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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.'"
lies, damn lies and statistics.
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.
This story is not true.
12 people have a cancer by radiation.
They have more than enough power projected to meet summer demand despite having only 2 of 50 nuclear power plants online:
http://japandailypress.com/no-electricity-austerity-measures-for-japan-this-summer-0926652
Anyone know how they made up the slack besides conservation? More coal? The article mentions "electric power companies have been looking to thermal power generation for their supplies", but it's not clear what that means - geothermal?
The true message of this article should be quite different: All nuclear power must be abandoned this instant, forever, because, well, umm, if all the millisieverts were put together and given to a baby, it might get radiation sickness.
Won't somebody think of the children?
And for those who are mentally challenged: .
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
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.
There have been plenty of people in Japan that have gotten sick, many with common acute radiation sickness, such as hairloss, teethloss, stroke, Thyroid, etc, They just ignore reporting the victims or classify their illiness to something else so they can claim it not a problem.
As Orwell wrote " 'He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.", he that controls the news controls the past and future.
naïvety, stupidity, and fixed beliefs.
Something seems maybe not quite right; wasn't there an engineer(s) who inadvertantly stepped in a pool of radioactive water, and got enough exposure to get skin burns? My google-fu is lacking, I can find references to the incident, but I can't find their estimated doses - I remember it being a big deal at the time, though...
JAPANESE RESILIAAAAAAANCE,notice that in bombardment pictures those fucking Toris never fall!
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.
And meanwhile, foreign media all but ignore the close to 20 000 dead from the tsunami; that was the real disaster.
Nobody is ignoring the tragic lose of life from the tsunami. This story is about the nuclear power plans and the ability of the Japanese people to adjust to other forms of energy (including dirty coal).
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
That we need to stop nuclear power immediately
love,
antinucular-activist
In another story the families of the irradiated workers are claiming how nice it is to have a night light for free...
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
... 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.
Chance of this story getting widely reported: none.
Since this story doesn't advance the opportunity for governments to exercise and consolidate power over individuals, it will not be widely reported.
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.
There's almost no oil consumption for electricity generation, and until we get a large fleet of electric cars nuclear electricity will displace very little oil burning.
What nuclear power does is displace coal, thus saving thousands of lives every year.
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?
Low capital costs, and at current prices low fuel costs.
Nuclear Armageddon and nobody showed. They liberal ghouls were praying for a body count.
an ill wind that blows no good
But there are still wingnuts who claim they can detect the radiation as far as California, that all tuna in the oceans are radioactive, etc.
The blinding stupidity of the human race and it's gullability for what they read/see on the internet will never cease to amaze me.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
From the article:
A swift evacuation of 200,000 residents within a 20-kilometre radius of the plant helped protect them â" WHO estimated most residents of Fukushima prefecture received doses of 1-10 mSv in the first year.
[...]
About 1000 deaths have been attributed to evacuations. About 90 per cent were people older than 66, who suffered from the trauma of evacuation and living in shelters. Sadly, those of them who left areas where radiation was no greater than in naturally high background areas would have been better off staying.
Philosophical Question: Do those 1000 deaths not count because they were not directly due to radiation poisoning? I mean, they wouldn't have happened if there had been no meltdown...
The trouble is coal-fired power stations emit more radiation than nuclear reactors do. From the article: "fly ash emitted by a power plant [...] burning coal for electricity carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy." That statistic is from 1978, and nuclear reactor technology has greatly improved since then (and continues to improve).
Mar 2011: "Tokyo Electric, the owners of the plant, said five workers had been killed at the site, two were missing and 21 had been injured." link
Apr 2011: "On March 24, three workers at the Fukushima nuclear power plant were exposed accidentally to high localised radiation while standing in contaminated water". link
Jul 2011: "A newly released document says the Japanese government estimated in April that some 1600 workers will be exposed to high levels of radiation in the course of handling the reactor meltdowns at the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant". link
Dec 2011: "Masao Yoshida, who led the fight to bring Japanâ(TM)s crippled Fukushima nuclear station under control, steps down tomorrow for medical treatment after almost nine months directing the disaster response from inside the plant". link
Dec 2012: "Dozens of workers received potentially cancerous doses of radiation to their thyroid glands during recovery work at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, according to data submitted to the World Health Organization. link
July 2012: "An executive at construction firm Build-Up in December told about 10 of its workers to cover their dosimeters, used to measure cumulative radiation exposure, with lead casings when working in areas with high radiation, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper and other media said." link
July 2012: "Japanese officials are investigating whether workers cleaning up in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster were pushed to shield their radiation meters so they could keep working for longer on the contaminated plant". link
AccountKiller
In a 2004 study on this very subject, it was determined that the mean latency period for thyroid cancer to appear after radiation exposure was over 30 years. Some appear sooner, of course, but many appeared much later than that. What is the point of this report? At best, the proclamation of not causing any noticeable immediate harm is premature. But saying that the exposure is "unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future" borders on irresponsible, and seems driven by an agenda.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1356259/
Our great computers fill the hallowed halls
Testing for cancers in a population at this time is all about establishing exactly what cancers existed before the problem. so you can accurately determine what effect the plant's failure will cause.
