Volunteers at Minamisoma city, Fukushima pref. The city was severly damaged by the Tsunami of Japan Earthquake and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant accident.
Image: Flickr/jetalone
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After the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami crippled Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, worry about the unfolding nuclear accident quickly commandeered international headlines. Even after the situation was brought under relative control over subsequent days and weeks, public concern hung on the threat of radiation almost more than it did than on the tsunami and earthquake themselves, which had killed more than 15,850 people and displaced at least 340,000 more.
A year out, public health experts agree that the radiation fears were overblown. Compared with the effects of the radiation exposure from Fukushima, "the number of expected fatalities are never going to be that large," says Thomas McKone, of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health.
And some, including Richard Garfield, a professor of Clinical and International Nursing at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, go a step further. "In terms of the health impact, the radiation is negligible," he says. "The radiation will cause very few, close to no deaths." But that does not mean that the accident has not already caused wide-reaching health issues. "The indirect effects are great," Garfield says.
Reacting over radiation
The prospect of invisible radioactive material contaminating the air and ground is terrifying—especially for a country that experienced two nuclear bomb attacks in 1945.
In the aftermath of the earthquake the situation seemed dire, as buildings crumbled and workers were exposed to lifetime doses of radiation in a few hours. But in retrospect, the power plant's malfunction was relatively well contained. The reactor shut down, as designed, at the time of the earthquake. "It was nowhere near as complex of a release as Chernobyl, which was everything from the core of the reactor," says Peter Caracappa, a radiation safety officer and clinical assistant professor of nuclear engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. "This was a slow release," he adds, and it was limited to a few radioactive materials, including iodine 131, which has a half-life of just eight days and therefore does not lead to long-term contamination. And for other isotopes, such as cesium 134 (three-year half-life) and cesium 137, (30 years), levels can be easily detected and dangerous areas kept clear.
And the Japanese government, although criticized immediately after the accident for providing spotty information, actually gave relatively good instructions to local residents. In particular, it wisely asked people to shelter in place before evacuating potentially dangerous areas, says Kathryn Higley, head of the Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics department at Oregon State University.
The government, armed with reliable maps of where radiation levels were highest, has tailored its advice to local circumstances. Owing to the weather patterns just after the accident, most of the radioactive fallout landed northwest of the Fukushima complex. So for that area, the government has kept the recommended evacuation distance at 30 kilometers. But to the south, a distance of 20 kilometers suffices—and even that, Caracappa says, is more for logistical reasons (keeping roads clear for cleanup crews) than for radiation dangers.
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Add CommentEven today, some editor at SciAm can’t resist putting “Health Woes Go Beyond Radiation Effects” in the title. As if there WERE radiation health effects!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEditor, read your own article – there ARE NOT and NEVER WILL BE “radiation health effects” from this event! The exposures, even of the emergency workers, were way too small. Twenty thousand people died from a once-in-a-millennium wall of water, but none from radiation! Get over it!
Just as at every other “nuclear catastrophe”, the stressful effects of the scientifically-ignorant, radiophobic, and fear-mongering news media ultimately harm far more people than the damaged power plants. Lacking actual radioactive corpses, the next game the media will be playing is, “but… what if such and such had happened?”
If, during their inevitable annual recycling of this disaster, the media are looking for villains, they shouldn’t forget to bring a mirror.
"The power plant's malfunction was relatively well contained" Really? In a documentary, the prime minister of Japan at the time of the accident said that it came very close to be of the scope of 10 Tchernobyl. But with a lot of nuclear power plants around, that is something not easy to acknowledge.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI live in Sendai, so I have lived through this entire experience. This article is an excellent account. I reached this conclusion about the negligible danger from radiation on about 3.15 last year and decided to remain here with my family.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe government and TEPCO acted prudently and professionally to protect human life, which was their main goal. They did an outstanding job. If anything, they erred on the side of caution. Let me explain.
They really needed, and lacked, an accurate representation or means to educate people about the general risk posed by radiation. The media, particularly "concerned scientists," "Greenpeace," all the way up to the New York Times, pushed their agenda of doom and gloom and imminent death. Anyone trying to reassure the evacuees, such as actual scientists, government officials, or knowledgeable people working with utility companies, was attacked immediately by panicked people and talking heads with no stake aside from an agenda. Officials were frustrated and cowed by the demagoguery. I saw the whole thing unfold.
The evacuees, many from areas that I would regard as safe, have not been allowed to go back to their homes. The homes have now deteriorated, and even if 80% of the people in a community return, they will have to confront abandoned dwellings, insufficient services, and weeds. Lots of weeds. They have been ruined financially. Their trust in society has been destroyed.
I blame the media. I blame "concerned people" from Tokyo and Washington, who had no idea how to interpret the correct information that was available to everyone. They spouted worst case scenarios as fact and sought to make themselves heroes at the expense of these poor people. Prime Minister Kan and G. Jacxzko of the NRC, I am looking right at you.
There is no question that we have already solved the problems of saving people and limiting radiation even in the worst of circumstances. We need to work now on saving their peace of mind, and concentrate on saving communities. It has to be acknowledged that these evacuees would be better off today if they had not had a world of screaming onlookers to distract them from the truth and keep them from their homes. Do we need censorship? Maybe. My local newspaper gave me accurate information, but all of the world's media outlets on the internet didn't. What does that say?
Bertrand Ducharme probably saw a FRONTLINE documentary that gives the account of former Prime Minister Kan, who is, to put it bluntly, known as a drama queen in these parts. Although it is a generally informative documentary, it does not include the official account of TEPCO, whose records differ quite a bit from Mr. Kan's. You can find some of that timeline at the FRONTLINE website.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMultiverse implies that Japanese people are ignorant and incompetent because they were attacked with nuclear weapons. Somehow I can't follow that logic. What I do know is that Japan has few energy choices and chose atomic energy to replace dependence on oil (it consumes about the same amount of oil today as it did in 1970) and coal (Fukushima citizens used to die by the hundreds in coal mine accidents). I also know that other nuclear facilities were closer to the quake epicenter and were ALSO hit by tsunami and ALSO experienced blackouts, but remained in working order.
There is an old Japanese saying: "Sometimes even a monkey falls from the tree." It means that even the best of the best have days where everything goes wrong. I might be the only person on the planet who believes this, but what the Japanese did at Fukushima was truly awesome. This was a huge quake causing regional damage to all infrastructure. They evacuated hundreds of thousands of people in the snow from tsunami-wrecked communities with no injury and no loss of life and no loss of order. They repaired the crippled plant with no water and no electricity, and no light. People at less risk stayed inside. Overall, they did an outstanding, simply unbelievable, job with what they had.
Did Apollo 13 stop NASA? Was it a failure? I hope that this event will not stop the Japanese from moving forward.
Katherine Harmon, thank you for this story. I hope you win a Pulitzer.
In most circumstances, the biggest hazard from radiation is that the word "radiation" turns the brains of many people to mush.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnides – thank you for sharing your first-person account, your courage and empathy for the Japanese people, and above all for maintaining your rationality through the hyperventilating media onslaught.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are radiation effects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are few radiation health effects so far. The only reason there are few and not many is that the govt evacuated the area.
