The Norwegian Institute for Air Research (Nilo) ran models and forecasts
of the radioactive fallout from the Japanese nuclear accident for some
time. Nilo has stopped providing such forecasts to the public.
However, Alexander Higgins discovered an internal page of Nilo’s website showing high levels of radioactive iodine 131:
(Click for larger image).
Because this comes from an internal – rather than publicly-released – portion
of Nilo’s website, it cannot be confirmed that these are real readings,
as opposed to some sort of fictitious simulation. However, the webpage containing the simulation contains “flexpart”, which is the name of Nilo’s official,formerly-public simulations.
Despite the lack of official confirmation, given that the readings show high levels of radiation hitting much of the West this month, that the EPA has suspended all but routine radiation monitoring, that American states aren’t really monitoring, that Canada has drastically slashed the amount of monitoring it is doing, and that the situation in Japan is worse than the Japanese have previously admitted, I had to post this information … with appropriate caveats.
Update: Someone associated with University of California Berkeley’s radiation testing program wrote last month:
The tools they are using appear to be very sophisticated and realistic
codes for air transport modeling. This is not my area of expertise, but
I am getting this from reading the technical parts of their website.***
[But] I found the following disclaimer on the page you linked. I have put some parts in bold:
“These products are highly uncertain based on limited
information for the source terms. Please use with caution and understand
that the values are likely to change once we obtain more information on
the overall nature of the accident. The products should be
considered informational and only indicate ‘worst case scenario’
releases. From what we’ve learned recently, it seems releases of this
magnitude have not yet occurred. Furthermore, these modeling
products are based on global meteorological data, which are too coarse to provide reliable details of the transport of the plume across Japan.“Currently we are using a daily releases distributed evenly of 0.1E18 Bq I-131, 0.1 E17 Cs-137, and 0.1 E19 Xe-133 per day.“
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How can you claim daily releases of of I-131 without claiming re-criticality? I-131 has a 8 day half life so why should there be continued releases more than two months later?
Because Number 1 is still critical http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_03.html
Move along people, nothing to see here.
EPA suspended testing because it wasn’t detecting any radiation. Fears are overblown. Inconclusive simulation. Many flaws. No radiation. Radiation not bad. Airplanes worse. Coal worse. Radon in basements. Need nuclear energy.
Nuclear power better than alternatives.
—this has been a broadcast of the Nuclear Industry Wanker—
beep beep beep
Let us sit back and watch them arrive. We could rate their efforts to slip in unnoticed. The best might actually do so, but the also-rans should be outed so that whoever is running them can weed them out, leaving the purest astroturf possible.
If I am to be psy-opped, I want it done properly.
Right ,here we go again.Few days ago you just had to inform everyone how well known crackpot thinks milk is dangerous and now about “simulation” that is not backed by anyone and that is clearly in error. Let us hope we will all die this time!
Lol… I’d rather like to see just the mucky-mucks in the banks die, rather than all of us. Hopefully Iodine 131 is attracted to corruption.
Ahhh…here we go with the if don’t drop dead before my eyes, its not so bad.
Skippy..go read about accumulation effect.
Sure. As the old saying goes…
No sense crying over spilled radionuclides.
even EoC and Zerohedge don’t post about random models they found somewhere on the Internet but can’t ascertain if they’re for real.
5/12 was yesterday, can’t someone just take a measurement instead of speculating about a model?
Can we maybe stick to topics where we’ve done the work and know what we’re talking about?
Can’t someone just take a measurement? You mean someone like the EPA?
Peeps wouldn’t have to speculate so much if the EPA was aggressively monitoring the situation as opposed to cowering under nuclear industry pressure.
There are many good universities in the US and Canada on the west coast. Maybe some of their research departments will go out and attempt to take measurments. Sounds like promising material for a thesis.
Dear Valissa;
Haven’t you heard? Academic enterprises are now to be “filtered” by the Ministry of Truth. Considering how many of “the usual suspects” are involved in trying to cover this up, any academic who tries to buck the trend seriously risks comitting “professional suicide.”
Look at the bright side. Now we human beings are engineering the next evolutionary jump for own own species! Think big Valissa! Your offspring, (those that survive) will bless you for it.
