You'll be fine. Have fun!

With the way it is currently its okay, I think.

The sushi place at confederation center is closed because they stop importing things from japan. Or at least thats what i understood with my limited French. It says something

Make up your own mind.

http://counterpunch.org/nader04272011.html

http://counterpunch.org/takashi04252011.html

http://counterpunch.org/grossman04252011.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_Rickover

if the fish in the sushi glows in the dark- don't eat it. 

Whats with the glow in the dark being associated with radioactivity in popular culture?

Glow in the dark food is indeed something to stay away from, but for different reasons...

You'll probably get more radiation in the Geneva-Tokio round-trip flight (*) than in Tokio itself. 

Have a look at http://xkcd.com/radiation/ -- not a scientific reference, but gives the general idea.

(*) Intercontinental flights happen at high altitude, where atmosphere is thinner and its shielding effect against cosmic rays is weaker.

That is a very good chart showing the comparisons really well. Basically its saying having an image of your tooth taken when visiting your dentist is more dangerous radiation wise than going to Japan.

"Intercontinental flights happen at high altitude, where atmosphere is thinner and its shielding effect against cosmic rays is weaker." ... is not true, strictly speaking.

There is a huge difference between internal radiation which happens when you ingest of breathe in radiation emitting isotopes especially those with long hal-lives, and external radiation.

Dangerously Wrong on Nuclear Radiation

Attack of the Nuclear Apologists

By HELEN CALDICOTT

Soon after the Fukushima accident last month, I stated publicly that a nuclear event of this size and catastrophic potential could present a medical problem of very large dimensions. Events have proven this observation to be true despite the nuclear industry's campaign about the "minimal" health effects of so-called low-level radiation. That billions of its dollars are at stake if the Fukushima event causes the "nuclear renaissance" to slow down appears to be evident from the industry's attacks on its critics, even in the face of an unresolved and escalating disaster at the reactor complex at Fukushima.

Proponents of nuclear power – including George Monbiot, who has had a mysterious road-to-Damascus conversion to its supposedly benign effects – accuse me and others who call attention to the potential serious medical consequences of the accident of "cherry-picking" data and overstating the health effects of radiation from the radioactive fuel in the destroyed reactors and their cooling pools. Yet by reassuring the public that things aren't too bad, Monbiot and others at best misinform, and at worst misrepresent or distort, the scientific evidence of the harmful effects of radiation exposure – and they play a predictable shoot-the-messenger game in the process.

To wit:

1) Mr Monbiot, who is a journalist not a scientist, appears unaware of the difference between external and internal radiation

Let me educate him.

The former is what populations were exposed to when the atomic bombs were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; their profound and on-going medical effects are well documented. [1]

Internal radiation, on the other hand, emanates from radioactive elements which enter the body by inhalation, ingestion, or skin absorption. Hazardous radionuclides such as iodine-131, caesium 137, and other isotopes currently being released in the sea and air around Fukushima bio-concentrate at each step of various food chains (for example into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow's meat and milk, then humans). [2] After they enter the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, where they continuously irradiate small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years, can induce uncontrolled cell replication – that is, cancer. Further, many of the nuclides remain radioactive in the environment for generations, and ultimately will cause increased incidences of cancer and genetic diseases over time.

( from: http://www.counterpunch.org/caldicott04122011.html )

by Robert Alvarez

( from: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/29-7 )

Welcome to the Atomic cafe.  Sit down and have drink - no need to think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOUtZOqgSG8

Exerpted from: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/26-10

The disaster at Chernobyl’s reactor on April 26, 1986 continues to expose humans, flora and fauna to radioactive lethality especially in, but not restricted to, Ukraine and Belarus. Western countries continue to reflect an under-estimation of casualties by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Food for thought on low dose radiation and whether there is a safe low dose threshold.

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11340

When the story keeps changing about Fuk-u-shima, one has a right to be sceptical about authority.

“On Tuesday, the government finally raised the Fukushima alert level on the International Nuclear Event scale from 5 to 7 -- “a major accident” -- the highest category possible, only previously used for the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster (which resulted in a 15,000-square-mile “dead zone” in the Ukraine).  Though government officials rushed to play down the Chernobyl comparison, a Tepco official offered this ominously bet-hedging comment: “Our concern is that the amount of leakage could eventually reach that of Chernobyl or exceed it.”

In fact, on our punch-drunk planet, we’ve never seen anything like what’s underway at Fukushima -- not one, but four adjacent nuclear reactors, three of which seem to have suffered partial meltdowns, and several containment pools for “spent” fuel (which, in terms of radioactivity, is anything but spent) in various states of distress.  Meanwhile, talk about the weeks needed to bring the situation under control has faded into perilous months, years, decades, even a century of cleanup and recovery.  There is speculation that some of the core of at least one reactor has already “leaked from its steel pressure vessel into the bottom of [its] containment structure” -- and every action to bring the complex under some kind of control only seems to create, or threatens to create, other unexpected problems (like that “lightly radioactive” water).

Meanwhile, amid further giant aftershocks from the 9.0 earthquake of March 11th (with possibly years more of them to come), the Japanese government has been slowly widening the 20-kilometer “evacuation zone” (recently described by a visitor as an eerie “death zone... like an episode of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone crossed with The Day After -- an apocalyptic vision of life in the nuclear age”) around the complex.  Just this week, it began warning pregnant women and children to stay out of certain areas up to 30 kilometers away from the plant.  That’s not surprising, considering that in a small number of soil tests taken outside that 30-kilometer zone -- in one case 40 kilometers from Fukushima -- cesium-137 (half-life 30 years) has been found at levels that exceed those which, at Chernobyl, forced residents to move away.  Many of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese who once lived in these areas (and if things get worse, beyond them) may never go home”. 

( from: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/15-8 )

Long term costs of Chernobyl

Return to Chernobyl

By IRIS CHENG

We have just returned after completing an important mission in Ukraine taking around 70 journalists from 18 countries with us to Chernobyl, nearly 25 years after the nuclear catastrophe. It was one of the largest media trips Greenpeace has organized. These seasoned journalists asked critical and insightful questions, none of them easily moved.

But many of them were deeply disturbed by what they saw and heard often by the mundane details that were mentioned matter-of-factly by the interviewees.

Like every year Ukraine government needs to spend between six to eight percent of the fiscal budget to cope with the consequences of Chernobyl.

Like how tens of thousands of Ukrainian children need to be sent away every year to uncontaminated areas for at least a month, in order to allow the body to get rid of some of the Cesium-137 accumulated through eating everyday food like milk, mushrooms, berry jam and meat.

Like how food sold in every market needs to be tested for radionuclide like Cesium and Strontium.

Like how children of Rokytne get tonsillitis several times a year because their immune systems are compromised by radionuclide. According to deputy head doctor from the District Hospital, two-thirds of the population of 53,000 he cares for is affected by Cesium-137 contamination in food. Rokytne is 300km away from Chernobyl, on the other side of the country.

( from: http://counterpunch.org/cheng04292011.html )

what a wealth of information from both sides! thanks for all those links. they're all very informative. i'm not sure i've come to a conclusion yet, though... :( if anyone else has any other views, i'd love to hear them!

> "Intercontinental flights happen at high altitude, where atmosphere is thinner and its shielding effect against cosmic rays is weaker." ... is not true, strictly speaking.

Yes, it is true.  See for instance EPA and INFN.