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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."
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.
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.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Oh yeah! As long as there is absolutely no chance of making a profit I'm sure safety will shoot right through the roof!
Just look at the death toll from Three Mile Island! Do you know that since the accident THOUSANDS of people in Pennsylvania have died from cancer! It's a crime!
Now look at Chernobyl where Progressive Soviet Idealism has shown the light that will conquer the corrupt imperialist western scum! Did you know that the death toll from cancer in Pripyat has been ZERO for over twenty years! This shows the superiority of the Soviet system over the profit-seeking scum who intentionally caused Three Mile Island and Fukushima because they made insane fortunes from nuclear accidents! Dear Leader Kim Jong Un will soon deliver us to a new world where there are no profits of any kind except to his ruling elite! Join us or die!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
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.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
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...
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.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Almost every single child living near Chernobyl had their thyroids removed after numerous growths were found. Therefore there is no way to know how many would have developed full cancer, but certainly some people did.
Quite a few children living near Fukushima are now showing growths on their thyroids too, but these things take years to be measured and resolved so for the next couple of decades at least there will be a great deal of uncertainly about the numbers.
Claiming that because we don't know the number is zero is ridiculous.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You think it would have gone better if it was?
Yes. The main problem with Chernobyl was not the accident itself, but the design. It had no containment vessel. No government has ever allowed a private company to build a nuke plant so obviously defective. People in both government and industry are the same, and equally likely to be selfish, greedy and incompetent. The difference is that capitalists are accountable, to both regulators and shareholders. The government is accountable to no one.
Fukushima was run by capitalists, and it failed partly due to incompetence and greed, but also because of one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded.
Chernobyl was run by socialists. It failed entirely due to incompetence and greed, on a sunny and calm Ukrainian day.
The GPP's claim that socialism is some sort of silver bullet for nuclear safety is absurd.
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.
Three-mile Island was.
So what's your point? The profit motive is just one more weak point in an already hard-to-contain form of energy. Keeping nuclear energy away from private ownership doesn't guarantee there will never be an accident, it just makes accidents due to insufficient compliance with safety regulations less likely.
Anyway, the only reason private industry wants to own nuke plants is because they are protected from serious liability and external costs by the government. Instead of letting private industry own the plants, let them be owned publicly and contract with private industry to run them, albeit with a very heavy boot on their neck and full liability. Taking care of the 2000 possible thyroid cancer cases, and their families, is not cheap. Instead of having to play games with these peoples' lives and end up with government having to pay for them anyway, let's just skip the charade of private ownership for such plants entirely.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Well, when the West German THTR-300 had an problem (a thorium reactor, by the way, since there are a lot of thorium reactor fans around here) and released a lot of radioactive dust into environment, the private operator denied everything and blamed the fallout from the Chernobyl accident a few weeks earlier for the readings. Only after a Protactinium isotope was found, the operator was forced to admit the release of radioactivity. So much for private industry. If they try to cover up minor incidents, I won't trust them with anything major.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Putting their health and maybe their lives on the line to make others in Japan safer.
It was well known that the seawall was insufficient to contain a tsunami of known historical magnitude.
There's no evidence for this assertion, particularly at the time the plant was designed and built, Instead, the first time that TEPCO seems to have considered this was back in 2008.
They didn't fix the wall in order to save money, and just hoped they would get lucky.
Which incidentally is a good strategy for a nuclear plant that was scheduled for decommissioning starting the very month that the earthquake happened!
Would you say "(oh noes!)" to the families of the 2000 Fukishima workers who are now at risk for thyroid cancer? Do you think those workers were maybe exposed to more radiation than a "coal base load plant"?
They were at risk before. So are you. Everyone has a non-zero risk for everything. Quantum mechanics demands that there is, in fact, a vanishingly small probability that you will turn into a jelly doughnut while reading this. Now let's talk actual risk. The quoted figure is 100 millisieverts. That is the lowest figure for which there is a predicted increase in cancer rates. Below that level, we can't plausibly say that there even is a risk. 20 mSv a year is the current international limit for nuclear plant workers.
So what they're saying is, before the risk was so low, it wasn't worth mentioning. Now the risk is so low, that it's equal to having worked in the plant for five years.
And is a comparison to a coal plant really a recommendation?
No, it's a recommendation that you stop going "oh noes! radiation! it must be bad because all the newspapers put it in big scary red letters!" Well, I can drown you with just a glass of water, but nobody considers that particularly dangerous; And it's the same with radiation. Everything is radioactive. Bananas are radioactive especially. Most radioactive food you can eat, in fact. Nobody is running around going "oh fuck! the bananas are going to kill us all." Perspective man, that's what you're lacking here.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
A very large number of workers died, about 20%. The broader exposure will likely bring about between 30,000 and 60,000 excess cancer deaths, some in countries that never got any electricity from Chernobyl ever. http://www.chernobylreport.org/?p=summary
I thought it failed because it was hit by a big fucking earthquake and 45ft wall of ocean water. A disaster that killed 18,000 people, but none due to the reactor failure.