There will be some readiation health effects that will show up over decades. This is the way it works, do the numbers. OK probably not a lot but some.
The event could have been far worse.
I have been reading the NRC conference call transcripts. What struck me is that the worst case that was being discussed at the time by those I spoke to online, and was being ridiculed by the nuclear shills such as yourself, was not as bad as what the NRC was internally planning for based on the info from TEPCO.
In fact besides that the online discussions were just a more heated version of the NRC's own discussions.
With the repeated intrusion of nuclear shills sprouting the spin of course.
Nobody in the NRC's discussions disclaimed the risks like the shills did on the net.
The 50 mile evac zone the US declared was the limit of the software, and not based on what they expected. They might have declared a wider radius if they could have calculated properly for the situation as they saw it.
If/when the same happens in the US they would have declared 50 miles and so that is what they declared for Japan.
It is so self-serving to declare no effects after the evac as if it all didn't matter.
People died, maybe not from the radiation directly, but from avoiding the radiation, which otherwise would have made them sick or killed them.
People are suffering and their towns are uninhabitable from the radiation that is high enough to make them sick or kill them slowly.
Get it now - People are suffering, and health effects go way beyond death.
If you run away from a gunman and fall over - but do not get shot, does that make the gunman harmless??
@multiverse4488 - The radiation exposures that survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were very high and prompt (received in just a couple of microseconds) doses. This is much different than the small doses expected over a period of years from the nuclear accident with dose rates are comparable to what people who live in Colorado receive from natural terrestrial and cosmic ray background sources.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@rwerkh - You said, "The 50 mile evac zone the US declared was the limit of the software, and not based on what they expected. They might have declared a wider radius if they could have calculated properly for the situation as they saw it."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is not a true statement. The fifty mile zone started out as a recommended do-not-go-into zone for American citizens so that they would interfere with the mass of people coming out of the evac zone. The recommendation was hijacked by Chairman Jaczko and turned into an evacuation-from zone. I know this because I worked with DoD and DOE personnel who deployed to Japan and coordinated US assistance to the Japanese.
Folks have been following a tear each day, almost each hour fro day 1, Information available with archives to see what has really happened, you will be pissed as many coming to see and long time posters ! We have been lied too again !
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://enenews.com/
http://members.beforeitsnews.com/stories/by/0000000000004882
http://enenews.com/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgain comparable for a few, and only because the worst areas are evacuated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am basing my statement on several hundred pages of transcripts of the NRC conference calls.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere were repeated questions about the 50 mile radius, since it was based on an initial estimate of 33% damage to one core and a zirc fire in a single SFP.
The repeated requests were to get a new calculation for a multi-core and multi-SFP incident. The last conversation I have read indicated that it was a software limit.
Jazcko's involvement was minor, he confirmed the opinions of the NRC and the Navy personnel and then took that.
Your statement sounds like it was based on heresay - mine is based on the actual conversations at the top level where the decisions were being made.
Sorry - you need to check original sources, and not take political opinions and rumours from a second and third hand source.
"The recommendation was hijacked by Chairman Jaczko and turned into an evacuation-from zone. I know this because I worked with DoD and DOE personnel "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis seems to suggest that DoD & DoE personnel were misrepresenting the decisions of the superiors adn spreading rumours that the correct procedure imposed by the NRC with input from Naval Nuclear Propulsion was in fact a mistake.
Are you really suggesting that the personnel in Japan were that incompetent?
The Japanese experience of being exposed to radiation as a result of atomic bombs and atomic bomb testing in the Pacific has taught at least some careful researchers and scientists that the health effects of low level radiation have been VASTLY exaggerated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr. Sohei Kondo, for example, has been researching and publishing in this field since he was first involved in on the ground measurements in the immediate aftermath of BOTH Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His 1993 book titled "Health Effects of Low Level Radiation" has a prominent place in my personal library with many dog ears and highlights.
Here is a link to some highlights from that book.
http://www.radscihealth.org/rsh/Docs/Kondo93/sk1_C1.html
There are many financial and political reasons why people have been taught to be irrationally fearful of radiation. My research has shown that the most important of those reasons is that selling fossil fuel in a supply constrained market is far more profitable than selling fossil fuel in competition with nuclear energy.
In 2011, Japan spent an extra $30 to $50 BILLION on imported oil and liquified natural gas to replace the output of the undamaged nuclear plants that were forced to shutdown as a result of irrational nuclear fears. Said another way, some very rich and dominant multinational corporations sold $30 to $50 BILLION more in product than they had planned.
That is quite a windfall. It demonstrates a very high return on the investment made in oil and gas company advertisements promoting "clean natural gas" during the post Fukushima media frenzy.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
The Japanese experience of being exposed to radiation as a result of atomic bombs and atomic bomb testing in the Pacific has taught at least some careful researchers and scientists that the health effects of low level radiation have been VASTLY exaggerated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr. Sohei Kondo, for example, has been researching and publishing in this field since he was first involved in on the ground measurements in the immediate aftermath of BOTH Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His 1993 book titled "Health Effects of Low Level Radiation" has a prominent place in my personal library with many dog ears and highlights.
Here is a link to some highlights from that book.
http://www.radscihealth.org/rsh/Docs/Kondo93/sk1_C1.html
There are many financial and political reasons why people have been taught to be irrationally fearful of radiation. My research has shown that the most important of those reasons is that selling fossil fuel in a supply constrained market is far more profitable than selling fossil fuel in competition with nuclear energy.
In 2011, Japan spent an extra $30 to $50 BILLION on imported oil and liquified natural gas to replace the output of the undamaged nuclear plants that were forced to shutdown as a result of irrational nuclear fears. Said another way, some very rich and dominant multinational corporations sold $30 to $50 BILLION more in product than they had planned.
That is quite a windfall. It demonstrates a very high return on the investment made in oil and gas company advertisements promoting "clean natural gas" during the post Fukushima media frenzy.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Can you explain why you think that a politician who is leading a country that just experienced one of the worst natural disasters in the history of his country spent so much of his time and imagination focused on a tiny slice of that tragedy?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy should I, an experienced nuclear reactor operator (US Navy), care one iota about the imaginary visions of what Kan thinks might have happened? Has he ever operated anything? Does he have a background in practical engineering that might have even allowed him to understand the advice that experience people at the plant could give to him?
There was never any danger of widespread injury. Radiation just happens to be one of the easiest things in the world to measure, even at levels many orders of magnitude below those that might hurt anyone. Saying that the plant "contaminated" vast areas misses a key point - the contamination levels, being spread over such a wide area and diluted in so much water - are far too low to hurt anyone.
The Japanese government mostly failed by not devoting the majority of its attention to the real tragedies of displaced people, people who needed access to reliable food, shelter and medical care, and the clean-up required when a massive wave of salt water overturns millions of individual containers of potentially toxic materials in an industrial area.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
@AnidesAntrobus - you are NOT the only person in the world who believes that the people doing actual work did an incredible job while the politicians and the fossil fuel financed media did an incredibly poor job of telling the story.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt has been very profitable for them not to tell the truth - your nation has spent an extra $50 billion or so for fossil fuel in the 12 months since the tsunami. Most of that extra revenue for the fossil fuel industry has come as a result of irrationally shutting down undamaged nuclear plants.
