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Little Health Risk Seen From Fukushima's Radioactivity
gbrumfiel writes "Two independent reports show that the public and most workers received only low doses of radiation following last year's meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Nature reports that the risks presented by the doses are small, even though some are above guidelines and limits set by the Japanese government. Few people will develop cancer as a result of the accident, and those that do may never be able to conclusively link their illness to the meltdowns. The greatest risk lies with the workers who struggled in the early days to bring the reactors under control. So far no ill-effects have been detected. At Chernobyl, by contrast, the highest exposed workers died quickly from radiation sickness."
You know, I'm really considering selling this damned Y2K bunker.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
The biggest issue in this whole incident was the comparison with Chernobyl. The slightest mention of that name creates panic. Compare something to it, and you'll get a mass of hysterical people.
Of course, that is the approach taken by most media these days.
Jim, I think you'd better get down here.... Better hurry...
You're obviously not a real anti-nuke activist. If you were, you'd know it's pronounced "nuke-yu-lar", as in "these power plants will nuke you!"
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Tatsuhiko Kodama, head of the radioisotope centre at the University of Tokyo and an outspoken critic of the government, questions the reports’ value. “I think international organizations should stop making hasty reports based on very short visits to Japan that don’t allow them to see what is happening locally,” he says.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
After all the lies during the events I have serious doubts about anything coming from official sources there. Its like listing to Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf and thinking "oh yes he has to be telling the truth this time".
"There is little health risks from the Fukashima reactor anamoly"
This is really disgusting because it damages the viability of nuclear power, and that is a resource we should be expanding and modernizing and not getting rid of.
There's been so much lying going on about the whole incident that I just can't believe anything being said about it anymore. If I lived anywhere close to it I'd demand a real investigation, not the usual "foreign 'experts' come, do a tour about the Tokio night clubs and write what they're supposed to" kind.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Mainchi reported on Monday: The storage pool in the No. 4 reactor building has a total of 1,535 fuel rods, or 460 tons of nuclear fuel, in it. The 7-story building itself has suffered great damage, with the storage pool barely intact on the building’s third and fourth floors. The roof has been blown away. If the storage pool breaks and runs dry, the nuclear fuel inside will overheat and explode, causing a massive amount of radioactive substances to spread over a wide area. Both the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and French nuclear energy company Areva have warned about this risk."
I am too. There was a lot of radiation released by Fukushima. Don't tell everyone to panic but don't lie and, in effect, tell everyone they are going to be okay either. It is a known fact that gamma radiation destroys DNA. I think one can link some cancers to gamma ray exposure.
That's some tasty FUD right there, yep...
Not being able to say for sure why one has cancer or some birth defects doesn't make it any less sad or less of a burden on families and healthcare.
Neither does knowing for certain. Cancer and birth defects are terrible illnesses, but the radiation levels from Fukushima are so low as to get lost in the background noise of, say, radiation from a nearby kumquat. There's no way to say the cancer was caused by Fukushima, and no way to say it wasn't caused by a nice sunny day.
No doubt many of the cancers we've had in the U.S. that were a result of the nuclear testing era weren't identified either.
Given that cancer cases have been recorded since before any nuclear tests, and all nuclear tests and fallout have been recorded, it's actually possible to figure out the probable death tolls from testing. Spoiler: they're somewhere between "nobody" and "fewer than have died this year from cholera".
Maybe the nuclear deterrent saved us, but it wasn't without a price.
Of course not. The United States dropped a 15-kiloton bomb on Hiroshima, killing 125,000 people. A few days later, a 21-kiloton bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing about 45,000. That's around 170,000 people who died for the "deterrent". Does it really matter that those people died from a nuclear bomb, or would it somehow be better if we'd dropped a ton of regular ol' incendiary bombs, then kept fighting the war for a few more years?
Say, why did the head of the NRC resign? Bad choices with Yucca Mountain? A bit slow to deal with some vulnerability? Someone under his desk? Poor health or another personal issue?
