MELTDOWN IMPACT: A computer model suggests that the radiation released by the Fukushima meltdowns is unlikely to be broadly lethal.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/Digital Globe
Immediate and future radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster may result in hundreds of deaths and emerging cancer cases, according to a yearlong modeling project undertaken by researchers at Stanford University.
Started within a week of the Fukushima meltdown, the project is the most detailed model yet of the emission, transport and deposition of radioactive material from the site, accounting for complex interactions between atmospheric conditions and the microphysics of radioactive particles.
Combining the projected spread of radioactive material with a standard radiation health-effects model, co-authors John Hoeve, a recent Stanford Ph.D. graduate, and civil engineering professor Mark Jacobson calculated that between 15 and 1,300 premature deaths would occur as a result of the accident.
Within that wide range, the team poses a best guess of 130 direct deaths resulting from radiation inhalation and exposure.
Those findings contest the hypothesis, circulated among some experts in the aftermath of the accident, that radioactive fallout from the Fukushima disaster would not result in any long-term human mortality.
Some mixed blessings
The full meltdown of Fukushima Daiichi reactor Units 1, 2 and 3 constituted the most serious nuclear event since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, creating a contaminated "dead zone" of several hundred square kilometers and resulting in the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people.
Yet the Fukushima disaster differed from Chernobyl in several important ways, according to the researchers. Nearly 80 percent of the radioactive material from the Japanese event ended up in the ocean, to be diluted by ocean currents, while the vast majority of Chernobyl's fallout ended up in Russia and Belarus and other neighboring states.
Fukushima's radioactive release was also limited by more stringent safety measures and a quicker response time, the report notes.
The remaining 20 percent of leaked radioactive material traveled through the air, moving with atmospheric currents, until it was eventually deposited on land. While the vast majority of grounded radioactive material has been detected in Japan, smaller traces have been detected as far away as North America and Europe.
"As you move away from Japan, you get an exponential decrease in radioactivity concentration," said Jacobson.
In the case of Fukushima, no deaths have yet been identified as the direct result of radiation exposure. But according to Jacobson, those effects can take years, even decades, to manifest.
"We know that there were 600 deaths that resulted from the evacuation," due primarily to stress and fatigue, he said. "There were also between 10 and 12 worker fatalities at the Fukushima plants. Our estimate looks at the expected deaths over a lifetime of exposure to low levels of radiation."
Simulating particle physics on a global scale
While the effects of radiation are highly variable, he said, exposure is particularly dangerous for children, for whom any exposure constitutes a proportionally larger concentration of radioactive material.
The model shows that a failure to evacuate the area immediately surrounding the Fukushima power plant would have resulted in, at most, an extra 245 radiation-induced deaths.
Considering that about 600 deaths are currently attributed to the evacuation process itself, it is possible that the government's security measures cost more lives than they saved, Jacobson said.
In the months preceding the Fukushima disaster, Jacobson, whose work focuses on chemical transportation, had been preparing computer programs to model pollution movement from Asia to the United States. When disaster struck on March 11, 2011, he realized his opportunity to put his models to work.
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25 Comments
Add CommentIt's not suprising that people who were evacuated will be less likely to die from what they avoided in evacuating.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe comparison between evacuation deaths and a predicted death count from cancer in an evacuated population is spurious to say the least.
The evacuation was a necessary evil under the circumstances, some areas had dose rates that were unquestionably dangerous. Evacuation is designed to avoid potential risk also and not just what has happened so far.
The potential risk as estimated by the NRC and by the Japanese Government was significant. The NRC had modelling requiring a 50 mile radius, and the limit was that their software couldn't handle the full extent of the problem.
Fukushima was and so far is a near miss of a bad accident. This is the lucky escape we are seeing.
What is most interesting is that the very idea of deaths from radiation in this circumstance is contrary to the endless attempts by the nuclear bloggers to deny any risk at all from the radiation.
I in no way intend to try to predict the deaths, but am fairly certain that the risk of zero deaths being touted in many articles and web postings is not going to be true.
200 is a believable figure for cancer deaths from Fukushima, but it is not by any means the upper bounds of current and reasonable estimates.
There are also quite a few other potential health effects to consider, for instance cancer not resulting in death!
