Mr Jaczko's panic-raising comments are irresponsible to say the least. He can bash the Japanese government as much as he likes sitting comfortably on his safe big chair, but if he was in Tokyo trying to get toilet paper or food he'd find himself in a desert of empty supermarkets and convenience stores raided by the panic-buying masses.
Everybody is on edge enough without needing any useless scaremonging, thank you very much. He believes that all the water in the spent fuel pool at reactor 4 had boiled dry? And how does he know that? Is he working at the plant? He strongly believes the US could "mitigate" the impact of a nuclear crisis similar to the one unfolding in Japan? So he bashes our goverment to make himself look good?
Listen, Japan is the Great Empire of the Geeks, we have more nerds than any other country in the world [yours truly included] and before the public had access to official geiger readings in Tokyo [now we do] we could already monitor the amount of radiation both inside and outside some buildings in town thanks to some citizens putting them online [here is a map with some links, at times they are offline because the owner shuts down his PC http://bit.ly/hvNRxa], so we do know that there has been a slight change when there was some radioactive gas release at the plant the other day [the normal reading is 20 cpm, the private outside geiger went up to 60 then gradually back to 20 again. according to http://radiationnetwork.com/ the danger level is 130 cpm] so as you see there really is NO DANGER for human health. Likewise, if the pool of reactor 4 was SO radioactive the geiger counters here would probably have recorded a raise in radiation levels, but it's still dwindling along on 20cpm [which I repeat, it's the normal reading generally recorded in Tokyo by the same counter].
It's perfectly true that the government has been releasing information very cautiously, but considering the current situation, I believe they have always said what was going on; most times they just did *not* know what was going on because not even the technicians did at the time. In such a massive crisis the first thing to do is to reassure the public and avoid panic. Remember that we already have hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the quake and the tsunami, plus the nuclear evacuation; there is really no need for mass panic in Tokyo now. If you give people information they cannot completely comprehend you risk to raise useless fears; not everybody has got a background in nuclear power [though we are becoming specialists day by day :D]. It's easy for Mr Jaczko to spit fuel on the fire sitting on his fat big chair in the US, he doesn't have to deal with millions of people running around screaming [like they surely would if he made the same remarks regarding a power plant in the States. Except that, of course, he would NEVER do that!].
Considering the current situation, the Japanese government has been acting in the best way it could. I am going to stay here in Tokyo and try to spread reliable information as much as possible, trying to do my - albeit little - best to help. Now let's hope that the works at plant continue smoothly and everything is cooled down properly. In the meantime, I'll keep an eye on the Geiger counters. O and by the way, I felt much more at ease about all this mess once I found this. It's the most reliable information source on the matter I found so far: MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub http://mitnse.com/
And of course, the best news resource is your LIVE page. In the midst of the International media circus, you are always a beacon of truth. Thank you very much!
PS: I forgot to add that I received an email from the Italian Embassy stating that a 6-people specialist taskforce has reached Tokyo and measured radiation levels in town starting from Narita Airport; their data confirm the official Japanese data and the ones I gave you, so the Japanese Government is not lying.
I actually got the official URL from them [the Italian Embassy]:
Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health http://113.35.73.180/monitoring/index.html
it monitors radiation levels every hour.
According to the Italian Embassy, the taskforce said there is NO presence of radiation generated by artificial [radioactive] isotopes.
The values recorded are around 0.4 microsievert/hour, which is about 1/3 of Rome's background radiation levels.
This is the link to the Embassy's message [in Italian]
