do the math:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/14/japan.us.nav... says the USS Ronald Reagan has been 100 miles away when "airborne radioactivity" was detected, and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366055/Japan-earthq... says that U.S. Navy crew in relief effort get a month's radiation in just one hour. From wikipedia: The worldwide average background dose for a human being is about 2.4 millisievert (mSv) per year, which is 0.2 mSv per month. i.e. 100 miles away they measured 0.2 mSv/h which, if we assume a r-squared dependency, 2 Sv/h within one mile at the reactor. Let's be conservative and assume linear dependence, then we still have 0.02 Sv/h which is a rather significant dose per hour. A dose greater than 0.5 sievert (Sv) is considered to be a high dose of radiation. With absorbed doses of 1 to 2 Sv and above, mortality is expected to be about 20%, according to radiation medicine specialists. Above a dose of 7 Sv the survival rate is zero.
The pilots picked up the radiation while flying around the plant as it was venting steam. They didn't pick up that radiation at the aircraft carrier 100 miles away, so your assumptions about crazy high levels of radiation at the facility don't add up at all.
"The maximum potential radiation dose received by any ship's force personnel aboard the ship when it passed through the area was less than the radiation exposure received from about one month of exposure to natural background radiation from sources such as rocks, soil, and the sun," Davis said.
According to 7th Fleet Commander and Spokesman Jeff Davis, the ships were moved away from the downwind direction of the plant as a precautionary measure on Sunday.
> i.e. 100 miles away they measured 0.2 mSv/h which, if we assume a r-squared dependency.
You can't assume an r-squared dependency, as the radiation they were measuring came from the radioactive steam that had drifted out to sea (i.e. the "airborne radioactivity"). It was not from the Fukushima-Daiichi site directly (after all, there's many different radiation monitoring stations nearby that have much better indications of general area radiation levels).
In fact you proved yourself wrong! If being a mile away from the reactor gave you 2 Sv/hour, and no one lives past 7 Sv, that's only 3.5 hours anyone could survive, and there have been workers at the site for days now.
there was a peak at 1.2 mSv/h when the meltdown occured. All in all the values are in the range of 0.4-1 mSv/h. At least a factor 10 lower as I found in the approximation above.