I almost added a more obviously snarky comment about how unlikely an academic institution would be willing to buck the system and be truthful. Was kinda hoping for a clever snarky response or comeback. The Ministry of Truth is a good start! We had a long discussion about the woeful state of academia today on a post a few days ago. Not many left who are naive about the nature and purpose of the modern education system.
prof.s have to get paid;; it is all money, money, money.
coal humor – http://www.coalcares.org/cleanenergy.html
priceless.
what is going on with the wind turbine on fire in the photo?
and did you know that solar energy is actually dangerous?
the sun can kill you!
Dear Troll;
Oh my, I laughed outloud at some of the arguements put forward by “Coal Cares.” And by the way, precisely what does coal care about? It being from down in the ground. and Trolls being notorious for their mining and delving activities, I thought you might have the inside word . Thanks a lot for this link, it is indeed priceless.
Frankly, we should switch over to coal to power all those windmills. You had your chance, solar!
As propaganda and fearmongering goes, this is pretty lame. But great material for a comedy sketch. Someone should email this to Jon Stewart’s writing teaam!
Dear Valissa;
What particularly frightens me about the “Coal Cares” website is exactly the extra low level of intellectual ability it’s aimed at. Are “My Fellow Americans” really that gullabull, (with apologies to that Wascally Wabbit.) If this is indeed the case, then our education system is in a lot worse shape then any of us suspect!
ambrit, I find this website scarier than the coal propaganda because it will get much more traction.
Mike Huckabee’s new education (propaganda) company… Learn Our History http://learnourhistory.com/
The Reagan Revolution is a huge centerpiece. Charming, eh?
Radiation from Fukushima just made my dick much bigger. Simulations indicate that it will hit US eastern seaboard close to Washington DC at 1245 on 14th of May. So watch out!
Seriously, we have a nuclear apocalypse here and zero casualties from radiation so far! What is wrong with you people? Get your act together and die! Blogger has his role to play in all this and you have yours.
‘We have a nuclear apocalypse here and zero casualties from radiation so far!’
Right — I just smoked a cigarette and didn’t die. The whole tobacco/lung cancer link was invented by doom mongers. You’re a genius, man.
Total release from Fukushima seems to have been in the range of 130 * 10^15 Bq. No wonder you get funny looking simulation if you use that as the _daily_ release…
Move along, there doesn’t seem to be much to see here…
The “simulations” shows amounts of I131 that is at maximum about 400 Bq/m^2 in US. This is MUCH more than the maximum fallout in Japan. (http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html). Incidentally after Chernobyl you had areas in Scandinavia with about 100 times higher Bq/m^2 than shown here and guess what? Nothing happened. But since you found this simulations from the web and no one takes credit for it, I am sure it must be true :-)
Well, actually a great deal happened in scandinavia–thyroid cancer went through the roof, along with a multitude of other cancers, and they’re *still* high.
Nuclear meltdown at Fukushima plant
By Julian Ryall in Tokyo 2:01PM BST 12 May 2011
One of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant did suffer a nuclear meltdown, Japanese officials admitted for the first time today, describing a pool of molten fuel at the bottom of the reactor’s containment vessel.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8509502/Nuclear-meltdown-at-Fukushima-plant.html
I was wondering if they would ever admit this, so glad to see it only took a couple of months. It seemed pretty obvious at the time… I thought the explosion was a dead giveaway.
A Bq is a Becquerel, or one Geiger count tick per second
(something like that). The old unit was the Curie:
a very large number of counts per second.
200 times the legal limit for rain-water sounds scary;
I’d suggest the danger lies with weeks or months at
200 times the legal limit. The simulation covered at
most 2 days.
What complicates things is that not all clicks are created
equal: there’s the Sievert (Sv) which is a unit
dose for damage to body organs, that kind of thing.
But then the May 12 meltdown suggests increased risk:
maybe radiation hasn’t leaked, but it might
somewhere down the road.
Dear Good One;
As if you hadn’t noticed; just when the Scandinavian countries were all set to follow our glorious Phooey into the grand sunrise of “Morning in America” and embrace supply side economics and winner take all social relations, Chernoyble occured. After the radiation settled over them, the previously ‘yearning to be free’ Northern Lands mysteriously reverted to their old “socialist” world views. Considering the source of the radiation, this was a blatant Commie Plot. We would have had to go to war with the Godless Commies over this if their system hadn’t imploded first. So, fate does indeed move in mysterious ways, and Atomic Energy is mankinds friend. See you at the rally.
