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32,000 Workers At Fukushima No. 1 Got High Radiation Dose, Tepco Data Show (japantimes.co.jp)

Posted by timothy on from the one-way-transform dept.

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.

24 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. So only 25% more than background? by OverlordQ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just being alive exposes you to about 4 mSv a year of background radiation.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
    1. Re:So only 25% more than background? by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 5, Informative

      Relevant XKCD for comparisons of radiation levels:
      https://xkcd.com/radiation/

    2. Re:So only 25% more than background? by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 4, Informative

      But, but, but... OMG RADIATION!!!!!!!!

      For Christ's sake. 174 people got enough radiation that 1:200 people might die of leukemia.

      No, not 1/200 people. The risk of dying of cancers of the types you get from exposure is about 1 in 100 or 1%. So, if that risk in increase by 0.005 percent, the elevated risk is now .01 x 1.005 = 1.005%. Which means 1 added cancer death maybe in 20,000 exposures.

    3. Re:So only 25% more than background? by fhage · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Psshaw... around Denver, we get about 11 mSv/yr because we live on top of a big uranium deposit. Radioactive Radon is everywhere!

      In Boulder where I grew up, the kids fishing pond was made from the abandoned settling ponds of an old mill.

      In the late 1960's, the DOE did an aerial survey for lost plutonium from the nearby Rocky Flats Weapons plant after a bad fire at the plant.

      All those little hills around the pond that we sat on as we fished were tailings from the Radium mill and were pretty hot.

      So, far I've received over 500 mSV from living in this radioactive heaven hole.

  2. Disaster by Etherwalk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Employees who work at a nuclear reactor during and immediately after a meltdown should get their healthcare and compensation for life, no questions asked We are asking them to stay and potentially risk horrifying deaths in order to give the public surrounding them time to evacuate; it is a heroic sacrifice for the good of the community and should be built into the cost and risk model of power companies installing nuclear plants.

    1. Re:Disaster by blindseer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.
  3. CT Scan by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That is the equivalent of a single CT Scan.

    1. Re:CT Scan by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, it is less dangerous than a CT Scan. A CT scan penetrates deep into your tissue (that is what it is for). What is impressive is that there was only 5 mSv of exposure. You get 4 mSv from just plain living on Earth, less if you live in your Mom's basement like I do.

    2. Re:CT Scan by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 4, Informative

      A CT scan is 30mSv. Also, a CT scan is a single large dosage instead of a low dosage over a long period of time.

      No it's not. Your information is extremely outdated. The highest dosage you get from a CT scan is for cardiac function imaging. It's because you need to look the heart during several different points through the cardiac cycle.

      On a typical 64-slice CT scanner the dosage is 5 to 10mSv for a cardiac function scan. That's going to be the highest dosage as any scanner with less than a 64-slice detector array will give unusable images and a very high radiation dosage. Almost no one is using these for cardiac imaging. A 64 slice CT scanner is very versatile, but not good for cardiac imaging.

      Most hospitals are using 256 and 320 slice CT scanners for cardiac imaging currently. And 640 slice scanners are now out in the wild. Rather than needing to spin the array in a continuous helical motion, the high slice scanners can image the entire heart in a single rotation. A 256 or 320 slice scanner can do a cardiac scan with 1 to 2mSv exposure.

      There's also dose reduction software. It allows the radiation dosage to be lower and give lower quality images, then clean them up in software after the scan. If you're getting a CT scan for anything other than the heart and it's going to be higher than 1mSv, go somewhere else. And unless there is some reason you need to have the scan done in a CT, such as a non-MRI safe pace maker or other hardware, there's very little need to have this type of scan done. Other than a very specific type of scan, no CT scan should be above 1 mSv.

  4. Re:Seriously... by Tailhook · · Score: 4, Informative

    how about the rest of you

    Sorry, no. The messenger has using Slashdot to push anti-nook FUD for years. The well is poisoned. Fuck him and his agenda.

    --
    Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
  5. Re:Only 5? by jd · · Score: 5, Informative

    https://hps.org/publicinformat...

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  6. Please let us vote on articles on the front page! by Prune · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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."
  7. Radiation Exposure Models are WRONG by SummitCO · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There sure are some scary comparisons of doses and suggestions of risk without any references in the TFA.