Keep sharing your stories. I would love to publish your thoughts as a guest post on Atomic Insights. If you are not interested in writing a new article, may I have your permission to repurpose your comments from this article?
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
There are people at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who are very skilled and technically competent. Based on conversations with several of them, I believe that nearly all of that particular type of employee was purposefully excluded from the emergency response center and from the daily discussions that the Chairman hosted. We know from public testimony that the other four commissioners, all of whom have vastly more nuclear knowledge and experience than Chairman Jaczko, were refused access to the emergency response center.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTherefore it is no surprise at all that the discussions of the people who were chosen to participate in the response indicated such wild fantasies and irrational behavior. They were probably operating from knowledge that they gained by watching Godzilla or The Morning After type movies.
The NRC has about 4,000 employees. Most of them know their jobs well. As is the case with any large federal agency, some of the employees are politicians who have agendas that are not aligned with the actual mission of their agency.
Anyone who is in denial about the effects of radiation is generally a "baby boomer" or hasn't read what ingested cesium does to human DNA over 20 years in a 0-12yo. Gen Z are aware, cultural changes will be made, these utopian 1950s ideas about the "atomic age" will die.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe this is factual. There are other versions circulating on the net purportedly comparing these cities with the decay in Detroit. Some if not all photos supposedly taken in Detroit are not in fact from that city.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact remains, these Japanese cities have thriving populations today. They are not nuclear deserts.
We all know that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed in August 1945 after explosion of atomic bombs.
However, we know little about the progress made by the people of that land during the past 64 years.
THE COLORFUL CITY NOW
HIROSHIMA - 64 YEARS LATER
http://www.billwilliams.org/hiroshima/index.html
You say "Why should I, an experienced nuclear reactor operator (US Navy), care one iota about the imaginary visions of what Kan thinks might have happened?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause he was at the center of the action when it happened. And he had access to the bests experts of TEPCO and of the USA. Being a far away nuclear reactor operator don't give you access to the same information.
Anybody who has followed the situation from the start know very well that in the first days TEPCO and the prime minister didn't give much information to the public in order to avoid panic in the population.
really, you think that way? how many x rays have you had? how many hours in the sun?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDenial about the effects of radiation is not generally a question of generation as you say. It is more a question of being related to the nuclear industry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTell us oh learned one, how many people have died in nuclear accidents related to power generation versus the number who have died in the process of producing coal generated electricity?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we were told how people were blown to bits or burnt to death.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOver the years the propaganda departments have watered this down and told us the main danger is radiation fom which we can protect ourselves with a layer of paper or a few pills
This has made any incident that even causes the smallest injury or fright in a nuclear plant seem vastly more serious than the thousands killed in mining accidents, oilproduction or dam failiures.
At the time this accident happened, I felt that the truly catastrophic devastation from the tsunami was being overshadowed by the much more mediagenic nuclear drama. It seemed that the nuclear disaster was going to be tremendously expensive, but cost little if any life, and that the Japanese government was taking adequate precautions for people's safety; being if anything overcautious.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn other words, what this article is saying, seemed common sense to me. Why couldn't other people see that at the time? Why can't they see that now?
Speaking of wheeling out "what ifs", we have this little propoganda coup that has come out just in time for the one year anniversary, and is being given significant press (the NYT, for God's sake!)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/world/asia/japan-considered-tokyo-evacuation-during-the-nuclear-crisis-report-says.html?_r=1
Anyone who knows anything about nuclear power plants must be pulling their hair out reading this tripe, especially given that these notions were supposedly being entertained by people of authority.
How can serious (supposedly knowledgeable) people think that an LWR is capable of releasing anything like that, under any circumstances (even if abandoned). Forced evacuation of other plant sites, causing subsequent meltdowns and similar releases?! Are you kidding me!!
The Fukushima release was just about as bad as it can get for an LWR. It released a significant fraction of what Chernobyl did, despite all the fundamental differences that make the maximum possible release for an LWR much less. Nothing was "avoided".
The question is what we do about it when such enormous lies get published. Seriously, all you have to do is have someone, supposedly in authority, engage in wild, baseless speculation, and it gets prominently published, never mind the fact that all experts no that the scenario is utterly baseless and entirely impossible. The high art of propganda....
It is utterly impossible for three LWRs to release 10 times what Chernobyl did, for a host of fundamental reasons.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're right about one thing, though. It is utterly incorrect to say anything was "well contained". Absolutely nothing worked, in terms of limiting the release. The plants released as much as LWRs possibly can, under any circunstances.
Well, someone didn't know what they were talking about, given that there was 100% core damage (full meltdown) in all three reactors (the worst conceivable event), and there were no significant impacts more than 20-25 miles out. The zirc fire concept has always been quite speculative, to put it mildly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTwo things we've learned from this event:
The impacts of worst-case events are much less than we thought (even a total meltdown of multiple reactors causes no deaths).
An evacuation zone of more than ~20 miles is never necessary. Furthermore, there will be plenty of time for an orderly evacuation, for any nuclear accident. The notion of high total doses being delivered to a population in a short period of time is not credible.
NRC has come out and said as much:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_121479.html
Rod,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think it's quite telling that only now, almost a year later, I've finally learned (read) how many people were forced to evacuate due to the earthquake and tsunami (340,000). Of course, both you and I have read about how ~80,000 people had to evacuate due to the nuclear accident, at least ~1000 times by now.
Chernobyl had the reactor core explode(not a nuclear explosion, the first explosion was a steam explosion, and the second was either steam or hydrogen), and thrown all over the place. About 70% of the core was vaporized and thrown into the atmosphere. Radiation levels near the core were ~300 sieverts/hour. So people were getting a fatal dose in minutes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFukishima was NOTHING like chernoybal. The cores are still in the reactor vessels. Sure there was some release of material but nothing like Chernobyl, mabye 1/1000th as much, or less. No one has recieved a fatal dose. Long term some peopel will get cancer that wouldnt have, but there is no real way to say how many this will be. It can be statistically predicted, but it will be a quite small number. Certainly small compared to the number who die in coal mines each year for sure.
Even the Chernobyl disaster caused less than fifty deaths. The ghouls were predicting tens of thousands. What is particularly disgusting is the apparent disappointment by the anti nuclear proponents that their predictions have not materialised.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou say: "You're right about one thing, though. It is utterly incorrect to say anything was 'well contained'"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you of mentioning it. That was really my point.
You say also: "The plants released as much as LWRs possibly can, under any circunstances"
I am very skeptical. What about reactors in fire? What about fire in decades of spent fuel if water no longer brings the temperature down?
The WHO estimated that up to 4000 people could eventually die from Chernobyl, see http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis includes long-term and less easy to quantify effects, such as excess cancer mortality. The "under 50" figure only includes people who obviously died from Chernobyl, like heavily exposed workers who died shortly afterwards.