“… it cannot be confirmed that these are real readings,
as opposed to some sort of fictitious simulation.”
The damn thing says “Simulation start” above the plot. For Gods sake doing some checking before you post.
Also, daily releases at those levels are just unbelievably ridiculous. They amount to approx. the total output of radiation from Chernobyl for every single day of the simulation.
This is just scaremongering on your part, plain and simple.
Serious waste of electricity on this post.
Awful post.
Friends;
The entire problem here is that no one seems to be trying to get good readings,(or, conversly, those that have been taken,) and releasing them to “shut up” the “crackpots and conspiracy theorists.”
I’m amenable to reason and good data. Someone just supply the “unsmoking gun” and shut me up. We’re all adults here, (unlike the poor saps Coal Cares is aimed at,) so let’s act it, not act it out.
Very sensible except for one thing… who will supply this “good data” to reason from?
Coal Cares is a parody site. It is not real.
It’s sad that this had to be pointed out, but don’t blame the dupes. When our economic and political elite constantly go around at midnight saying the sun is shining, the bar for parody is set extraordinarily high.
Just when it appears that George “Don’t Drink the Milk: It’s radioactive!” Washington couldn’t be a bigger moron…he comes up with this astonishingly stupid post.
Please…for a good laugh, take a moment and follow the link at the top of GW’s post…the one wherein Alexander Higgins “discovered” an internal page on the NILO website….
Look at this Hamilton Blog. Freaking hilarious.
Plastered at the top is this attention grabbing headline:
“THYROID KI–SUPER STRENGTH THYROID PROTECTION!”
Notice Higgins’ “journalist-blogger” photo. Evidently, Hard-Hitting-Higgins couldn’t even get another person to take it for him, so he resorts to a ridiculous self-snap. [Hell, the photo is the size of postage stamp, and Higgins still couldn’t manage a uniform background.]
As to the post itself, Higgins doesn’t even say how he comes across this “secret” information, other than the cryptic–“It was discovered on the NILO website”. What?? That’s it?
Thyroid Pill Peddler “discovers” secret radioactive contaminant information…and GW, of course, runs with it. You can’t make this shit up.
BREAKING NEWS! THIS JUST IN:
As I looked at Higgins’ site, I couldn’t help but to notice he actually has a television show.
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/04/08/episode-alexander-higgins-show-15356/
In his first and only episode, he interviews some guy named “Archangel”. Archangel sounds as if he’s calling in from deep inside a Thermonuclear-Armageddon-Bunker. [But he’s calling from Pennsylvania.]
Of course, Higgins doesn’t have a camera-person, so the screen is black.
They begin the interview (and I shit you not) with Archangel reading…get this(!)… a “Red-Alert Letter” about the deluge of radiation. [Yes, they actually call it a “Red Alert Letter.” I’m not making any of this up. Seriously.]
I couldn’t make it any further…but you wanna know the best part?
While conducting the interview on the black screen, guess what’s being advertised in a little banner ad at the bottom?
Milk! That’s right…a freaking milk ad. Priceless.
GW…what a buffoon.
And no, I’m not being too harsh. Quite the contrary. GW passes himself off as an “adjunct professor” with credentials and a strong investigative ethic. Yet, when he’s not self-linking back to his own stupid blog, he’s linking to one of his college students peddling thyroid pills.
[BTW: If your thyroid-protection-pill needs have already been met, you might consider the $555 InspectorXtreme Radiation Alert kit. Act Now. And if you mention “Higgins” you’ll get 10% off.
And again, I’m not making it up…it’s for sale on the right side of the blog.]
After contemplating the varied comments, when an asteroid hits Earth I can just imagine humans arising from their holes in the ground and caves to proclaim “nothing serious”!
When Dan Duncan talks about morons, it sounds like he has special expertise.
The methodology of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, also known as NILU is smartly analyzed and discussed at:
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/2400
Their projections are “worst case” and carry the caveat noted above.
That does not mean the projections might not have some degree of accuracy.
The Berkeley Nuclear site is the best the subject.
The Berkeley site states that they are doing measurements. Thanks for the link.