The usual junk science brought to you by Big Oil's media outlet at Sciam.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJacobsen, a notorious antinuker,who is qualified tell the backhoe where to dig for for wind tower foundations and Houve a recent grad specialising in climate modelling, produce work based on the totally debunked LNT nonsense.
All recent real science peer reviewed and published in REPUTABLE journal has zero effect of radiation with annual levels under 100 mSv. Jacobsen's usual junk science assumes effects using what he calls "A standard health-effects model... human exposure to radioactivity." Yup one from his pal Helen Caldicott the antinuke pediatrician no doubt.
If the more recent results from real science like this one here from MIT were used instead
Google "prolonged-radiation-exposure-0515.html"
The study would then show no increase in deaths at all.
In fact, the evacuation then and now which caused all the deaths is necessary because of the toxic forever chemical wastes dumped by Big Oil's facilities during the massive refinery fires and spills - nothing to do the Fuku plant. Jacobsen could have modelled that too but then he wouldn't wouldn't have got paid.
It is shameful that this notorious antinuke charlatan gets to publish well out of his field. In one of his last pieces of junk science the fool actually claimed nukes were a high carbon emissions energy source because nuke power results in a nuke war every 30 years.
When you look at the millions Chevron donates to his anti science campus you can understand his motivation and all the press he gets for his nonsense.
@sethdayal
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDon't even get me started on Helen Caldicott. A physician who thinks she's a nuclear physicist.
However, I would hardly call this particular article "anti-nuke". 200 hundred deaths, though I guess it's easy for me to say, is no cause for global concern about the safety of nuclear power.
Today my city of Toronto was the fourth hottest in the world. Right now, nuclear is by far the lesser of the evils.
Another Schlock article from the Shell Oil American disinformation service. A rabidly anti-nuclear Civil Engineer with ZERO experience, qualifications or knowledge of Radiation Health Physics is a reputable source - yeh, right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor QUALIFIED Radiation Health Physics experts on the potential effects of Fukushima:
http://atomicinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/Sakamoto-2012_ANSconf-June23.pdf
atomicinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/Cuttler-2012_ANS-President-Session_Jun23-copy.pdf
"..Fukushima radiation level is comparable to high natural background areas; UNSCEAR
-- Radiation protection standard in 1920s was a safe tolerance dose: 680 mSv/year
-- Radiation-induced DNA damage rate due to 1 mSv/year is more than 6 million times lower than spontaneous DNA damage rate
-- negligible in comparison with natural rate
-- Radiation-induced: 10-100 DNA alterations per cell/cGy
1 mSv/year radiation < 3 x 10-2 DNA alteration/cell/day
This is > 6 million times lower than spontaneous rate!!!
So radiation is not a significant cause of cancer.
We’ve known this for more than 20 years!.."
TESTIMONY OF John D. Boice, Jr., Sc.D.
BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE AND TECHNOLOGY'S
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT AND INVESTIGATIONS & OVERSIGHT COMMITTEES:
bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/john-boice-testimony-5-13-11-house-science-committee.pdf
"..Fortunately, the health consequences from the radiation releases from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant appear to be minimal.."
The truth about the Fukushima disinformation campaign launched by Big Oil financed ENGOs, a time for a reckoning, those who cry "Fire" in a crowded movie theater deserve to pay dearly for their anti-social actions:
bravenewclimate.com/2012/06/17/time-for-reckoning/
www.npr.org/2012/03/09/148227596/trauma-not-radiation-is-key-concern-in-japan
The Linear No-Threshold Theory, that has never been shown to have any scientific basis, which Jacobson uses, is ripped to shreds at the last American Nuclear Society meeting:
http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2012/07/11/lnt-examined-at-chicago-ans-meeting/
Crap science.Putting a number on the potential deaths is spurious. Tweak a variable and exponential numbers start to pop out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNobody knows what variables to measure or what weight to give them. We barely understand the effects of radiation on the human body in a controlled study...educated guestimates.
This is not an X-ray machine. The particles released, when lodged in the lungs or other parts of the body, will produce far more cancers than predicted here. They act like someone walked past a radiation source, not that the radiation source took up residence in their body.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou don't need a supercomputer to compute that thousands of Americans will die every year from the sun's radiation (skin cancer), that the cancer risk is higher from medical X-ray and natural cosmic rays than from Fukushima, which is negligible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW radioactive isotope was injected in my body (nuclear medicine) I've been radioative for over 12 yrs. Negligible effect on health. I bet that's more radiation than most Japanese will ever get from Fukushima.
