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.

Comments

Another Win For the Anti-Nuclear Guys

[Anonymous Coward]

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 Had it been replaced by a newer reactor, as it should have been, the whole incident would never have happened, but then that's another example of how the anti-nuclear guys are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.

Re:Another Win For the Anti-Nuclear Guys

[Mr D from 63]

Some Clarifications to the 1600 are in order;

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/ne...

Around 90 percent of those who died of indirect causes were aged 66 or older, according to Reconstruction Agency statistics published in September.

Unlike those caused by collapsed buildings or tsunami, indirect deaths are determined by municipal panels by examining links between the disaster and the cause of death. This occurs when a relative of a deceased files a request.

Causes of indirect deaths include physical and mental stress stemming from long stays at shelters, a lack of initial care as a result of hospitals being disabled by the disaster, and suicides.

Many of these deaths happened well after the evacuation. So effectively all deaths of the elderly displaced are blamed on Fukushima. It appears there is extra compensation if you can attribute a death to Fukushima.

Re:Another Win For the Anti-Nuclear Guys

[Applehu Akbar]

"The building of a new reactor was not delayed by Greenpeace, champ"

This is true. The Green movement has none of the power in Japan that it does in the US and Europe, which accounts for a large fraction of Japan's economic strength since the Seventies, when our own building of industry and infrastructure was stifled by Greenpeace and its even more radical ilk. When I lived in Tokyo during this period, there was an annual antinuclear rally that drew perhaps a hundred people, in a city of over 30 million.

After Fukushima, foreign Greens and their pet journalists swarmed in to fire up a mass movement like the ones in Western countries. Their rallies drew big crowds at first, during the initial "How bad is this going to get?" period, largely by capitalizing in a newfound mistrust of government that flared up after the disaster - in which, remember, the nuclear accident was only a sidebar to the deaths of 16,000 people. As time went on, the initial fears subsided and the antinuclear rallies are back to drawing mostly flies, as before. Today, after a series of extra safety checks, the reactors are being started up again.

The Fukushima issue in Japan revolves around, "How did our reputation for long-term planning fail so spectacularly in Tohoku ('Northeast', their term for the disaster as a whole). Seacoast towns had ancient markers detailing the exact place where historical tsunamis had reached, ignored in the postwar rush for coastal development. After the grid failure prevented Fukushima from maintaining core coolant circulation after shutdown, the crew went to Plan B, which was to hook up fire trucks to maintain the circulation. But, whoopsie, the plumbing connections didn't match. These are the sort of screwups that turn an inconvenience into a meltdown. But because there is no anti-technology movement in Japan, they will figure out how to do better next time.

Re:Another Win For the Anti-Nuclear Guys

[Uberbah]

99.99999999% of Americans were completely unaffected by 911. So it must not have made any impact on the nations consciousness or changed any policies, right?

Re:Another Win For the Anti-Nuclear Guys

[Uberbah]

The Green movement has none of the power in Japan that it does in the US and Europe

If the Green movement had the power in the U.S. that nuke fans thought it did, all coal and nuclear power in the country would have been replaced with solar panels. In the Carter Administration.

After Fukushima, foreign Greens and their pet journalists swarmed in to fire up a mass movement like the ones in Western countries.

Greens didn't tell the Japanese that TEPCO was a habitual, corner cutting liar that put their employees and surrounding region at risk. TEPCO did that through their corruption and hubris.

But because there is no anti-technology movement in Japan, they will figure out how to do better next time.

Standard nuke fan storyline: if you oppose nuclear power, you're a luddite! Reality: you can be fascinated by the technology, but realize that nuclear power is the most expensive technology ever invented by man.

Let's pretend that the IAEA isn't as incestuous with the industry it's supposed to oversee as Treasury is with Goldman Sachs, and that there will never be a nuclear meltdown again, anywhere. Nuclear power is still completely unjustifiable, as no plant rolls the full cost of it's construction, operation, security, maintenance into the rates it charges much less storing the waste for hundreds of years.

Nuclear power == corporate pork and fluffing Tom Swift fanboys.

And yet

[drinkypoo]

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?

Re:And yet

[cbeaudry]

And yet, the report says, and I quote:

"No one has been killed or sickened by the radiation — a point confirmed last month by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Even among Fukushima workers, the number of additional cancer cases in coming years is expected to be so low as to be undetectable, a blip impossible to discern against the statistical background noise."

Seems to me Fukushima was a government failure in emergency management more than anything else.

The Other Victims.

[Mr D from 63]

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.

What about the tsunami?

[GuB-42]

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.

Re:Oh No!

[Orgasmatron]

Yes, all zero of them have been fully counted.

Re:Oh No!

[Rei]

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.

Radiation risks from Fukushima were more enhanced near the plant, while the evacuation measures were crucial for its reduction. According to our estimations, 730–1700 excess cancer incidents are expected of which around 65% may be fatal, which are very close to what has been already published (see references therein).

Estimates not good enough? Let's try actual measurements of thyroid cancer in children:

Assuming two years for duration on detectable level of cytology until clinical level, incidence rate ratio was 26.98 (95% confidence interval, 14.12-48.61) in the nearest area, and in Fukushima city, it was 19.41 (95% confidence interval,?9.62-37.31), compared with the Japanese mean annual incidence among those aged 15-19 years from 1975 to 2008 (i.e., 5 per 1,000,000).

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:

Even among Fukushima workers, the number of additional cancer cases in coming years is expected to be so low as to be undetectable, a blip impossible to discern against the statistical background noise.

The actual report says:

The latency time for late radiation health effects can be decades, and therefore it is not possible to discount the potential occurrence of such effects among an exposed population by observations a few years after exposure ... Among the group of workers who received effective doses of 100 mSv or more, UNSCEAR concluded that “an increased risk of cancer would be expected in the future. However, any increased incidence of cancer in this group is expected to be indiscernible because of the difficulty of confirming such a small incidence against the normal statistical fluctuations in cancer incidence.”

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):

For leukaemia, the lifetime risks are predicted to increase by up to around 7% over baseline cancer rates in males exposed as infants; for breast cancer, the estimated lifetime risks increase by up to around 6% over baseline rates in females exposed as infants; for all solid cancers, the estimated lifetime risks increase by up to around 4% over baseline rates in females exposed as infants; and for thyroid cancer, the estimated lifetime risk increases by up to around 70% over baseline rates in females exposed as infants. These percentages represent estimated relative increases over the baseline rates and are not estimated absolute risks for developing such cancers”

But back to the UNSCEAR report: here's its section on cancer risks that the IAEA claim cited by the Times was based on:

40. For adults in Fukushima Prefecture, the Committee estimates average life

Same issue with Hurricane Evacuations

[trout007]

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.

Re:Oh No!

[Mr D from 63]

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.

Re:Oh No!

[Mr D from 63]

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.

Re:Unintended consequences

[rasmusbr]

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.

Re:Oh No!

[Mr D from 63]

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?