I’m trying to figure out what microsievert actually is. They show a graph on NRC news, and there’s a live geigercounter in Tokyo right here. Right now, it says: “16,34″.  So that’s… 2 point something CT scans? “2.4″ is the yearly amount, apparently.

Reporters from all around the world are fleeing now. They say “the great exodus from Tokyo” has begun. That’s right, when the French run, you better speed it up and run faster.

Edit:

The site also helpfully notes that 100 CPM is about 1 microsievert per hour.

For a bit of context:
As I stated above, one hundred counts per minute in a Geiger counter like this is equivalent to 1 microseivert per hour.
It takes about a full seivert (equal one million microseiverts) to have a risk of death from acute radiation poisoning.
At lower levels of exposure, around 100 milliseiverts, one can suffer some permanent injury (like infertility).
A dose of 1 milliseivert per year is considered a ‘safe’ annual dose of radiation.

So… according to my calculations you would need to stay in Tokyo at radation level say, 16,5 for an entire month to reach over 100 microseiverts. Oh! Milliseiverts… I HATED MATH. Waits! 0.000165 milliseiverts per hour * 24 * 365 = 1,4454 a year. But…. ? The readings in these geigercounters are entirely different… wtf. Look at this one, it says around 30 cpm now, instead of that live video one. That’d be 2.68 a year. Milliseiverts I mean. Anyone that actually CAN count, may correct me here. I’m bettin’ on the graph instead of the video.

Edit #2: Japan reverses the decision, asks EU for help. Dutch have figured out some time ago what they could do for Japan, when the first reactor blew up: “we can builds a dam”. The reporter said it was “not in any way for the near future, but hey”. I thought it was the most hilarious and stupid thing I heard, but then I heard a few days ago a dam had indeed bursted. Not so crazy after all? There’s a team ready with K9′s as far as I hear… though there was talk about them even going.

I don’t mean Tokyo’s neon lights going off and on by interval. What is it now? 6 reactors, 3 separate plants? One of which eerily close to the megalopolis Tokyo; with more people living there than in my entire country. I wonder if people are starting to (attempt) to leave Tokyo on their own initiative? Solidarity is cancer in this case. Only, god forbid we’ll ever see a day that Tokyo needs to be evac, that would probably be an impossible exodus.

On the Dutch news just now there was a guy, part of a rescue team, 120 kilometers under the Fukushima plant 2 and he was just advised to go back into his hotel room and close all doors and windows as the plant was ready to start releasing some radioactive steam again. He was kind of shocked about that. As far as I know the stuff is flying North so far. Weird.

It’s probably the first time in my life I’m glad the country is more than 9000 km away. Oh, plus 4 meters. As long as there’s that many nuclear reactors on the island, I don’t mind flying a few extra when the geigercounters return to normal. XD. You know you’re Dutch when the immediate response to this paragraph is: “Are they gonna tax me extra for 4 meters?”. Don’t deny it. You thought it.