Just 200 death.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat makes it OK doesn't it.
As I posted on another article, Dr. Michio Kaku said that even in a worst case scenario for this disaster, it is still only the Japanese people that have most of the worrying to do, and this is coming form a man who is anti-nuclear, and has even participated in protests against certain nuclear plants. But, of course, as a physicist, he is also a man who won't let ideology interfere with his conveyance of reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is myopic and self-centred to only worry about our own well being, but it is important to quell global anxiety to avoid a mass shut down of nuclear facilities in favour of coal, which would be exponentially more disastrous in the long run.
As noble as the "green" cause is at it's core, many of it's constituents are sketchy, and are not afraid to exploit the gullibility and fear in the general populace. Unfortunately, the far left is quickly paving a road to hell with good intentions, and in the eyes of many is tainted by intellectual dishonesty.
Dr. Strangelove ,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI usually comment in this sort of discussion,that my wife had 5 weeks of electron beam radiation and 3 days of Caesium 137 insertion for Ovarian and Uterine Cancer.
That Caesium radiation period involved having a big barrier at the entrance to her room with the dreaded radiation symbol on it.
Over 12 years later she has had no complications from it and would probably have been dead years ago without it.
Any idea what the number of deaths would be from particulates, mercury, uranium/thorium/potassium radiation if the equivalent power had been generated from coal for 40 years?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe headline on the homepage of this site reads:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Up to 1,300 More Deaths Could Follow from Fukushima Radiation"
The implication is that deaths have already occurred through Fukushima radiation.
SciAm has a responsibility to tell us how many, with references.
And why does the headline refer to 1300 that could follow, whereas this article, to which the headline is linked says a "best guess of 130 deaths".
I'd like to believe that SciAm doesn't engage in sensationalist scaremongering, and would like to see the evidence and arguments against.
I wouldn't put much stock in these figures. They have completely ignored "Radiation Hormesis".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
Look it up. It is fascinating reading. GK
This stupid nonsense - junk science really - that SCIAM routinely puts out as part of its contract with Big Oil exceeded all limits of sanity with this one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's Green superstar Mark Lynas putting the boots to Jacobsen's worthless spew.
http://www.marklynas.org/2012/07/fukushima-death-tolls-junk-science/
200 deaths are a lot of deaths, the bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940 produced 980 casualties, and not all ways of dying are equally painful, even when today more than 50% of cancers are cured just by surgery.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm highly surprised that Scientific American has promoted this material.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's a report on cancer published by a civil engineer with a public history (with media engagements) of denouncing nuclear power, and a recently qualified climate modeller. In a minor energy journal.
That is, it's not written by a radiologist, oncologist or epidemiologist, and it's not published in a health or radiology journal with competent peer reviewers, and conflicting interests are not declared. Such antics are precisely the same as those tried on by climate change deniers for several years.
So why on Earth does SciAm pick up on it? I note that the article does not even deign to mention that Jacobson is a veteran anti-nuclear campaigner, even though, academically, that kind of interest is vital to disclose. I also note that it doesn't mention slightly(!) more expert opinion that the probable radiation deaths will be statistically indistinguishable from zero. Does Jacobson have personal contacts with the editorial board?
Q: What's the difference in their treatment of science between SciAm and the Heartland Insitute?
A: No, seriously, what is the difference?
My own interests: I live in Japan and am fed up of self-appointed experts trying to coin it in by making things up about the dangers presented by Fukushima, and even more fed up of publications such as yours failing to engage in even the simplest of diligence checks on those "experts". What you say has an impact, which people like me who live here have to diffuse. Please stick to the science, and leave your non-scientific political beliefs out of it.
Curious if you actually read the MIT report and saw how they did their testing? Maybe seen the fact that they ignored all previous data called?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbout 10 years prior to the MIT study, the exact same study was done with different results. In matter of fact, the study done prior used 1/3 the radiation exposure as the MIT study. The only difference is that the prior study exposed the lab rats to radiation over time, which would be more realistic then MIT's procedure.
MIT is given millions to promote nuclear energy. Seems to me to be a conflict of interest.
I grew up under the shadows of TMI's cooling towers. I was there in 1979 when the accident occurred. The real health issues were buried by the NRC and Met-Ed. Deaths do not tell the whole story. I, members of my family, and neighbors that lived there at the time still suffer the health issues from something we were told didn't happen.