I trust the WHO's estimate much more than the "under 50" figure, because the WHO seems like an objective middle ground. The pro-nuclear people want to give the lowest possible figure, the anti-nuclear people inflate Chernobyl deaths into the millions, turning blaming all sorts of deaths and birth defects on Chernobyl without evidence.
Even with the 4000 estimated deaths from Chernobyl, the mortality from nuclear energy is 4000 times less than that from coal! see http://ecopolproject.blogspot.com/2011/05/coal-related-deaths-are-higher-than.html This also from the WHO. The WHO estimates that coal kills millions of people, many from the particulates in the air.
I don't want the truth distorted in the pro-nuclear cause even though I believe in it.
This article is horrible. How can you print something like this without any fact checking. If you had you would know that they are grossly distorting reality. The group has a bias problem and industry ties. They also massaged numbers, to fit a desired outcome. It is a shame that journalists will print anything someone important sounding says. It hurts the public debate just as bad as the nonsense that 20,000 people in the US supposedly died due to Fukushima. Both are agenda driven junk. There is a debunking of the claims in this article here http://www.simplyinfo.org/?p=5235
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. There has not been enough testing of enough people to determine the potential outcomes to health.
2. The claim that worker exposures are low is based on number manipulation. A set group has very high exposures. There are thousands working in low rad areas to support the effort.
3. The NGO testing of children is showing thyroid abnormalities in considerable numbers and considerable percentages with internal contamination. More testing needs to be done to get a real picture of the risk. It is both too little data and too soon to make a determination of risk.
4. Japan has a major problem with contaminated food and safe food supply right now. Until that is fully resolved additional internal exposure is a risk.
5. The evac zone and areas outside it are still over the .5 uSv evacuation threshold used at Chernobyl.
Still no big deal?
1 worker with 200 – 250 mSv internal contamination
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1 worker with 150 – 200 mSv internal contamination
5 workers with 100-150 mSv internal contamination
36 workers with 50-100 mSv internal contamination
42 contractors with 50-100 mSv internal contamination
3642 workers & contractors had lower (below 50 mSv) but detected levels of internal contamination. There is also one worker with a 590mSv internal exposure. Plus a few cases of nasty radiation burns and other injuries. There are also at least 3 deaths at the plant that are very suspicious. 1 has been ruled overwork. 2 remain unsolved but have hallmarks of radiation exposure. There are hot spots in the plant high enough to do that.
We don't have the numbers for the Tokyo fire fighters or the SDF soldiers caught in 3's explosion. I would venture their numbers are quite high.
Plus the misnomer that because nobody died right away everything is fine. Cancer has a long latency period. We won't know the answer that "nobody died" from Fukushima likely for decades.
Yes, there are harder to quantify long-term deaths.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever - last I heard, the radiation release at Fukushima was estimated at 1/10 that of Chernobyl.
The WHO estimated that as many as 4000 deaths were caused by Chernobyl, this includes excess cancer deaths etc.
Just guessing, if it's proportional, maybe 400 extra deaths caused by Fukushima?
It does not compare to the millions of deaths the WHO says are caused by coal.
Even with solar power, people fall off rooftops when installing solar panels. I'd guess that the death rate per watt of energy produced by solar power is MUCH higher than for nuclear power.
OK, lillymunster, let's work your numbers. Assuming each worker got a dose in the middle of the range given, we have about 100 person-Sv exposure. It is commonly assumed that you can expect about one radiogenic cancer death per 10-20 person-Sv, various studies yielding numbers in this general range. So, using the least optimistic number, we might expect about ten radiogenic cancer deaths in this population. But typically about 20% of humans die of cancer, so we'd expect about 800 non-radiogenic cancer deaths in this population. Even the statistical standard error here is about +-25, and variation in cancer rates generally is larger. If these numbers are accurate, we'll never see a significant increase in the cancer rate in this population.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd there are reasons to believe this is an overestimate. Given that this is a steeply declining distribution, taking the midrange on each category overestimates the average, and the dose estimate here is dominated by the lowest category, where this effect is probably the largest. Also, the linear model I used probably overestimates the hazard of low doses, and I used a pessimistic coefficient.
Regardless, it is clear that on 3/11, it was far more hazardous to be a child in a school on the coast than to be a nuclear worker in a reactor facility on the coast, even for those workers who continue to have to clean up the mess. This was a titanic catastrophe: don't diminish it by focusing on the relatively minor part that happened at Fukushima.
I don't believe LWR cores can catch on fire. Nothing in there but steel, concrete and water (unlike the highly flammible graphite core at Chernobyl). This is one of many fundamental differences that make the maximum possible release much lower f(than Chernobyl) for an LWR plant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for spent fuel pool zirconium fire, I am deeply skeptical as to whether it is really possible, in the real world.
You say: «However - last I heard, the radiation release at Fukushima was estimated at 1/10 that of Chernobyl»
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA worldwide network of sensors found that levels of radioactive caesium 137 released from the damaged nuclear plant were significantly higher than anticipated, according to the Norwegian Institute for Air Research study.
The Japanese government estimated that 15,000 terabecquerels of caesium were released after the plant was damaged, while the new study put the figure at 36,000 terabecquerels – 40 per cent of the total released from Chernobyl.
From the MIT report on Fukushima,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://mitnse.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/fukushima-lessons-learned-mit-nsp-025_rev1.pdf
"The release of radioactivity from the plant has been large (with contributions also from containment venting)
and some workers have received significant radiation doses (>100 mSv whole-body equivalent), but health risks for them and the general population are expected to be negligible (see Appendix A). In fact, no loss of life has occurred or is expected as a result of the accident. Direct damage and casualties inflicted on Japan by the earthquake and tsunami far exceed any damage caused by the accident at the nuclear plant. The Fukushima accident has been rated at the maximum level (Level 7) on the IAEA nuclear event scale, indicating an accident with large
release of radioactivity accompanied by “widespread health and environmental effects”, like Chernobyl. However, there are very significant differences between Fukushima and Chernobyl. Briefly, the amount of the release (~10% of Chernobyl), the presence of the containment structures, the radionuclides released (mostly iodine and cesium isotopes vs. the entire core
inventory), the physical form of the releases (mostly aqueous vs. volatile), the favorable currents and winds at the site, and the timing of the release with respect to population evacuation resulted in vastly smaller overall consequences."
In other words, estimating mortality by radiation release is probably a big overestimate.
Fukushima is nothing like Chernobyl, which continued operating for 15 years after one of its reactors blew up and now a tourist attraction. Chernobyl is of course worse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can get twice more natural radiation living in the beaches of France (87 rem) than bathing in nuclear radiation of the blown Fukushima reactor (40 rem/hr) The French beachboys will die of cancer first before the Japanese workers.
Dr. Strangelove, do you still love the bomb?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour assertion about the beaches of France deserves a big laugh. Finding some spots of radioactive sand doesn't mean that the beaches of France are more radioactive than the Fukushima reactors!
