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Fukushima: 1,600 Dead From Evacuation Stress
seven of five writes: The NYT reports that radiation-related hysteria and mistakes have cost the lives of nearly 1,600 Japanese since the Fukushima disaster. The panic to evacuate, not the radiation itself, led to poor choices such as moving hospital intensive care patients from hospitals to emergency quarters. The government's perception of radiation exposure risk, rather than the actual risk itself, may have caused far more harm than it prevented.
So fearmongering by the anti-nuclear body has lead to more deaths. Those guys are really doing a great job of increasing carbon emissions, increasing energy prices, increasing deaths due to continued use of coal fired power states, and now increasing deaths thanks to the fear of nuclear power that they've been spreading for years.
The reaction to Fukushima was totally overblown, and the media made it sound like a global catastrophe when in reality it was a minor incident that was primarily caused by continued use of a reactor that should have been retired. Had it been replaced by a newer reactor, as it should have been, the whole incident would never have happened, but then that's another example of how the anti-nuclear guys are endangering lives by not allowing newer reactors to be built.
The government's perception of radiation exposure risk, rather than the actual risk itself, may have caused far more harm than it prevented.
And yet, Tepco downplayed and lied about the actual risk, and the amount of radioactive material released, literally at every turn. That is, literally everything Tepco said about it was a lie, and it was actually more and higher than they said literally every time. Perhaps the public loses confidence in official reports when they are all lies?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In *every* nuclear disaster, the *first* reaction of the people in charge is to lie:
1 - Chernobyl. Lies.
2 - Three Mile Island. More lies.
3 - Fukushima. More lies.
And before someone says this is an issue with private companies running nuclear facilities, remember that the initial Chernobyl denial and coverups happened under the control of a communist government, so it swings both ways.
You'll find that there were many deaths also associated with the indirect effect of the tsunami and earthquake across Japan. A high number of suicides,stress on the elderly were part of it. And the depression of many who lost loved ones or lost their homes and all their belongings.
The devastation from the earthquake and tsunami was massive, but all those victims get ignored because of the focus on Fukushima. 60 minutes did a Fukushima documentary, and didn't even find 30 seconds to acknowledged those countless tragedies.
It looks like the nuclear accident steals the show but one must not forget that the earthquake and tsunami themselves that killed at least 15000 people and rendered many others homeless. So I am not sure how they got to 1600 deaths but how did they differentiate cases that were caused by the radiation-related evacuation and cases where the direct effect of the earthquake and tsunami was the cause.
Yes, all zero of them have been fully counted.
See that "Preview" button?
You'll find that the after-effects of the bombs in Japan were quite limited. Even with dispersal of radioactive material, we find that Japan consistently has lower cancer rates than the rest of the world.
Beneficial Biological Effects of Miso with Reference to Radiation Injury, Cancer and Hypertension
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is going to be an unpopular post. But the premise of the article - that the accident itself caused/will cause no deaths, only overreaction - is simply not true. And their "proof by ghost reference" doesn't help things any.
Here's proof by actual reference.
Estimates not good enough? Let's try actual measurements of thyroid cancer in children:
They do note that there's a risk of screening effects, but given the correlation between rates and distance from the plant, they believe that the outbreak is real and needs further study
What did I mean earlier by "proof by ghost reference"? Their first two links just go to NYT search pages that aren't fruitful in backing up anything they claim. The third link takes some work but you can dig out the actual report in question. The NYT article describes it thusly:
The actual report says:
Okay, so we do expect more cancer in them - the sample size however is low enough (174 people) that it's hard to prove statistical significance. But wait, this too is an indirect reference - what does its source say? Just a second, but first let's cite one more thing from the IAEA report the NYT article cites (a WHO study):
But back to the UNSCEAR report: here's its section on cancer risks that the IAEA claim cited by the Times was based on:
Crowd: What do we want? Fry: Fry's dog! Crowd: When do we want it? Fry: Fry's dog!
Evertime there is a Hurricane Evacuation you get a couple dozen that die from car accidents or falling off ladders boarding up their houses to prevent looting, etc. That is one of the reasons politicians are wary of calling evacuations unless really needed.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
The IAEA report on Fukushima is quite clear that no statistical increase in deaths is likely to be observed. Not for adults, children, or offspring. Even for workers at the site with the highest exposures, there will likely be no observable effects. As you say, with the workers the sample size is small to start with, so that becomes factor
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/P...
Based on our experience with other exposure cases, the estimates of negative radio logical health impacts are always much higher than what we observe in reality. There are two reasons. One is that the models for estimating health effects are conservative, and two is because the estimated exposures are conservative (they assume higher doses to account for uncertainty.). I have no problem with conservative estimation, just as long as they are used correctly. So, yes, statistical deaths are real deaths, statistical illnesses are real illnesses, and thankfully we'll not likely see any from the radio logical effects of Fukushima.
Interestingly, a tidbit is that the children thyroid exposure at Chernobyl was 1000 times that of a child in the Fukushima district. From what I can find, there is still no observed statistical increase in negative health effects associated with those exposures at Chernobyl. But I want to be clear I have not researched that thoroughly.
By repeated layers of watering down, the story has changed from what the research (even their own sources) says - that yes, the accident will be causing many cases of fatal cancers, but we can't prove which ones are due to radiation - into a general sense of "nobody's going to get sick from this accident" in the article.
I think you're interpenetration is a bit off. The story has not changed, and the IAEA report is very good at showing us all of the important considerations and explaining how they apply in the case of Fukushima. It is a matter of taking generic statistical modeling and taking real world factors into account, not a matter of watering things down. The risks from exposures received are extremely small, the at risk population is small, the real world sampling confirms assumptions are conservative, and therefore there is going to be no observable increase statistically.