As the numbers seem slightly high, I suspect regression toward the mean will cause a drop in the number. That will cause confusion in the masses!
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
I wonder. If one takes all the Slashdotters that, in responding to this post, tout the accuracy of the IPCC report (ostensibly a UN Body), but decry this report as being wrong, bad science, improper collection, etc. I wonder what that would look like. My hunch is that when the science agrees with your worldview you see the subject opinion as science, consensus, etc. and when it doesn't, it's a fraud... probably equally so for those observers on the left (most Slashdotters) as those on the right on a per capita basis.
Maybe that article sometime ago about biases in viewing science results based on political viewpoints might prove out in a way the authors of that study thought only applied to conservatives.
Fallout 4 Fukushima!
OUTER sPACE THE Of OpenBSD. How
They're used to earthquakes and tsunamis and know that there isn't that much that can be done to prevent those disasters.
There isn't much that can be done... except of course for building a huge sea wall.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So they minimized the number of statistical radiation-induced deaths down to some small value by permanently evacuating an area of hundreds of square miles around the reactor? Still doesn't sound like a trivial thing to me.
Given the small number of highly exposed workers, it is unlikely that excess cases of thyroid cancer due to radiation exposure would be detectable.
If plant management had any competency at all, the workers were given potassium iodide doses, which proved highly effective at preventing thyroid cancer in people exposed to Chernobyl's radiation.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Fascinating... except we'll need to wait a few decades to finish collecting the data before we can analyze it and draw conclusions.
As far as I remember in the whole history of civil nuclear power there were roughly 687 fatalities recorded by civil nuclear power, even if one includes cases of long term neglected diseases.
On the other hand, in the same time around 2.500.000 people died of hydropower with 250.000 alone in one major dam bust 40 years ago in china.
As nuclear power produced roughly 10 times as much energy in the same time based on "deaths per watt" hydropower is 35.000 times more lethal than nuclear power.
Tell this to the believers of the anti nuclear church and they will nail you to a cross... always look on the bright side of life...
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
How much of that cost is tied up paying off the dozens of NIMBYs, Government officials at every level, outreach programs to counteract fear mongering, and anti-nuclear consumer/civil advocate groups? Is nuclear not a feasible option because of what it *actually* costs to drop a plant there or because of all the associated bullshit that the government requires?
The UCS isn't exactly unbiased. They want good old fashioned dollars pumped into R&D, which is a costlier, longer term, and riskier investment.
Rather than attacking a technology that isn't about to go away anytime soon, the UCS should be engaging in the more constructive discussion of bringing these costs down, reducing risk to public safety, and educating the public.
You know, after reading all of these reports and comments by those saying there is no harm, I wonder why they even bother to put shields on nuclear cores in the first place and to work so hard to avoid discharges of contaminated water. Heck, these reactors blew up and nothing bad happened! Right?
Yeah, no. You won't see any of the apologists or big CEOs moving their kids to Fukushima and eating food grown there. Just the poor schmucks who can't afford to move will be stuck there and told not to worry, or seek compensation, because nothing bad happened.
Money, Power, Stupidity.
Of course there are no immediate deaths from radiation leakage for the Fukushima Incident ! Yet, 10 to 20 years from now the citizens will be dying from the cancers initiated by the radiation leakage, even as far away as the Tokyo Prefecture.
The Government of Japan at that time will face a 'healthcare bureaucracy banking crisis.'
Well that crisis is for the unborn Japan, not the dying Japan of today.
I thought the death toll of animals and pets left behind was pretty staggering. I guess they don't count.
Hey, same death toll as Three Mile Island!
I work in the nuclear industry. While I consider it the safest bulk power generation around, there is potential for things to improve both in and out of nuclear power. Solar and Wind show promise, but are definitely not at the point of being able to compete with nuclear's price. Maybe in 10 years, maybe in 20 years, maybe never. But we should be looking at the right here and now for the "best" choice to generate power.
