dangerous. And an accident at Monju would have catastrophic consequences beyond what we are seeing at Fukushima."

6.16 - Units No. 1, 2, and 3 "have nuclear waste on the floor" from melted cores.  "The fuels are now a molten blob at the bottom of the reactor," Gundersen added. "TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water."

"We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up. We still have radioactive wild boar in Germany, 30 years after Chernobyl."

 "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor."

6.16 - Radiation level in Tokyo much higher than publicly announced (VIDEO)

6.15 - Radioactive lava hitting pool of underground water at Chernobyl could have caused 2nd explosion like a "gigantic atomic bomb" - Major city 320 km away would have been destroyed (VIDEO).  (This is the big fear for Fukushima because underground streams go directly under the nuke plants.)

6.15 - Carnegie experts: Real possibility of additional "significant" radioactive releases from Fukushima.

6.14 - Curium-244 detected for first time outside Fukushima plant - Requires lead shield 20 times thicker than Plutonium-238. As compared to a competing thermoelectric generator isotope such as 238Pu [Plutonium-238], 244Cm [Curium-244] emits a
500 time greater fluence of neutrons, and its higher gamma emission requires a shield that is 20 times thicker - about 2 inches of lead for a 1 kW source, as compared to 0.1 in for 238Pu.

6.13 - Radiation 1,000 times safe levels far outside no-go zone - "Very, very dangerous levels" (VIDEO)  Rain and winds bringing radiation into Fukushima City [60 km from plant].

6.13 - 60 million curies of radiation released from Fukushima - 50 million curies at Chernobyl.  (T)he Japanese government, in its report to the IAEA, said it had underestimated the amount of radioactivity released to the atmosphere during the first week and that it amounts to roughly 40 million curies of radioactivity. What they failed to mention is that they discharged an equally large amount into the ocean, about 20 million curies....  Massive entry of radiation into groundwater will spread throughout water table in Northern Japan (VIDEO)

6.12 - Kyodo: Strontium detected in groundwater - Says 240 times max limit was actually found in seawater. The utility said the substance was also found in groundwater near the plant's Nos. 1 and 2 reactors. The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said it is the first time that the substance has been found in groundwater. Now over 260 Sieverts per hour inside Reactor No. 1 drywell.

6.11 - Trouble at SFP No. 4: Water injections not enough to cool pool - Workers find large hole in wall. On Friday, workers entered the 4th floor of the No. 4 reactor building where the pool is located for the first time since the nuclear disaster took place. They found a large hole in a wall created by the March 15th explosion. They also discovered that a nearby pipe necessary for the cooling system had been mangled. [...] Fixing the damaged pipe is expected to be extremely difficult. [...]  (So, all their previously announced "plans" were pure speculation - dreams, not even remotely connected to reality.)

6.10 - Work suspended at Reactor No. 3 - Radiation too high.  The workers withdrew after measuring radiation of 100 millisieverts per hour near the reactor's containment vessel.

6.9 - Nuclear fuel has melted through base of Fukushima plant, Telegraph, UK.  Water that was pumped into the pressure vessels to cool the fuel rods, becoming highly radioactive in the process, has been confirmed to have leaked out of the containment vessels and outside the buildings that house the reactors.

6.9 - Radiology experts find up to 45 microsieverts/hour near school zone - 90 times higher than Chernobyl evacuation threshold. Even some nursery schools that have already undergone a decontamination process had a relatively high reading of 0.5 microsievert per hour, he said. That would translate into an annual exposure of 5 millisieverts, which was the evacuation threshold for Chernobyl.

6.8 - Nowhere to Run: Hot radioactive particles in Seattle at 50 percent of levels seen in Tokyo - Latches onto lung tissue.

6.8 - Winds have turned, hot particles to head south from Fukushima - Advice is to leave Tokyo if Unit No. 4 collapses. [N]ow the winds have turned, so they are heading to the south toward Tokyo and now my concern and my advice to friends that if there is a severe aftershock and the Unit 4 building collapses, leave. We are well beyond where any science has ever gone at that point and nuclear fuel lying on the ground and getting hot is not a condition that anyone has ever analyzed.

6.7 - Fukushima I Nuke Accident: Japanese Government Admits "Melt-Through" in Reactors 1, 2 and 3. Yomiuri Shinbun (original in Japanese; 6/7/2011) reports that the Japanese government will now admit in the report to IAEA that the "melt-through" may have taken place in the Reactors 1, 2 and 3 at Fukushima I Nuke Plant. According to Yomiuri, "melt-through" happens when the melted fuel leaked from the Reactor Pressure Vessel and deposits at the bottom of the Containment Vessel, and is considered worse than "melt down".

6.7 - Fukushima Record Radiation Levels - 4,000,000 Microsieverts Per Hour. A robot measuring radiation in the Fukushima nuclear power plant, where 3 full-blown nuclear meltdowns are underway detected the highest levels of radiation yet - topping over 4,000,000 microsieverts per hour - a level so high it is 100% lethal within 1.5 hours of exposure.

6.6 - Fukushima: Twice As Bad As Thought - Japan gov't more than doubles estimate for amount of radiation released after meltdown.  One recurring theme that has emerged after Fukushima is the tendency of nuclear experts to underestimate (publicly at least) the severity of the disaster. Today we received further proof of this when the Japanese government more than doubled the estimate for the amount of radiation released from the plant in the immediate aftermath of the crisis in March.

6.6 - First time Plutonium reported outside Fukushima plant.  Shinzo Kimura of Hokkaido University collected the roadside samples in Okumamachi, some 1.7 kilometers west of the front gate of the power station. They were taken during filming by NHK on April 21st.

6.6 - Japan confirms "full meltdown" at all 3 reactors. Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday. The nuclear group's new evaluation, released Monday, goes further than previous statements in describing the extent of the damage caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11. [...] Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said.

6.5 - Expert thinks US West Coast might see contamination of water and fish by 2013.  Torpedo-shaped tuna leave the waters off Japan every spring, swimming at speeds of 50 mph to the waters off Oregon and Washington, arriving late summer. Before it gets there, it may well have spent time in some of the most radioactive water on earth. Some in the fishing industry are now urging the government to test the fish when they arrive.

6.4 - NRC afraid bottom of Reactor No. 3 will break out and dump everything - First time it's mentioned problem.  Transcript for Exclusive Arnie Gundersen Interview: The Dangers of Fukushima Are Worse and Longer-lived Than We Think, [...] Now, Unit 3 has another problem and the NRC mentioned it yesterday for the first time and it gets back to that saltwater and the effect on iron. They are afraid that the reactor bottom will break, literally just break right out and dump everything. Because it's now hot and it's got salt on it and it's got the ideal conditions for corrosion. So the big fear on Unit 3 is that it will break at the bottom and whatever else remains in it, which could be the entire core, could fall out suddenly. [...]  It's also possible in any of the fuel pools, one, two, three, and four pools, that you could get a criticality, as well. So there's been frequent enough high iodine indications to lead me to believe that either one of the four fuel pools or the Unit 3 reactor is in fact, every once in a while starting itself up and then it gets to a point where it gets so hot that it shuts itself down and it kind of cycles. It kind of breathes, if you will. [...] I think it's a relatively significant amount - maybe a tenth of the nuclear reactor core.... [M]y biggest fear right now is the unit 4 spent fuel pool. There was a report this week that they found iodine-131 in that fuel pool. Iodine-131 can only come from nuclear fission, and because it has a short life, it disappears after about 80 days. In other words, the presence of iodine-131 suggests that the spent fuel has started its own chain reaction without any human intervention. As workers pour water into unit 4 - which they need to do to keep it cool - they might essentially be creating a nuclear reactor.

6.3 - Two explosions may have occurred early on at Reactor No. 3, very similar to Chernobyl - Likely at least several hundred pounds of plutonium ejected (VIDEO)

6.3 - Vast underestimation of radiation levels by Japan gov't - Blames "calculation errors." "A wrong formula was used in calculation in some parts." Calculation errors were found for 10 additional locations within Namie-machi, resulting in a vast underestimation of the radiation levels.

6.3 - Fukushima Water Has More Radiation Than Released Into Air. The water level in basements and trenches at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima plant rose and may contain more radiation than is known to have been released into the atmosphere [...] Radiation in the water is estimated at 720,000 terabecquerels, general manager Junichi Matsumoto said at a media briefing in Tokyo. [...] "The risk of overflow is as serious as the meltdown of reactor fuel rods that's already happened," Tetsuo Ito, the head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute at Kinki University in western Japan, said in a phone interview. "Tepco should've acknowledged this risk weeks ago and could've taken any urgent measures."

6.2 - Japan bans radioactive green tea from area 40 miles SOUTHWEST of Tokyo.  Japan banned the shipment of green tea leaves grown in four prefectures around Tokyo on Thursday after radioactive caesium above legal levels was found in samples, a media report said. [...] The ban covers tea leaves from parts of the Tochigi, Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures and all of Ibaraki prefecture, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare said, Kyodo News agency reported.

6.1 - "It was even worse than the worst imagination of the media" - Radiation now "leaking through cracks in the containment and melted holes" after total meltdown.  We came close to losing northern Japan. No one ever suspected that we had three simultaneous core meltdowns, 100 percent core damage and that sea water of all things stopped a tragedy from taking place. The media if anything, we now realize downplayed the real impact of the accident.  Michio Kaku.

5.31 - TEPCO announced Monday that two employees working at the plant and in the central control room when a reactor suffered a hydrogen explosion in March may have absorbed radiation exceeding 250 millisieverts. The ministry plans to rebuke TEPCO over the matter. Two TEPCO workers, who were believed to have received radiation exposure in excess of the state-set limit of 250 millisieverts, were found to have not taken potassium iodide pills as directed, according to the company. Potassium iodide is said to prevent radioactive iodine from accumulating in the thyroid gland.

TEPCO said it told the workers to take the pills for two weeks. However, they took only one dose on March 13. TEPCO is currently questioning the two male employees as to why they did not take them. On March 14, a hydrogen explosion occurred at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant's No. 3 reactor where they were working. A massive amount of radioactive material was believed to have spread in the air.

On Monday, the two were examined at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba. Radioactive matter was detected in their urine, but they did not have health problems such as loss of motor function.

"It is believed that they weren't taking the tablets at appropriate times," said Makoto Akashi, director of the institute. They may not have accumulated so much radioactive material in their body if they had taken the pills right after exposure, he added.

5.30 - Fukushima Risks Chernobyl `Dead Zone'. Radioactive soil in pockets of areas near Japan's crippled nuclear plant have reached the same level as Chernobyl, where a "dead zone" remains 25 years after the reactor in the former Soviet Union exploded.

5.29 - Fukushima nuclear plant is "leaking like a sieve."  Leaks have been a persistent problem at the plant since it was struck by an earthquake and tsunami on 11 March. Three reactors operating at the time of the quake went into meltdown after the tsunami wiped out emergency generators designed to circulate water through the cores. TEPCO recently admitted that all three units probably suffered complete meltdowns before workers could flood them with seawater. [...] [T]oday Reuters reports that the storage tanks appear to be leaking.

5.28 - Crippled nuke plant not prepared for heavy rain, wind. Heavy rain has been forecast for the areas from Sunday to Monday due to the season's second typhoon, Songda, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. Today the IAEA has finally confirmed what some analysts have suspected for days: that the concentration per area of long-lived cesium-137 (Cs-137) is extremely high as far as tens of kilometers from the release site at Fukushima Dai-Ichi, and in fact would trigger compulsory evacuation under IAEA guidelines.

