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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.
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.
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.)
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
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.
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