Slashdot Mirror
Japan's Radiation Disaster Toll: None Dead, None Sick
An anonymous reader writes "This article discusses a recently-released U.N. Scientific Committee report which examined the health effects of the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Their conclusion: 'Radiation exposure following the nuclear accident at Fukushima-Daiichi did not cause any immediate health effects. It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public and the vast majority of workers. ... No radiation-related deaths or acute effects have been observed among nearly 25,000 workers involved at the accident site. Given the small number of highly exposed workers, it is unlikely that excess cases of thyroid cancer due to radiation exposure would be detectable.' The article even sums up the exposure levels for the workers who were closest to the reactor: 'Of 167 exposed to more than the industry's recommended five-year limit of 100 mSv (a CT scan exposes patients to up to 10 mSv), 23 recorded 150-200 mSv, three 200-250 mSv and six up to 678 mSv, still short of the 1000 mSv single dosage that causes radiation sickness, or the accumulated exposure estimated to cause a fatal cancer years later in 5 per cent of people.' The report also highlights the minute effect it's had on the environment: 'The exposures on both marine and terrestrial non-human biota were too low for observable acute effects.'"
Says who? People who have a vested interest in downplaying any serious problems...
Give it 5 years. Then we'll see what the toll really was. Maybe.
On which side of the argument? 0 sick or with a minutely increased chance of cancer sounds a bit low, but closer to the truth than the media hysteria immediately following the event.
And meanwhile, foreign media all but ignore the close to 20 000 dead from the tsunami; that was the real disaster.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Energy saving, which has brought Japan to this seemly comfortable position grants just a temporary relief. They will be hard pressed to turn the reactors again sooner or later. More likely sooner. Nuclear energy is not an option, either for Japan or any other country, it is an unavoidable path.
Coal, coal, and coal.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Japan itself has been fixated on the nuclear aspects of the disaster. They're used to earthquakes and tsunamis and know that there isn't that much that can be done to prevent those disasters. They've focused on the nuclear aspect because 1. it's a newer type of disaster and 2. unlike earthquakes and tsunamis, it could have been prevented with a little more planning.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
This story is not true.
Now you're arguing with UN scientific research just like those "anti-science" AGW sceptics.
Yay for cherry picking your preferred science.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
... because some of the subcontractors were forced to shield their counters. The problem was even discussed on Slashdot. This means that the numbers are underestimated. Probably badly, knowing how japanese usually keep quiet on this kind of problems.
This. In a rage I gave up trying to follow the disaster in the media after just a few days as it became clear there was little interest in the tens of thousands dead and harrowing stories of survival.
It's all the more screwed up seeing as how the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill happened just a year before. Eleven people died, instantly. Because unlike a modern nuclear reactor, oil will in fact explode with a giant fireball if something goes wrong. Unlike Fukushima, the ensuing geiser of oil quickly polluted hundreds of thousands of square miles to an extent that it was easily and prominently seen from space. Our solution to this was to dump millions of gallons of toxic and carcenogenic chemicals on top of it until we couldn't see the oil any more. Problem solved! Out of sight, out of mind. Meanwhile, how many billions of sea creatures perished and how many new cases of cancer are we going to see in the decades to come? We'll probably never know, because oil disasters just aren't sexy like nuclear disasters are.
Oh yeah, and I am sick and fucking tired of not being able to eat large amounts of the tastiest fish in the sea because they are contiminated with huge amounts of mercury, primarily (from my understanding) through the burning of coal. Imagine the hysteria we'd see if the fish were actually mildly radioactive instead of merely full of toxic heavy metals that, unlike most radioactive sources, linger in your body unless you undergo chelation therapy.
Nuclear sucks, it has security issues (although it could also safely and usefully dispose of all the Uranium 235 in the world, an angle I rarely hear anyone mention), and it's not renewable. But it would be so, so nice if people would fucking grow up and make even a token effort at objectively evaluating opportunity costs instead of continually screaming at the top of their lungs about pet issues.
Indeed. But they confirmed 5 cases out of 174.000 tested children... when the prevalence rate of thyroïd cancer is less than 2 in 1.000.000 in this area of Japan and age range, according to the article you are citing. Smells fishy to me.
Isn't there a long delay between exposure and visible cancer? Does the fact that the cases are visible now imply that they must have started before the accident?
Indeed. But they confirmed 5 cases out of 174.000 tested children... when the prevalence rate of thyroïd cancer is less than 2 in 1.000.000 in this area of Japan and age range, according to the article you are citing.
Smells fishy to me.
When you screen 100% of a population for a disease there's going to be a higher incidence rate than when only those showing obvious symptoms are found... especially for a disease like thyroid cancer, which is typically slow growing so it may not be discovered for years.
The 2 in a million rate is for "those aged 10 to 14 in Japan", while the screenings were for "174,000 people aged 18 or younger". A big difference in age range.
If it gets rid of coal and prevents natural gas' rise, it's damn worth it. Clean electric cars would be the icing on the cake.
And how many people would have gotten lung cancer if this reactor had never existed and they'd been burning oil or coal all of this time? Nuclear power is the safest practical form of power we have right now. This was one of the oldest designs for a reactor that's still in use, it was hit by one of the largest natural disasters in history, the aftermath was poorly handled and it still survived. One of the most astonishing things about this entire event is that people still call it a disaster. This reactor performed exactly as it was designed. It did not melt through the containment vessel, sink down to the water table and cause a radioactive steam explosion (like Chernobyl)
Lastly, comparing this event to Chernobyl in anyway is outright ridiculous. Go read up on the event... Chernobyl was a real disaster. This event was a success in that the safety systems prevented something far more terrible from happening.
In a homogenous society like Japan
What the hell is that even supposed to mean, except for "I don't want to believe this"?
Regarding base load: you don't need base load. That's a myth. You need a large grid, multiple power sources, an abundance of plants and some amount of storage, e.g. hydro (pumped isn't necessary, you just need to be able to have a buffer) or natural gas, could be biogas. I've seen three independent studies come to this conclusion.
The primary problem with nuclear power is cost. It's really expensive. There was an article in Bulletins of Atomic Scientists that covered this in depth, "How to close the US nuclear industry: Do nothing":
http://bos.sagepub.com/content/69/2/12.full
Since it's so expensive, it has to be operating 24/7 which makes it hard to integrate in a power grid with intermittent power sources.