5.28 -Japan detects "extraordinarily high levels" of radioactivity off Sendai. Japan's science ministry has detected extraordinarily high levels of radioactive cesium in seafloor samples collected off Miyagi and Ibaraki Prefectures. Radioactive substances were found in all locations, including those off Miyagi and Ibaraki Prefectures, which had not been previously investigated.  Radioactive cesium 137, measuring 110 becquerels per kilogram or about 100 times the normal level, was found in samples collected from the seabed 30 kilometers off Sendai City and 45 meters beneath the surface.

5.27 - US Navy forecast shows super typhoon may hit Fukushima plant - TEPCO "still considering typhoon measures." Typhoon Songda strengthened to a supertyphoon after battering the Philippines and headed for Japan on a track that may pass over the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant by May 30, a U. S. monitoring center said.

5.27 - Ozawa: We may not be able to live in Japan someday - Radiation is going to be flowing out for a long period of time.  Some day we may not be able to live in Japan. There is the possibility that the power plant can reach the state of criticality again. If it explodes, it's a huge matter. Radiation is being leaked in order to keep the reactors from exploding. So, in this sense, it's even worse than letting the power plant explode. Radiation is going to be flowing out for a long period of time. This is not a matter of money, but of life and death for the Japanese. If Japan cannot be saved, then the people of Japan are done for.

5.26 - Nuclear Super Typhoon? Massive storm may approach Fukushima this weekend - Current gusts of 195 mph. Super Typhoon Songda was a Category 5 storm late Thursday, with maximum sustained winds of 161 mph and gusts of 195 mph, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The storm was producing wave heights of 38 feet in the Pacific, forecasters said.

5.26 - Nuclear expert: Fukushima "has turned even worse than it was in Chernobyl" - "Appears to have fit into the worst predicted scenario." 

5.26 - New TEPCO analysis shows 94% of nuclear fuel melted in Reactor No. 3.  Analysis of unit 1 suggested the entire core had fallen into water in the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel .  For unit 2, the [...] second scenario has only about 12% of the core remaining on the support plate, with the rest having fallen into the water in the the lower part of the reactor pressure vessel.

5.25 - CNN: Reactors may be "riddled with holes" - Experts suspect full meltdown at No. 1, 2 and 3.  The holes may be as big as 7 to 10 centimeters ( 2.8- 3.9 inches), Tokyo Electric Power Co. said in a 225-page document submitted to Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

5.25 - Chunks of nuclear fuel appear to have entered drywell, causing damage: AP - Related to recent 192 Sievert/hour measurement in Reactor No. 1?

Key facilities at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power may have been damaged by the quake itself that day rather than tsunami-caused power loss that failed the reactor's cooling function, Kyodo News quoted a utility source said Saturday. Data taken by workers entering the No. 1 reactor building at the crippled plant on the night of March 11 showing the radiation level was as high as 300 millisieverts per hour suggest a large amount of radioactive materials from nuclear fuel in the reactor was already released. Kyodo said a source at TEPCO admitted the possibility of key facilities having been compromised before the tsunami waves, saying, "The quake's trembling may have caused damage to the pressure vessel or pipes."

5.24 - TEPCO confirms partial meltdown of Fukushima Nos. 2, 3 reactors. Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Tuesday that a partial fuel meltdown is believed to have occurred at the Nos. 2 and 3 reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant, updating its earlier assessment that just the No. 1 reactor suffered critical fuel melting. The latest announcement means all three reactors with active fuel inside at the plant are now believed to have suffered fuel meltdowns in the wake of the devastating March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

5.23 - Highest Yet: State of California finds Iodine-131 in milk sample for first time since March.

5.22 - Reactor No. 3: `Japan reports more radiation leakage'.  At least 250 tons of radioactive water spilled into the Pacific Ocean from Japan's earthquake-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant, officials said. The Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the radiated water leaked for 41 hours beginning May 10 from the No. 3 reactor at the site....

5.21 - TEPCO announced on May 21 that the debris that emits 1000 millisieverts/hour radiation was found outside the reactor building of the Reactor 3, on the south side. According to TEPCO, it is a pile of concrete bits and paper-like materials. It is the highest radiation ever found on the debris outside the buildings.  (Hottest reading yet!)

Gas (containing radioactive materials) which continues to be released from the melted reactor core is cooled and becomes mixed in with cooling water. The level of contamination is still rising as we speak.  According to estimation by a group of experts who formerly worked at the nation's pioneering nuclear organization, Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI), the three nuclear reactors damaged in the recent disaster contain the amount of radioactivity equivalent to over one billion curies of cobalt-60, if you would excuse me for the use of old unit of measurement. Say just 1% of that gets mixed in and the cooling water would have 10 million curies of radioactivity. This is a horrifically large amount.  With this perspective, one would realize that ten million curies of radiation is something beyond comprehension.

5.21 - Fukushima plant probably began spewing radiation within hours of earthquake: data.  Data released for the first time this week show three of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors probably began spewing radiation within a few hours of Japan's devastating earthquake and at least one may have gone into a full meltdown within about 15 hours of the tsunami striking the plant and shutting off its cooling systems. Yet for the first days of the disaster, the plant's operators and Japan's nuclear safety regulators studiously avoided using the word "meltdown." They repeatedly said they believed the reactors' fuel rods were still intact and safely contained inside their zirconium sheaths. In reality, the rods in the core of the No. 1 reactor had fully melted by the morning of March 12 and had fallen to the bottom of the reactor's pressure vessel. The documents show the plant's managers dithered over whether or not to vent the reactor to reduce a build-up of dangerous pressure inside.

5.20 - Experts detect 5 times higher radiation levels in Tokyo than announced by government.

5.19 - British Scientist: There's no doubt Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl.

5.18 -  Nuke Expert: "It'll be like somebody dropped a bomb" if melted fuel rods breach reactor vessel - "A big cloud of very, very radioactive material above the ground."  . If workers are unable to get additional cooling water into the reactor vessel, the molten fuel core will collapse into the water in bottom of the vessel. Eventually the heat from the decaying fuel would boil away the water that's left, leaving the core sitting on the vessel's lower head made of steel.   Should that happen, "It'll melt through it like butter," Allen said.  That, in turn, would cause a "high-pressure melt injection" into the water-filled concrete cavity below the reactor. Because the concrete would likely be unheated, the reaction created by the sudden injection of the reactor's ultra-hot content would be immense, he said.

5.18 - Nuclear Physicist: Most of the fallout from plutonium-containing MOX fuel will drop on U. S., unless very strong winds take it elsewhere.  The most terrifying fact is that the Japanese power plants are using `dirty' fuel, which most countries have rejected and banned. Needless to say that the Americans built them. Since the Earth is moving Counterclockwise most of the fall-out will drop on U. S., unless very strong winds take it somewhere else. "It'll be like somebody dropped a bomb, and there'll be a big cloud of very, very radioactive material above the ground," Allen said, noting that it would contain uranium and plutonium, as well as the fission products.

5.18 - Nuclear Engineer: Almost all nuclear engineers have known since early on that the reactors have melted through the core.  Professor [/Nuclear Engineer Akira Tokuhiro] teaches in Idaho and as an academic he is still free to tell what he believes and believes almost all nuclear engineers following this disaster know, and have known since almost the beginning, that the reactors have melted through the core and that this has not been admitted until just these past few days when access to the computer data from the control rooms was obtained.

5.17 - Molten fuel made it outside of Containment Vessel - Pressure Vessel is "completely broken" says Kyoto U. nuclear professor.

5.17 - "There have been nuclear explosions" - "Ongoing nuclear reaction taking place now" (VIDEO). 
"Situation at Fukushima out of control", Russia Today, May 17, 2011: Transcript Summary
*Raging radioactive inferno taking place inside the reactor. we believe probably outside the reactor.
*The real situation is in fact far worse because there have been nuclear explosions we now know.
*We know that it is still fissioning. ongoing nuclear reaction taking place now. it is still going on.
*It's very hard to know how you could take control of the situation. the situation is essentially out of control.

5.17 - Melting of nuclear fuel at Reactors No. 2 and 3 "extensive if not complete" - "Far more dire than previously recognized."  Science Magazine

5.16 - Was Fukushima a China Syndrome? The China Syndrome refers to a scenario in which a molten nuclear reactor core could could fission its way through its containment vessel, melt through the basement of the power plant and down into the earth. While a molten reactor core wouldn't burn "all the way through to China" it could enter the soil and water table and cause huge contamination in the crops and drinking water around the power plant. It's a nightmare scenario, the stuff of movies. And it might just have happened at Fukushima.

5.16 - Back-up cooling systems at Fukushima failed. The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has admitted that the reactors' back-up cooling systems failed to function after the March 11th earthquake and tsunami. Tokyo Electric Power Company on Monday revealed the plant's operation records for the period following the disaster on March 11th. An emergency condenser system at the Number 1 reactor functioned for less than 10 minutes after the earthquake.  (Important information concealed for over two months!!!)

5.15 - Seawater found in coolant at Hamaoka plant. At the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in central Japan, seawater has been found in coolant at one reactor. Five nuclear reactors at the Hamaoka plant in Omaezaki City, Shizuoka Prefecture, were all shut down on Saturday due to concern that a massive earthquake might hit the area. The move was in line with a request by Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

5.15 - Radioactivity at intake of No. 3 reactor rises. Radioactive materials in the ocean near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant rose to 3,300 times the legal limit on Sunday. Tokyo Electric Power Company says it measured 200 becquerels of cesium-134 per cubic centimeter on Sunday morning near the water intake of the No. 3 reactor. The level was higher than on the previous day, when it was 2,300 times the legal limit.

5.15 - Key nuclear facilities may have been damaged before tsunami. Kyodo Data taken at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on the night of March 11 showing a high level of radiation at a reactor building suggest the possibility that key facilities there may have been damaged by the quake itself that day rather than tsunami-caused power loss that failed the reactor's cooling function, a utility source said Saturday.

5.14 - Highest Yet: 2 Sieverts per hour detected in No. 1 reactor building on May 13.

5.13 - Off the Scale: Radiation in No. 1 reactor building exceeds 1,000 millisieverts per hour - Levels too high for Geiger counter to measure.  `Situation' at No. 1 reactor "could escalate rapidly if the lava melts through the reactor vessel." 

5.13 - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission thinks the reactor in unit 2 of Japan's disabled power plant got so hot it "probably melted through the reactor pressure vessel," U. S. Representative Edward Markey said.

5.12 - "It's Official: Fukushima Was Hit With a Full-Blown Nuclear Meltdown" - Pool of radioactive lava could be melting its way out.  The flow of bad news (and radiation) out of Fukushima's reactors has diminished to a trickle over the past several weeks, as rescue work has proceeded. Not today. TEPCO's admitted for the first time that Fukushima experienced a grave meltdown. TEPCO workers and the Japanese government have desperately struggled to keep the nuclear fuel rods inside the reactors cool-if they don't, the scorching material will melt into a pool of radioactive lava, further damaging the facility. That's the scenario everyone's been aiming to avoid-and that's the scenario we now know had actually occurred all along. Underneath all that dumped seawater has been lying a blob of melted fuel. And it could be melting its way out. This admittance goes against every assurance TEPCO has handed the world in the midst of Japan's nuclear crisis [...]

5.12 - "Reactor Rupture": TEPCO says "there must be a large leak" in No. 1 reactor - Reveals No. 2 and 3 may have similar ruptures.

