Anyone in Japan? Tsunami alert - any more news ? PLEASE

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DH who gets these things has had a tsunami alert for Japan. Does anyone have any more info? Itsjust breaking news about the massive earthquake at the moment.

How awful. Thanks BeenBeta for the technical info. I am finding it difficult to get non-hysterical fact based info.

The Germans are annoying me. I have a friend who is taking iodine and has bought UHT milk in bulk. FFS. And her partner, a paediatrician, had updated his website with advice on buying and taking iodine.

Total overreaction? Or sensible precaution? They are in Germany, not in Japan.

Seems so ridiculous, when those in Japan are fighting to stay calm and measured.

And I think it is selfish and self-absorbed. They should be thinking of ways to help those in Japan. Not worrying about an (as yet) non-existant threat to their own health.

I think it is important to keep it in perspective but take precautions in case the situation suddenly gets worse.

At the moment there are elevated levels of radiation is some Tokyo suburbs but the imminent risk to human health is not very high at this precise moment because the levels are not critical.

However, a reporter was just on TV from Tokyo and was describing how there is a kind of very low level panic below the surface. There is very little food in shops. He desribed how difficult it was to get a sandwich or a can of coke.

thumbwitch - I totaly agree with your analysis. If I were in Tokyo with my family my concern would be that the radiation might get suddenly worse and a real panic exodus from the city began so that roads and rail became clogged or that power, food and water was cut off entirely.

The risk is not the radiation at this precise moment but what might happen in future and then being trapped in the city.

If you have time to spare & want to read up on some aspects of radiation dose vs risk you could do worse than to check out this by a colleague of mine who's runs his own radiation protection business in the UK. He has some little videos on there. He does a lot of training so is well versed in explaining things on a layperson's terms. It is lengthy tho - almost like a mini course. This particular link does include some reference to the Japan situation.

thinking of you all.

Hope you have a smooth journey to Shikoku, Pennybubbly.

I am currently really appreciating my safe boring life. Hope things get a bit more boring for you all in Japan soon

Sakura - am happy that my db never goes outside anyway! (Mind you if he loses his internet connection there is a risk he might lift his head from the laptop, look around, discover the big rectangular hole in his house commonly known as a door, and go through it to discover the amazing three-dimensional world we call Real Life.)

Yes, it's one of those dodgy Chinese curses, isn't it: "May you live in interesting times"?
If this is interesting I'd take boring any day. I hope along with sethstarkadders that your lives become more boring for you soon.

3rd explosion at Fukushima plant - radioactive cloud now travelling towards Tokyo according to latest news here in Australia.
18 million are without supplies or nearly so.
It just gets worse and worse. :(

this is very interesting about the foreign media reporting.

and here something light hearted

Yes I do think there has been sensationalisation in foreign news media. However, I also think Japanese media has been guilty the other way of being too passive. That is now changing though.

I was listening to a reporter from Tokyo this morning who was describing the unreal atmosphere at the latest TEPCO news conference. The reporter was saying how uncharacteristically aggressive the local journalists were being when they were questioning the TEPCO executives. Usually Japanese journalists are quite obedient and just write down what thay are told but the mood now is that they no longer fully believe or trust the official line.

It would be great to have something between the hysteria and blind acceptance. Very difficult to know what to think.

They've been showing a fair bit of footage of Japanese people, including the men, crying their eyes out and saying how very unusual it is to see this - that Japanese people, especially men, are very rarely likely to give way to emotion in public. I don't know if that's foreign reporters succumbing to stereotype or if its true - but I can see that emotions are running very high, understandably.

SKY is reporting that the UN Weather Agency says winds are dispersing the radioactivity over the ocean.

Contradictory reporting really isn't helping, is it?

SKY is also reporting that the radioactive leak has peaked, and that levels have already fallen significantly (but I can't find where that's sourced to). But I am really, really hoping this one is an accurate report.

Germany is decommissioning seven nuclear power stations. Officially for three months, but it is doubtful if they will ever be turned back on again.

