*Thanks for watching.* This piece was the hardest to make in the series. I was truly confused and troubled by the radiation rates that I saw, having calibrated myself to lower ambient rates as in the CEZ. But when I got back home and took a deep breath, I believe the bigger picture -- this video -- revealed itself. Not one of the evacuations in response to the three most famous nuclear meltdowns was justified by cost-benefit.

There was this thing with thyroid cancer in that area until somebody suggested "you check this very rigorously but do you have a control group from an area that is not contaminated?". When they introduced a control group/area that was checked as rigorously they found the same levels of thyroid cancers in the not contaminated area, they only reason they found elevated levels was because of rigorously testing.

It would be extremely difficult to change the government's stance on this. The political backlash they'd receive for not being overcautious would be far too great, as most people wouldn't recognise an "acceptable amount of radiation" no matter how much evidence you'd provide that it's theoretically safe.

This series taught me that radiation is both not as dangerous as and way more dangerous than I ever thought, the latter being specifically in cases where people deliberately mess around with it.

It's been mentioned in the comments that "abscense of an evacuation order does not mean people will relax and feel safe." This highlights the importance of public education.

"The real pain and suffering in Japan is not radiation sickness, its homesickness". That's so good Kyle, I'd like to see Voyager try to write poetry like that.

My heart breaks when the elderly begged the government to let them return home soon.

I'm a 55 year old guy (military vet) and a science geek, I find your productions engaging, succinct and professional. You make fact based videos, not emotion based and you obviously do your homework. Few KZfaqrs travel to such (potentially) hazardous places to get a first hand account and do so much time consuming research before making videos and presenting material. Please keep up the outstanding work and stay safe sir.

The one thing we can't measure is the stress injuries that people would have gotten if they were not evacuated. If they had stayed in place, they could still have gotten PTSD and other traumas from the incident. There is always the stress from "am I going to die because nobody told me to flee?"

Hindsight is 20/20. Like any disaster, do you err on the side of caution, or do you meter the response. You can never know which is the right response until after the threat has passed.

As someone who watches documentaries like this on a frequent basis, I have to say that this is one of the most moving ones I've ever watched. Amazing work bringing this truth to the public eye.

I feel like this is one of the biggest problems we face. The lack of education in media is a bummer. It exists, but it's buried under reactionary content. I really appreciate you taking the time to teach us. 👍

Hard to believe that someone I started watching for the science of "Mortal Kombat" is now making what I think are some of the most interesting, and even important videos populating my feed. Seriously, I appreciate the work you're doing here.

It's difficult to make people think neutrally about a form of energy connected with cancer, radiation poisoning and the worst weapons we have ever built. The first reaction is fear, and logic flees in the face of fear. So thank you for making us think about this.

I disagree with your initial accessment of the evacuation order. Yes, hind sight is 20/20. And maybe people could have returned sooner. But evacuating people out of the unknown risk or fear of more melt downs or radiation seems to me to be a smart move. I want to protect my fellow man. So I ask them to leave their home for protection. But, again, I strongly agree that the return was mismanaged.

This was... interesting to listen to. I was stationed at Yokota AFB, located in the city of Fusa, at the time the earthquake/tsunami hit. I still remember being awoken by the shaking, as even as far inland as we were it was still registered as a 5.0 quake, and shrugging it off. We had just gotten off a week long exercise and I had been on night shift. I remember being issued iodine tablets in case we needed them. To being told to have 72 hr bags ready with any important documents ready to go in case the base needed to be abandoned. That anything I couldn't take with me would be written off. We were told we couldn't even travel through a 50 mile radius of the plant, not even on rail. The stress levels were as you can imagine, very high. And I was just stationed there.

While the data has made it clear that the evacuation caused more harm than good in hindsight, I find it hard to lay any blame on the leaders who greenlit the evacuation. The tension between being able to act on reliable information versus making a timely one in an unclear situation is an extremely difficult balancing act. I am reminded of the time when one of the biggest typhoons in recorded history, Haiyan (Yolanda) struck Tacloban City in the Philippines in 2013. The locals weren't familiar with "storm surges" as a meteorological term but were familiar with "tsunamis". The government, insisting on using the correct technical term, issued warnings to evacuate these areas due to incoming storm surges. The result was that people became confused on how dire the situation was and led to slow, reluctant evacuations. Thousands died in a single night. Had the government used the word "tsunamis", it could've saved a lot more lives even if it was factually incorrect. I still believe that most of the Japanese leaders had their hearts in the right places when they gave the order to evacuate. It takes a true leader to act decisively given the circumstances when others are more interested in being right than being effective.

