Around 2,000 Fukushima Workers At Risk of Thyroid Cancer

mdsolar writes "Around 2,000 people who have worked at Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant face a heightened risk of thyroid cancer, its operator said Friday. Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said 1,973 people — around 10 percent of those employed in emergency crews involved in the clean-up since the meltdowns — were believed to have been exposed to enough radiation to cause potential problems. The figure is a 10-fold increase on TEPCO's previous estimate of the number of possible thyroid cancer victims and comes after the utility was told its figures were too conservative. Each worker in this group was exposed to at least 100 millisieverts of radiation, projections show."

Comments

Small Risk

[the eric conspiracy]

This article is preposterous. 100 milliseiverts is the lowest level for which there is believed to be an increased risk long term of getting cancer. The increase in rate is believed to be about 2%.

Now for the adult population the rate of thyroid cancer is about 1% of all cancers, or .25% of the population.

Throw in the fact that the cure rate for thyroid cancer is 95% or so and it is apparent that the odds of any of these people dying from this exposure is quite small.

Re:Nuclear power is perfectly safe

[fnj]

Yes. The main problem with Chernobyl was not the accident itself, but the design. It had no containment vessel.

And it had a positive void coefficient. And instability at low power levels. And a flammable graphite moderator. And the tips of the control rods were made of graphite which actually INCREASED reactor power when they started to enter the reactor. And the reactor building roof was covered with flammable bitumen (counter to regulations). The totality of the dreadfulness of the design is almost impossible to comprehend. Even so it is exceeded by the stupidity of the experiment undertaken by the operators which ended in the catastrophe.

There are still 10 operating RBMK reactors of this awful type in Russia.