Your assertion that there are some "spots of radioactive sand" is hilarious. The natural radioactivity of soil and sand depends on the local geology of the whole area. It is not limited to some spots of sand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd yes you get more radiation living in the beaches of France than working in Fukushima. Of the 8,300 workers in Fukushima that responded in accident, only 6 got the highest radiation dosage of 25 rem. The natural annual radiation in the beaches of South-West France is 87 rem.
BTW the "doomsday bomb" prevented nuclear war. The fictional doomsday bomb of Dr. Strangelove was the real-world Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) strategy of the US during the Cold War. Don't you just love the bomb?
You don't have to go to the beaches of France to get the same radiation dosage received by the Fukushima workers (maximum 25 rem). Sunbathing anywhere can give you over 25 rem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTechnically, sunlight is a non-ionizing radiation. However, the ultraviolet (UV-B) part of sunlight has an ionizing effect. It can directly damage the DNA of the skin cells and cause skin cancer. For radiation risk purposes, UV-B may be considered an ionizing radiation like what you get in a nuclear meltdown.
Oh there are health effects and the crude way that you deny it should be evidence enough for any thinking people. Chernobyl has left a health impact in its wake of 7,000,000 sick and ill people. I guess you missed that in your extensive research huh? Fukushima's health effects will be more catastrophic than Chernobyl's ever dreamed of due to the population density. People should learn to read.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFalse. You need to read some of the 3,000 NRC documents that recently came out to see this is false information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are close to a million people already known to have died from the effects of Chernobyl. There are 7,000,000 people living with the consequences every day now, with illness and death as their constant companions. Chernobyl:Consequences for the People and the Environment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFukushima will be worse, by several magnitudes due to population density.
MAN MADE radiation is not akin to the celestial variety: it is much more devastating to the double helix of the DNA... And the doses that the workers at Fukushima got was ALL man made... so many of them, if not most, will die of heart disease, cancer, or a plethora of other diseases that are directly attributable to man made radioactive elements created inside of nuclear reactors and not in NATURE at all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this really must be a joke because there certainly have already been numerous health effects and 300,000 children who are being used as scientific guinea pigs are wearing dosimeters every day. Over half of 3,000 Fukushima children who were TESTED have thyroid lumps already. Nuclear apologists apparently do not read the science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWrong. The 50 mile evacuation zone was to remove American citizens from the reach of the radiation plume, period.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"@multiverse4488 - The radiation exposures that survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were very high and prompt (received in just a couple of microseconds) doses. This is much different than the small doses expected over a period of years from the nuclear accident with dose rates are comparable to what people who live in Colorado receive from natural terrestrial and cosmic ray background sources."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFalse. This model based on high fast external dose is not accurate scientifically. The INTERNAL doses received are much more damaging and are not accounted for in the "standard reference man" model, nor are the damaging effects to developing fetus', infants and children and young people included in this erroneous model. Newer, more SCIENTIFIC models do exist, and those models say something entirely different than what you have to say. There is no safe level of man made radiation. NONE.
Those figures also did not account for the cesium deposits that went out in the jet stream over the Pacific and on to North America... although we do now know that 80% went to the east... so the 1/10th of Chernobyl is not valid. Also, the radiation fell on a much more populous area in Fukushima, and iodine pills were not distributed as they should have been. In 2 to 5 years we will begin to hear the horrors that will be developing in Japan...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen will enough be enough? When it happens in YOUR back yard? Will it matter to you then? PS) How far do you live from a nuke plant? Think about it. The plumes from Daiichi reached beyond Tokyo... which is 170 kilometers... most of us live that close to a nuclear facility of some kind. NO nuclear is the only safe nuclear. Period.
France received fallout from Chernobyl of course the beaches are dangerous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRight... you must not be reading the same NRC docs as I am.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think "we" learned that Jim. The radiation plume extends far beyond 20 miles. Have you not looked into this whatsoever? There is substantial, and long term contamination, this is neptunium and plutonium ok? measured 70 miles from the plant. The core, the fuel rods, were ejected onto the ground. They had to bulldoze them under right where they lay in order to even get men in there to work. The current evac zones are pathetic and insufficient. You must not live anywhere near a nuke plant to be so casual about the effects, devastating effects that come to those who are in the path of the plume...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNobody knows where the cores are-not Tepco, not the Japanese government, not the IAEA or the NRC or NISA or anyone else on this planet knows where the cores are, and just so you know? Unit no. 3 did eject the contents of either its core or its fuel pool and they were found scattered all around the plant right on the ground. They bulldozed them under to try to cut the dose. Did you miss that somehow in your "research"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"MAN MADE radiation is not akin to the celestial variety: it is much more devastating to the double helix of the DNA"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNope. Cosmic ray is more energetic and more devastating than radiation from nuclear reactor. Uranium-235 undergoes alpha decay with 10^7 eV energy. Cosmic ray's energy is over 10^20 eV.
"France received fallout from Chernobyl of course the beaches are dangerous."
Nope. The natural radiation is due to the presence of radioactive potassium-40 in the sand. Other areas in France do not have high radiation level.
"There are close to a million people already known to have died from the effects of Chernobyl."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPessimistic death projections aside, the actual number of confirmed deaths directly attributed to Chernobyl's radiation is 244 according to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR)
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/health_impacts.html
"Over half of 3,000 Fukushima children who were TESTED have thyroid lumps already"
Cite your credible source of this information. Does thyroid lump means cancer? Is that a statistically significant increase in cancer incidence compared to previous years?
Sorry but it is known fact that a huge plume of radiation from Chernobyl covered France, which they initially kept under wraps from the public, and man made radiation is an unnatural thing-we have lived with the cosmic variety from the dawn of time. You may want to look at the Kikk study (http://tekknorg.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/german-kikk-study-higher-cancer-risc-next-to-atomic-power-plants-unofficial-belarussian-children-cancer-data/ ) to educate yourself on the dangers of nuclear reactors and man made radiation, which proves conclusively that people who work at nuclear plants and children who live near them are more prone to develop cancer than those who do not live in close proximity. The NATURAL background radiation, which was already damaging in some areas on the planet, has been UNNATURALLY elevated due to man's meddling in things and now the natural background radiation ain't so natural anymore.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour obvious lack of knowledge about the latency period of radiation damage is showing clearly. My credible source, concerning the children of Fukushima, is the government of Japan, although, at this point, their credibility is much in jeopardy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe UNSCEAR estimate of Chernobyl deaths has been disproved on every front, and if you will note the studies, over 5,000 of them in the slavic languages mostly, by the most renowned scientists on the actual scene of the damage from Chernobyl rather than the 350 or so english language only ones that were used to reach the hideously low estimate that continues to be touted by nuclear apologists far and wide, you will see that the actual condition is far more dire than that which was recorded in the report which you cite. I guide you once again to Alexey Yablokov, and the reality of what this disaster brought upon those people. It is estimated in some communities in Belarus that there are less than 20% healthy children. Does that sound like zero effect to you? It does not to me.