5.12 - "If it is assumed the fuel did melt through the reactor, then the most likely solution is to encapsulate the entire unit. This may include constructing a concrete wall around the unit and building a protective cover over it," W. Gene Corley, senior vice president of CTL Group in Skokie, Illinois, said on Thursday.

"Because of the high radiation that would be present if this has happened, the construction will take many months and may stretch into years," Corley said.

5.11 - Gov't, TEPCO in uphill battle to contain Fukushima reactors. Two months after the outbreak of the crisis Fukushima, the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) are still fighting an uphill battle to contain overheating nuclear reactors and are likely to review their roadmap that seeks to put the reactors under control within six to nine months.

5.11 - Smoke/steam pouring out of Reactor Units No. 2, 3, 4 (PHOTOS & VIDEOS)

5.11 - 60% of reactors off the grid. Almost 60 percent of the commercial nuclear reactors in Japan are currently shut down due to the March 11th disaster or routine inspections. The unusually high figure will have a significant impact on the nation's power supply this summer. Japan operates 54 reactors, 32 of which were not operating as of Wednesday. 14 were suspended after March 11th and 18 are undergoing regular inspections.

5.10 - "Very, Very Serious": Unit No. 4 leaning, in danger of falling - Gov't confirms stabilization efforts underway (PHOTO & VIDEO)  (Note:  The spent fuel pool is on the 3rd floor.)

5.9 - High radiation beyond evacuation zone.  The first map of ground surface contamination within 80 kilometers of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant shows radiation levels higher in some municipalities than those in the mandatory relocation zone around the Chernobyl plant. [...] "I am surprised by the extent of the contamination and the vast area it covers," said Tetsuji Imanaka, assistant professor of nuclear engineering at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute. 

• Nuclear physicist suspects No. 3 MOX spent fuel rods have spread out and surrounding area is contaminated with plutonium - "You can never return to this place again."

5.9 - Radioactive strontium detected at Fukushima plant. Tokyo Electric Power Company has detected high levels of radioactive strontium in soil inside the compound of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Strontium can cause cancer and like calcium it tends to collect in bones once humans inhale it. Up to 570 becquerels of strontium 90 per kilogram of dry soil were detected in samples from 3 locations. They were taken on April 18, about 500 meters from the Number 1 and 2 reactors at soil depths of up to 5 centimeters. The amount detected is about 130 times higher than a previous high, level that was measured in Fukushima Prefecture before the accident at the nuclear plant.

5.8 - TEPCO says "sharp rise" in temperature at reactor No. 3, up 70 F in a day - Japanese media: Is it due to the melting of nuclear fuel?

5.8 - Reactor 3 RPV was recently measuring at 314.5 C - above its design specification of 300 C

5.6 - The U. S. government has abandoned efforts to monitor elevated levels of radiation that infiltrated the nation's water and milk in the wake of a nuclear catastrophe in Japan. [...] "I really am horrified," said Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear policy lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "It's quite staggering and it seems to be part of the pattern of the EPA trying to make sure that there are no measurements that could cause people to be concerned." 

5.6 - Dutch find radioactivity in container from Japan.  Tester finds radioactivity levels up to 50 times maximum limit on container from Japan at Dutch port - "Could be dangerous."  Private sector specialists found about 6 times more radioactivity than the Dutch customs officials on both the peak and average measurements.

5.6 - Belgium's radiation safety regulator has discovered radiation levels surpassing European Union limits on a shipping container from Japan, the agency said on Wednesday.

5.5 - IAEA expert predicts radioactive cesium will be carried across Pacific to West Coast of U. S. and Canada in one or two years.

5.5 - Workers entered the No. 1 nuclear reactor building at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant Thursday for the first time since the complex was damaged by the March 11 mega earthquake and subsequent tsunami, as part of efforts to install a cooling system at the No. 1 reactor, Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials said. --Kyodo

5.5 - Tokyo Electric Power Company says it is moving ahead with plans to bring the Unit 1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant to "cold shutdown" within the week, Japan Times reported today.

"They're basically getting ready to run a big experiment," says Edwin Lyman, a nuclear reactor expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nuclear industry watchdog group that is closely monitoring the situation in Japan. "It sounds like they're assuming that the structural issues [with the primary containment structure] aren't that serious - and there's debate over that."

Even so, filling up the containment structure "seems like a reasonable thing to do if they can't cover the cores in any other way," Dr. Lyman adds. "They're just stuck with doing whatever is going to work. The problem is, they're learning by experimentation - not by some well-thought through contingency plan."

5.4 - Did Fukushima Daiichi Unit No. 4 catch on fire today? (VIDEO) 

5.3 - Latest Fukushima webcam images show large clouds of smoke/steam rising from reactor buildings

5.3 - "URGENT: Radiation leaks from fuel rods suspected" at Japan's Tsuruga nuclear plant - Radioactive Xenon up 75,000%.  Tsuruga nuclear plant is located 280 miles west of Tokyo in Fukui prefecture, not affected by earthquake and tsunami. 

Hundred  year battle. A nuclear expert has warned that it might be 100 years before melting fuel rods can be safely removed from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant. "As the water leaks out, you keep on pouring water in, so this leak will go on for ever," said Dr John Price, a former member of the Safety Policy Unit at the UK's National Nuclear Corporation.

5.2 - Highly radioactive sewage found 30+ miles from Fukushima plant - Cesium levels up to 334,000 becquerels per kilogram.

5.1 - Top Japanese nuclear expert/proponent: Government's announcement is wrong - "I believe all the fuel rods are completely melted down."

4.30 - Two senior Japanese officials warn there is still a real risk of catastrophic disaster at Fukushima.

Pump fails at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, slowing efforts to cool No. 2 reactor
   Person living 170 miles from Fukushima shows "dangerously high radiation levels"
   Japan's nuclear commission reveals Fukushima may have emitted more radioactive material than official   Chernobyl totals

4.29 - Nuclear adviser to Japanese gov't quits.  Toshiso Kosako, a professor at the prestigious University of Tokyo, said at a news conference that the prime minister's office and agencies within the government "have ignored the laws and have only dealt with the problem at the moment."

4.28 - NRC Chief Questions Blackout Plans for US Plants
Washington (AP) - The nation's top nuclear regulator cast doubt Thursday on whether reactors in the U. S. are prepared for the type of days-long power outage that struck a nuclear power plant in Japan.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has only required plants in this country to cope without power for four to eight hours. After that time, it assumes some electrical power will be restored.
NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko on Thursday questioned whether four to eight hours is enough time....
On Wednesday, a tornado in the state of Alabama forced the automatic shutdown of three reactors at a power plant after outside power was temporarily lost.

4.28 - High levels of radiation in areas near nuclear plant foreseen for a year.

4.28 - TEPCO claims explosion at No. 4 spent fuel pool may have prevented rods from melting down.

4.28 - Flooding No. 1 reactor halted after causing drop in pressure that could "spark a hydrogen-oxygen explosion."

4.27 - Radiation Readings in Fukushima Reactor Rise to Highest Since Crisis Began, Bloomberg, April 27, 2011
Radiation readings at Japan's Fukushima Dai-Ichi station rose to the highest since an earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems, impeding efforts to contain the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
Two robots sent into the reactor No. 1 building at the plant yesterday took readings as high as 1,120 millisierverts of radiation per hour, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at Tokyo Electric Power Co., said today.
"Tepco must figure out the source of high radiation," said Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear engineering professor at Kyoto University. "If it's from contaminated water leaking from inside the reactor, Tepco's so-called water tomb may be jeopardized because flooding the containment vessel will result in more radiation in the building."

4.27 - asahi. com: TEPCO filling containment vessels; experts raise doubts - English Posted on April 26, 2011 by Matt - Tokyo Electric Power Co. started the unprecedented and potentially risky measure of allowing water to flood the containment vessels of three troubled reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, company sources said.  It is the world's first attempt to saturate the entire containment vessel with water with the aim of cooling the pressure vessels inside the containment vessels and ultimately the reactor cores themselves.

4.27 - Nuke agency says water may be leaking from No. 1 reactor container.  The government's nuclear agency said Tuesday that water may be leaking from the No. 1 reactor container of the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and that remote-controlled robots are expected to check the situation inside the reactor building.  (But the #1 reactor container is leaking!  Another plan doomed to failure.  See above.)

4.27 - Water may be leaking from No. 4 reactor fuel pool. The operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says water may be leaking from the spent fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor. More than 1,500 spent fuel rods are stored in the pool, the largest number at the site. TEPCO has poured in 140 to 210 tons of water over each of the last few days. The company found that water levels in the pool were 10 to 40 centimeters lower than expected despite the water injections.

4.26 - Japan gov't announces new leakage from reactor No. 1 containment vessel. 

4.26 - TEPCO has been unable to verify the water levels at the No. 2 and No. 3 reactors, and suspect that water is leaking from the damaged containment vessels.

4.26 - "Mysterious circumstances" of explosion at reactor No. 3 - Cannot be explained by a simple hydrogen build-up.  Arnie Gundersen Postulates Unit 3 Explosion May Have Been Prompt Criticality in Fuel Pool.

4.26 - TEPCO prepares to fill No. 1 reactor with water.  Tokyo Electric Power Company is planning to fill the No. 1 reactor and then its container with water by mid July, to submerge the fuel rods and cool them down stably.  TEPCO hopes to fill up the No. 1 and No. 3 reactor containers by mid-July, as part of its recently announced schedule for containing the nuclear accident.  (The fuel rods have been exposed for a month and a half????)

4.25 - "Japanese catastrophe is already more serious than Chernobyl" - Air force chief at Chernobyl shocked by poor response to Fukushima.  "Right at the start when there was not yet a big leak of radiation they (the Japanese) wasted time. And then they acted in slow-motion."

4.25 - Fukushima: Nuclear Blast at Reactor 3?  Professor Christopher Busby: "I believe that the explosion of the No 3 reactor may have also involved criticality but this must await the release of data on measurements of the Xenon isotope ratios."  (Excellent analysis using comparison video of blasts at Unit 1 and Unit 3.)

4.25 - Fukushima Could Have Been Worse... And WILL Be.  Chernobyl is over. Fukushima hasn't really begun. Chernobyl released a huge radioactive cloud when it blew up. Fukishima will exceed the Chernobyl release in a year no matter what else happens. Those melting nuclear cores aren't going away. There are additional differences. Chernobyl didn't dump radioactive water into the world's primary fishing waters. Fukushima will have to dump highly radioactive water into the oceans for many years just to PREVENT a Chernobyl-type accident * Fukushima will be many times worse than Chernobyl and will continue for, possibly, hundreds of years.

4.25 - Atmospheric radiation leak underestimated.  Data released by the government indicates radioactive material was leaking into the atmosphere from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in early April in greater quantities than previously estimated. Radioactive material was being released into the atmosphere from the plant at an estimated rate of 154 terabecquerels per day as of April 5, according to data released by the Cabinet Office's Nuclear Safety Commission on Saturday. The NSC previously estimated radiation leakage on April 5 at "less than 1 terabecquerel per hour."

Nuclear War Survival information below.

4.24 - Debris found on a nearby mountain has radioactivity of 300 millisieverts/hour

4.24 - Heat exchanger for No1 reactor considered.  TEPCO says 70 percent of the fuel is apparently damaged...At present, the water level is estimated to be about 6 meters from the bottom of the containment vessel.  Radioactive substances must be removed before pouring contaminated water into the heat exchanger...but as the level of radioactivity is too high for human entry, many problems remain before the heat exchanger can be set up.  (So the heat exchanger being "considered" is simply a dream at this point. Dreams do not a cleanup make.)

