Is it safe to live 100 km from Fukushima for short time?

[sarabiobio]

I would like to know if is safe to stay in Sendai (less than 100 km from Fukushima). I have read different information in internet but I think is better to ask a expert, I am not sure about the radiation since it seems is not stable, it could be between 0.4-0.6 msv if I understood, is that ok to live there for 2 months? what about the food, swim in the sea and drink water? what are the health risk nowadays?
Thanks in advance

 

[jedishrfu]

Wikipedia would be a good start but you probably would want to read more sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster

Here's another report:

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Truth_About_Fukushima.php

 

[mfb]

0.4 to 0.6 mSv is way below the dose you naturally get per year no matter where you live, and many places have more natural radiation than that within 2 months.

If you go there via an intercontinental flight, that alone can give you something like 0.1 to 0.2 mSv as radiation dose.

 

[sarabiobio]

0.4 to 0.6 mSv is way below the dose you naturally get per year no matter where you live, and many places have more natural radiation than that within 2 months.

If you go there via an intercontinental flight, that alone can give you something like 0.1 to 0.2 mSv as radiation dose.

Thanks for your answer, I don't know too much about what mSv means but according to what I search in internet that's per hour, so I thought 0.06 per hour means 0.06x24x 60days = 86.4 mSv in total one would get there during 2 months (I read the dose is accumulative that is why I did that, and then I read clsoe to 100mSv start to have some effects in the body that is why I was worried. Please correct me if I am wrong.

 

[mfb]

You certainly won't live in a place where you get 86 mSv in two months. You would probably have to live on the reactor site for that.

 

[sarabiobio]

You certainly won't live in a place where you get 86 mSv in two months. You would probably have to live on the reactor site for that.

so you mean is nothing to worry about? even drinking the water from the tap water and so?

 

[mfb]

There is nothing to worry about.

I don't know the quality of Japanese tap water, it could be problematic for chemical or biological reasons.

 

[nikkkom]

6 years after the event, the radiation which can affect you comes entirely from the contaminated ground (and trees which pull salts from it) - air and water do not contain any radioactive particles by now, it is all washed off. (Well, unless there would be a large forest fire in the contaminated zone, which is not usual).

Looking at the contamination map, you only need to avoid some rather small territories. I bet you can't easily get there anyway, since they are evacuated or restricted, but anyway, here's the map.

Sendai is located on the shore, at the very top of this map.

 

[nikkkom]

I found this interactive map

http://www.nnistar.com/gmap/fukushima.html

Interactive means it's new and kept updated, but in this case this is not important, since contamination is in the ground and therefore is not moving.

It is mainly useful because it shows a larger area, and this allows to easily see what is the "natural" level (rad levels farthest from the Fukushima) and how much Sendai is different from it. The answer is: Sendai is ok. At most, twice as much as background, which is less than worldwide natural variability.

 

[nikkkom]

Correction. Looks like the "interactive" map is actually old, not updated for years. Still useful, though.

 

[nikkkom]

This one is recent

http://safecast.org/tilemap

 

[mfb]

This one is recent

http://safecast.org/tilemap

Sendai is far away from any regions with even slightly elevated radiation levels.

There are various inhabited places with natural radiation levels of more than 1 µSv/h, that is the orange color surrounding the yellow areas.