Thank you for doing things like this, Kyle, with all the respect such sensitive matters deserve. Life is never clear cut, easy, or simple - it is complicated and full of nuance, and understanding these things can help dispel some of the smoke, mirrors, and illusions that fear, doubt, and misguided self-interest can cast. I will have a lot to consider regarding this incident that I may have treated less seriously then I should have in the past, and every bit of information (or an incentive to research further) helps.

Also factor in the _active_ danger of a "shelter in place" order. Had anything more happened, and very well could have, then you would've had thousands of people sitting in a highly radiated area. 20/20 hindsight. The worst didn't happen, and now everyone wants to second guess things.

"Everyone is a genius in hindsight" - I say this often. This is a situation where the govt would have just been overcautious, because if they hadn't, and things became catastrophic for those that weren't evacuated - the govt would get slammed and sued for that. It makes a lot of sense in a panicked situation to just evacuate - be safe more than sorry. The ramifications are terrible, with all the mental anguish, but it was for the greater good. As I said at the start - it's super easy to criticise decisions made in the moment, where we're these people criticising the govt when they were making the decisions, I ask?

I have always enjoyed these half-life videos so much. They are measured, more quiet and sombre, but they resonate louder than any other kind of videos you make. Keep up this amazing effort. Society and people need to hear these and ponder.

Kyle, While I agree that the current evacuation is not required in most areas. The main reason the evacuation happened in the first place was because the fear of more reactor explosions. This is something you fail to mention in this video. The reactors were not fully secure/stable for months after the explosions. Once they were stable, the evacuation could have been lifted in most areas.

I think it's easy to say in hindsight, after more than a decade of studies, that the evacuation did more harm than good, but at the time people were operating under limited information. We may live in a world where evacuating did more damage than the radiation, but there's equally a world where they didn't evacuate, only to find out they miscalculated.

i thought one of the reason for evac was a possibility that more hydrogen could go BOOM. we could talk about contamination now, but at the moment, not everything was under control. so in the context of limited info, was the large scale evac a correct action?

Urgh, in principle you're right, but i honestly dont think the harm could be entirely avoided by not evacuaring people. I dont think the average person is particularly well equipped to do a dry maths based calculation like this. Theyre going to be scared depressed, panicked ptsd whether theyre evacuated or not. If many won't return even though the government says it's now safe, what would meaningfully change if the government had told them to change in the first place?

It’s easy to look back and make these determinations but in the immediate aftermath there are too many unknowns not to take action. Will the situation with the plant become worse? Is there contaminated water? Is there contaminated rain/snow? How will weather patterns affect the distribution of contaminants? Etc. etc.

Well, to be honest, being overly safe is likely better than the chance that thousands of people get high doses of radiation. The situation was uncontrollable due to the flooding. As to the increase of suicide rates, thats something common across Japan atm. If you google the declining birth rate occurring there, people are going through a hard time all around there.

Wasn't there a statistically significant increase in the rates of illnesses like cancer and birth defects in the shadow of the plume after Chernobyl? Given that, wouldn't it have been a real risk to stay in what is now the CEZ?

Your videos truly make me sit down, stop, and think about how the actions of the world governments have such an impact on not only their citizens but of the rest of the population of surround countries. This needs to be spoken about more. Thank you for the video

I appreciate the way that you present information like this, and as someone in their mid 60's, I can begin to see more and more how your comments about allowing the elderly to return is important. Younger families can often times bounce back from bad situations like this, but to the elderly that haven't got that ability any longer, it's a situation that truly does need exploring further. As crass as this may sound to some, what have they got to lose by allowing them to return to the lives they left behind? If we can't show proof positive that they are facing immeasurable risk, why not allow them to spend their golden years as they desire?? Maybe we need to learn from nature.

The end of the HBO series Chernobyl shows a graphic explaining that the official death toll according to the Soviet (and now Russian) government was 28, and the viewer throws up their hands in frustration, knowing that many more deaths were the result of the late evacuation. Now, that same figure is given, and we're supposed to think, "Golly, that's not so bad."

This was one of the most enthralling videos I have watched in a LONG time. The thinking, combined with your wonderful story telling made these 17 minutes feel like they were gone in mere moments. Thank you, for another great video.