4.23 - ALERT: Japan admits daily radioactive release from Fukushima at least 15,000% higher than previously announced. Gov't says low estimate was simply a mathematical error.

"Very high levels of contamination" far away from Fukushima exclusion zone - More than double amount Soviets set for "relocation" at Chernobyl. The concentration per area of long-lived cesium-137 (Cs-137) is extremely high as far as tens of kilometers from the release site at Fukushima Dai-Ichi, and in fact would trigger compulsory evacuation under IAEA guidelines.  March 30th date but apparently just released.

Fukushima Forecast: Radiation cloud to approach US West Coast starting April 24 (VIDEO) 
Uninterrupted line of radiation stretches across Pacific, tracking towards West Coast of U. S., Canada.

4.23 - Earthquakes continue off Fukushima.

4.22 - The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the Fukushima Daini nuclear plant, the companion of the crippled Daiichi plant 10 km (6 miles) away, was still leaking radiation but had cleared a key milestone toward stabilising.  (Note:  "Still leaking"?  We have been told this reactor complex shut down safely without damage!)

4.22 - State of Arizona found I-131 in Phoenix milk at levels 500% higher than EPA's top reading for anywhere in continental US.

Webcam shows cloud of radioactive steam rising from Fukushima (PHOTOS) April 22nd

Nulear Expert: "TEPCO data suggest that fission is ongoing. This is bad news" - "Truly scary" that nobody in Japan seems to know basics of reactor accident progression...truly scary, because it suggests they are playing with these broken/leaking reactors and SNF pools inside at least three buildings totally destroyed by steam explosions, as if the reactors and their SNF pools are broken toys that they're using trial and error to try fixing. Everyone with just a very basic understanding of reactor safety should know that once a reactor is scrammed, U-235 is no longer fissioning, and I-131 has no parent which can be decaying to create it in an ongoing process... the water circulating in intact SNF pools should have absolutely no detectable I-131 in them....April 21st,

New EPA data shows iodine-131 in Los Angeles tap water - Still no testing for radioactive cesium...

TOKYO, April 21, Kyodo. An official at Tokyo Electric Power Co. admitted Wednesday that fuel of the plant's No. 1 reactor could be melting. The "molten fuel accumulates like lava."  Previously:  Japan says "partial meltdown" at No. 2 reactor - Kyodo

4.21 - Meanwhile, at Reactor No. 6, one of the two units that have survived the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, workers Tuesday pumped 100 tons of water from the basement of the turbine building into the reactor's condenser unit. NISA said underground streams are a possible source. Before the crisis, streams beneath reactors No. 5 and 6 were pumped to divert water, a process that hasn't been conducted since the quake.

3.12/2011 - As Japan is one of the most seismically active nations in the world, it has strict sets of regulations designed to limit the impact of quakes on nuclear power plants. These standards call for constructing plants on solid bedrock to reduce shaking. 

4.23.2011 - TEPCO mulls sinking walls around Japan reactors   Workers would have to dig to a depth of 15 metres (50 feet) to reach an impervious layer to build the walls on, it said.  (Now the nuclear plants are not on bedrock? How far down to bedrock, and how many underground streams are there to cause a catastrophic steam explosion when the corium melts through the containment?)

4.20.11 Mistrust of the media has surged among the people of Fukushima Prefecture. In part this is due to reports filed by mainstream journalists who are unwilling to visit the area near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. But above all it is the result of contradictory reportsreleased by the media, TEPCO and the government.  "Freelance journalists and foreign media are pursuing the facts, even going into the radiation exclusion zone. However, surprisingly, the Japan government continues to prevent freelance journalists and overseas media from gaining access to official press conferences at the prime minister's house and government."

4.20. US Government Pretends Radioactive Fish Is Safe. FDA Refuses to Test North Pacific Fish for Radioactivity.   Japanese govt bans shipment of radioactive fish. The Telegraph notes that scientists tagged a bluefin tuna and found that it crossed between Japan and the West Coast three times in 600 days.

Japanese radioactive iodine found in breast milk.  TSA offers experienced agents for physical exams (just kidding).

4.20.11 Radiation, aftershocks could slow Fukushima stabilization. High levels of radiation discovered could disrupt Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s timeline for a cold shutdown.  (Okay, now more than a year to "stabilize.")

ARNIE GUNDERSEN: Radiation is leaking every day now, both liquid into the ocean and also airborne. When you see those clouds of smoke coming out of the unit, that s not steam, that s radioactive steam. So, they re releasing radioactivity as a airborne, and also, probably more important right now is Unit 2, the reactor has a hole in it, and the containment has a hole in it. So they re pouring water in the top, and it s running out the bottom. And it s what s causing all of this enormous amount of high-level radioactive waste. April 19, 2011

4.19.2011 - TOKYO A pair of thin robots on treads sent to explore buildings inside Japan's crippled nuclear reactor came back Monday with disheartening news: Radiation levels are far too high for repair crews to go inside.  It marked the first time that radiation levels have been measured inside the buildings housing reactors Nos. 1 and 3 since hydrogen explosions occurred in these two units in the wake of the massive quake and tsunami on March 11.  Arnie Gunderson says that #2 reactor is worse than the #1 or #3 reactors, saying the evidence points towards a self sustaining reaction in the #4 fuel pool.  For the first time after the accident at the Fukushima plant, TEPCO has released photos of the inside of the reactor buildings.

TEPCO announced on April 18 that the radioactive materials were found in high concentration in the Spent Fuel Pool water of the Reactor 2 at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. In the meantime, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) announced on April 18 that the Reactor 4 building basement was found to be flooded with 5-meter (16.40 feet) deep water. No information yet on the radioactive materials in that water, but it would be another impediment to the repair work to be done on the Reactor 4. NISA had announced earlier on April 18 that the depth of water found in the Reactor 4 building was only 20 centimeters.  TEPCO senior official Junichi Matsumoto said there is little doubt that plutonium has leaked from the plant during the accident.
  (Earlier in this disaster TEPCO had reported radiation had not increased when in fact the radiation meters were maxed out.  And now this.  Baghdad Bob now has more credibility than the Japanese government and TEPCO.)

Workers cannot approach reactor buildings - Radiation too high.  April 18

Gov't under fire for disaster response; TEPCO chief heckled in Diet   April 18
Well, this year is lost, said Kenji Matsueda, 49, who is living in an evacuation center...The area would need to be decontaminated, including removing and replacing the soil, Nishiyama said.

TEPCO aims to achieve 'cold shutdown' for reactors in 6-9 months  - TOKYO, April 17, Kyodo

Fresh leak fears as Japan rocked by ANOTHER earthquake  -  April 17
RADIATION levels around Japan's stricken nuclear plant soared... ...think the "problems will get worse." A government adviser said yesterday: "We are far from the end. There will be mountains to climb."

So much "mud" in reactor No. 1, it's preventing water from getting into core   April 16th, 2011

Newly released TEPCO data provides evidence of periodic chain reaction at Fukushima Unit 1, Fairewinds Associates

Radioactivity Rises Near Japan's Crippled Nuclear Facility; Could Mean New Leaks  TOKYO, 4/16 -
Levels of radioactivity have risen sharply in seawater near a tsunami-crippled nuclear plant in northern Japan, signaling the possibility of new leaks at the facility, the government said Saturday. The announcement came after a magnitude-5.9 earthquake jolted Japan on Saturday morning,

"Fuel rods in reactors 1 and 3 have melted and settled at the bottom of their containment vessels" April 15th

Nuclear Expert: Iodine-131 in No. 4 pool suggests that "spent fuel has started its own chain reaction" April 15th

Japan's nuclear clean-up continued to unravel as officials admitted there may be too much radioactive water to pump out of the damaged power plant.  "It may be difficult to completely remove the contaminated water and so allow work to proceed," he said. "We may need to think of other options."

"New burst of radioactive material" emitted from Fukushima after "bungled" cooling effort - April 14th, 2011
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan emitted a new burst of radioactive material this week after a bungled cooling effort apparently affected spent atomic fuel in the site's No. 4 reactor cooling pond, the Associated Press reported.

Groundwater radiation level at nuke plant rises: TEPCO (And they don't know where it is coming from!)
The water in and around the No. 2 reactor turbine building is believed to contain higher concentrations of radioactive substances than other contaminated water found at the site, and is believed to originate from the No. 2 reactor's core, where fuel rods have partially melted.  Meanwhile, concern grew over the state of the No. 3 reactor at one point, as the agency said in the afternoon that the temperature of part of its reactor pressure vessel was found to be rising suddenly.  Pouring water on the reactors was therefore only a stopgap measure and they never considered what would happen if the water used became highly radioactive and leaked to other parts of the plant.

Japan Mulls to Move Capital over Disaster Worries (4/14)  As powerful earthquakes continue to jolt Japan and radiation levels near Tokyo are rising, the Asian country's authorities are considering moving the capital to another city.  [Tokyo evacuating?  It looks like the politicians want to jump ship for safer territory.]

TEPCO Confirms Reactor 4 Spent Fuel Pool Is Now An Uncontrolled, Open Air Fission Process

Japan's Prime Minister Kan: "Evacuation Zone Will Be Uninhabitable"  4/13.  Think Chernobyl.

Expecting another monster tsunami?  4/14.  On Thursday, workers continued to relocate emergency diesel generators to higher ground where they would be safe from aftershocks and tsunamis. After the generators are moved to an area about 30 meters above sea level, they could be switched on by evacuating workers when a tsunami warning is issued. TEPCO will also have power trucks and hose-equipped fire trucks standing by on higher ground. The power company is also rewiring the external power supply to avoid a total blackout.

Nuclear engineer: Enormous amount of plutonium at No. 4 spent fuel pool in danger of catching fire; Pool is cracked and leaking (VIDEO)  4/13.

TEPCO SORT-OF ADMITS BURN-THROUGH ON #4 REACTOR.  4/13.   Radiation has risen to high levels above the spent-fuel pool at reactor No. 4 and its temperature is rising...The temperature of the pool was 90 degrees C, compared with 84 before it caught fire on March 15 ...Tokyo Electric Power Co. was unsure whether the surge in radiation was being caused by the spent fuel rods or radioactive material leaking from the reactor's pressure vessel.

"Deplorable": Plutonium detected in soil at 5 locations - "Unknown which reactor plutonium came from"... certain damage to fuel rods ....

Japan Gov't says radiation is escaping from containment vessels that are not "totally" destroyed

Aftershocks continue.  3 earthquakes with a magnitude of over 6.0 were observed on Monday and Tuesday alone.  (4.12)  ( Japan Ground Flexing The ground is pulsating long after an earthquake.)

DR. MICHIO KAKU: They're literally making it up as they go along. "We're in totally uncharted territories. You get any nuclear engineering book, look at the last chapter, and this scenario is not contained in the last chapter of any nuclear engineering textbook on the planet earth. So they're making it up as they go along. And we are the guinea pigs for this science experiment that's taking place."

High radiation levels in sea off Fukushima coast
The science ministry says radiation levels in seawater off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture are the highest since it began monitoring them about 3 weeks ago.  (4/12)

"The radiation leak has not stopped completely and our concern is that it could eventually exceed Chernobyl," an official from operator Tokyo Electric and Power told reporters on Tuesday.  (4/12)

JAPAN'S FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR PLANT OPERATOR SAYS FIGHTING FIRE AT NO. 4 REACTOR IN THE DAIICHI COMPLEX  (Another reactor going!)

