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Google Releases Street View Images From Fukushima Ghost Town

Posted by samzenpus on from the new-fallout-map dept.

mdsolar writes in with news that Goolge has released Street View pictures from inside the zone that was evacuated after the Fukushima disaster. "Google Inc. (GOOG) today released images taken by its Street View service from the town of Namie, Japan, inside the zone that was evacuated after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011. Google, operator of the world's biggest Web search engine, entered Namie this month at the invitation of the town's mayor, Tamotsu Baba, and produced the 360-degree imagery for the Google Maps and Google Earth services, it said in an e-mailed statement. All of Namie's 21,000 residents were forced to flee after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, about 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the town, causing the world's worst nuclear accident after Chernobyl. Baba asked Mountain View, California-based Google to map the town to create a permanent record of its state two years after the evacuation, he said in a Google blog post."

20 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. lolwut by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Google releases images, but we're not going to show them to you. Or load the page's CSS.

    1. Re:lolwut by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      But we are going to remind you of their ticker symbol, because everyone comes to Slashdot for investment advice.

    2. Re:lolwut by Phreakiture · · Score: 2

      Let me Google that for you . . .

      --
      www.wavefront-av.com
  2. Were are the super-mutants ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I like the graphics but the game play can use more work.

  3. Unmanned car ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Did they use a manned, or unmanned car for this ?

    1. Re:Unmanned car ? by Maringo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And did they stop for a red light?

    2. Re:Unmanned car ? by nadaou · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In all likelihood manned. If you "drive" around for a few minutes in street view you will notice a number of other cars driving on the main roads. The acute risk from radiation has dissipated (the worst emitting particles have the shortest half-lives) the remaining threat is low-level emitting particles where the danger is more or less cumulative with time. A day spent driving around the town might be a small risk to you and your car, but you wouldn't want to live or work there every day.

      It probably wouldn't hurt to bolt an extra air filter in the cabin air intake, and give the car a good wash down afterwards, just in case you stirred up some nasties in a dust pile.

      --
      ~.~
      I'm a peripheral visionary.
    3. Re:Unmanned car ? by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Informative

      Manned of course. The exclusion zone is not a 100% ban on all people and the radiation isn't even that bad. The highest dose experts (not TEPCO) predict a person would be subjected to is 20mSv/yr, 1/5th the dose that is known to possibly cause cancer, and about the same as a commercial pilot is expected to be exposed to.

      It's easy enough to enter the exclusion zone and several photographers already have, they just haven't made the headlines on Slashdot because they took photos not a streetview.

    4. Re:Unmanned car ? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Please don't try to make simplistic comparisons of mSv/yr expose, they are not valid or helpful.

      An airline pilot is exposed to radiation from outside his/her body, most of which can't penetrate the skin and none of which accumulates permanently. The next year the pilots exposure is still 20uSv/yr, and if they stop flying it drops back to normal levels.

      A person trying to live in Namie is exposed to dust, earth, paint particles, pollen and accumulated minerals and metals in the environment. It gets inside them, particularly into organs like the thyroid. It sits there irradiating them for decades, with no skin/flesh barrier. That is what causes cancer and leukemia, and that is why every child living near Chernobyl had to have their thyroid glands removed and now can't absorb calcium. Clearly it is not an acceptable place to live.

      Namie may never recover. Even if they clean it all up and make it safe most of the people who used to live there have been forced to move on. They have jobs in other places and have made new homes, or are at least trying to. They won't all just move back, and even if they did a lot of the jobs there have gone now as the companies folded and agriculture became impossible due to contamination. Some people will go back, but it will never be the same.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:Unmanned car ? by Donwulff · · Score: 2

      As everybody knows, Wikipedia is the end and be all of any scientific knowledge, so let's have a fact-check:

      "The highest dose". Wikipedia to the rescue! "On 6 May 2012 it became known that according to documents of the municipal education board reports submitted by each school in Fukushima prefecture in April at least 14 elementary schools, 7 junior high and 5 nursery schools so called "hot spots" existed, where the radiation exposure was more than 3.8 microsieverts per hour, resulting in an annual cummulative dose above 20 millisieverts." Those schools are quite further away from the NPP than Namie, and the reason their dose rate is known at all is they were required to be measured. So we can say with certainty that expected highest annual doses exceed 20mSv/yr, in fact in Namie it's likely to be significantly higher.

