La situation sur place via ceux qui restent sur place

Well, what a week it has been. Most everyone we know has had their eyes glued to the Internet news services during the day and the TV news in the evening, wanting to know about one thing: radiation and whether it's coming to Tokyo. We've been served information on a 24x7 basis on everything you ever wanted to know about nuclear reactors and meltdowns.

Now we know:
* What types of radiation to be worried about (Iodine-131  and Cesium-137 isotopes in this instance)
* How much will kill you outright (4-6 Sieverts per hour)
* How it affects people and the environment long-term (here in Tokyo it's the airborne particulates we have to worry about not the radiation occurring in Fukushima itself)
* How much is being measured around the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant (see below)
* How the weather, as capricious as it is, will either blow a cloud of radiation down over the 35m people living in Tokyo -- or won't...

But the fact is that as of today, Sunday, the radiation levels in Tokyo are still low, well within safe amounts, and have been all week. So what we're living with here in the big city is not radiation fall out, but the tangible, gut-gnawing fear of it. And what fear it has caused...

Over the last 5 days in particular, as we all started realizing it was the nuclear power plant, not the
Tohoku/Kanto earthquake which would most threaten Tokyo, the fear levels of people living here have risen dramatically. At the beginning the focus was on the lack of information about the plant status, other than it was dire, and whether we could trust the government and TEPCO to give us the truth. So here at our sister company Metropolis, one of the technical staff, Steve Danieletto, brought in his Geiger counter and started doing daily readings. You can find the readings here, and what you'll find is that very little radiation has made its way to Tokyo.

http://metropolis.co.jp/quake/quake-2011-03/tokyo-atmospheric-radiation-...

You can see Steve take the readings here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rp2nqBt04A&feature=player_embedded

The following is an excellent map and links to Japanese radiation monitoring stations all over Honshu:
http://bit.ly/gyZulQ

So having established that the government is giving reasonably reliable information, the focus shifted to the competence and ability of TEPCO and authorities to get the reactors under control again. Here's where the real problem started, because they (TEPCO et al) haven't been able to tell us exactly what is going on -- partly because of the intense radiation at the actual site, they can't get close enough to the reactors and so appear to be doing remote guesswork.

Fear is not about actuals, as any good horror movie director will tell you, it's about possibilities. And the foreign media have been doing their best to feed that fear, since this is what sells. Reading some of the reports abroad, Japan is already radioactive and Tokyo is doomed. One locally-based expat got fed up with this, and produced a media-tracking page called "Journalist Wall of Shame".
You can see it at:
http://jpquake.wikispaces.com/Journalist+Wall+of+Shame.

Yes, the situation in Fukushima is volatile, and yes, the reactors could still yet blow up. But Japan has its best and bravest up at the power station site, working on dousing the fuel rods and restoring infrastructure so that they can bring things under control, and so far they appear to be making progress.

If you're wondering how much radiation we're talking about, here's something to put things into perspective:
* One banana: 0.0001 millisieverts (mSv)
* Mammogram: 5 mSv
* CAT Scan: 6 to 18 mSv
* Radiation Sickness: starts at around 500 mSv

Actual readings from this incident:
* Reading March 15th at Fukushima Dai-ichi, right at No. 2 reactor: 800 mSv/hour (Worst)
* Reading March 16th at Fukushima Dai-ichi plant front gate: 10 mSv/hour
* Reading March 19th at Fukushima Dai-ichi, right at No. 2 reactor: 20 mSv/hour (Much reduced)
* Reading March 20th at Fukushima Dai-ichi: around 700 microsieverts/hour (700 μSv) and falling
* Reading March 19th in Tokyo: around 0.17 μSv/hour and stable (normal)

Here's what a UK expert posted on the UK embassy website says about a worst case scenario. In short he says the impact on Tokyo will be limited:
http://ukinjapan.fco.gov.uk/en/news/?view=News&id=566914282

Back to the fear factor. Most Japanese living in Tokyo are sticking close to home and the TV. They have been stocking up on food -- causing Tokyo's stores to be bare of bread, milk, eggs, natto, and a bunch of other things. Those going to work would by our guess be just 30%-50% of normal numbers, based on the paucity of people on the trains and traffic in the streets. We imagine that those who could will have already taken the opportunity to head back to their home towns. (See the news below about full hotels in Osaka.)

Thursday and Friday were particularly fearful days for foreigners in Tokyo when the U.S. embassy decided on Thursday that after all, U.S. citizens who wanted to leave on a voluntary basis would be assisted to airlift out of Tokyo. The next day, the same offer was extended to families of armed forces. Until that time, many foreigners here rationalized that if the U.S. government was staying put (and they have as much wherewithal as the Japanese to monitor the situation), then things must be OK. But for them to ratchet up the alert levels and start to ship people out was definitely unnerving for many.

Yet, as the embassy itself said, the evacuation is voluntary and the embassy remains open for business this weekend to process documentation for departing Americans and their immediate families. So they're staying put.

The effect of these fear levels is really hurting life and commerce here in Tokyo. There have been various estimates on what the cost of the earthquake will be, between JPY100trn and JPY200trn -- which could be as much as 3% of GDP. But these estimates probably don't take into account the fact that the Fukushima reactor crisis could last for weeks, not to mention the associated power cuts due to losing 20% of the nation's electricity supply for possibly 3 months (until fossil fuel power stations come back online). As the situation drags on, large companies in the nation's largest city will be unable to work normal hours, small companies will go under due to customers staying home, and we think the economic impact will be much higher.

Here at our own group companies we have had a taste of the impact on business. Internally, about 30% of our staff, both foreigners and Japanese, have decided to get out of Tokyo -- day-by-day a few more make the tough decision. We can't blame people for leaving, especially those with families abroad who are pressuring them to get out while there is still time. We have been told of crying mothers and relatives on the phone from abroad, who after reading the foreign press reports are fretting and begging their sons and daughters to just "come home". It's hard to resist that kind of pressure. Japanese staff also, with friends and family outside Tokyo are being urged to leave.

Normally a 30% drop in staff would be disastrous for us, but the fact is that many of our clients have also either substantially reduced their operations or in the case of some companies, have simply sent out email saying that they will be closed indefinitely. As a result, demand for services and the need to keep scheduled meetings has dropped noticeably.

Usually after something bad happens, we try to find a silver lining, so that the event can be written down to experience. But for this nuclear near-miss, the only good thing we can think of is if the authorities either decide to close down all the old nukes in Japan and impose a much stricter building code on those remaining, OR, better still, make a wholesale move to green energy and make it a national imperative.

Either way, we never again want to experience the fear of a nuclear reactor melting down just 200km away, and not knowing whether to run or stay.

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For those of you wanting to donate or make contact with loved ones here in Japan, go to the following website for a list of links:

http://metropolis.co.jp/