"Since unit two is showing signs of fission happening, the chances of something more catastrophic happening at that site are increasing," Olson added, "People are acting like the worst is over, and that is just not understanding the real issues here as far as the radiological impacts." (4/11)

She also pointed out that the fuel pool in reactor No. 3 "is gone, according to recent photos. There is no fuel there. The reactor fuel pool in No. 3 is gone. Where did it go?" (Note: Plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel rods were used in reactor No. 3.  "...fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown "up to one mile from the units,")

Restoration work at Fukushima plant suffers setback in Monday's 7.0 quake (directly under the damaged Fukushima reactors!)  Many aftershocks.  Monday, April 11.

A month into the crisis, the utility acknowledges, there is no end in sight...Some Japanese experts now say the effort is in danger of failing unless Japan seeks more help from international experts to bring it to an end...Tokyo Electric officials told CNN they can't say when they'll be able to restore those normal cooling...reactors too hot to cover in concrete...

No end in sight for Fukushima disaster as bureaucrats battle the laws of physics  No nuclear power plant has ever considered the inability to get on long-term core cooling for more than a week, much less three weeks.

Japan may raise nuke accident severity level to highest 7 from 5.  April 12, Japan.

Satoshi Sato, a Japanese nuclear industry consultant, called the current line of attack a "waste of effort." Plant instruments are likely damaged and unreliable because of the intense heat that was generated, and pumping more water into the reactors is only making the contamination problem worse, he said.  Sunday, April 10.

Engineers at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant north of Tokyo said Sunday they were no closer to restoring the plant's cooling system which is critical if overheated fuel rods are to be cooled and the six reactors brought under control.

Japan fails to stop radioactive discharge into ocean  Sunday, April 10.
TEPCO was forced to start pumping sea water into the power plant after failing to restart the reactors' cooling systems after the quake. It has been pumping in nitrogen to cool the core, but officials say they are unsure of what to do next. "We cannot say what the outlook is for the next stage," Hidehiko Nishiyama, a deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said on Sunday. "As soon as possible we would like to achieve stable cooling and set a course toward controlling radiation."

In reaction to Prime Minister Naoto Kan's demand for prompt reporting of problems, the pro-nuclear lobby has closed ranks, fencing off and freezing out the prime minister's office from vital information. A grand alliance of nuclear proponents now includes TEPCO, plant designer General Electric, METI, the former ruling Liberal Democratic Party and, by all signs, the White House.

"We hope that Japan will act in accordance with international law and adopt effective measures to protect the marine environment," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement on Friday.

New Japan Quake Cuts Power To Nuclear Plants   Apr. 7 2011

" .... At 12:23 a. m. the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, an arm of the Japanese government, began holding an emergency press conference. An official said external sources of electricity have been cut to both the Higashi-Dori nuclear power plant in Aomori Pref and the Rokkasho nuclear recycling plant, which I wrote in the latest issue of Forbes magazine. Both facilities are in Aomori Prefecture, near the tip of Japan's main island, and are reportedly operating normally via on-site emergency generators. .... "  (Reactors do not "normally" run on emergency generators!!!)

The company estimates that 70 percent of the fuel rods in the No. 1 reactor core have been damaged, compared with 30 percent in the No. 2 and 25 percent in the No. 3 reactor cores.

Flat-out Lies: TEPCO and JAPAN INSISTED the fuel storage pools were intact and under control.
U. S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan's Nuclear Plant
By JAMES GLANZ and WILLIAM J. BROAD Published: April 5, 2011 snip

The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown "up to one mile from the units," and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be "bulldozed over," presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed.

Fukushima Radiation Literally Off The Charts
By Tyler Durden Created 04/05/2011 - 09:06
"The monitor told NHK that no one can enter the plant's No. 1 through 3 reactor buildings because radiation levels are so high that monitoring devices have been rendered useless.

Fukushima #I Nuke Plant: Cloth Caps Over Reactors Coming, and All That's Left for Japan is Luck

Radiation-shielding sheets to be installed in Sept. at earliest

Japanese Govt did not reveal high level radiation estimate.  Date of article 4.4.11.  Release 3.16.11

A Tepco executive said yesterday (4.3.2001) he isn't optimistic about the prospect of containing damage at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant's No. 3 reactor.

"I don't know if we can ever enter the No. 3 reactor building again," Hikaru Kuroda, the company's chief of nuclear facility management, said at a press conference. (MOX plutonium)

US nuclear team in Japan preparing for possibility of "large-scale radiation leak" at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

Fukushima 'much bigger than Chernobyl', says Russian nuclear activist

"Chernobyl was level seven and it had only one reactor and lasted only two weeks. We have now three weeks (at Fukushima) and we have four reactors which we know are in very dangerous situations," she said.

International nuclear experts believe that melted fuel in reactor No. 1 has caused a "localized criticality," which is a small, uncontrolled chain reaction that occasionally emits a burst of heat, radiation and a blue flash of light.

Crews 'facing 100-year battle' at Fukushima
By David Mark, Mark Willacy, staff

A nuclear expert has warned that it might be 100 years before melting fuel rods can be safely removed from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant.

But one expert says the radiation leaks will be ongoing and it could take 50 to 100 years before the nuclear fuel rods have completely cooled and been removed.

"As the water leaks out, you keep on pouring water in, so this leak will go on for ever," said Dr John Price, a former member of the Safety Policy Unit at the UK's National Nuclear Corporation.

Entomb? Cement pumps flown in to nuke plant
Same company that helped seal in Chernobyl is sending equipment

Japan pays 'suicide squads' fortunes to work in stricken nuclear plant as 'battle is lost for reactor two'

Has Fukushima's Reactor No. 1 Gone Critical?

On March 23, Dr. Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, a Research Scientist at the Monterey Institute of International Studies saw a report by Kyodo news agency that caught his eye. It reported that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) had observed a neutron beam about 1.5 km away from the plant. Bursts of neutrons in large quantities can only come from fission so Dalnoki-Veress, a physicist, was faced with an alarming possibility: had portions of one of Fukushima's reactors gone critical?

To nuclear workers, there are few events more fearful than a criticality accident. In such a scenario, the fissile material in a reactor core--be it enriched uranium or plutonium--undergoes a spontaneous chain reaction, releasing a flash of aurora-blue light and a surge of neutron radiation; the gamma rays, neutrons and radioactive fission products emitted during criticality are highly dangerous to humans. Criticality occurs so rapidly--within a few fractions of a second--and so unpredictably that it can suddenly kill workers without warning. There have been 60 criticality incidents worldwide since 1945. The most recent occurred in Japan in 1999, at an experimental reactor in Tokai, when a beam of neutrons killed two workers, hospitalized dozens of emergency workers and nearby residents, and forced hundreds of thousands to remain indoors for 24 hours.

Workers at Japan Nuke Plant 'Lost the Race' to Save Reactor, Expert Says

Workers at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant appeared to have "lost the race" to save one of the reactors, a U.S. expert told the Guardian.

Richard Lahey, who was head of safety research for boiling water reactors at General Electric when the company installed the units at the Japan plant, says the radioactive core in the Unit 2 reactor appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on a concrete floor.

Japan's Top Official puts declares "Maximum Alert" after a nuclear reactor core breach is leaking plutonium outside the plant. A top nuclear expert declares there are "3 Raging Nuclear Meltdowns In Progress".

Radiation levels outside the plant are now so high they are lethal within 4 hours and insiders say there is a huge crack in the nuclear reactor that will prevent the nuclear fallout from ever being contained.

"Japan's damaged nuclearplant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors - designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests - to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl. ("New Scientist", March 24 -thanks to Michael Collins "They said it wasn't like Chernobyl and they were wrong")

So, volatile radioactive elements are already being lofted into the jet stream and spread across continents. What's different here is that the quantities are much larger than they were at Chernobyl, thus, the dangers are far greater. According to the same group of scientists "the Fukushima plant has around 1760 tonnes of fresh and used nuclear fuel on site" (while) "the Chernobyl reactor had only 180 tonnes." The troubles at one nuclear facility now pose a direct threat to humans and other species everywhere. Is this what Obama meant when he called nuclear power, "Safe and green?"

High-level radiation detected in trench outside Fukushima reactor building

Plutonium detected in soil at Fukushima nuke plant: TOKYO, March 28, Kyodo

TEPCO official admits radioactivity too high to measure - Exceeded limit of gauge

More obstacles impede crews in Japan nuke crisis

Officials acknowledged there was radioactive water in all four of the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex's most troubled reactors, and that airborne radiation in Unit 2 measured 1,000 millisieverts per hour, four times the limit deemed safe by the government.

A top TEPCO official acknowledged it could take a long time to clean up the complex.

"We cannot say at this time how many months or years it will take," Muto said, insisting the main goal now is to keep the reactors cool.

Woes deepen over radioactive water at nuke plant, sea contamination

Gov't asks treatment plants not to take in rainwater due to radiation

Soil contamination already worse than Chernobyl

by Jocelyn Kaiser on 25 March 2011, 6:14 PM

The hot spot is similar to levels found in some areas affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident in the former Soviet Union. Assuming the radiation is no more than 2 centimeters deep, Chen calculates that 163,000 Bq/kg is roughly equivalent to 8 million Bq/m2. The highest cesium-137 levels in some villages near Chernobyl were 5 million Bq/m2.

MELTDOWN:  Breach in reactor suspected at Japanese nuke plant

Japan's Nuclear Disaster Raises Concerns About Contamination of the Global Food Chain

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

March 18, 8:22 AM:   Radiation map of Japan.

2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami
A massive 8.9/9.0 magnitude earthquake hit the Pacific Ocean nearby Northeastern Japan at around 2:46pm on March 11 (JST) causing damage with blackouts, fire and tsunami. 

The Japan Coast Guard says the seabed right above the seismic focus of the powerful earthquake on March 11th moved 24 meters to the east off Miyagi Prefecture in northeastern Japan.

After the magnitude 9.0 quake, the coast guard analyzed data on its benchmarks, which had been set on the seabed at a depth of more than 1,000 meters.

They found that one benchmark 120 kilometers east of the Oshika peninsula had moved about 24 meters to the east-southeast and rose 3 meters.

Another point 70 kilometers east of the peninsula was found to have moved 15 meters east-southeast and sank 60 centimeters.

The same point moved 10 centimeters after a magnitude 7.2 earthquake 6 years ago.

But they say such a large shift caused by the latest earthquake is unprecedented.

March 11 Tsunami Was A Record Breaking 38.9 meters!!!! 127.6 feet

How far did Japan move?   Map of fault lines in Japan.  Active map showing placement of 1015 aftershocks.
Best compilation of earth movement videos, but you have to wait past the commercial first.
Sound of Japan's 9.0 earthquake as heard in Alaska.

The prevailing jet stream is from Japan, across the Pacific, and often directly over Oregon. This is the most commonly used prevailing wind predicted fallout pattern, but remember, fallout can go anywhere or everywhere (and probably will). I will update this site as often as needed so you will at least have a clue what is headed your way - so long as the jet stream is overhead.  In twenty-five years living in the same location, watching the jet stream pattern, I have never seen it undulate like a snake, switching from Vancouver, BC to Southern California in a matter of hours.  It is almost as if the jet stream is being manipulated to keep most of the radiation away from the continental US.

