Reply #82: zamg, & the page i linked, have been linked as the source document

[Hannah Bell]

for the report in various reports all over the web.

that is the reason the new scientist article linked it.

It is zamg's analysis.

http://fukushima.greenaction-japan.org/2011/03/24/calculated-estimate-of-fukushima-emissions-by-the-central-institute-for-meteorology-and-geodynamics-zamg-of-austria/

In fact, it is *wotawa's* analysis per this:

Mr. BRUMFIEL: The sensors are registering radioactive elements like iodine-131 and cesium-137. These are byproducts from nuclear fission inside the core of a reactor.

Wotawa has been�feeding the data into computer models�that can forecast where the radiation will go. He also uses the models to work backwards and calculate the amount of material first released. Based on those calculations, he says the accident, in some ways, is roughly the size of Chernobyl.

http://m.npr.org/news/Science/134833909?page=5


and here:

In Vienna, the Austrian institute’s Dr Gerhard Wotawa stressed that the two isotopes from Fukushima he had sought to estimate — iodine-131 and caesium-137 — normally make up only one tenth of total radiation. Unlike the Fukushima crisis, at Chernobyl, in what is now Ukraine, the reactor was blown apart and spewed heavily radioactive fuel core material into the atmosphere. Another key difference between the two was that most of the radioactivity from the Japanese plant was dispersed across the Pacific, not over land, Wotawa said. Based on measurements made at monitoring stations in Japan and the United States, Wotawa said the iodine released from Fukushima in the first three-four days was about 20 percent of that released from Chernobyl during a ten-day period. For Caesium-137, the figure could amount to some 50 percent. Wotawa said it was difficult to make day-by-day comparisons with Chernobyl, but he added: ’For caesium and iodine … the source terms (amounts released from the two accidents) are not so different’.

http://www.globalmediapost.com/2011/03/24/9979/

and here:

Meanwhile, radiation trackers have measured the fission products over North America to reveal the extent of radiation released by the Fukushima accident. The measurements showed that in the first four days following the March 11 quake and tsunami, Fukushima Daiichi released Iodine-131 packing 4x1017 Becquerels of radiation, says Gerhard Wotawa, a radiation tracker at the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Vienna. His team generated the estimates using data from the global detectors installed to enforce nuclear weapons test bans.

http://technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=37127