Why doesn't anyone increasingly unscientific Scientific American publish articles from the like of Prof Wade Allison who wrote a book entitled “radiation and reason" (available from radiationandreason.com) instead of supposition by scaremongers without basic expertise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProf Allison and–and many other researchers–have, as a result of studying real-world examples, discovered that levels of radiation up to about 1000 m Sieverts are not dangerous and in fact, may give resistance against cancer.
All the time, the people who worry about deaths from nuclear power ignore the fact that, for instance, a single failure of a hydro dam killed 170,000 people in China in the 1970s. 2 years ago an accident at a hydropower station in Russia killed 75 people and could have killed as many as 1,000,000.
The one single fact we can be really sure of is that nuclear power is, by far, the most environmentally friendly and safe of all major forms of power generation. Even windfarms, which have generated a tiny amount of power, have killed something like 90 people.
Many of the people who criticise nuclear power do so because they know it will destroy the case for the renewable energy projects and its truly disgraceful subsidies that they extract from other consumers. It is a classic case of the poor subsidising the rich. And that is why electricity is now so expensive in many countries.
Veranda: My sympathies go out to all of you affected by this aftermath. The steady stream of dis-information must be particularly exasperating and fearful. It is the natural result of mixing idealism with science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"probable radiation deaths will be statistically indistinguishable from zero" does not fit the ideology... nor further the agenda. I hope your fellow citizens can take comfort from your calm and clear view. GK
Ugh. *diffuse ->defuse (!)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGK - thanks (although I'm not a Japanese citizen but a long-term foreign resident). The spread of disinformation over Fukushima is causing all kinds of problems. Under pressure from small vociferous groups, prefectures are refusing to accept tsunami waste for incineration for fear it's radioactive (so the clear-up is hampered), children from the tsunami areas are getting bullied at new schools for being "radioactive", agriculture is being kicked in the teeth: in fact, what should be the main focus - that 16,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands made homeless - is being crowded out by nonsense, opportunistic propaganda and paranoia.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat happened at Fukushima was a mess; the company running it was shockingly negligent, the government complicit in this for decades, and I deeply feel for the evacuees from around the plant. But reports like the one SciAm covers here? It's just people exploiting the situation for their own political and economic ends.
Radiation therapy enables miracle cure for untreatable melanoma, actually stimulates the immune system to fight and destroy cancer throughout the body, even though only one tumor was irradiated:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismaximumnewsinformer.com/?p=6202
Radiation plus Hormone Therapy much more effective than just Hormone Therapy alone in treating Prostate Cancer:
www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20111102/prostate-cancer-radiation-hormone-therapy-111102/
Does radiation really cause cancer? Conversation among professionals:
atomicinsights.com/2012/01/does-radiation-really-cause-cancer-conversation-among-professionals.html
These are REAL Radiation Specialists not the hacks, with ZERO qualifications that the Big Oil Shill Atomic lies man quotes.
"...Radiation’s principal effect is on the defenses. Low radiation doses/levels stimulate all the defenses reducing the incidence of cancer. High doses/levels have the opposite effect.
While radiation alters DNA, this effect is usually small compared to the spontaneous rate of DNA alterations. Let’s consider whether there is a small chance that a cancer may develop due to DNA altered by a near-lethal dose of radiation.
Wade Allison points out that radiation treatments of tumors and post-surgical follow-up radiation treatments irradiate large amounts of healthy tissue (organs too) at 200 rad each day for 4 weeks. That amounts to 200 x 5 x 4 = 4000rad[40Sv] in a month. [23,000X Fukushima district maximum allowed]. There are many cells in this healthy tissue (10^9 per gram), and Allison says that these tissues recover. These irradiated areas do not become cancer ridden..."
Learn the facts from probably the world’s foremost Radiation Health physicist, Wade Allison:
http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/nuclearsafety/webpptMay07.pdf
"...Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors
-- largest experiment
-- longest experiment, data for 60 years
-- 429,000 population, >103,000 died in 4 months
-- since 1950 health records of 283,000 followed
-- dose for 86,611 modelled (mean 160mSv), checked with ESR & chromosome counts
-- control sample of 25,580 outside city
-- leukaemia and solid cancers recorded, (data on pregnancies, etc also..."