Massive turn-around in Germany. Massive. The Government is under extreme pressure though, because of the upcoming state elections.

I have also read in several places that the radiation levels at the plant have fallen back but it seems that people are losing confidence and now leaving Tokyo in fairly significant numbers and shops are being stripped of food and other supplies.

From Reuters:

Radiation fears spark panic buying, evacuations in Tokyo

"At Haneda Airport, hundreds of young mothers lined up with children, boarding flights out of Tokyo.

"We are getting our of Tokyo and going to our home town because of the situation. For the time being we have bought a one way ticket and will wait and see what happens," said a Japanese woman with an eight-month-old baby and four-year-old son, who declined to be identified by name."

Taking stable iodine in Germany is definitely not sensible - they could really risk developping a thyroid condition. If they think they are at risk from thyroid cancer at such a location then by that logic everyone in the world would have contracted it from weapons testing, Chernobyl, etc!

The levels of the harmful iodine isotope are falling as it has a half-life of about 8days & is a fission product so will have stopped being produced once the reactors were shutdown.

IAEA is confirming that levels around the plant are falling. WHO happy with health precautions that are being taken.

But there are still concerns about what may happen next with the stricken reactors, particularly reactor 2.

Elvisgirl
Thanks for that. I am so cross with my friend and her partner for spreading panic. He is a paediatrician and has posted links on his practice website about taking iodine.

The only reputable online sources about the nuclear situation I have found is the IAEA and World Nuclear News, but it is still mostly of too little detail to inform properly of the situation & of course delayed. The trouble is that the info needed is quite detailed. One radiation reading at one particular time with only a vague idea of location is open to various possible interpretations, but really you wouldn't want to even give an interpretation with such a lack of info. Obviously one can see the main problem is getting the info out of the location in the first place.

I found it quite interesting that in the first two days there was pretty much 24hr coverage on several news stations then by yesterday evening I couldn't find it on any news channel until it came on at a particular slot. The newspaper coverage today in one of the dailies was only four sides, most of it photos.

Can anyone explain to me, or point me to where I can find out, how people have religous faith under these circumstances. It seems to play a great role in somehow helping people through the ordeal if they can get over the why does it happen part. I am just waiting for some fundamentalist groups to start spouting that it is a punishment for greed/gays/infidelity/abortion etc, if they haven't already.

Oh, they already have, elvisgirl - it doesn't take long:

Fox presenter Glenn Beck says it's a message from God (DM link, sorry).

Even a few of the more extreme Japanese politicians like Ishihara.

And I'm sure there are plenty more rants out on the internet about how Japan deserved it for being irreligious/what it did in the war/any random reason. I just can't stomach searching for them.

For anyone who wishes to watch there is a live video stream of a geiger counter in Tokyo here on Ustream.

You may have to watch a little advert for 30 seconds and obviously I have no idea who is streaming the video or what the 'normal' level of radiation would be but it is there if you want to look at it.

The level was around 29.20 cpm when I made this post.

From a bit of googling around, 29.20cpm sounds slightly elevated but not dangerous - experiment showed 360cpm in normal transatlantic plane flight.

oh, the Geiger counter is cool. I got a Swiss advert, in Swiss German which always makes me laugh.

yes exexpat, I've just watched a clip on the Japanese news about normal radiation levels and it put it into percpective.

The highest level of radiation is at the plant, ovbiously, and it's at about 25cpm there. The radiation level found in the regions around Fukushima and the figures are coming up like 0.2, 0.4, the highest being 0.8 per house
They showed that in an X-ray, which is 5O
A long haul return flight, as exexpat said is 200 or so
and all in all the average person comes in contact with about 2400cpm per year

per house? I meant per hour

Mme Lindt, at your post about the Germans. THe Japanese couldn't be more different in temperament. I did tell DH what you posted and he agreed with you in that if they're that worried about radiation, they should send iodine tablets to Japan