Here's a more comprehensive update from NIRS from about 3 weeks ago:

UPDATE, August 22, 2011. The New York Times reports that Japan is finally getting ready to acknowledge what we have been saying in this space for months: that the Fukushima evacuation zone is an uninhabitable Dead Zone, and no one will live there again for at least many decades. An official government announcement is expected later this week.

The news follows release of a new radiation survey conducted by the government, which shows contamination levels throughout the evacuation zone to be much higher than previously admitted—up to 500+ MilliSieverts/year (50 Rems/Year) in Okuma, two miles southwest of the reactor site. This is actually about twice as high as radiation levels NIRS measured in Pripyat, Ukraine—about two miles from Chernobyl—in 1996.

But high radiation levels also were measured outside the 20 kilometer (12-mile) exclusion zone. Levels in the town of Namie, for example, 22 kilometers to the northwest of Fukushima Daiichi, were reported at 229 MilliSieverts/year—far above inhabitable levels. It is our (unconfirmed) understanding that most, if not all, of Namie previously had been evacuated, as well as some other towns even further from the reactor site. Thus, the actual Dead Zone is expected to be larger than the 20 kilometer radius.

Evidently there is still real concern that the evolution of this disaster may still continue, with specific focus on Reactor Unit-1.

Charley Noble