On 04/09/2013 11:48, GB wrote:
On 04/09/2013 10:54, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

they carry dose meters and alarms.


Apparently, the meters were set with a maximum range of 100 mSv, so the
leak was logged at that level. Unfortunately, it was actually vastly
higher, but nobody noticed until much later.

I imagine one of the issues they have is that they have to discharge
experienced staff, as they have been subject to lifetime radiation
limits, if not beyond. Consequently, they have all sorts of new people
on-site who have no clue about what they are doing.

Quite frankly, if you did have an idea about what you are doing, would
you work there?

As it happens, yes. They did an appalling job of handling release of
information to the media at the outset; since TMI we are *much* better
organised in the UK. But they also did a relatively good technical job
in the immediate recovery period as, for that matter, did the Russians
after Chernobyl.

I have to agree, though, that they are not doing well now.

An interesting juxtaposition of figures, at the time the Japanese talked
about allocating another third of a billion euros/dollars to Fukushima,
a BBC radio program was talking about how the Norwegians are tucking
away a billion euros/dollars into their wealth fund *every week*.