Thank you for attempting to set the bar with honest science and coverage of important topics. I hope your work sets forth a new wave in science communication and literacy

It's hard to think of what I'd do in that situation. I feel like I could never again be comfortable in an area that was underneath the plume cloud. Even if there wasn't an Evacuation order, I'd have picked up my bags and left, my family has done so before, simply to search for work. But for those who've lived their entire lives in those towns and cities, it's understandable how staggering it could be.

12:20 New studies find there is no threshold below which radiation is safe. The 100 mSv dose used to be the lowest radiation dose that older epidemiological studies were able to detect an elevated risk of cancer, because they used smaller sample sizes. They did not prove radiation was safe below 100 mSv, they simply weren't able to detect rare cases of cancer, masked by other causes. Epidemiological studies into radiation risks have to compensate for levels of smoking (one of the biggest factors), obesity, diet, chemical exposure, viruses etc., and for nuclear workers, they also have to correct for the Healthy Worker Effect (nuclear workers have a higher socioeconomic status and receive close medical monitoring, this means their risk of cancer is lower than average). Many newer studies that properly compensate for various lifestyle factors and the Healthy Worker Effect, and use very large sample sizes (>100,000 people), found that there is safe no threshold for radiation exposure i.e. studies detected an elevated risk of cancer below 100 mSv e.g. the 15-country study of cancer risk among radiation workers in the nuclear industry, recent studies of atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The risk is small, but it is there. Also, a new study was just published (involving 309,932 nuclear workers sand 10.7 million person years) that once again found there is no threshold below which radiation is safe, but additionally they suggest that the risk of developing cancer might be higher at lower doses (

I feel like a big reason people arent returning Look at the house. Half the windows are gone. The place is trashed. The Shrine outside is rubble. So what reason to move back? It would be a lot of effort to fix that house back up, and its been more than a Decade. Theyve found a place to live elsewhere. For most. Its going to be more conveinient to just stay where they are. And then the Radiation rates being higher than base, even if its not dangerous, is going to drive away even those that would want to return. Theres no benefit now. As for evacuating in the first place. Frankly. Its better to be overly cautious. Sure in this case you can look back and say it wasnt needed. But at the time. You have to expect the worst. Otherwise youll be blamed for every person harmed

Currently living in japan. That part where the bell sounded really made it feel real. That same bell sounds across the country at noon. It was really weird to hear in Fukushima.

I was part of a large scale evacuation (Town of approximately 7000 permanent residents) due to wildfires (so, very immediate, very real threat of death) and was able to return with my family after 12 days. I cannot imagine what it would have been like for a much longer period.

Also don't forget that many people would have experienced mental health harms from staying in place. They'd be falsely convinced of grave danger and be convinced they were going to get cancer etc. etc And this would lead to many volountary evacuations undertaken without support which would mean things weren't the same for those who stayed. Yes, in an ideal world it would have been volountary but the problem is that often various kinds of assistance and payment depend on it being non-volountary.

There's a lot of conflicting talk on linear no-threshold model vs threshold model, but Kyle offhandedly showed a preference for threshold model. I'm raising my eyebrow.

I'm so glad you've incorporated this topic into your series. The older I get the more of reality I see is governed by the mind rather than matter. I love that you acknowledge the personal biases you have to overcome before making conclusions worth sharing, and I believe with time you'll help to push science communication towards those much-needed principles of transparency and holistic thinking.

excellent video, but i do not agree that Chernobyl disaster is not directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of first responders such as firefighters and countless men who were cleaning up the graphite rods of the reactor roof.

This is a case of "hindsight is 20/20". From the perspective of the government, a mandated evacuation is always better to be safe than sorry. Put yourself in the their shoes, and remember the last time this happened was Chernobyl. If I were a resident, I would seriously mistrust the local government if they told me "everything is fine", given TEPCO's notorious history. There are so many other issues, too. Within a year, *any* cancer would be 100% blamed on the radiation. Residents wouldn't be eligible for life insurance. And goods or packages shipped from the city would probably trigger radiation alarms. So there are just too many "what-ifs", and the most reasonable decision at the time was to evacuate. Today, bringing people back would require a superfund style cleanup first, followed by structural inspections and repair or replacement of buildings, homes, bridges, underground pipes and sewage, etc. Not because of radiation, but because of being abandoned for so long. In the end, it's the cost. Is it worth it for Japan to spend tens (or hundreds) of billions of dollars to restore a city? That can only be answered by the Japanese people.

