[po]

These numbers are still very very small.

I'm sitting in Tokyo right now working away on my codebase. No need to get worked up over nothing and so far it is nothing. A lot of my friends (mostly foreigners in Tokyo) are getting on trains out to Kyoto or Osaka. I think that's fine; maybe it's better to be safe than sorry. Maybe it's the cynical New Yorker in me but I feel like I've seen too many of these scares before. Sometimes you just have to turn off the TV/Twitter/whatever and get back to work.

Who knows, maybe in a few hours or days I'll be heading out too. I think it's unlikely. Right now, I don't think there's a need .

[orblivion]

It's not like swine flu where something out of people's control might happen, purely based on speculation. At the moment you're fine, but that's because there are people deliberately keeping things at OK levels. If they stopped, things would stop being OK.

Not to say you should necessarily worry more yet, but just know that its not something that will sort itself out, it will require a solution.

[marze]

Isn't Tokyo 150 km from the leaking reactors? The radiation levels for those living closer must be more concerning, if it is 23x background that far away.

[cdavid]

There is an evacuation zone of 20 km around the plant, and people between 20 and 30 km advised to not go out. The radiations around the plant are now definitely dangerous, but those are far far above the ones seen in Tokyo.

Right now, from what I can read from Japanese news, and assuming the numbers given by the authority are accurate, there is no danger in Tokyo - 20 x normal is still below what's considered dangerous. What worrying about those numbers are not the number themselves, but what it means if the situation in the plants worsen - and I think people don't really know.

The Japanese gvt announced a couple of hours ago that every region in Japan will regularly update measure of radioactivity, which suggest that they don't try to hide too much, although I would not read too much into it either.

[varjag]

The wind is also not blowing on Tokyo. Could be much worse otherwise.

[brazzy]

Unfortunately, the wind is going to turn towards Tokyo later today.

[donw]

Same here. I'm far more concerned about figuring out how to get IRB to play ball than I am about growing extra limbs or discovering that I'm now a nightlight.