And yes, these thyroid lumps are very rare in children, so this is a disturbing number of them already showing these signs that ill health is around the corner for them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot in the least is estimating mortality by radiation release an overestimate...If anything, it is grossly underestimated. Also most of the "lessons learned" are nothing more than smoke and mirrors. NO lessons have been learned as long as nuclear is allowed to continue to murder our children.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIsn't it funny that the Big Oil shill Atomiclies is doing just that - spewing a bunch of lies a continual stream of them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll the recent peer reviewed science published in reputable journal on radiation doses show doses under 100 msv are not dangerous at all - more than an individual would have received sitting at the FUKU front gate.
His junk science has no explanation for the peer reviewed science published in reputable journal that shows folks in Ramsar Iran have peak yearly doses of 260 mSv far higher than anything outside the Fukushima plant itself but have a lower incidence of cancer than average. Other studies have found the same results in folks that lived in radiation environments as high as 900 mSV per annum. The US average is under 3.
"Sorry but it is known fact that a huge plume of radiation from Chernobyl covered France, which they initially kept under wraps from the public"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry but your pronouncement and conspiracy theory does not make it a fact. To be factual, it must be based on credible scientific studies, which you have none.
"man made radiation is an unnatural thing-we have lived with the cosmic variety from the dawn of time."
Of course man-made is unnatural dhuh... That cosmic rays exist since the dawn of time has nothing to do with the fact that they are more energetic and more devastating than radiation from nuclear fission.
"You may want to look at the Kikk study"
Yes an interesting study. You should note the following:
1) Its hypothesis on the link between cancer and nuclear plants is contradicted by previous studies by the same scientists and numerous studies by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation
2) The authors of the study contradicted their own hypothesis and they concluded: “In view of the fact that this result was not expected under current radiation-epidemiological knowledge, and considering that there is no evidence of relevant accidents, and that possible confounders could not be identified, the observed (negative) distance trend remains unexplained.”
"Your obvious lack of knowledge about the latency period of radiation damage is showing clearly."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour ignorance is more obvious. One year is too short to determine if cancer would develop. Apparently you think it is enough. (of course if the radiation dosage is too low, it will have negligible effect)
"My credible source, concerning the children of Fukushima, is the government of Japan"
Another unsupported pronouncement. Show me the official statement of the government of Japan.
"The UNSCEAR estimate of Chernobyl deaths has been disproved on every front, and if you will note the studies, over 5,000 of them in the slavic languages mostly"
UNSCEAR is more credible than your unknown and obscure studies. BTW do you speak Slavic? How do you know what these studies are saying?
"It is estimated in some communities in Belarus that there are less than 20% healthy children"
That's your estimate but you have no credibility. Where are the scientific studies?
Atomic-lies, is certainly an appropriate name for the drivel Mr. Shill for Big Oil/NG puts out. Notice Atomic-lies man totally ignores and could care less about the much higher radiation emissions from NG fracking wastewater:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.propublica.org/article/is-the-marcellus-shale-too-hot-to-handle-1109
www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27gas.html?_r=4&ref=homepage&src=me&pagewanted=all
Also no interest on the Mud Volcano in Indonesia, caused by Natural Gas drilling, that releases 6 million cubic feet of mud per day, causing the evacuation of 13,000 families already & a dozen deaths, homes buried forever, and is expected to continue for another 80 yrs. Compared to which the Fukushima Nuclear Incident looks like a bad rainy day.
www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Worlds-Muddiest-Disaster.html
Notice the mainstream media doesn't cover that story.
And Atomic-lies' Bible - by Alexi Yablokov is apparently some sort of ancient cetacean biologist who got grandfathered into the Russian Academy and has ZERO qualifications in Radiation Health Physics. His report is transformed into overpriced arse-wipe by this report by a REAL Russian Radiation Health Physicist, M.I.Balonov :
atomicinsights.com/2011/10/devastating-review-of-yablokovs-chernobyl-consequences-of-the-catastrophe-for-people-and-the-environment.html
"...Prof. Yablokov and his coauthors give extensive references to the media, commercial publications, websites of public organizations, or even unidentified ones, to justify their ideas. These are also the source for statistical data on demography, morbidity, etc., which is not considered seriously by the scientific community. Most of the references are conference proceedings, abstracts of theses, and brochures in Russian, all hitherto unknown to the world and hardly accessible even in the former Soviet Union, not to mention the rest of the world. Thus, independent verification or clarification of the data presented by the authors is virtually impossible..."
"...the author proposes so-called ecological or geographic technologies,... are compared. However, international experience in radiation epidemiology has repeatedly demonstrated that this approach leads to erroneous conclusion..."
Reputable analysis of the Chernobyl incident by ACTUAL Radiation Health Scientists:
http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Observations-on-Chernobyl-21st-Century-1.pdf
http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/who_chernobyl_report_2006.pdf
You live in Sendai huh? And in all your wisdom have determined that it's all good? That is the most ridiculous thing that I think I have ever heard in my entire life. REAL scientists know the dangers of man made radiation, and the nuclear industry with their agenda is hardly representative of REAL science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is about a nuclear disaster-period and the lies being propagated by its industry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://tekknorg.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/german-kikk-study-higher-cancer-risc-next-to-atomic-power-plants-unofficial-belarussian-children-cancer-data/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.ratical.org/radiation/Chernobyl/Chernobyl@10p2.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the first part of this article (Spring 1996 Pathfinder) I compared the recent trivialization of Chernobyl's consequences to news accounts that appeared soon after the explosions and fire. For example, while the commercial press now tell us that the disaster "spread radiation across parts of Europe," the fact is that the federal EPA announced in mid-May 1986 that, "Airborne radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear accident is now so widespread that it is likely to fall to the ground wherever it rains in the United States."[4]
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe U.S. government's Argonne National Lab has said that 30 percent of the reactor's total radioactivity -- 3 billion of an estimated 9 billion curies -- was released.[6] And scientists at the U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Lab suggested that one-half of the core's radioactivity was spewed -- 4.5 billion curies, according the World Information Service on Energy, quoting Science, 6-13-86.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVladimir Chernousenko, the chief scientific supervisor of the "clean up" team responsible for a 10-kilometer zone around the exploded reactor, says that 80 percent of the reactor's radioactivity escaped, something like seven billion curies.[7] At the Union of Concerned Scientists, senior energy analyst Kennedy Maize, concluded that "the core vaporized" -- all 190 tons of fuel, and all 9 billion curies.[8]
Former Chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Joseph Hendrie, concluded likewise, saying "They have dumped the full inventory of volatile fission products from a large power reactor into the environment. You can't do any worse than that."[9] http://www.ratical.org/radiation/Chernobyl/Chernobyl@10p2.html
The British Medical Journal reported in 1995 that the rate of thyroid cancer in the region north of Chernobyl -- Ukraine and Belarus -- is 200 times higher than normal, and the (British) Imperial Cancer Research Fund found a 500 percent increase in thyroid cancers among Ukrainian children between 1986 and 1993.[14]
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I find so amazing and surreal is that many of the posters here deny radiation effect, and that is one of the most ignorant opinions of all time, and leads me to the conclusion that such individuals know little or next to nothing about radiation. I mean, come one, no effect? REALLY??? Seriously? This is your argument? It fails, miserably.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rzZEIbnyibg#!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMarie Curie? died of leukemia after her work with radiation? Ringing any bells?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRadiation 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
Big Oil Shill, Atomic Lies can't handle the truth.