The opposite of evacuating isn't a peaceful stay at home The opposite of evacuation stress is the stress of being around a faulty reactor, not knowing if the threshold will increase and you'll be forced to leave home without notice, living in fear of the radiation damage despite assurances from the government which might get worse if communication is as poor as it was in the evacuation scenario Fukushima was a disaster in disaster handling but the equation isn't that simple to balance

Thank you for all the time and care you did in creating this video. Not only has it kept me informed about all things nuclear, but it has increased my perception on the miscommunication between the people of Fukushima, Japan and government.

Love the content, Mr. Hill. Please keep up the awesome work!

Im loving this series. It is very insightful and well researched. One area I think needed more attention was the impact on infants and children. Even after watching this series, I would be very concerned about the impact on my child if I lived in an area with 100mSv excess ambient radiation.

Unfortunately the groups against nuclear power will always have a stronger voice than the science because people are fearful of policies around nuclear. We need more information like your videos.

Funny coincidence that this was uploaded right now- I just finished a school project on nuclear energy, and now I wish I had this earlier to throw in more details.

im confused. Aren't there like dozens of documentaries about the birth defects of kids around Chernobyl and Fukushima? how can you say there are no health effects from the fallout.

I really appreciate your work on this, but I would like to hear more on the side of "we don't know yet..." An evacuation is almost always a good idea when still gathering information. What point did scientists have a good enough grasp on the fallout from this incident to make a reliable call on if people should return home?

Chernobyl did have a great impact in Norway. Because Norway is mostly mountains, and the winds blew that direction, most of the nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster ended up in Norway, causing thousands of miscarriages due to radiation poisoning, both for humans and other animals. My own family was affected by this, as my oldest sister (my mother's first child) died a few days before they were to do the caesarean section on my mom. They found she had died due to my mom having consumed contaminated greens. Her ligaments, and body in general, was so weakened by the radiation poisoning that when they opened my mom and found her dead, she literally fell apart as they tried to get her out. My moms, when I was younger, would sometimes tearfully reminisce about how beautiful her eyes were. Apparently they had become almost purple...

You are an inspiration to and many thank you for doing this kind of research and sharing it with all of us❤

This video popped up on my feed as something that might interest me, and it’s the first I’ve seen of your videos. I must say, VERY WELL DONE Kyle! Very well done! I’ll be subscribing and watching some of your previous videos.

Really appreciate this series and this content. I hope information like this makes it out to the public at large. Keep up the good work.

Thank you for being a beacon of knowledge on this sea of radiation uncertainty. I knew the displacement of people during a disaster takes its toll on the people and their mental health, but I did not realize the totality of the numbers over the course of the decade plus it has been since Fukushima.

Love this series. Allowing the elderly to return seems like a humane decision, but out of curiosity, I wonder if they would be able to enjoy their lives as they were before? How do you offer services (stores, healthcare, services, etc.) to them if they're the only population interested in going back? Where will they shop for groceries? Where will they they get healthcare? Where will they go to the bank? If there was more trust into the population that radiation has no effects over 20+ years, maybe younger populations could return and fill these jobs but otherwise it is more complex than just telling people to go back.

This series is one of my favorites in science communication. I'm hoping to start college soon to work on an Environmental Science degree and this series is a huge part of that. Incredible work as always.

What a great video! This was really eye opening and the way information was presented was super engaging!

You would have to compare the rates of PTSD in the general population who survived an earthquake against those who were evacuated around Fukushima. There is always going to be an increase after a major natural disaster. It’s not like the area was perfectly fine and people were forced to leave for no reason. Even if you ignore the radiation it was still hit by an earthquake the quake and tsunami. That tends to have an impact on people’s psyche.

The evacuation was a success in protecting what it was meant to protect: Whatever was left of the public opinion at the time.

I love your videos. Your videos make me happy. Inspired. Intrigued. Curious. I want to learn more, and you make it accessible. Thank you for your refreshing point of views.

Thanks for explaining milli-sieverts. There’s a dizzying array of units of measure related to radiation, and while it’s beneficial to explain them as they crop organically in these documentaries, I have to wonder if a dedicated episode explaining them wouldn’t be beneficial in the long run.