The report absolutely does not say "nobody's going to get sick from this accident", as you imply. It is worded quite appropriately and clearly that observable statistical impacts are not likely to be found.
Nuclear power has been a disaster and widespread adoption of clean, renewable energy can't come soon enough.
Bullshit.
There have been multiple individual coal mining accidents that have killed more people than the entire nuclear industry has ever killed. Millions of people are estimated to die prematurely every year from pollution-caused heart and lung disease, and coal is one of the main culprits.
Every decision ever made to invest in nuclear instead of coal has been a life saving decision. The same could be said of investment in wind an solar in places where they can partially replace coal, but wind and solar will need to be paired with energy storage or long-range low-loss power distribution. Until we have either a cheap scalable energy storage technology or superconducting power distribution wind and solar will never replace coal.
And don't get me started on hydroelectrical dams. Dam breaches have killed more people than we could ever hope to kill with flawed nuclear reactor designs if we tried on purpose.
They are the foremost experts on this type of analysis, and they are not a nuclear power associated body but rather work to ensure global nuclear safety for all radio logical venues, including medical, weaponry, power, industrial, etc. You can find your personal excuse to dismiss these well documented reports, and instead believe whatever you decide, but you'll have a hard time finding the data, basis, and proven methodology presented in these reports. Do you dismiss IPCC reports on global warming as well?
North American Society of Homeopaths is an (presumably) an interest group.
International Atomic Energy Agency is a regulatory and study organization, backed by UN.
Spot the difference?
It's a valid viewpoint to be sceptical as to the neutrality or effectiveness of regulatory organizations, but the intent and background is clearly different here.
Just in case you missed it:
From the very first line of the IAEA's Wikipedia entry:
See that? "Promote"?
Look at the membership of the IAEA. Do you see anything that sticks out? Maybe the fact that each and every member is a politician?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Concerning Chernobyl, you state initial estimates, but observed instances of negative health effects have been much less, which backs my points. There are studies that indicate some increase in childhood thyroid cancer instances, but if you read the details it is often within margin of error, and there are significant uncertainties with conclusions because the historical data for the locations is not good. There have been efforts to sort through the results of various thyroid studies (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22048494).
Since thyroid cancers from childhood exposure are by for the most probable, it is a good base for a health impact assessment. Thyroid screening techniques that have been adopted since Chernobyl are much more sensitive at detecting precancerous and early cancerous cells, so everywhere these techniques are used more cases are found that would have under traditional screening if indeed there even was testing prior to the event. That further complicates the assessment of results. I certainly won't say there has been no increase.
All we really know is that the real world observed increase in cases are less that estimated by the IAEA originally for Chernobyl. So they are certain conservative in their approach.
So far, the death toll from the earthquake, tsunami and evacuation is over 4500, and over 130,000 people are still displaced, and deaths among the displaced that wouldn't have happened at home will continue. I'm sure there will also be some increase in cancer rates, but our collective fear of the nuclear boogieman is obviously what people want to talk about here instead of the actual disaster.
Humanity's sense of "risk of harm" when comparing low-risk events is really bad.. We seem to obsess over the risk of particularly graphic dangers, even when that risk is negligible, and ignore the risks of driving, and ladders, and natural disasters in areas where they recur frequently. Evolution clearly shafted us here.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No one is responding to the content of your post. That's the lesson here.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
They are the foremost experts on promoting nuclear energy. It's part of their charter for goodness sake.
Err no, they are the foremost expert on MANAGING nuclear energy. Actually if you were to abolish the IAEA Nuclear would suddenly lose much of the overhead that makes it so expensive to build a plant in the first place.
But by all means ignore people who actually know track and manage the nuclear industry and go back to reading infowars.
Exactly. IAEA has proven to be the most accurate when it comes to these types of studies, and they understand the mechanisms better than any other organization. They are involved in a lot of world activities which involves the UN, politics, etc.
They promote safe, peaceful use of nuclear materials and technology. That is done by being accurate. The best promotion for nuclear is safety, the worst is non-safety. It would do more damage to project few health effects then realize many, than the opposite.
But, people will look hard and find reasons to dismiss it, no matter how well documented and fact based it is. Many of those people cling to anecdotal FUD with no supporting data presented. That is the world we live in.
...but the coal industry in the States kills about 24,000 people per year - and that's just the respiratory stuff, it doesn't even attempt to find out what all the mercury that winds up in the fish is doing to people.
So sorry if it sounds callous to say, "actually, it doesn't matter whether you're arguing over zero deaths, one, ten or a hundred"...but as long as every single article about nuclear issues doesn't start and end with that 24,000 deaths per year (hundreds of thousands worldwide, though China is the really staggering toll), then all of those articles are callous.
Honestly, if 65 people per day were dying of a disease, would it be callous to say "look, the cure only kills about a hundred people in a whole year, fuck those people, deploy the cure". Maybe it would, but with a good:bad ratio of 240:1, it's the kind of callousness we all sign off on when it comes to anything else.
It's actually funny (black humour) to read those super-long posts attempting to prove this or that about the ultimate death toll...but the numbers don't even rise to the 1600 at issue for the evacuation, much less the respiratory deaths from fossil alternatives, much less the whole atmospheric chemistry issue. It's like the bar being set for nuclear is that it must be perfect..."way, way better" is not good enough...
You make no sense. I presented a source that very clearly supported my point. If were not able to determine that from the source's summary, then it is your 'scientific literacy' that should be in question.