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.
"...adiation’s principal effect is on the defences. Low radiation doses/levels stimulate all the defences 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 tumours 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 = 4000 rad in a month. 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..."
Blah... if you live five years and one day you make it into the survival statistics. Die the next day? It is not recorded as a cancer death. How about that? I personally know people who have died with cancer-very personally-you?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo-it is the destruction of the double helix of the dna that causes THAT.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHacks. haha You are so witty. Hack. That's a good one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProvide the links to the reports of the British Medical Journal and the (British) Imperial Cancer Research Fund that you quoted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour claims are contradicted by the report of Dr. Jaworowski of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection (Poland) and former Chairman of UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.
To quote Dr. Jaworowski:
Fourteen years after the Chernobyl accident in the officially termed "highly contaminated" areas of the former Soviet Union, except for thyroid cancers, no increase in incidence in solid cancers and leukemia was reported. In its 2000 Report, UNSCEAR stated that the "population need not live in fear of serious health consequences", and "generally positive prospects for the future health of most individuals should prevail" [6]. No epidemics of cancers in the Northern Hemisphere, direly predicted from the LNT assumption to reach tens and hundreds of thousands, or even millions of cases, has ever occurred.
The number of 1800 new thyroid cancers registered among the children from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine should be viewed in respect to extremely high occurrence of the "occult" thyroid cancers in normal populations [11-14]. These cancers, not presenting adverse clinical effects, are detected at post mortem, or by ultrasonography examinations. Their incidence ranges from 5% in Colombia, to 9% in Poland, 13% in the USA, and 35% in Finland [12]. In Finland occult thyroid cancers appear in 2.4% of children 0 to 15 year old [11]. In Minsk, Belarus the normal incidence of occult thyroid cancers is 9.3% [15]. The greatest incidence of "Chernobyl" thyroid cancers in children under 15 years old, of 0.027%, was registered in 1994 in the Bryansk region of Russia, which was less by a factor of about 90 than the normal incidence of occult thyroid cancers among the Finnish children. The "Chernobyl" thyroid cancers are of the same type and similarly invasive as the occult cancers [13]. The first increase of these cancers was registered in 1987 in the Bryansk region, Russia, one year after the accident. Since 1995, the number of registered cancers tends to decline. This is not in agreement with what we know about radiation induced thyroid cancers, the latency time for which is about 5 years after irradiation, and the risk of which increases until 15 - 29 years after exposure [6].
I was able to do this research myself. You may do the same or not, it is of little to no consequence to me. BUT the science stands very strong and very clear that radiation is harmful to humans. Do you seriously think that all these nuclear wastelands are just that way for no reason? If so? Then there is no point in even continuing this debate, as you are sorely ill informed and lacking any sound basis in your arguments. Radiation is harmful to humans, and the man made variety is even worse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no safe dose limit. - K.Z. Morgan, former ICRP president.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this20 milli sievert per year for infants in children in Japan.
20 milli siever per year = standard for nuclear reactor workers.
ICRP Publication Number 8 from 1966 on page 60. in relation to the health damage caused by natural radiation for the bulk of the world's population is a risk of sixth order (1 to 10 dead per million per rad / gray) in a few areas with high natural background radiation the risk fifth order. 10 to 100 dead per million and rad (gray).
According to the National Cancer Institute, cancer incidence (all sites) in the US increased by 55% between 1950 and 1995; the trends in Europe and other industrialised nations are similar. Non-smoking related cancers are responsible for about 75% of the overall increased incidence of cancer since 1950, and cannot be explained in terms of better detection or ageing. Cancer incidence increases in parallel with gross national product and industrialisation but the obvious explanation for this phenomenon – environmental pollution, chemical and radioactive – is ignored. Perversely, victims are blamed for their lifestyles http://www.preventcancer.com/books/about/cancer_gate.html
“Background radiation is also the primary reason why women aged over ~40 are advised not to have children. (…) Many scientists also consider that background radiation is the prime factor in the ageing process, and is ultimately the reason why we are not immortal”: PAGE 5 http://www.odwac.gov.on.ca/standards_review/tritium/Tritium_Radiation_Risks_Additional_Note_for_ODWAC_Fairlie.pdf
In 1970 it was proven that human fetus is 500 times more vulnerable to radiation. And in 1978 this was released in the bulletin of atomic scientists: http://books.google.de/books?id=aAoAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=cancer+stewart+xray+1970+radiographs&source=bl&ots=UGZYt0TZGo&sig=ENE9wYZjjNs3Rh2XyptdZwP3Ucw&hl=de&ei=7545Tu6iF8aAOsLrvbMG&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
“…To provide an adequate safety standard the dose limit of 1 mSv/y have to be reduced to 0.02 mSv/y or 20 µSv/y.”Page 9: http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~kunih/all-doc/stoakuni.pdf
The main part of the radiation dose is accumulated by the population with the consumption of food: 70 - 90 %. To eat, the children have to take the masks off. Invest in these products, the people in Japan and Belarus need it:
with scientific regards,
It's too early to close the fukushima-files.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe full effects are:
latency 1 - 4 years for children (because of mitosis)
latency 20 - 25 years for adults.
"Weakening of the victim, then another radiation shocks" -> Based on the long term follow up of the population exposed to ionizing radiation due to residence near nuclear testing fields in the period 1949-1962 increased chromosome aberration were detected not only in directly exposed population but also in their children and grandchildren. Unstable chromosome aberrations ( dicentrics and rings) were detected in children of parents who were exposed to radiation as part of anticancer therapy. Cells of such children also express higher radiosensitivity. http://www.springerlink.com/content/f373917263h7hxg6/
At least three million children in Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation require physical treatment (due to the Chernobyl accident). Not until 2016, at the earliest, will we know the full number of those likely to develop serious medical conditions.
with scientific regards,
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/Chernobyl/Chernobyl@10p2.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttps://www.facebook.com/fukushima311watchdogs For those who seek the TRUTH about this disaster-we are watching!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswow ... I cannot believe the comments i am seeing here. The article alone is simply another attempt at minimizing what will happened next. But i will not go into a debate. Ignorance is bliss; and i would hate to ruin everyone's day. I will just point out 3 quick personal opinions and then you can go on with your "radiation is safe" theory;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. My friends in Iwaki, Koriyama and Fukushima City are clearly measuring crazy amount of radiation. Of course it is all presumably Cesium but they got smarter and know there is Strontium, Plutonium, Cobalt etc ... Thank god, they do not read articles like this one, so within 2 days, I heard that three of the couples I know have decided to evacuate! I am so happy for them.