Im not trying to troll. I love your videos. And you educated me on radiation, which I knew nothing about before. But Stockton Rush, CEO of Ocean Gate, says in one of his interviews that most submarine accidents are pilot error and not mechanical failure. but he didn't take into account that because the pressure is so high, the pressure chambers are over engineered, and that's why mechanical failures are so rare. I'll ask the same here. May be because we overreact. That's why death and long term affects of radiation are close to none?!

This is a wonderful piece that opens a very necessary conversation around disaster response.

Always with the super interesting and extraordinarily researched pieces. Thank you Kyle for trying to educate the world on these things!

Amazing content More educational then my highschool science class and I can actually pay attention to this

I appreciate the effort that went into this video. I can agree with your thesis too, but I think it could set an alarming precedent for the future. A nation might take longer to respond to a more serious threat, as it is often difficult to gauge the severity of a disaster in the immediate aftermath. It just seems to leave the door open to a more massive nuclear disaster that could have been contained better/faster/whatever. I’m speaking in hypotheticals, who knows what’ll actually happen. My main problem is that we don’t have a good control scenario to demonstrate the effects a no-evacuation plan could have had. That being said, I have absolutely no qualifications, experience, or practical knowledge to bring to the table here. Please feel free to disregard this comment if you wish, and have a lovely day :)

You are a absolute gold reporter. You learned me so much new thing in a subject I thought I knew a little bit about, actually learning me more than I thought I knew.

"Until next time" I get shivers every time. Another great video going into my favorite playlist on KZfaq.

Great video however in Ukraine after Chernobyl there were a great many health defects however USSR suppressed and hid them away because they were ashamed, they originally tried to hide the meltdown in its entirety.

I have never been this early. Keep up the great content 👑

your serious videos always make me want to cry by the end yet i love each and every one of them

That video was amazing man. Eye opening. Thanks for what you do

On one hand, I agree with a lot you present here, but I think you missed some important points: Evacuations in a 20 km radius already happened by day 3 after the incident, the 10 km beyond were a "stay at home and lock all doors and windows" zone. Local authorities due to tsunami and reactor incident had lost any contact to the govt. They had no clue if more quakes or waves were on their way - the first one had extended more than 10 km inland. Those 10 km were "evacuated" by the tsunami anyways. They also had no clue what was happening at the reactor sites, they had no working radiation sensor network to base their decisions off of etc etc. They had no way to know what the current risk was, they had no clue how bad it'd get. Under these circumstances I say they did the right thing to the best of their abilities. It's easy to say which evacuation and where shouldn't have happened in hindsight, where we _know_ things didn't get worse than they did. But if you don't know how bad it's gonna get - better safe than sorry imo. Having said that, once communication was established and it was clear that the situation was somewhat under control (ca. 5 months later, by July/August iirc), and the radiation levels were known etc. there should've been a better effort to bring people home to safe areas. And as for the rest - the groundwater was contaminated, and also, the rad levels you measured were _after_ the decontamination efforts by the govt. That decontamination took time - also smth to not be forgotten.

Dude you’re such a legend for the way you communicate the reality of nuclear energy/disasters. Thanks for being so consistent 😊

These are genuinely fantastic videos . I love them. Please keep making them

Top quality as always, Kyle. Thank you for going the extra mile on this series.

This is a masterpiece Kyle! Thank you for showcasing these so important studies that otherwise would've not reached the same amount of people.

While you have a point in hindsight and I agree that the people in Fukoshima should have been allowed to return home much earlier, I disagree with a lot of your "statistics". Agreed, the number of deaths due to radiation in Chernobil is extremely low, but that is mostly because the Russian government artificially kept this number low. It was better for PR reasons and costs to make it bureaucratically impossible for people to prove any health problem and death was caused by Chernobil. The situation in Fukushima was very unclear and the people at the plant had a lot of trouble stabilizing the situation for many weeks. If anything had gone wrong there, the evacuation would all of a sudden been completely justified and in "the fog of war" choices were made that erred on the side of caution. There are many lessons to be learned from both incidents and you have pointed out several of them. Having said all above, I do feel that the initial reaction to evacuate was, given the circumstances, the right call. Many decisions after could have been made differently with likely a better outcome, agreed.

Incredibly informative as usual, awesome work Kyle!!!

This series of videos have become one of my favourites in all of youtube, thank you very much for spreading such great information and messages Have you thought about adding captions in different languages to hopefully spread them even farther?

