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32,000 Workers At Fukushima No. 1 Got High Radiation Dose, Tepco Data Show (japantimes.co.jp)
mdsolar writes: A total of 32,760 workers at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant had an annual radiation dose exceeding 5 millisieverts as of the end of January, according to an analysis of Tokyo Electric Power Co. data. A reading of 5 millisieverts is one of the thresholds of whether nuclear plant workers suffering from leukemia can be eligible for compensation benefits for work-related injuries and illnesses. Of those workers, 174 had a cumulative radiation dose of more than 100 millisieverts, a level considered to raise the risk of dying after developing cancer by 0.5 percent. Most of the exposure appears to have stemmed from work just after the start of the crisis on March 11, 2011. The highest reading was 678.8 millisieverts.
Just being alive exposes you to about 4 mSv a year of background radiation.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
That is the equivalent of a single CT Scan.
The firehose voting is not enough. There are too few people voting on firehose article, making it more open to abuse by those with multiple sockpuppet accounts. There should be a way to downvote articles on the front page, and a karma-like score pre-applied to those people's firehose submissions.
Why this submissions is flamebait anti-nuclear energy FUD:
- 5 mSv is background radiation and is a ridiculously low threshold
- 50 mSv is the standard in places like the US
- of those 174 workers exposed to the highest radiation dose, we can expect that one will get cancer -- pretty damn good for what's supposed to be one of the worst nuclear disasters!
- in comparison, how many people got killed by the total lifetime (production to decommission) per energy generated by mdsolar's preferred methods? here's where nuclear stands in comparison: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/...
Of course, those that have been here for a while already knew this submission was going to be utter bullshit the moment we saw who posted it.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
"Shoot the messenger" means that you treat the bearer of bad news as if they were to blame for the news.
It has noting to do with decrying the messenger as an frequent source of biased and incomplete information, nor the site's unusually frequent use of his submissions (a la Bennett Hazelton and others).
So, no.
It gets better...
5 mSv is the additional annual exposure of your typical aircraft crew flying North American routes. Since that industry routinely hits that threshold, shall we shut it down too?
174 got enough of a dose to increase their chances of dying after developing cancer by 0.5%. Which means there's a 87% chance that ONE guy will die of cancer as a result of Fukushima.
Wow. The second-worst nuclear disaster in history, and it MIGHT cause ONE death. In thirty or forty years....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Employees who work at a nuclear reactor during and immediately after a meltdown should get their healthcare and compensation for life, no questions asked
Wait, I have a question. Would these people still get free healthcare and compensation if they CAUSED the meltdown? What if they didn't cause it but were merely negligent in preventing the meltdown? What if they were an employee working on site but in a building far from the reactor and had no increase in exposure and did nothing to assist in the recovery effort except something trivial, like emptying the wastebaskets from the offices?
Here's a better question. Why don't we build nuclear power plants that simply cannot meltdown? Perhaps this is impossible based on differing opinions on what is considered a meltdown. We do know how to build safe nuclear power plants but the Department of Energy has been sitting on their hands in allowing people to construct demonstration plants so that their safety can be proven. Instead the DOE does study after study, spending all kinds of money on engineers to look at drawings and simulations, expecting to see a design too safe to fail.
There are probably a dozen companies in the USA, and at least that many more world wide, with nuclear reactor designs that would be much safer than the plants we have now but no one is permitted to actually prove they can work with a real and honest working prototype. Build some prototypes big enough to prove the concept but small enough to contain, put in double safety systems, and turn them on. Test them, abuse them, make them fail. After we've seen how they can fail we can build systems to contain the radiation threat. Simulations are worthless unless you have real world data for comparison. This is why we build cars in CAD and then once built we launch a few of them into a wall to see how they crumple up.
I had someone tell me, who at least claimed to be an engineer, that we should not build any new nuclear reactors until we prove they are safe. I asked, how do you prove anything until one is built? Which I guess is the point, he did not want to see any nuclear reactors built. Which is also what I believe the DOE is doing. No one in the DOE wants to sign off on a nuclear reactor since if anything goes wrong then they will be blamed for it. In the mean time we are burning coal at an incredible rate.
If you think nuclear power is dangerous then compare it to anything else on a megawatt-hour produced to deaths metric and you tell me who is killing more people, is it the nuclear power industry or the DOE for keeping more nuclear power from us?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I'll add on to this by asking some very basic questions on the safety of other power sources. What is the increased chances of cancer for handling the radioactive dust from a COAL powered plant? What of other threats to health like industrial accidents, particulate matter in the lungs, and so forth? Some of those balance out with nuclear given that the steam turbines and such are effectively identical between coal and nuclear.
What of wind and solar? What are the chances of dying from falling from a windmill pylon or a rooftop solar installation? Again some hazards like electrocution balance out because nuclear, solar, and wind all produce electricity. These hazards do need to be counted though since while the hazards exist in both the threat level may not be identical.
I suspect that hydro power is exceedingly safe but when it fails I'd expect massive loss of life. Entire communities can be washed away.
Let's speculate on the increased cancer risks to nuclear power because that is scary. Never mind that you'd be just as dead if you fell off a roof.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.