      "1/5th of the dose". From Wikipedia, "The linear no-threshold model (LNT) hypothesis is accepted by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) and regulators around the world." They note that there is some controversy, but over the linear part, not the no-threshold part. As in any scientific subject, one can always find a study-du-jour to challenge any widely held belief, but the no-threshold model seems to have become something of a consensus, except among those who seek to dismiss dangers of radiation.

      Otherwise I generally agree, in particular the Google photographer is not going to be spending a year there, and I would wager they have the car windows tightly shut and air-conditioning off "just in case". With those precautions and a "decontamination" with e.g. firehoses on the checkpoint one could easily brave even higher contaminated areas. They may also change drivers regularly just to be safe - after all, elsewhere it's noted "Swathed in white protective masks and suits, residents are bused into the zone on rare occasions to retrieve valuables and check on their homes. The trips are brief—roughly two to three hours—to minimize radiation exposure."

    6. Re:Unmanned car ? by Donwulff · · Score: 3, Informative

      About that, actually studies have quite consistently found airline crew annual exposure is around 2mSv/yr, see for example http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/faqs/commercial flights.html. 20mSV is the absolute maximum annual dose that "should" be allowed for airline crew, while studies have found 20mSv is typical lifetime dose for airline crew.

      There's better comparisons to put the dose rate in perspective though - for example, "Smoking an average of 1.5 packs per day gives a radiation dose of 60-160 mSv/year" (Wikipedia) while a CT-scan can give around 20mSv per examination http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/safety/index.cfm?pg=sfty_xray - classified as "moderate" risk of developing cancer, as in 1 in 1000 to 1 in 500.

      In this context of course none of this hardly matters - the Google driver isn't going to be spending an year there, and they're certainly not going to "internalize" most of that radiation. But it's very valid point for the prospect of people returning to Namie - the dose rates measured are taken at around waist height height where alpha and beta rays hardly even reach, indicating only external gamma ray dose. Those dose rates tell nothing about people who live, bathe and breathe in that isotope-soup. But currently, nobody lives in Namie and it's not know when, if ever, that can even be considered.

    7. Re:Unmanned car ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      That's because, after a nuclear incident, the ant was 5 feet tall and 15 feet long.

    8. Re:Unmanned car ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Namie may never recover.

      What is this bullshit and why are you modded insightful?

      Radiation type pollution by definition *disappears* over time. Never is an infinite amount of time. Over a period of 5 generations, there will not be enough radiation to be of any importance. Over a period of 2 generations, there will be less radiation in Namie than in New York.

      And before you start with other bullshit about "outside" radiation, radon is not exactly "outside".

      An airline pilot is exposed to radiation from outside his/her body, most of which can't penetrate the skin and none of which accumulates permanently. The next year the pilots exposure is still 20uSv/yr, and if they stop flying it drops back to norm

      Utter *ignorance*. Most of the extra radiation that pilots are exposed to originates from cosmic radiation particle showers. They easily penetrate **the plane**, yet, you say they can't penetrate the skin?? Think logically.

      Secondly, "radiation" doesn't accumulate. Radioactive elements accumulate. Unless you start eating dirt around Fukushima, the "radiation" there also doesn't accumulate and most certainly can't penetrate the skin - it is much less energetic than from potassium!

      Give me 100 acres around Namie and I'll move there tomorrow and live there for next 50+ years. There is much worse shit you are exposed to everyday than some radiation. Another case and point,

      http://www.spiegel.de/international/living-in-chernobyl-radioactivity-that-s-nonsense-a-412954.html

      people have never evacuated. They lived there for last 26 years and the only thing they gained was peace and quiet. Paranoia and related mental illnesses is what will kill people in Japan, not radiation.

