US/Japan release radiological readings around Fukushima: Hot zones higher than those prompting 1986 Chernobyl evacuations

With the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident now approaching the ninth week and still out of control, the situation remains grave as the Japanese government and industry desparately struggle to bring the severely damaged multi-unit reactor complex into cold shutdown in order to prevent more hydrogen gas explosions and even greater radioactive releases.  

New radiological monitoring data jointly collected and published on May 6, 2011 by Japanese and US authorities reveal ground level radioactive cesium contamination beyond Japan's declared twelve (12) mile “no entry zone” higher than radiation levels that prompted the mandatory evacuation of populations from around the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. Radiation readings taken by helicopter and plane found levels of radioactive cesium137 (30 year half-life) registering between 3 million and 30 million Becquerel per square meter (Bq/m²). Following the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine, populations in Ukraine were ordered out of areas contaminated at 550,000 Bq/m². Those areas are still officially declared to be an uninhabitable zone now more than twenty five years later.

Meanwhile, Tokyo Electric Power Company submitted a request to the Japanese government for compensation from taxpayers to address the astronomical and still mounting cost of the nuclear accident and future decommissioning if the multi-unit reactor accident can yet be brought under control.