Dr Jerry Pournelle, famous science, science fiction, and computing writer, visited our offices and studies recently, and sent a note to Roger Simon, the CEO; Roger forwarded it on to me and I wanted to publish it here. Jerry says:
My View today has some hard numbers which come from a very reliable source. I can’t identify him but he is a senior Japanese scientist in a private company there.
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2011/Q1/view666.html#worstcase
There may be more flare-ups over the next week or two. Workers are exceeding their badge dosages but some are heroically staying anyway. All people not needed at any given time are sent off site for obvious reasons since cumulative dosages of experience technicians is the worst threat just now.
Levels at the periphery have been high enough that you don’t want to be there, but not many are at the periphery. The peak there was large but not disastrous, and is now lower again. It will probably rise again in future. Reactors 4 5 6 have their rods removed from the reactor and put in storage pools so the danger now is that they’ll dry out and release some more fission products; there’s no danger of any actinide oxides going into the atmosphere.
In other words the mushroom cloud watch can end. Not that it was ever needed. I expect even Katie Curry will catch on eventually. I have to say I have been disappointed in Fox News which seems to have jumped onto the alarmist bandwagon and stayed there far too long.
This is not a tempest in a tea pot, but it’s certainly not a typhoon in lake Michigan either. The worst injuries (other than industrial accidents which may happen at any time or place) have been workers exceeding their badge limits and being sent home.
The “nuclear evacuation” of the plant workers is sensible: if you ain’t needed fight here and now, get out so you don’t build up larger cumulative exposure. No alarm in that. Just sense.
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