I, like some other people have said, don't like the fact that this is 2 years later and is not likely to show a significant cancer rate for a few more years. Chernobyl caused some health risks. When were those truely noticable in the general population? 5-10 years later. So this study has the advantage of proving what we already know, that cancer rates 2 years after even a bad accident aren't much higher(aka Go Nuclear Power!) they also allow people to argue against Coal(aka Go Nuclear Power!).
What really needs to be examined is:
1. Cancer rates years from now.. say 5-20 years.
2. Other consequences such as PTSD(potential increases in crime rates), economic losses(cost of lost homes, etc), and marine biology.
3. What would cancer been like if alternatives had been used such as coal? Its fairly well documented that coal plants release relatively massive amounts of radioactive materials into their environment because of radioactive impurities in the coal. One study showed that as many as 10k people a year die in the USA alone from lung cancer that is likely from coal impurities alone.
So how many people will die from cancer from the nuclear accident versus how many would die if there had been coal? I'd bet coal is quite a bit higher.
So how many people will die from the nuclear accident versus how many died from the earthquake? I bet the earthquake is quite a bit higher.
Is the "cost" of life worth what was gained to society as a whole? That's a personal belief.
I think the whole argument should be waiting a few more years before we start concluding what the long term health benefits are. I also think anyone dismissing this report now will dismiss the next report because the numbers will just be "too low" no matter how many zeros are on that number.
The real reality? Many people need to grow up and look at the whole picture. It may or may not favor nuclear power. But you know what I know for sure.. the discussion won't end in my lifetime. No matter how many studies support the economic value of nuclear and no matter how many people may develop cancer many people will dismiss the studies as heavily favoring nuclear power anyway.
"did not cause any immediate health effects" yeah because radiation causes long term effects, stupid.
So this article is supposed to make us feel good about the whole thing, saying, "look, nobody died, nobody is going to be sick, nuclear power is as safe as could be"? That is all fine and dandy (although some people are questioning these statements above), but what about the 100km^2 or so of land that have become uninhabitable for the next few decades? What about the tens of thousands of people who had to be relocated? Or does that not count because those people did not actually die, but basically just lost all their possessions and livelihood? Tough luck? Sacrifices for the greater good?
Sure, nobody seems to have died from direct consequences of the accident yet, but taking this as an argument for nuclear power is ignoring all the indirect damage that has been done, and that is definitely linked to the accident, and not the earthquake or the tsunami.
So it will work for Fukushima!
The control of the information is not with WHO you think it is.
It's pronounced 'nucular'. Nucular.
FYI: http://japandailypress.com/fukushima-thyroid-cancer-cases-rise-to-12-confirmed-15-suspected-0530049
Fukushima children thyroid
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The anti-nuclear power luddites are going to be so disappointed.
Liberty in your lifetime
What about the workers that died trying to stabilize the plant?
The earthquake that caused the tsunami that made Fukushima break (whew!) also damaged several dams in the area.
One of them washed away five homes and killed at least four people.
In response to this, they shut down the energy source that didn't kill anyone.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
We have had no killer asteroid lately
So killer asteroids are safe
But it is reasonable that the industry will not ween itself for many years to come
But obviously you can't believe this, because they came to the wrong answer. They must've been bought. (First post? No, not likely.)
For those who claim this is a grand conspiracy theory, you can see the difference between theory and practice, within the actual text of the agreement, summed up by this 2004 quote of Dr Michael Fernex formerly of the University of Basel who worked for the WHO;
"Six years ago we tried to have a conference. The proceedings were never published. This is because in this matter the organisations at the UN are subordinate to the IAEA. Since 1986 the WHO did nothing about studying Chernobyl. It's a pity. The interdiction to publish which fell upon the WHO conference came from the IAEA. The IAEA blocked the proceedings; the truth would have been a disaster for the nuclear industry"
This is the history of how the International Atomic Energy Agency has been able to deal with the human health implications of Nuclear disasters by muzzling the science and medicine that can be conducted. For an accident as serious as Chernobyl even the hamstrung report from the World Health Organisation said;
"The international experts have estimated that radiation could cause up to about 4000 eventual deaths among the higher-exposed Chernobyl populations, i.e., emergency workers from 1986-1987, evacuees and residents of the most contaminated areas. This number contains both the known radiation-induced cancer and leukaemia deaths"
Imagine, based on the actual evidence, what the WHO may have been able to uncover had they been allowed to actually reveal the actual truth of the disaster. The Guardian however points out that the IAEA is ignoring the evidence of the volume of deaths occurring as a result of the Chernobyl disaster.The UNICEF report "Human consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear accident" summarised it neatly;
"Life expectancy for men in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, for example, is some ten years less that Sri Lanka, which is one of the twenty poorest countries in the world and is in the middle of a long drawn out war"
This isn't from any radioactive fallout from the accident though, it's the economic fallout from a collapsed regional economy manifest as suicide and mental illnesses. So because they didn't die from cancer or radio isotopes those numbers don't get included.
