Japan’s Nuclear Emergency – Facts and Figures

The mainstream media coverage of the unfolding nuclear disaster at Japan’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been disappointing to say the least. From fear mongering to apologist soliloquies about the safety of commercial nuclear power, the up-to-the-minute facts have been hard to come by. Here are some excellent factual links from agencies, industry professionals and news organizations that are producing timely updates about the status of the Japanese efforts to bring the situation under control:

Japan Atomic Industrial Forum – producing a table with daily updates of the status of each reactor complex

All Things Nuclear, a blog from The Union of Concerned Scientists is producing thoughtful and detailed analysis of the accident’s likely causes and potential impacts

ZAMC – the Austrian Weather Service, in an official capacity for the Incident and Emergency Center of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is producing real time updates on the status of possible weather transport of radionuclides dispersed by the wind (English PDF translation at the bottom of the page)

Update 3/28: Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Environment, Society for Plant and Reactor Safety – provides graphs and maps of the affected regions (this is a google translate page, you need to download the figures directly from the original URL to see the graphics)

Update 3/29: Germany’s Federal Office for Radiation Protection is producing a number of informative charts and graphics regarding the CTBTO detection data throughout the northern hemisphere, including this animated map showing the detection of radionuclides by date:

Update 4/11: SIROCCO, at the request of the IAEA, is now modeling radionuclide dispersion into the pacific ocean.

TEPCO is operating a live web camera showing the Fukushima Daiichi facility from a distance

Update 3/29: The U.S. EPA is deployed a new map based RadNET interface and has begun publishing detailed radionuclide monitoring data for selected stations from the U.S. west.

Update 4/11: The U.S. EPA has a new, dynamically updateable table of radionuclide contamination readings here.

A private citizen in Tokyo – graphing the real time output of a Geiger counter (CPM units) with wind speed and direction and weather updates

NHK, Japan’s National News service is running a 24hr (not always live) english language stream on UStream – the stream has been disabled

Update 3/30: NHK’s New’s Science and Culture Division is now publishing regular updates on radionuclide concentrations found in the air and sea water samples from around Fukushima Daiichi.

Update 4/3:  Additional sources of radiation monitoring levels within Japan:

Unknown Japanese source #1
Unknown Japanese source (Tokyo) #2
MEXT Data by Prefecture

The UC Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering is posting daily updates on the levels of various radionuclides present in air, rain water, tap water and milk samples collected in the Bay Area.  The data is very interesting because it gives us a clearer picture of how the particulate fallout is washed out by rain and bio-accumulates as a result of the food chain. The data time series is much more complete than what has been posted to date by the EPA.

Though less complete, the UW Physics Department is posting similar data from air monitoring in Seattle, WA.

See also:

Information on converting CPM to mR/hr for different radionucleotides

A short primer on radiation units and their meaning

Update: The Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health has published radiation monitoring data for the period 3/18-3/23.