2. Here is for example a couple of "scientists" (on top of my head) that clearly should change their day jobs;FLASHBACK; March 15th 2011
British Embassy Tokyo
Announcement; The Government's Chief Scientific Officer Professor John Beddington
"In the reasonable worst case scenario at Fukushima, a plume would only be emitted to a maximum height of 500m, so any radioactive cloud would land very close to the reactor. "
http://ukinjapan.fco.gov.uk/en/news/?view=News&id=566406782
The other funny guy was one Japanese scientist claiming that Plutonium has did not go as far as the surroundings of Daiichi. errrr ... wrong! Plutonium spread as far as Chiba (and beyond but that is unofficial)
3. With all these information we accumulate, we tend to forget a very simple fact; In Japan, legal levels of radiation exposure were set to 1 mSv / yr.
Not 5, (evacuation in Chernobyl)
not 20 (radiation levels set for nuclear workers)
not 100 (levels sociopath Yamashita thinks it's safe)
not 1200 (an other sociopath Wade Allisson)
a simple "1" (ya know between 0 and 2)
Those are international standards and have been set for a reason. This number can never be broken ... even to fit a nuclear crisis ... and that has been that way for as long as I can remembered! How about we stick to that!
Anyway, I would suggest all you, before continuing debating on the safety of radiation exposure, in the comfort of your house (and while my friend is still crying after bringing her kid for a check up, finding out the child still is peeing Cesium after 1 year of evacuating "March 12th") that you prepare yourselves to apologize profusely in a few years from now to the nuclear victims in the great nation of Japan! By the way, my friend with the kid lives now 650km off Daiichi! Just food for thought!
Nelson
that says; your "local" newspaper is feeding the propaganda, perfectly coordinated by your local authorities. I understand you are trying not to give in to panic, specially given your location. I will not go into a debate, simply hoping you and your loved ones will stay safe!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy FAR AND AWAY, the biggest environmental issue after the Tohoku Earthquake was the EXTRAORDINARY amount of Chemical & Heavy Metal Toxins, Mutagens, Carcinogens, Teratogens, Neurotoxins, Embryotoxins and Endocrine Disruptors released into the land, sea, air & water. Transformers filled with PCB's are converted into some of the most deadly carcinogens human civilization has ever created, like Polychlorinated dibenzofurans, 0.1 gms is a fatal dose for an adult.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMinimum required Industrial Site Remediation MUST include removing all gasoline, diesel, lubricants from any vehicles and take to a registered Toxic Waste Disposal Site. All Fluorescent, Mercury HID lamps & ballasts which contain Mercury & PCB's must be taken to a special site for safe Disposal. All Transformers which contain PCB's and Chlorinated Hydrocarbons must be taken to specialized Decontamination Facility. All Batteries, which contain heavy metal toxins such as Lead, Antimony and Cadmium and dangerous acids, must be sent to a specialized facility for recycling. All Asbestos materials, from Electrical Switchroom tiles & insulation to tiles, pipe & furnace insulation and wallboard - must be painstakingly removed using a tedious Hazardous Substance Removal procedure. All Toxic & Ozone depleting Refrigerants must be removed for safe disposal, not dumped into the atmosphere.
Thousands of chemicals, that are routinely stored in Mechanical Shops, Industrial Facilities, Shopping Centers, Cleaning Facilities, such as Chlorinated Hydrocarbons, Fluorocarbons, Dioxins, Pesticides, Heavy Metal products, Toxic Paints, Acids, Dyes, Solvents, etc need to be removed for safe disposal. This is not being done in Japan, following the Earthquake/ Tsunami and Oil/NG companies have a blank check to release any amount of deadly POP’s, Arsenic, Cyanide, PAH’s and hundreds of other chemical toxins into the atmosphere. People are burning Toxic waste in giant bonfires in order to quickly clean up the massive debris piles.
www.japanfocus.org/-Winifred-Bird/3588
ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/static/pdf/ehp.119-a290.s001.pdf
"...officials in hard-hit areas such as Miyagi prefecture — where Japan's respected emperor and empress visited tsunami evacuees Wednesday — acknowledge they have yet to focus on asbestos and the potential contamination of other such airborne particles...There are people not even wearing masks[against asbestos]. This is like a suicidal act,..."
Notice that the Big Oil Media has nothing to say about that.
"I was able to do this research myself. You may do the same or not, it is of little to no consequence to me."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see you believe you are an expert on nuclear radiation. I don't do my own research because I do not pretend to be an expert. I rely on the research of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) Nothing is of consequence to you except your own irrational belief.
"BUT the science stands very strong and very clear that radiation is harmful to humans."
This is a half truth. Radiation is harmful to humans depending on the radiation dosage. The radiation doasages received by Fukushima workers were less than that from natural radiation in some places.
"Do you seriously think that all these nuclear wastelands are just that way for no reason?"
The primary reasons are fear and extreme precaution. To err on the side of safety, so to speak. There are wildlife and tourism in the so-called "nuclear wasteland" in Chernobyl. The radiation level in some areas is lower than in Finland.
"Then there is no point in even continuing this debate, as you are sorely ill informed and lacking any sound basis in your arguments."
You must be speaking of your own irrational fear of man-made radiations.
"Radiation is harmful to humans, and the man made variety is even worse."
If you truly believe this, why don't you file a case against radiologists for harming their patients? X-rays, CT scans, chemotheraphy, nuclear medicine. They are all harmful man-made radiations according to you.
@mikkai
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"At least three million children in Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation require physical treatment (due to the Chernobyl accident). Not until 2016, at the earliest, will we know the full number of those likely to develop serious medical conditions."
These are precautionary dosages to prevent diseases. It doesn't mean they are all sick. Thyroid cancer incidence in the region is lower than in the US and Finland, and declining since 1995.
@nelson
"we tend to forget a very simple fact; In Japan, legal levels of radiation exposure were set to 1 mSv / yr."
This is not an international standard. Countries have different legal limits. It is driven more by politics than science. In Norway, the natural radiation is 11.3 mSv/yr. In New York, the natural radiation is 4.5 mSv/yr. In medical practice, adverse health effect or symptoms of radiation sickness clearly manifest at 1,000 mSv.
The 1998 World Health Organization (WHO) study claimed 212 deaths over 12 years from the 72,000 workers who cleaned up Chernobyl and exposed themselves to high radiation. This death toll figure was endorsed by the activist environmentalist group Greenpeace. This translates to 0.025% mortality rate for this high-risk population.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNote that the average mortality rate in the US is 0.84% according the CIA Factbook (2012). The average American is more likely to die than the so-called Chernobyl "liquidators." So much for the Chernobyl fear.
@nelson
The 1 mSv/yr legal limit of radiation exposure in Japan must be a joke because the average natural radiation in Japan is 1.5 mSv/yr and worldwide is 2.4 mSv/yr. They should ban nature.
I'd like to share this little known fact to dispel the widespread fear of Chernobyl and now Fukushima.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAccording to the National Cancer Registry of Ukraine, from 1989 to 2006 the highest incidence of thyroid cancer in the country was 0.001% for males and 0.005% for females.
Now compare that to the thyroid cancer incidence in the US according to the World Health Organization (WHO) 0.005% for males and 0.015% for females. The average American male and female are 5 times and 3 times more likely to develop thyroid cancer than Ukrainians who live near Chernobyl.
The radioactive materials released by Fukushima is one-tenth the amount of Chernobyl. In other words, Chernobyl was 10 times worse than Fukushima.