Saturday, March 19, 2011

Land Of The Rising Core Temperature, Part 12

The real problem with Japan right now is again, lack of food, water, and power/heat to hundreds of thousands.  The radiation from Fukushima Daiichi is now making things much, much worse.

As workers scrambled to curb a nuclear crisis Sunday, the Japanese government considered halting the sale of food from farms near the Fukushima plant after abnormally high levels of radiation were found in milk and spinach.


Very small amounts -- far below the level of concern -- of radioactive iodine were also detected in tap water in Tokyo and most prefectures near the Fukushima Daiichi plant damaged by last week's monster earthquake and tsunami.

Six members of the emergency crew at the plant have been exposed to more than 100 millisieverts of radiation per hour, the equivalent of getting 10 chest X-rays per hour, plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Company said.

The utility said the workers were exposed when trying to restore electricity to the stricken reactors in hopes of using the cooling systems again.

Tokyo Electric had raised the exposure level for emergency workers from its previous standard of 100 millisieverts per hour to 250 millisieverts.

Yeah see, irradiated food + limited food supply + no power to preserve food + wiped out transportation infrastructure to move in new food + winter temps = pretty much nightmare time.   From a large-scale logistics point of view, this is about as bad as it gets.  It would almost be darkly humorous if it wasn't so absolutely catastrophic.

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