My readings on the evening of March 11th showed absolutely normal background radiation for my area - virtually nothing. Now there is residual decay that is barely measurable as a constant background reading.  These readings are taken at an elevation of 2 inches above ground level because my Geiger survey meter has a remote probe.  I test the calibration of the meter before each reading.  It is not yet time to give potassium iodide to children, according to the experts, but that time will come.

Survey Meter Reading:

Date:   Sunday, April 29, 2012       Time:    9:00 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.000 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 8 to 10 feet, three at 0.03, one at 0.03 and a few at 0.01 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. The Jet stream flowing toward NW coast centered on Vancouver Island, but still offshore.  Some evidence of Fukushima radiation but very reduced from previous levels. 

Date:   Friday, Nov 5, 2011       Time:    4:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, three at 0.04, four at 0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. The Jet stream flowing into Southern California.  The jet stream is coming down over the Pacific, now over the Seattle area. Finally an uptick in radiation after a month of staying relatively the same.

Date:   Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, two at 0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. The Jet stream flowing into Southern California.  The jet stream is undulating over the Pacific and losing most of the wind-borne fallout.

Date:   Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, two at 0.04, three at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. The Jet stream flowing into NW Washington State.  The storms have kept to the north of me.

Date:   Friday, Sept. 23, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one at 0.05, two at 0.04, three at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. The Jet stream over Vancouver, BC now, heading into Oregon and Washington tomorrow.  North wind blew in some radiation.  Rain tomorrow night may show something.

Date:   Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, three at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. The Jet stream is offshore, fragmented. No change for a week.

Date:   Friday, Sept. 16, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, three at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. The Jet stream is offshore, fragmented. No change for a week.

Date:   Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011       Time:    6:35 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, three at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. The Jet stream is streaming in over SW Alaska and Northern BC, Canada. A very slight increase in radioactivity today.

Date:   Sunday, Sept. 4, 2011       Time:    5:35 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. The Jet stream is offshore BC, Canada. No real change in two weeks.  That does not indicate the fallout has stopped!  Given the rapid decay of the lighter radioactive elements, it indicates we are receiving a continuous amount of partially decayed radioactive particles.  Nothing should change until the autumn weather patterns emerge and the rains begin.

Date:   Tuesday, August 30, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. The Jet stream is offshore BC, Canada. No real change over a week.  That does not indicate the fallout has stopped!  Given the rapid decay of the lighter radioactive elements, it indicates we are receiving a continuous amount of partially decayed radioactive particles.

Date:   Sunday, August 28, 2011       Time:    5:45 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. The Jet stream moved north into Canada. No change over a week.  That does not indicate the fallout has stopped!  Given the rapid decay of the lighter radioactive elements, it indicates we are receiving a continuous amount of partially decayed radioactive particles.

Date:   Friday, August 26, 2011       Time:    5:55 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. The Jet stream moved north into Canada. No change all week.

Date:   Tuesday, August 23, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream moved north into Canada.

Date:   Sunday, August 21, 2011       Time:    4:40 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, four at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream is undulating over the Pacific and could come overhead in a day or two.  Most of the radiation is staying in Japan and radiation levels are higher than in the exclusion zone of Chernobyl.  Read the reports from 8.13 to 8.17 above.

Date:   Friday, August 19, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, two at 0.04, four at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream fragmented over the Pacific.  Most of the radiation is staying in Japan and radiation levels are higher than in the exclusion zone of Chernobyl.  Read the reports from 8.13 to 8.17 above.

Date:   Wednesday, August 17, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, four at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream fragmented over the Pacific and one fragment is over Vancouver Island, BC right now.

Date:   Monday, August 15, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, three at 0.05, four at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream fragmented over the Pacific and one fragment passed overhead last night.

Date:   Saturday, August 13, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, four at  0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream fragmented over the Pacific.  Nothing new today.

Date:   Friday, August 12, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, four at 0.04 and quite at few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream fragmented over the Pacific, but we received a new dose of decayed radiation from one fragment that passed overhead.

Date:   Wednesday, August 10, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, two at 0.05, two at 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream completely fragmented over the Pacific, but we received a new dose of radiation.

Date:   Monday, August 8, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream completely fragmented over the Pacific. No change for the past week.

Date:   Friday, August 5, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream completely fragmented over the Pacific. Decay the past four     days.

Date:   Wednesday, August 3, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet,  three at 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream completely fragmented over the Pacific. Decay the past two days.

Date:   Monday, August 1, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, one at 0.06, two at 0.05, three at 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream completely fragmented over the Pacific.  One fragment passed overhead last night and deposited fresh radioactive particles.  That fragment is now approaching the Great Lakes area.

Date:   Saturday, July 30, 2011       Time:    7:00 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, three at 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream still heading into BC Canada, but we have had a North wind bringing in some fallout for the past 3 days.

Date:   Thursday, July 28, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, two at 0.05, three at 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream still heading into BC Canada, but we had a North wind that brought in some fallout. 

Date:   Tuesday, July 26, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream heading into BC Canada.  Decay here for the past two days.

Date:   Sunday, July 24, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, two at 0.05, three at 0.04, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream is fragmented over the Pacific, a fragment could pass overhead tonight, but even without a direct jet stream overhead we got some fresh radioactive fallout.

Date:   Saturday, July 23, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, three at 0.04, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream is fragmented over the Pacific, but still we got some fresh radioactive fallout.

Date:   Thursday, July 21, 2011       Time:    6:25 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream is coming in over the Seattle area.  No change in readings for SW Oregon today.

Date:   Wednesday, July 20, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream is fragmented over the Pacific Ocean.  The radiation reading the past week have been almost exactly what I measured during the Chernobyl incident, but that was over in a few weeks.  The fallout from Fukushima could continue for a century.

Date:   Tuesday, July 19, 2011       Time:    6:25 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream passed overhead last night and left only a little decayed radiation in its wake.

Date:   Monday, July 18, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream dipping down to Northern California.

Date:   Sunday, July 17, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, two at 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream is fragmented over the Pacific, one fragment passed over last night for a slight increase in measured radioactivity.

Date:   Friday, July 15, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet,  a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream is fragmented over the Pacific, no change from yesterday.  But "no change" must take into account the rapid decay of most of the fallout we are receiving, so there actually was new fallout, just decayed by the time it got here.

Date:   Thursday, July 14, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet,  a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream is fragmented over the Pacific, no increase in radiation detected.

Date:   Wednesday, July 13, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet,  a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The Jet stream is fragmented over the Pacific, but one segment passed overhead last night with NO increase in radiation.  Radiation is spreading throughout Japan at very high levels.

Date:   Tuesday, July 12, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, two at 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  A Jet stream fragment will come ashore tonight.

Date:   Monday, July 11, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, two at 0.05 and 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream still fragmented over the Pacific Ocean, but an increase anyway.

Date:   Sunday, July 10, 2011       Time:    6:30 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream completely fragmented over the Pacific Ocean.

Date:   Friday, July 8, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream over BC, Canada.

Date:   Thursday, July 7, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one each at 0.05 and 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream over Western Washington and we had a North wind.

Date:   Wednesday, July 6, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream coming in over BC. Nothing new. Decay today.

Date:   Tuesday, July 5, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, two at 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream coming in over BC.

Date:   Monday, July 4, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, two at 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream fragmented over the Pacific, heading to the Seattle area.

Date:   Saturday, July 2, 2011       Time:    5:50 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one at 0.05, two at 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream well up into Canada.

Date:   Friday, July 1, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one at 0.06, two at 0.05, two at 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream is coming in over the Seattle area, but we got a dusting.

Date:   Thursday, June 30, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, two at 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. A segment of the Jet stream is coming in over the Seattle area.

Date:   Wednesday, June 29, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one at 0.05, two at 0.04 and a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. A segment of the Jet stream passed overhead early today with new fallout.

Date:   Tuesday, June 28, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream dropping south, coming in over Central California.  Nothing new for me today.

Date:   Monday, June 27, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream still fragmented offshore.  Nothing new today.

Date:   Sunday, June 26, 2011       Time:    5:50 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, one at 0.04 and some at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream fragmented 600 miles offshore.  Nothing new today.

Date:   Saturday, June 25, 2011       Time:    5:40 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, five at 0.04 and some at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream fragmented offshore.  New fallout, but obviously decayed before arrival from the convoluted jetstream. 

Date:   Friday, June 24, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at 0.04,  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream over the Seattle area.  Decay here today. 

Date:   Thursday, June 23, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.06, two at 0.05, a few at 0.04,  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream overhead and a north wind. 

Date:   Wednesday, June 22, 2011       Time:    6:55 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.05, a few at 0.04,  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream fragmented offshore.  Decay today.

Date:   Tuesday, June 21, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, one at 0.6, 2 at 0.05, a few at 0.04,  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream coming in over Seattle.  Not much new today.

Date:   Monday, June 20, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.07     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, two at 0.07, 3 at 0.6, 4 at 0.05, a few at 0.04,  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream coming in over Seattle and a North wind is blowing the radiation down the coastline to Oregon.  A very heavy dusting of radioactive particles today.

Date:   Sunday, June 19, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at 0.04,  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream from North, primarily inland over Eastern Washington, Eastern Oregon and Idaho. No wind.

Date:   Saturday, June 18, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one at 0.05, a few at 0.04,  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream offshore, heading in. Mild rain today, no wind, no change in radiation.

Date:   Friday, June 17, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one at 0.05, a few at 0.04,  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream offshore but we had a mild north wind.

Date:   Thursday, June 16, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at 0.04,  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream offshore.  Nothing new - decay today.

Date:   Wednesday, June 15, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, one at 0.06 and one at 0.05, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream over Seattle and down to Portland, strong north wind, and our radiation picked up considerably.

Date:   Tuesday, June 14, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream over Seattle, no new radioactive fallout in SW Oregon.

Date:   Monday, June 13, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, a few at  0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream overhead, but no new radioactive fallout.

Date:   Saturday, June 11, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.07     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.07 and quite a few from 0.06 to 0.04 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream offshore, wind from the west.  Decay today - nothing new.

Date:   Friday, June 10, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.1.2     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, two at 0.12, two at 0.09 and many from 0.06 to 0.04 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream coming in on a north wind.  Today was the first significant fallout recorded.  I ran the test course twice to confirm.  There was a definite spike in radioactive fallout today, double any previous reading in both intensity and coverage.

Date:   Thursday, June 9, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, two at 0.04, two at 0.03 and many and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream fragmented over the Pacific Ocean.  No wind, no rain, no new radiation.

Date:   Wednesday, June 8, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.05, three at 0.04, two at 0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream fragmented over the Pacific Ocean with a strong band over the area from Seattle to Portland.  Decay today.

Date:   Tuesday, June 7, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.06, two at 0.05, three at 0.04, two at 0.03 and many and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream fragmented over the Pacific Ocean with a strong band over the Seattle area and weaker bands over Southern Oregon and the Central California area from SF to Santa Barbara.  Brisk North wind brought in very distinct new radiation.

Date:   Monday, June 6, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, three at 0.04, two at 0.03 and two and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream fragmented over the Pacific Ocean but a band of rain came in this afternoon with widely-scattered but obviously new fallout from Japan.

Date:   Sunday, June 5, 2011       Time:    5:45 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, two at 0.03 two and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream completely fragmented over the Pacific Ocean - no new radiation for the fourth consecutive day.

Date:   Saturday, June 4, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, two at 0.03 two and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream completely fragmented over the Pacific Ocean - no new radiation for the third consecutive day.

