Flashback:
– LA Times: Top NRC official in Japan compared Fukushima to ‘never-never land’ — At same time, US warned France about publishing ‘extremely high’ radiation doses for infants in Tokyo (ENENews, Feb 23, 2014):
Los Angeles Times, Feb. 20, 2014: On March 18, 2011, an official from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission named Chuck Casto called together the NRC delegation on assignment with him in Tokyo. “We’re in never-never land,” he told them. […] “Never-never land” barely did justice to the situation. Casto and his team had been flown to Japan to help deal with the crisis, but all that they knew was that the Japanese government and [Tepco], were at an almost complete loss about how to deal with the catastrophe […] These events and more are meticulously reconstructed in “Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster” […]
Here’s what was also going on behind the scenes at nearly the same time as Casto was comparing the situation to ‘never-never land’:
Conference call with HSE (UK), CNSC (Canada), IRSN (France), ASN (France) & NRC (pdf), March 17, 2011: […] IRSN stated that they plan to put this entire simulation […] on their IRSN website (publically available) in the next 6-12 hours […] IRSN stated that this simulated data shows that for a 1-yr child, the estimated thyroid dose in Tokyo would be between 0.1-1 mSv [millisievert] thyroid uptake (inhalation only) […] (US, Canada, and UK) stressed to the French that these estimates appeared to be extremely high for a child inhalation dose. We stressed to the IRSN that great care should be given in providing the assumptions […]
Thyroid doses for a 1-yr child in Tokyo would end up being many times the French estimate:
Radiation Dose Estimate Report Tokyo, Japan for Child between the ages of 1 and 2 years (pdf): [US] Department of Defense estimated whole-body and thyroid radiation doses […] over the period from March 12, 2011 to May 11, 2011. […] Tokyo, Japan; Child between the ages of 1 and 2 years, your radiation dose estimates for the 60-day period are: […] Thyroid Radiation Dose Estimate: 1.40 rem (? 14 millisieverts)
Asahi Shimbun, May 24, 2012: The WHO […] thyroid gland dose estimates for 1-year-old infants were […] 10-100 millisieverts in Tokyo and Osaka. Tokyo sent health ministry officials to the WHO headquarters and went through diplomatic channels to call for revisions. “The figures are just impossibly high,” a government official said at the time. “If they are released, that will not only arouse unnecessary anxiety among the Japanese public but also serve as negative publicity.”