"...in the case of leukaemia a radiation dose of 200 mSvis harmless
-- in the case of solid cancers a dose of 100 mSvis harmless
-- studies of other abnormalities show no significant effects at these low doses..."
So proven absolute minimum to cause any health effects is 3 mSv/day dosage. Radiation levels right outside the plant gate at Fukushima are 0.13 mSv/da
http://japan.failedrobot.com/
Jacobson's method of analysis has been applied to Japan Airlines for it causing increased radiation exposure of its passengers:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"..The group of companies that comprise Japan Airlines Co. Ltd. (JAL) has a fleet of about 280 aircraft and carries around 52 million passengers each year. Thus, using the same crude estimate of radiation exposure during a flight that I used before—which is roughly comparable to the crude estimate of radiation exposure calculated by "a 3-D global atmospheric model," since I rely on measured statistics, while the Stanford paper relies on a computer model of dubious quality using inputs with unspecified uncertainties—I can calculate a collective dose. The result is about 2100 passenger-Sv of equivalent dose in a 16-month period..."
"..So using the same lazy reasoning, back-of-the-envelope estimation, and LNT assumption that Ten Hoeve and Jacobson use in their paper (e.g., on page 12 of the PDF), I conclude that their methodology predicts that, since March 2011, the date of the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, JAL has been responsible for an additional 240 passenger cancers and 120 eventual cancer deaths.."
"..While this is slightly less than Ten Hoeve and Jacobson's projected 130 people, primarily in Japan, who will die from cancer due to the Fukushima accident over the next 50 years, we should note that the Fukushima-I plant has been shut down. Meanwhile, JAL is still operating and is still killing a "projected" 90 people each year, of various nationalities, without any plane crashes or other accidents.
Naturally, the uncertainties in these estimates are very large. However, considering these results and the "scientific rigor" that has gone into both this analysis and the Ten Hoeve and Jacobson study, perhaps it would be more prudent to restart the Fukushima-I plant and shut down Japan Airlines..."
It is pretty obvious who is behind these OBSCENE efforts to spread Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt - a massive money-no-object disinformation campaign against anything connected to commercial Nuclear Power, the only SIGNIFICANT alternative to Fossil Fuels.
Wow, after reading most of these comments it seems obvious that few people really understood the need to evacuate such a large region. It was done not because of the radiation already released, but in preparation for a much worse meltdown and release of radiation that so far has only been prevented by one big bandaide. Like the article said, 80% of the radiation was released into the ocean. The real damage done has a long term prognosis that is not being addressed in this report.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is a fact is that the nuclear industry in Japan and the rest of the world has a lot to gain by denigrating the adverse effects of this disaster and nothing to gain by telling us all the real truth.
The fact is that TEPCO still has absolutely no idea if or when it will ever be totally cleaned up and GE, which built the reactors, ain't talkin' either. Last time I checked they are so intrenched in the global political game that they haven't even paid their taxes either.
This whole whitewash is about profits and tax write offs. If you can't figure that out you are not paying attention.
I already have problems digesting many of SciAm's editors sponsorship of nuclear fission but it simply oversteps by omitting all and any news about the latest Fukushima findings:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisa) Japanese researchers, and we know how understated their public declarations are culturally, warn that the Fukushima incidents "may have worse consequences than initially believed"; you are SciAm, you are better connected than I am, look it up and publish it;
b) we have the same situation as with Harrisburg: news about human "alterations" are simply not published, i.e. forbidden, but animal "alterations" are too obvious to be covered up; near 20% of first-generation butterflies (alive during the incident) have shown alterations such as tumors and misformations especially of the eyes and wings;
c) more frighteningly, the genetic faults have increased with every generation so that the second generation (the one born after the incidents) had approx 20% misformations, third generation around 35%, and the present fourth generation 55%; this research was using butterflies where one of the two parents was healthy (brought in or imported) and not contaminated; results offspring where both parents were contaminated are "not available".
Dear SciAm, I do understand that you may not have the resources to keep us up to date on the latest from Fukushima since you use it to bring us the extremely unnerving facetwit floating thingie, and I do understand that a great number of your editors is being pro-nuke but why that keeps you from reporting the latest important news from Fukushima astonishes me.
Has your budget become so tight or is that against the wishes of your corporate owner?
You start to seriously fail the standards I expect from scientific reporting.