Date:   Friday, June 3, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, one at 0.04, a two at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream completely fragmented over the Pacific Ocean - no new radiation came in today.

Date:   Thursday, June 2, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, two at 0.04, a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream coming in over Southern California. 

Date:   Wednesday, June 1, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream coming in over Southern California.  Nothing new - decay today.

Date:   Tuesday, May 31, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.04, a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream coming in over Northern California.  Nothing new - decay today.

Date:   Monday, May 30, 2011       Time:    4:30 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.05, two at 0.04, a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Northern edge of  Jet stream coming in over California.  Nothing new added - decay today.

Date:   Sunday, May 29, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.07     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.07, two at 0.06, 4 at 0.05, two at 0.04, a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Northern edge of  Jet stream overhead.  Significant increase in radiation today.  Still measuring less than a millionth of a rad, but an increase nonetheless.

Date:   Saturday, May 28, 2011       Time:    6:35 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.04, a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream heading into Central California.  Mild radiation, nothing new today.

Date:   Friday, May 27, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.06,  two at 0.05, two at 0.04, a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream straight in to Southern Oregon/Northern California for second day.  Mild, but we are obviously getting radiation from Fukushima.

Date:   Thursday, May 26, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.06,  three at 0.05, two at 0.04, a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream straight in to Southern Oregon/Northern California.

Date:   Wednesday, May 25, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet,  two at 0.05, two at 0.04, four at 0.03 and some 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream loops south offshore, heads back up over Eastern Oregon.

Date:   Tuesday, May 24, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.06, two at 0.05, five at 0.03 and some 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream offshore but coming in tonight. Same radiation reading as yesterday even without a direct jet stream overhead. With three of the Japanese reactors now reported as being in full meltdown, we are very lucky so far to only have this level of fallout.

Date:   Monday, May 23, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.06, two at 0.05, five at 0.03 and some 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream coming in at San Diego, but we still got a good dusting today.

Date:   Sunday, May 22, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.04 and four at 0.03 and some 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Decay today.  Jet stream  well offshore, strangely fragmented over the Pacific. Decayed fallout.

Date:   Saturday, May 21, 2011       Time:    6:00 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.04 and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Decay today.  Jet stream  still offshore, strangely fragmented over the Pacific. No change at all from yesterday.

Date:   Friday, May 20, 2011       Time:    4:25 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.04 and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Decay today.  Jet stream  still offshore, strangely fragmented over the Pacific.

Date:   Thursday, May 19, 2011       Time:    6:25 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, three at 0.04 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Decay today.  Jet stream coming down from the North, still offshore, fragmented over the Pacific.

Date:   Wednesday, May 18, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.05, three at 0.04 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Decay today.  Jet stream coming down from the North, still offshore, but heading in tonight.

Date:   Tuesday, May 17, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, one at 0.06, two at 0.05, five at 0.04 and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Decay today.  Jet stream still heading into Central and Southern California without too many undulations over the Pacific Ocean.

Date:   Monday, May 16, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.07     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 1 - 3 feet, one at 0.07, two at 0.06, five at 0.05,  many at 0.04 and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream still heading into Central and Southern California. The highest readings I have taken since the Japanese quake and tsunami.

Date:   Sunday, May 15, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet,  two at 0.04 and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream driving into Central California.  No new radiation here today.

Date:   Saturday, May 14, 2011       Time:    4:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every foot,  three at 0.04 and many at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream coming in overhead after undulating over the Pacific.  Fallout low level but quite significant.  No rain and a south wind. We have been lucky that another hydrogen or steam explosion has not driven more radioactive particles into the upper atmosphere.  As things stand now, the constant flooding of the reactors has saturated the ground and groundwater at Fukushima with uranium, strontium and plutonium to the point the entire area may not be inhabitable for centuries.

Date:   Friday, May 13, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every foot,  three at 0.04 and many at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream coming in overhead after undulating over the Pacific.  Fallout low level for quite significant.

Date:   Thursday, May 12, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 1 - 2 feet,  three at 0.04 and many at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream coming in overhead after undulating over the Pacific.  Fallout increasing in density but not in intensity - it is largely decayed before it gets here.

Date:   Wednesday, May 11, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet,  three at 0.04 and many at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream coming in overhead after undulating over the Pacific.  More radiation today, but decayed before it finally got here. 

Date:   Tuesday, May 10, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, one at 0.05, three at 0.04 and a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream heading into British Columbia, CA. 

Date:   Monday, May 9, 2011       Time:    4:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 4 - 5 feet, two at 0.04 and a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream directly overhead, straight down from the north. No increase in radiation in the past day. 

Date:   Saturday, May 7, 2011       Time:    4:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.05, two at 0.04 and a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream overhead, mild fallout today.

Date:   Friday, May 6, 2011       Time:    4:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.05, two at 0.04 and a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream overhead, mild fallout today.

Date:   Thursday, May 5, 2011       Time:    6:35 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, two at 0.06, two at 0.05, four at 0.04 and a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream centered over Seattle, but still we got mild fallout today.

Date:   Wednesday, May 4, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, one at 0.05, two at 0.04 and a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream from north, down over Idaho.  No rain, still hot from last night.

Date:   Wednesday, May 4, 2011       Time:    8:20 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.07     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, one at 0.07, two at 0.05, two at 0.04 and a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream was overhead, moving inland.  North wind, no rain, more fallout overnight.

Date:   Tuesday, May 3, 2011       Time:    9:20 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.05, two at 0.04 and a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream overhead.  A little accumulation overnight.

Date:   Monday, May 2, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.04 and a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream moved inland. Light rain today, no new fallout.

Date:   Sunday, May 1, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.05, two at 0.04 and a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream moved inland, almost straight down from the North and over Eastern Oregon and Western Idaho - that area may be receiving fallout.

Date:   Saturday, April 30, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.07     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.07, three at 0.05, three at 0.04, and a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream overhead almost from due North.  Strong north wind, and the radiation pattern (see below) seems to always show an increase with North winds.

Date:   Saturday, April 30, 2011       Time:    8:30 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.05, one at 0.04, and a few at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream still overhead but diving down to So. California.  The radiation is mostly staying in Japan:  Pray for the innocent people who will have to live with it forever.

Date:   Friday, April 29, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, three at 0.05, two at 0.04, and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream directly overhead.

Date:   Friday, April 29, 2011       Time:    9:15 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.05, two at 0.04, and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream centered overhead, but very mild fallout.  We have been very lucky so far.

Date:   Thursday, April 28, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, two at 0.05, three at 0.04, and two at 0.03 and four at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream slightly overhead, mostly over California. Cold showers with mild radioactive fallout.

Date:   Wednesday, April 27, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.04, and two at 0.03 and four at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream directly overhead but no new radiation.

Date:   Wednesday, April 27, 2011       Time:    9:15 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.04, and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream mostly over California, but coming in here too. Decay overnight.

Date:   Tuesday, April 26, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, four at 0.04, and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream mostly over California. Decay today. If radiation is coming into North America someone else is receiving it.

Date:   Tuesday, April 26, 2011       Time:    9:25 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, four at 0.05, four at 0.04, and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream directly overhead. Very heavy rain overnight, some increase in radiation detected.

Date:   Monday, April 25, 2011       Time:    6:25 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, two at 0.04, and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream overhead. The expected radiation cloud (see top of page) did not arrive as forecast.  Rain today but no new radioactive fallout.

Date:   Sunday, April 24, 2011       Time:    6:25 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, one at 0.05 and two at 0.04, and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream moving overhead. The expected storm (see top of page) is late arriving - it should come in overnight with very heavy rain.

Date:   Sunday, April 24, 2011       Time:    7:55 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, two at 0.06 and two at 0.05, and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream over California. Overnight rain.  Nothing new.

Date:   Saturday, April 23, 2011       Time:    5:45 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.12     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 1 - 2 feet, one at 0.12 mR/hr, two at 0.07, two at 0.06 and three at 0.05, and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. Jet stream over Baja, Mexico. Definite radioactive showers today.

Date:   Saturday, April 23, 2011       Time:    8:45 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.05, two at 0.04 and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream over Mexico. Scattered showers.  No overnight accumulation.

Date:   Friday, April 22, 2011       Time:    6:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, two at 0.06, three at 0.05 and some at 0.03 and 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream over Central California, no rain, but we still got renewed tertiary fallout.

Date:   Friday, April 22, 2011       Time:    8:35 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, three at 0.04, five at 0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream over Northern California, no rain. Overnight decay.

Date:   Thursday, April 21, 2011       Time:    6:35 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, two at 0.05, three at 0.04, five at 0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream over Northern California, strong North wind, no rain.  

Date:   Thursday, April 21, 2011       Time:    8:15 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, three at 0.05, two at 0.04, 4 at 0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream over California but we got mild radioactive rain anyway.  

Date:   Wednesday, April 20, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, one at 0.05, two at 0.04, 4 at 0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream now over California.  Decay today.  

Date:   Wednesday, April 20, 2011       Time:    9:45 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, one at 0.06, two at 0.05, 4 at 0.04, three at 0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream overhead.  No rain, but we got Fukushima dust last night.  

Date:   Tuesday, April 19, 2011       Time:    8:35 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.05 mR/hr, 4 at 0.04, three at 0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream heading into Northern California.  

Date:   Monday, April 18, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.06 mR/hr, 4 at 0.05, three at 0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream directly overhead and a vicious North wind today.  

Date:   Monday, April 18, 2011       Time:    8:20 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.000 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, three at 0.03 and some at 0.02 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Center of  Jet stream overhead last night, but nothing new came in.  

Date:   Sunday, April 17, 2011       Time:    6:00 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, three at 0.04 and some at 0.03 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Center of  Jet stream overhead today. No significant accumulation apparent today.  My Canadian Admiral meter which reads from 1 to 500 R/hr shows nothing.  Only my Geiger meter reading to mR/hr can detect anything.

Date:   Sunday, April 17, 2011       Time:    8:15 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, two at 0.5, some at 0.04 and 0.03 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Center of  Jet stream overhead this morning. No significant accumulation apparent overnight.

Date:   Saturday, April 16, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 1 - 2 feet, four at 0.5, some at 0.04 and 0.03 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Center of  Jet stream moved north to Washington/Oregon border area. No new accumulation apparent during daylight hours today.

Date:   Saturday, April 16, 2011       Time:    9:00 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 1 - 2 feet, five at 0.5, many at 0.04 and 0.03 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream directly overhead. Radioactive rain overnight. Highest concentration of radiation yet detected.  Still not to dangerous concentrations, but it is getting there.

Date:   Friday, April 15, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.5, some at 0.04 mR/hr, quite a few at 0.03 in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream directly overhead. Slight accumulation today.

Date:   Friday, April 15, 2011       Time:    8:15 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, some at 0.04 mR/hr, quite a few at 0.03 in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream overhead. No apparent accumulation overnight.

Date:   Thursday, April 14, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet,  two at 0.05,  2 at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.04 mR/hr, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream overhead. No apparent accumulation today.

Date:   Thursday, April 14, 2011       Time:    9:35 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet,  two at 0.06,  2 at 0.05 mR/hr, some at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream overhead. Mild radioactive rain overnight.

Date:   Wednesday, April 13, 2011       Time:    6:20 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet,  two at 0.06,  5 at 0.05 mR/hr, many at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream passed overhead. Mild radioactive rain today.

