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

Re:Nuclear power is perfectly safe

[ShanghaiBill]

If you keep profit out of the equation. But with 30 year life cycles I don't know how to do that. Sooner or later someone is going to clamor to privatize it and make it more 'efficient'.

Chernobyl was not privately owned.

Herpaderp derp

[girlintraining]

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

Well, yeah. The original estimates were made during a crisis situation and based on limited data. Let's all act shocked now that more comprehensive data is available and the estimate has been revised by an order of magnitude. And yet people act shocked when they take their car into the mechanic for a "strange noise" and demand a quote on the spot, then get irritated when the number goes up because "strange noise" turned out to be something more serious than a loose fitting.

Sigh. This isn't exactly news. We knew that as time went on and more eyeballs were put on Fukushima we were going to find more problems, and more accurate data. That's nothing more than the result of an application of scientific process... it's been doing the same thing the world over for thousands of years.

Re:Herpaderp derp

[bsolar]

Well, yeah. The original estimates were made during a crisis situation and based on limited data. Let's all act shocked now that more comprehensive data is available and the estimate has been revised by an order of magnitude.

That's not correct. The estimates the article talks about were made in December 2012 and submitted to the World Health Organization, so well after the crisis. The objections came from Japan's Health Ministry which was concerned that the estimates looked far too conservative. From the article:

TEPCO reported to the World Health Organization in December that only 178 workers at the plant were believed to have received radiation doses to their thyroid glands above 100 millisieverts.

Japan's health ministry voiced concern that the criteria the company used in its estimates of exposure for its own workers as well as for those employed by contractors were too narrow, and called on the utility to re-evaluate its methods.

There were also errors in calculations and differences of interpretation.

TL;DR: the problem was not limited data but wrong methodology.

Re:Herpaderp derp

[girlintraining]

TL;DR: the problem was not limited data but wrong methodology.

Okay... which again, is the scientific process at work. Hello peer review. But I still don't see how this is news -- it doesn't change what will happen to the workers, or the care they're receiving, or affect the clean up, or any other aspect of the disaster or after-action activities. The only newsworthy comment is that TEPCO management is obviously incompetent -- in much the same way engineers at NASA repeatedly warned management about the risks in the shuttle program, and management repeatedly ignored them until they started exploding, and then tried very hard to downplay the reported risks with questionable statements and logic that lacked any credibility.

TL;DR -- Bureaucracy is the same everywhere.

Re:Herpaderp derp

[bsolar]

TL;DR -- Bureaucracy is the same everywhere.

That might be but this "bureaucracy" and mismanagement is hurting nuclear power. There are countries which decided to ditch it and others which put in place a stop to new nuclear power plant projects. In my country thankfully nuclear power is still supported and the "renewables" holy grail is seen as some interesting long-term project but not up to the task right now. Still every fuck-up by TEPCO & Co. takes the headlines and gives pretty good ammunition to nuclear power opposers which have already a pretty good game with most people.

TL;DR: whoever manages nuclear power needs to be trustworthy. TEPCO is damaging nuclear power with his continuous fuck-ups.

Heightened Risk != Cancer Victim

[jkflying]

Just because they are at a "heightened risk of thyroid cancer" doesn't mean that they are going to get cancer. It means that they are more likely to get it than people who weren't exposed to the radiation. Only 2000 people at a heightened risk, as a result of a nuclear power plant being hit by a tsunami? Not bad, I say.

Next time, don't build a nuclear power plant where it can be hit by a tsunami, though. That was just stupid.

MOTO

[cyberjock1980]

WoW. MOTO article.

Ever person that works at a nuclear power plant knows and understands the risk of thyroid cancer due to exposure to radioactive Iodine. If anything, the workers know that this is true, understand the technicals for why it is mitigated with potassium tablets, and are okay with the increased risk of a very treatable condition. I've worked in the industry for more than 10 years and I KNOW this is true.

Many emergency responders that work in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant know this too. I KNOW this is true as I dated someone that was an emergency responder.

So maybe we should publish other articles on Slashdot.

-Higher risk of being shot in Chicago than on a farm in Montana.
-Higher risk of dying in a car accident when traveling faster.
-You are more likely to suffocate if you inhale your pool versus inhaling at your neighborhood park.

Not to discredit how much having cancer sucks. But thyroid cancer is very treatable today. Especially when you have a known group of people that are more susceptible to it and therefore can be tested more thoroughly for early warning signs.

Oh slashdot.. I miss the old you...

Re:Nuclear power is perfectly safe

[AmiMoJo]

What it boils down to is that human nature is the problem. We see it again and again in every area. Aircraft safety is a perfect example - extremely safe but somehow human beings still manage to screw it up from time to time.

Unless you plan to staff the plant with angels and fuel it with unicorn farts it's never going to be 100% safe.

Re:Chernobyl?

[Anonymous Coward]

unbelievable low numbers in Chernobyl.

WTF is "unbelievable" about Chernobyl? Over 50 people died directly. Another dozen or so died directly attributed to cancer from Chernobyl. We have learned that there is lots of benign cancer in a population - natural background cancers. That is the *real* data. There is also real data that there was no leukemia spike from Chernobyl that was expected based on LNT. There goes the hype, at least if you are rational.

I guess that does not live up to the hype some have spread thickly around because of "evil radiations"? LNT radiation model is for safety purposes only and for nuclear weapon exposures modeled of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It has NEVER meant to model low level exposure. But it is used anyway to hype up danger and get funding and to block nuclear power. And who wants to block nuclear power? It seems both the greens and the fossil fuel lobby. It's bad to both businesses to have non-CO2, non-polluting power source. /rant

Consider the alternative

[yesterdaystomorrow]

Suppose the Fukushima complex had been coal-fired rather than nuclear. For decades, it would have contaminated the air and surrounding land with megatons of toxic emissions, harming the health and shortening the lives of its neighbors. Miners would have died supplying the coal. When the tsunami hit, many workers would have died, since coal plants are much less robust than nuclear. The debris wave from the plant would have killed more. I don't think there can be any doubt that, while not perfectly safe, the use of nuclear technology in this location saved many lives. But coal gets a free ride in the press, which downplays its hazards. Anything nuclear gets the fear treatment.