      That is what causes cancer and leukemia, and that is why every child living near Chernobyl had to have their thyroid glands removed

      No leukemia spike from Chernobyl. Only about 200 cases of actual thyroid cancer attributable to Chernobyl and that is 99.99% curable. On the other hand, 1000s and 1000s that have literally killed their thyroids with "protective iodine dosages" and similar got butchered because ultrasound finds benign growths and they remove the thyroid "to be safe". You know, 15-60% of population has thyroid nodules (genetic). A doctor would tell you "if you look for something, you will find it", it doesn't mean there is a problem. From circulatory issues to growths, you'll find it! *Everyone* has those.

      FUD and more FUD. No wander people freak out about "radiations". How many "victims" and "survivors" have killed themselves with alcoholism and other drugs? Think about it.

  4. Direct link by Raven737 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Direkt link to the google maps/streatview

    1. Re:Direct link by SternisheFan · · Score: 3, Funny

      Don't make fun of the American kid. At least he realized that WW2 happened in the past.

      You have a good point about our education system today. I recently saw a History Channel show about a veteran crewman from the Enola Gay bomber who gave speeches of his experience to American schoolkids. He said in one high school one student thanked him for his service in "World War Eleven" (WWII).

  5. Record radiation levels ... by perpenso · · Score: 2

    Sadly it might have been interesting to record radiation levels during the drive.

    1. Re:Record radiation levels ... by wanfuse123 · · Score: 2

      This is a publicity stunt. It's meant to show how the streets look O.K. to be filled with people again. It's the silent radiation killer that is the problem as everyone knows. Fukushima is a peering legacy like Chernobyl before it about the dangers of conventional generation I, II, and III nuclear reactors. We should have been long off these types of reactors. If we had been investing like the most brilliant minds said about Thorium (since 1940's) we would have had 73 years to develop them and we would all be driving around Thorium powered cars by now. With a million times the power density of coal, and much higher power density than current nuclear meltdown prone nuclear reactors we could be free of energy concern for 1000 years. No Melt Downs and No Global Warming and abundant cheap energy.

    2. Re:Record radiation levels ... by khallow · · Score: 2

      It's the silent radiation killer

      Oh yes, let's tremble at the spooky bogey man.

      Fukushima is a peering legacy like Chernobyl before it about the dangers of conventional generation I, II, and III nuclear reactors.

      No. It's a flaw of this particular design which spans generation I and very old generation II. Lumping generation III, which all has passive cooling, with Fukushima is mere deception.

  6. Ghostery highscores... by Cow+Jones · · Score: 4, Informative

    The linked page on businessweek.com contains no less than 13 trackers:

    ChartBeat
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    --

    Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
  7. Sorry but you are half correct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You are correct in which ingested radioactive particle are much worst than external radiation. Which is why simple xposure even with Q factor taken into account does not tell the full story. I would rather be exposed to 20mSv per year of cosmic ray, than say , ingest 1/2 of the equivalent radiation in food.

    In fact a lot of town reach similar environmental exposure all over the world without having a big increase in cancer. In fact I used to live in a city in France which had in average 4 mSv per year (mostly due to radon, and yes that one is responsible for lung cancer) with some street and school being close because they spiekd at above 8mSv per year. There are other city in the world which goes higher due to environmental sources. Heck even one place in Iran which goes 5 times that.

    That said the exposure at Namie is not even that high, it is actualy highly irregular. Some people seems to have gotten higher dose than the numbers cited by the governemental officials, but most of the population a much lower dose. The maximum measured seems to have been at a local point 70 mSv/year which is barred of entry. The average of the town seems much more toward 10 mSv per year. Some people in a building in south korea (or china?) in which cobalt 60 iron girder were used had a much higher dose over 10 years and did not suffer more cancer. Possibly due to hormesis. Yes it was not inside exposure, but neither is most of the radiation in Namie !

    The bottom line is that it is not that simple, and at the moment nobody can say whether it will be bad with a few more people dying out of cancer, or if it will be neutral, not seeing anything special, or even good for the inhabitant due to hormesis. Fear mongering won't help. All we can scientifically say right now is : i don't know.