Maybe it was death threats from anti-nuclear Luddites, or, simply exhaustion from the pressure of being a public figure, or annoyance with the continual ignorance of the masses fighting against one of the most promising technologies of the 20th century.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Yeah, it's modern times. Anyway... when I read news I try to get both alternative and mainstream sources covered. I reckon, as the quote goes... truth is usually somewhere in the middle. Having said that, I read a lot recently about fukushima reactor #4. Here's a snippet:
[quote]
The troubled Reactor 4 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is at the centre of this potential catastrophe.
Reactor 4 -- and to a lesser extent Reactor 3 -- still hold large quantities of cooling waters surrounding spent nuclear fuel, all bound by a fragile concrete pool located 30 metres above the ground, and exposed to the elements.
A magnitude 7 or 7.5 earthquake would likely fracture that pool, and disaster would ensue, says Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer with Fairewinds Energy Education who has visited the site.
The 1,535 spent fuel rods would become exposed to the air and would likely catch fire, with the most-recently added fuel rods igniting first.
The incredible heat generated from that blaze, Gundersen said, could then ignite the older fuel in the cooling pool, causing a massive oxygen-eating radiological fire that could not be extinguished with water.
[/quote]
So what happened until now I guess shouldn't be the focus of media attention, but rather how to deal with reactor #4 - of course, if these statements are true.
Here's url to the full article:
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20120518/fukushima-dai-ichi-risk-reactor-4-120519/
...already covered this
Nice to see others have finally figured the same thing out.
1. That article is over a year old, rendering any discussion about Iodine moot.
2. Even a year ago, the levels were well below EPA standards.
3. Do they even do regular testing of milk in Vermont for radiation?
Please, if you're going try and make a point then you should try to be a little less "chicken little" about it.
Just as everywhere else in the developed world. (Although actual figures in US states vary between 35% and 53% of people getting cancer - no evacuations so far, despite hugely increased risk in some states.)
There was. The vast majority of it vanished over the past year as the iodine decayed. The majority of the remainder is now washed out to sea and will likely be indistinguishable from the normal radioisotope content of the ocean as is.
So they'll need to do some cleanup and keep an eye on things with their doctor. It's not like everyone will have some hideous cancer as a direct result of this. Get back to me in a couple decades when rates of incidence are trackable and we can see what happened, when, and to who.
Chernobyl is not exactly a fair comparison. That was a massive release with so much radiation in some places you could actually taste it.
Like it or not, Fukushima actually demonstrated that in an absolutely worst case nightmare scenario the releases would not be that bad.
What I think is funny are the people who worry about getting cancer from the minuscule, barely measurable radiation drifting in weather patterns and then sit down to a breakfast of bacon and eggs. Processed meats have a much better statistical correlation for cancer than micro levels of radioactive isotopes, some of which occur naturally.
I know, I know. I'm going to burn in hell now for ripping on bacon.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
true but if the majority of radiation was alpha it is easily blocked unless ingested.
Since what got carried away in the explosions and water was alpha and beta, The danger is less. most of that has become heavily diluted in the ocean.
Radiation has many different effects depending on type. a high dose of one has a different short term, and then long term effect.
Gamma goes through everything but doesn't stick around as much.
Alpha can stick around in an environment for decades continuously poisoning and re-poisoning those who come in contact with it.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
There's no point in mass fear, the illnesses and deaths are largely spread out over both time and distance and as such pass by mostly without mention. But the deaths are still real.. The people that were alive between 1948 and 1970 (the period of exposure) are/were the primary ones affected. I've known a couple of people that turned out to be from the midwest (one of the harder hit regions from Nevada testing) who had leukemia (they're dead now). Back in the day we didn't know any better. There's a reason we eventually did away with atmospheric testing and have sought to avoid additional contamination.
The incident in Japan has left much of the nation much like the U.S. is, with "background" levels elevated. (The U.S. "background" levels are about double what is seen in someplace like Australia. Except for the area hit in WWII, Japan was mostly low too.) Although a small percentage of the population is affected, the U.S. certainly has/will see some additional cancer cases from Chernobyl, the Japanese accident in 1981 (accident very well covered up, a sodium reactor leaked for months with hundred of workers exposed beyond normal limits, and was measurable in the U.S.) and later from the events of last year. Beware of "science" saying that low level radiation is good. It seems that the people doing those studies have also "shown" that mice do better with low level doses of all sorts of other nasties too. Who would have known how wonderful toxins are? (call it science concocted for defense attorneys) Absorbed like calcium, baby-boomers to this day have strontium-90 in their teeth and bones.