This episode hit deep. You outdid yourself on this one. Absolutely amazing work. The world needs this information more than ever as we progress into a more nuclear-powered world. Shattering misconceptions is what it's all about.

this feels like one of the darkest episodes of this series yet, especially towards the end. more deaths caused by homesickness than a bloody tsunami. now THAT is heartbreaking

Love all the effort you put into these videos

Kyle i would like to say that your videos are absolutly incredible, ever single day i hop onto youtube just hoping you released a video i love your content and you do a very good job at informing everybody about radiation, and you have helped me understand what radiation is and its dangers... thank you so much :)

I think you are missing out on one factor, you keep saying it yourself "What we know...now", during the disasters there was a lot of unknowns, and I believer people were scared. What would the stress levels have been if there were no evacuation orders given that this was a nuclear disaster? There is currently no way to know for sure, but I theorize that if folks were told to stay, given their lack of knowledge about radiation and the clear lack of communication at the times, the stress levels long term would have been higher....But again that's just a theory, it is very easy to see things when viewing the disaster through the lens of what we know today :)

Since I'm working in the nuclear industry (Radiopharma production) I realized how the dangers of radiation are unbelievably overestimated and the fear of radiation is actually a phobia (irrational fear)

Your use of tone and intonation is really well done imo. Great content and vid, very compelling

These episodes never miss, keep up the great work. Always an immediate watch when i see you have posted.

Hindsight is 20/20. At the time no one knew if the meltdown was even under control (maybe still isn't up to this day) and the fear of aftershocks that could cause another tsunami was very real. Add upon that the fact that just the idea of what was happening was terrifying to the local public (very understandable), so they probably wouldn't have responded well to a more "sensible" and measured evacuation strategy. If the government/TEPCO did that at the time, they would probably be accused of negligence in a public outcry. So to me it's too easy to say in hindsight that they shouldn't have evacuated the the way they did at the time!

Honestly, I feel like the evacuation was still warranted. Looking back, it's easy to say that the cost, both human and financial wasn't worth it. But for three disasters (earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown) hitting a populated area like they did, but the situation could have been way worse. There were so many unknowns in the moment that the loss of life could have been significantly higher had things gotten worse and had they not evacuated. The sample size for meltdowns is very low and the universe is a chaotic place. I think evacuation was the right call.

Thanks for continuing this impactful series, Kyle! :D

Dear Kyle. Thiese videos are so important. I have followed you from befor you were with the facility. The half live series is not only among my most beloved and compelling documentary series I follow I feel very priviliged and happy that I have the opportunity to see someone as comitted and as educated as you giving me these very important insights and perspectives from someone who went through the troube of conducting a thorough and on sight investigation, carefully juxtaposed with data ans science, in a calm and thoughtful manner. these show deserves a price. Every sience calls should show them in schools. Thank you for your work. I highly appreciate it. (even if i am not in a position to contribute on patreon, please accept my lieks and emotional support)

I think there's one aspect about this that's important, though. This analysis has the benefit of hindsight. At the time of each incident, the evacuation concerns were valid, because the situations were developing, in Fukushima's case, it took a while to reach a state where further failures were unlikely. Should the evacuation orders sttill be in place now? Probably not, but the temporary evacuations do seem justifiable. Determining when return authorizations should have begun seems the argument to be made.

Unless I got the info wrong, Japan finally lifted the ban on one of TESCO's nuclear plants a few days ago

This was a heavy hitting episode. Thank you for the good work that you do, Kyle.

I'm such a sucker for these videos. Such a serious topic. So well presented. Glad I'm here for it.

While I 100% agree that the continued enforced evacuation is causing more harm than good, I can't fault the government for reacting the way they did initially. In a currently unfolding disaster like this, where you have no idea just how bad it will get, it's always better to be over-cautious than not. Unfortunately since the majority of people, especially in government, don't understand much about radiation outside of what the media has fed to them, not proceeding in an appropriate fashion based on the evidence is something that happens all too often.

I would like some clarity on the data on radiation dose that were known when evacuation order where given. The threshold of 20 mSv is the one use in the lifting of evacuation (using data aquired one year later), was it also the one which determinated evacuation? Did they have good meseaures or only estimation when the orders were given? Once the evacuation has happened it become very hard to reasure people enought for them to come back. But if you are not sure of the doses can you wait and risk not evacuating?