Date:   Wednesday, April 13, 2011       Time:    8:20 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet,  one at 0.05, many at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream passed overhead quickly, heading to Southern California.

Date:   Tuesday, April 12, 2011       Time:    6:25 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.07     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet,  one at 0.07, three at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.   Jet stream heading in to West Coast of Oregon now.

Date:   Tuesday, April 12, 2011       Time:    8:15 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet,  two at 0.05, three at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream from North. Accumulation = decay. 

Date:   Monday, April 11, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet,  two at 0.05, three at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream moving closer.

Date:   Monday, April 11, 2011       Time:    8:35 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, one at 0.06, two at 0.05, three at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream moved past overnight very fast, now over Mexico!

Date:   Sunday, April 10, 2011       Time:    5:45 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.07     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, one at 0.07, two at 0.06, three at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream now over Vancouver Island.  It will be over Southern California by tomorrow morning, but will swing briefly overhead tonight.  No rain, cold North wind.

Date:   Sunday, April 10, 2011       Time:     11:00 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.12     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, one at 0.09, two at 0.07, three at 0.05 mR/hr, two at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream now over Vancouver Island, but was directly overhead last night.  Radiation readings show obvious increase in fallout. 

Date:   Saturday, April 9, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.07     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, one at 0.07, two at 0.06, three at 0.05 mR/hr, two at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream heading in, will be directly overhead tonight.  Radiation readings picking up. 

Date:   Saturday, April 9, 2011       Time:    10:05 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, three at 0.05 mR/hr, two at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream heading in, will be directly overhead tonight.  Radiation readings picking up.

Date:    Friday, April 8, 2011       Time:    6:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:     0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.05 mR/hr, two at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream way offshore, heading south to Los Angeles.  Cold north wind over land - nothing new.

Date:   Friday, April 8, 2011       Time:    8:40 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:     0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.05 mR/hr, three at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream way offshore, heading south to Los Angeles.  Overnight decay.

Date:   Thursday, April 7, 2011       Time:     6:40 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.05 mR/hr, four at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream way offshore, heading south to Los Angeles.

Date:   Thursday, April 7, 2011       Time:    10:15 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, four at 0.04 mR/hr, some at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Overnight decay.  Jet stream offshore, heading south to San Francisco.

Date:   Wednesday, April 6, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.001 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, six at 0.04 mR/hr, many at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream overhead, radioactive rain today.  Still mild, but we obviously have radioactivity on the ground and in the rainwater from Japan.

Date:   Wednesday, April 6, 2011       Time:    9:30 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.0005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.04 mR/hr, a few at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Nothing new overnight.

Date:   Tuesday, April 5, 2011       Time:    6:40 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.0005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.06, two at 0.04 mR/hr, a few at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Nothing new.

Date:   Tuesday, April 5, 2011       Time:     8:35 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.40 !     (mR/hr);

Background 0.0005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, one at 0.40, two at 0.04 mR/hr, more at 0.03, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Jet stream overhead, radioactive rain.  Overnight decay.

Date:   Monday, April 4, 2011       Time:    8:45 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.0005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.04 mR/hr, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Northwest wind with the jet stream centered on Seattle.

Date:   Sunday, April 3, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.05 mR/hr, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Northwest wind sweeping in from jet stream centered on Seattle.

Date:   Sunday, April 3, 2011       Time:     8:15 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:     0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, three at 0.04 mR/hr, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Very mild radiation, decay overnight.

Date:   Saturday, April 2, 2011       Time:     6:25 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, two at 0.06 mR/hr, three at 0.05 mR/hr, quite a few at 0.04 in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The wind is from the north and the jet stream is coming in hard and fast.

Date:   Saturday, April 2, 2011       Time:     8:15 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:     0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, three at 0.04 mR/hr, in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Very mild radiation, but sufficient to be measured.

Date:   Friday, April 1, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, three at 0.04 mR/hr, two at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Very mild radiation. No change real today.

Date:   Friday, April 1, 2011       Time:    8:35 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, some at 0.03 mR/hr, two at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Calm winds overnight, no rain, and the jet stream is still over the Seattle area to my north.

Date:   Thursday, March 31, 2011       Time:    6:25 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, many at 0.03 mR/hr, three at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. 

Date:   Thursday, March 31, 2011       Time:     9:45 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, many at 0.04 mR/hr, four at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  More fallout overnight as I am now at the southern edge of the jet stream.

Date:    Wednesday, March 30, 2011       Time:    6:25 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.005 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, many at 0.03 mR/hr, one at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  Nothing new for me. No rain and the jet stream moved north to the Seattle area.

Date:    Wednesday, March 30, 2011       Time:     9:15 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, many at 0.04 mR/hr, four at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  More fallout overnight in heavy rain.

Date:    Tuesday, March 29, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, many at 0.03 mR/hr, three at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. 

Date:    Tuesday, March 29, 2011       Time:     10:15 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, many at 0.03 mR/hr, four at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. 

Date:    Monday, March 28, 2011       Time:     6:40 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);  No change.

Date:    Monday, March 28, 2011       Time:     8:30 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, many at 0.03 mR/hr, two at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. 

Date:    Sunday, March 27, 2011       Time:    6:15 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.00 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, many at 0.03 mR/hr, two at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. 

Date:    Sunday, March 27, 2011       Time:     9:45 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.00 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, most 0.03 mR/hr, two at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area. 

Date:    Saturday, March 26, 2011       Time:    6:45 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Date:     Saturday, March 26, 2011       Time:     9:45 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.00 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, most 0.03 mR/hr, one at 0.04 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The jet stream is over Northern California but very close now, and still no increase in dangerous levels of radiation.  With the meltdown of the No. 3 reactor and others sure to follow, though, we could easily get hit with radioactive particles in the next few days or weeks.

Date:     Friday, March 25, 2011       Time:     7:05 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.00 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, most 0.03 mR/hr, two at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The jet stream is now over Northern California but very close now, and still no increase in detectable radiation.

Date:    Friday, March 25, 2011       Time:    10:15 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.00 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, most 0.03 mR/hr, two at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The jet stream is now over Northern California but very close now, and still no increase in detectable radiation.

Date:     Thursday, March 24, 2011       Time:     6:45 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.00 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, most 0.03 mR/hr, three at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The jet stream is now over Northern California.

Date:    Thursday, March 24, 2011       Time:     10:05 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.00 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, most 0.03 mR/hr, two at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 x 9 foot test area.  The jet stream is still over Southern California.

Date:    Wednesday, March 23, 2011       Time:    7:10 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, most 0.03 mR/hr, one at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 foot test area.  The jet stream is still over Southern California.

Date:    Wednesday, March 23, 2011       Time:     10:05 AM PDT     No change from last night.

Date:    Tuesday, March 22, 2011       Time:    6:55 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, most 0.04 mR/hr, two at 0.05 mR/hr in a 12 foot test area.  The jet stream is still coming in over Los Angeles.

Date:    Tuesday, March 22, 2011       Time:     10:15 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, most 0.04 mR/hr, two at 0.06 mR/hr in a 12 foot test area.  The jet stream is still coming in over Los Angeles, but the low pressure area holding it off the Oregon coast is moving inland.

Date:    Monday, March 21, 2011       Time:     7:00 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.01 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, most 0.04 mR/hr, two at 0.06 mR/hr in a 12 foot test area.  The jet stream is still coming in over Los Angeles, but the low pressure area holding it off the Oregon coast is moving inland.

Date:    Monday, March 20, 2011       Time:    7:55 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.07     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, most 0.04 mR/hr, two at 0.07 mR/hr in a 12 foot test area.  The jet stream is still coming in over Los Angeles, but the low pressure area holding it off the Oregon coast is moving inland.

Date:    Sunday, March 20, 2011       Time:     6:45 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, most 0.04 mR/hr, two at 0.06 mR/hr in a 10 foot test area. 

Date:    Sunday, March 20, 2011       Time:     9:00 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, most 0.04 mR/hr, one at 0.05 mR/hr in a 10 foot test area. 

Date:    Saturday, March 19, 2011       Time:     7:14 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet, most 0.04 mR/hr, one at 0.06 mR/hr in a 10 foot test area.  Nothing new during daylight hours, but the jet stream is way down near San Francisco.  Our intense thunderstorm is over.

Date:    Saturday, March 19, 2011       Time:     10:10 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.09     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet, most 0.04 mR/hr, one at 0.09 mR/hr in a 10 foot test area.

Date:    Friday, March 18, 2011       Time:     6:40 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.06     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet.

Date:    Friday, March 18, 2011       Time:     8:05 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.02     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet.  The jet stream is still over Southern California, 800 miles to the south of me.  They may be getting the first traces of radiation.

Date:    Thursday, March 17, 2011       Time:     6:35 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet.  Lessened.  Jet stream over San Francisco area.

Date:    Thursday, March 17, 2011       Time:     1:14 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.03 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 2 - 3 feet.

Date:    Thursday, March 17, 2011       Time:    8:02 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

NO CHANGE FROM YESTERDAY.

Date:    Wednesday, March 16, 2011       Time:     7:02 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 3 - 4 feet.

Date:    Wednesday, March 16, 2011       Time:     1:12 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.02     (mR/hr);  

Very heavy rain and thunderstorms last night and this morning.  Readings declined.

Date:    Tuesday, March 15, 2011       Time:     6:19 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);  

Lessened.  Apparently no new tertiary fallout during daylight today.

Date:    Tuesday, March 15, 2011       Time:    10:29 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);  

No change from last night.

Date:    Monday, March 14, 2011       Time:    8:03 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Date:    Monday, March 14, 2011       Time:    12:13 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.04     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, nothing serious.  We are probably seeing radioactive iodine-131, which has a half-life of 8 days.

Date:    Monday, March 14, 2011       Time:    7:46 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.03     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks about every 5 - 6 feet, nothing serious.

Date:    Sunday, March 13, 2011       Time:    3:50 PM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.05     (mR/hr);

Background 0.02 mR/hr; Hot spot clicks every 5 feet, nothing serious, but radiation is obviously coming in via the jet stream.

Date:    Sunday, March 13, 2011       Time:    8:58 AM PDT      HOT SPOT:    0.02     (mR/hr);

Normal background; a few hot spot clicks, nothing serious yet.

Date:    Saturday, March 12, 2011       Time:    12:41 PM PST      HOT SPOT:    none       (R/hr);

Date:    Friday, March 11, 2011       Time:    7:38 PM  PST          HOT SPOT:    none       (R/hr);     

Dosimeter accumulation:    None         (Roentgens)

Elapsed time of dosimeter recording:  Not yet enough radiation to use a dosimeter.

Measuring Radiation  (and here)
One year of exposure to natural radiation (from soil, cosmic rays, etc.) 300 mrem 3 mSv
Exposure to cosmic rays during a roundtrip airplane flight from New York to Los Angeles 3 mrem 0.03 mSv  

Radiation Dictionary

Removing Radioactive Contamination from the Body

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Also, microsievert are directly convertible to rems, if you're so inclined.

• 1 Sv = 100 rem

• 1 mSv = 100 mrem = 0.1 rem

• 1 μSv = 0.1 mrem

• 1 rem = 0.01 Sv = 10 mSv

• 1 mrem = 0.00001 Sv = 0.01 mSv = 10 μSv

You can move the decimal point one place to the left for rems.

~~~~~~~~

You're being exposed to radiation -- but it's the amount that counts.

http://www.fox6now.com/news/la-fg-radiation-comparison-20110315,0,386338.story

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