Certainly the risk varied considerable, and like fallout from accidents, the hotspots depended on combinations of timing, the wind, rainfall, and what one ate. For Iodine-131 there have been detailed estimates. If you were a female born in the 50's in someplace like Nebraska, and drank a fair amount of goats milk from animals that were pasture fed, the risk was (and for survivors still is) very significant. Risk was less for those drinking less, it wasn't quite as high with cows, and it was lower from animals fed hay indoors. (A lesson from that is to have a couple of months feed hay in reserve to reduce the exposure via milk during the time it takes for I-131 to go through enough half-lives)
It's only for I-131, and then only for the Nevada tests (other sources not included), but have some fun with the risk calculator if you were around back in the day.
https://ntsi131.nci.nih.gov/
The rest can laugh it off I suppose. The Japanese fishermen that can back to Japan with serious radiation exposure from the South Pacific tests did inspire the Godzilla and friends monster movies after all, so something good came of it.
It's true. If they don't nuke you now, they will nuke you la'r.
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
No, if we'd firebombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we'd probably have killed a lot more people than were killed by the nuclear blasts - hills can protect you from a nuke blast if you're in their shadow, but not so much if you're being chased by a firestorm.
Note that Tokyo suffered a million-plus casualties from a couple-three firebombings...
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Nuclear tech saves many lives every day(Cancer treatment and detection), as well as powering the most likely long term energy solution.
The Japanese did not use graphite moderated reactors for very well known reasons, Chernobyl being the best example of those reasons... (Negative steam void reactivity coefficient, was a major one, iirc.)
The reactors at Chernobyl were pretty much updated versions of the ones we built during WWII to make plutonium, also iirc.
Idiocy=Bad.
Any tech is only as bad or good as what you use it for, and how you use it is your problem to explain.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Cancer and birth defects are terrible illnesses, but the radiation levels from Fukushima are so low as to get lost in the background noise of, say, radiation from a nearby kumquat.
Do kumquat trees draw cesium or some other isotope from the soil like sunflowers do? Sunflower seeds often show radiation. They were even testing them in Japan as a possible measure to help clean the soil, but from what I read they didn't remove enough to be useful, and the plants themselves needed special disposal afterwards.
The U.S. levels in the air were low, yes (expect very few cases of lung cancer from that compared to other sources such as decaying radon coming from our soil, building materials, and in water supplies - especially in Texas), but there were much higher concentrations seen in some rainfall. Although not reported on the EPA site, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo had both Iodine-131 and Cesium 134/137 showing up in the milk from the university dairy unit pasture-fed cows. Some places in the U.S. had rainfall testing 1000 times the FDA allowable limit for drinking water. Even the Cal Poly milk was above the amount allowed in drinking water. At least I-131 doesn't last long. They quit showing test results for S.L.O. milk, so it isn't apparent just how much of the cesium present had been directly deposited on the grass the cows ate versus how much was absorbed through the soil. The amounts are not huge, but whatever is left in the soil is going to be there for decades. Average figures tend to hide the fact that there are hot spots, some seen even on the east coast. Most of the radiation that caused cancer in Sweden from Chernobyl is believed to have been the result of what was in rainfall on a particular day.
If you look at cancer reporting in California tabulated over the years and broken out by group, there are a couple of cancers rising significantly particularly in women, and the curves are getting steeper. Yes, the total percentage of the population affected is small, but people are being affected. (The timing of the rises would correlate with Chernobyl as the cause). The fact that there is some radiation from the soil and space (even brief spikes during solar flares), doesn't make radiation any more desirable.
I actually thought the head of the NRC, Chairman Gregory Jaczko, had recently done a reasonable job, but I'd like to know more. Not everyone that has concerns about nuclear power or feels that low-level radiation is still worth minimizing is anti-nuclear. Don't discredit citizens with legitimate concerns, throwing out utter nonsense about threats. Talk about pure FUD...