Since cancer takes years to incubate, thus premature deaths and birth defects manifest over time. After this generation, the next generation and long after this disaster has passed into lore it will still be well within the toxic half-life of radioactive isotopes such as cesium 137, strontium 90 and plutonium 239.
The genetic abnormalities and diseases caused by this accident are generations away and unlikely to be seen by anyone alive today and direct exposure will occur as long as there is a food chain to absorb these isotopes and people to eat that food. So the occurrence of recessive gene damage that occurs across generations as the likelihood of combining those genes is increased as more people in the population ingest radionuclides via whatever means.
What we will never know is how many pregnancies fail to com to term from this catastrophe, however we are able to count birth defects, now a common occurrence after the Chernobyl disaster. The New York Academy of Sciences report r
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
'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. ...
that's a bald faced lie! www.fairewinds.com www.llrc.org have information to the contrary.
We've got a swath of "hot" sea water coming across the Pacific and the end of the fiasco is no where in sight.
No *human beings* ... yet. Overlooking all the dogs, cats, cattle, birds, bugs and other wildlife that the damage quickly finished off. The human cost will be more apparent after 2 or 3 more decades of denial and astroturfing.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Hello,
This person said he was having symptoms, namely, feeling the cold and being significantly tired. Having a messed up thyroid, even if not immediately fatal, is no fun at all.
I'm glad he got treatment and hope it helped.
--PM
Accepted cost of fossil fuels:
- average of many deaths per day in coal mining and oil extraction
- acute/obvious environmental damage
- acid rain
- global warming via CO2 emissions and the cost of all the damage, food insecurity courtesy of weather pattern changes, etc.
- all the radiation that comes out coal-plant smokestacks (many times the radiation from nuclear plants)
- all the war, politics, human right abuses necessary to ensure oil supplies
Nuclear power:
- moronic design (no containment dome) and mistake led to one Chernobyl
- a very rare 10m tsunami creates problems if it knocks out the vulnerable backup diesel generators for nuclear plants, all of which had shut down properly
- uranium enrichment divertable to bomb-making is NOT necessary -- see the CANDU design (i.e. tell Iran that if they want nuclear power, build a CANDU)
- need to take care of the waste rather than dumping it into the atmosphere and water bodies as is done with fossil fuels (bummer!)
irrational monkeys: EEEK, forget the accepted costs for fossil fuels, whatever you do don't use nuclear power!!
Of COURSE, conservation and all other energy sources should be on the table too, many of which are better under certain circumstances than either of the above means of power generation.
Yes I realize that -- which is why I claimed that potassium iodide prevents thyroid cancer, which is true, and made no other claims for it.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
And the Agenda 21 folks are.. you guessed it.. the UN, the very same folks who now say.. "hey radiation is GOOD for you!"~ "See.. all that Cesium and plutonium hasn't made anyone sick..!" "All the doctors listing increased cases of thyroid cancer are simply dumb..!" The UN officially called maintaining the worlds population above 500 million is "unsustainable", and the excess population must be gotten rid of.. "Hey how about a little radiation in the food chain?".. MMM irradiated donuts...
It is really hard to believe that a scientific committee will publish such a report when:
- the WHO (World Health Organization) published last February an official report proving the contrary ( Health risk assessment from the nuclear accident after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami based on a preliminary dose estimation. 28/02/2013.)
- 12 Fukushima workers (grunts) are already officially diagnosed with thyroid cancer and 15 others are considered "under suspicion of thyroid cancer" and are under medical watch.
- the sheer number of kids living in the surrounding within the 40km perimeter around Fukushima and whose thyroid problems are already officially diagnosed (after Fukushima) and are under medical scrutiny.
Even though the japanese governement doctors tend to say that the cases of Thyroid Cancer are unrelated with the fact that they are working at Fukushima, because they appeared "too quickly", maybe they should also consider the fact that they are constantly exposing themselves to radiation dosage much higher than what is legally authorized and that is also a proven fact.
Plus the sole number of 12 proven cases of Thyroid Cancer + 15 cases under scrutiny in the same work environment is a very high percentage (euphemism).
So, really, who are they kidding?
As we say in french : Ils marchent sur la tête ! (trans. : they act foolishly!)
It reminds me when the french government said that the Tchernobyl radiation cloud stopped at the french border and never crossed the country. Just as stupid and foolish!