Saturday, April 30, 2011

Two male Plant workers in Fukushima are just under their 250 milliSievert limit

Tepco stuck to their low estimates for as long as they could, but comes clean after the 'internal exposure' of the affected workers is taken into account

From Kyodo news:

Radiation exposure levels near limit for 2 Fukushima nuke workers

TOKYO, April 30, Kyodo

As the nuclear crisis continues at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, two workers, who were previously hospitalized for possible radiation burns, turned out Saturday to have been exposed to radiation levels close to the limit of 250 millisieverts while seven women in affected areas were found with slightly contaminated breast milk.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the two workers have been exposed to 240.8 millisieverts and 226.6 millisieverts of radiation, respectively, when internal exposure is taken into account, among 21 workers exposed to over 100 millisieverts of external radiation since the crisis erupted following the March 11 quake and tsunami.

Under Japanese law, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has limited by an ordinance radiation exposure of each nuclear plant worker at 100 millisieverts a year in an emergency situation, but raised the limit to 250 millisieverts to cope with the Fukushima crisis on March 15.

Exposure is exposure, whether external or internal. They should be running the numbers with a worst case scenario in mind at all times for their employees.

1 comment :

  1. TEPCO is claiming they couldn't do full body gamma counts with Fukushima's FBC's because on-site contamination had render them useless. Of course they forget to think of all the other FBC systems available at other uncontaminated facilities across the country until they had no choice. NHK just reported that the two people with the highest doses were the guys who stepped into the radioactive water trying to hook up power.

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