Republican Congressman Lee Terry of Nebraska had a few things to say, but was exceptionally vague. It's hard to trust much during an election year, especially attacks, but the fact that Jaczko resigned seems to validate that there was an issue. It seems to be a combination of management style and selectively withholding information to get his way. We should demand transparency, even if some of the details require educating people to keep the public calm. He does deserve credit for the U.S. being more on target than what Japanese officials were saying as to the (greater) area that was a high risk place to be. A campaign of lies, denying the consequences of releases, seems a big mistake to me. Only through honestly facing important issues can we hope to effectively manage them.
http://leeterry.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1712
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2115375,00.html
Gamma emitters are moderately dangerous, but alpha emitters can safely be stored under your bed
Not quite. IANA health physicist, but from my reading of Wikipedia, alpha emitters can be the most dangerous of all if they get into your body, because then they dump all their energetic payload into a tissue-paper-width of actual tissue.
So: safe to store under your bed only if they are a solid block of metal. Not at all safe if they are breathable aerosol particles, less safe if they are particles which fall out of the sky onto your food crops or fish, even less safe if they are functional analogues of chemicals that living tissue stores and concentrates long-term, such as strontium, potassium or iodine.
Radioisotopes of potassium seem to hit the sweet spot of maximum bio-damage. Light enough to carry on the wind and fall out on crops kilometres away from the leak site, half-life in the years rather than days, and incorporated into the body and potentially can be concentrated up the food chain (though not for as long as strontium, I believe). And the cancer rate from them will definitely not be measured in bananas.
Does that seem like a correct assessment to you?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Please see http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/denson7.html.
It argues that those 170,000 people died unnecessarily.
A banana gives off about 15 Bq of radiation, or about 400 picocuries.
The article you've liked to is talking about quantities of Cs-137 giving off about 3 picocuries per liter of milk. A banana is literally over 100x more radioactive.
The high reading of 390 picocuries of I-131 per liter of rainwater a year ago means drinking a liter of that "contaminated" rainwater carries pretty much the same radiation risk as eating a banana.
By giving the other extream you are not invaladiting the nuclear energy is a valid and safe power source when managed properly.
Nuclear energy is a very efficient power source, and we should be expanding it, and stop falling pry to the feet mongers who doesn't know the difference between nuclear energy and a nuclear bomb.
That said it does have some responsibility because it does have dangerious after products, and needs tone well maintain.
However right now, the left is afraid of nuclear, and the right doesn't want to control it. A stupid combination.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
However right now, the left is afraid of nuclear, and the right doesn't want to control it.
I'm "the left*," and I'm not afraid of nuclear; I support nuclear energy because I care about the environment and acknowledge society's need for a continually-increasing supply of (low-emission, base-load) energy. I know there are others on the left (here on Slashdot) that agree.
* The actual left, not Obama's conservative "left."
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
The thing I invite you to ask yourself is this: "Who lied to you?" I live in Japan and speak Japanese passably (though the vocabulary related to nuclear disasters was not a forte of mine at the beginning of the incident). One of the biggest problems I've had with this whole thing is that the information presented in the west by reputable news outlets was *different* from the information being presented in Japan. What was all the more infuriating was that the lies uncovered by the western media were never told in Japan in the first place (as far as I could tell).
I kept listening to the TEPCO news conferences, and listening to the prime minister and then comparing it to what the western press was reporting. It was completely different. Then all of a sudden, the western press would say, "Oh, it's all wrong" and report what was originally reported in Japan. I'm really not sure if it was a translation problem, or what. The news conference would say, "The information we have is consistent with an intact reactor core, but there is a possibility that the core has melted down. We can not be sure at this time." The western press would say, "TEPCO reports that the core is intact". Then when the core was found to have melted down, the western press would change directions. This happened time after time after time.
The IAEA had a web page which detailed the timeline of the disaster from the beginning to the end. It matched my understanding of the information coming from TEPCO and the Japanese government exactly (and differed greatly from my understanding of the information coming from the western news agencies). Unfortunately, it no longer seems to exist on the link I had for it. I invite you to take a look for it on their web page if you want: http://www.iaea.org/
You may be thinking, "It doesn't matter who got it wrong, I can't trust those bastards." But it really does matter. If your primary information source is the western media, you may find that you are not getting the right picture and may be distrusting the wrong people.