With regards to airborne radiation and ground measurement, here is the reading at the NaI detector at KEK in Tsukuba showing a steady decline over the past nine months. This was expected as the source became under control over time.
Having a good timeline should allow us to make a better comparison with the Texas A&M simulations and readings on the ground. To the untrained eye it looks like there is only one set of sensors. However, the fog of data is fed from are several sensor networks. There are:
The puffs of smoke that have caused temporary evacuations of the control rooms have not been accompanied by increases in radiation. A gray or black color could indicate a fire, while white “smoke” is more likely steam.
From the FEPC reports, the spent fuel pools at Units 2, 5, and 6 are at acceptable temperatures. Water is being added to the pools at Units 3 and 4, but no temperature is given. The reactor cores in Units 1, 2, and 3 remain partially uncovered by water, but the fact that their containment is holding pressure suggests that there are no large breaches.
Marian Steinbach has started putting the readings she obtained from the SPEED! network into a small video. This is outstanding. If we could include all the data from all the sensor networks and have a similar video from the plumes, I am sure we could begin to infer something
Here is the SPEEDI Radiation Data Animation - Draft (Mar 20, 00:00 to Mar 23, 15:20 UTC)
As I was looking at the trajectory computations by the fine folks at Texas A&M and the aerial assessment provided by DOE yesterday, I am in need of an explanation: Namely, if you look at the DOE measurements, there is red corridor going up on the left of Fukushima Dai-ichi:
yet when one check the Texas A&M simulations, only a period of potentially six hours provided this region to the exposure to the plume.namely:
The three days worth of simulation by Texas A&M and covered by the DOE survey are:
The U.S Department of Energy just issued a press release and a presentation that featured aerial and ground measurement data. In the presentation there is also a mention of a ground US monitoring station deployed by their Consequence Management Response Teams near Fukushima. (Download the presentation here)