    The problem with many exposure limits and risk estimates is that they are all based on the worst case scenario, ultraconservative exposure model: linear no-threshold (LNT). Basically, this model we created in the 1940s assumes that all radiation is bad and more is worse in with a linear dose to risk relationship.

    However, there is not much evidence to support this simplistic model, which is what NRC uses to establish dose limits! We've known it is wrong for a long time. There is evidence that other models, specifically radiation hormesis, are correct. We won't change anything policywise because imagine the gnashing of teeth from the Greens when the newspaper article reads "Government loosens radiation rules! FEAR!"

    But radiation hormesis is supported by the evidence. It suggests that below a certain level, radiation stimulates cellular and DNA repair mechanisms so that there is an opitmal dose of radiation that is ABOVE zero and that only when you go high on a dose in a given time (threshold) does the damage outweigh the stimulated benefits, but the response may be nonlinear for dose vs risk after the threshold.

    Here are just two of the more recent articles on the subject (research goes back a LONG time)

    2009, "The Linear No-Threshold Relationship Is Inconsistent with Radiation Biologic and Experimental Data" Radiology
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

    2013, "Linear No-Threshold Model VS. Radiation Hormesis"
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

    Other fun pieces of information:
    A chest X-ray is ~1.5mSv.
    An abdominal Cat Scan (CT) is usually 10-20mSv per study.
    Natural radiation exposure for Denver, CO (5280ft): 12mSv per year.

    1. Re:Radiation Exposure Models are WRONG by DRJlaw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Natural radiation exposure for Denver, CO (5280ft): 12mSv per year.

      It gets better...

      Naturally occurring background radiation is the main source of exposure for most people, and provides some perspective on radiation exposure from nuclear energy. The average dose received by all of us from background radiation is around 2.4 mSv/yr, which can vary depending on the geology and altitude where people live â" ranging between 1 and 10 mSv/yr, but can be more than 50 mSv/yr. The highest known level of background radiation affecting a substantial population is in Kerala and Madras states in India where some 140,000 people receive doses which average over 15 millisievert per year from gamma radiation, in addition to a similar dose from radon. Comparable levels occur in Brazil and Sudan, with average exposures up to about 40 mSv/yr to many people. (The highest level of natural background radiation recorded is on a Brazilian beach: 800 mSv/yr, but people donâ(TM)t live there.)Several places are known in Iran, India and Europe where natural background radiation gives an annual dose of more than 100 mSv to people and up to 260 mSv (at Ramsar in Iran, where some 200,000 people are exposed to more than 10 mSv/yr). Lifetime doses from natural radiation range up to several thousand millisievert. However, there is no evidence of increased cancers or other health problems arising from these high natural levels. The millions of nuclear workers that have been monitored closely for 50 years have no higher cancer mortality than the general population but have had up to ten times the average dose. People living in Colorado and Wyoming have twice the annual dose as those in Los Angeles, but have lower cancer rates. Source

      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?

    2. Re:Radiation Exposure Models are WRONG by Nidi62 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Natural radiation exposure for Denver, CO (5280ft): 12mSv per year.

      It gets better...

      Naturally occurring background radiation is the main source of exposure for most people, and provides some perspective on radiation exposure from nuclear energy. The average dose received by all of us from background radiation is around 2.4 mSv/yr, which can vary depending on the geology and altitude where people live â" ranging between 1 and 10 mSv/yr, but can be more than 50 mSv/yr. The highest known level of background radiation affecting a substantial population is in Kerala and Madras states in India where some 140,000 people receive doses which average over 15 millisievert per year from gamma radiation, in addition to a similar dose from radon. Comparable levels occur in Brazil and Sudan, with average exposures up to about 40 mSv/yr to many people. (The highest level of natural background radiation recorded is on a Brazilian beach: 800 mSv/yr, but people donâ(TM)t live there.)Several places are known in Iran, India and Europe where natural background radiation gives an annual dose of more than 100 mSv to people and up to 260 mSv (at Ramsar in Iran, where some 200,000 people are exposed to more than 10 mSv/yr). Lifetime doses from natural radiation range up to several thousand millisievert. However, there is no evidence of increased cancers or other health problems arising from these high natural levels. The millions of nuclear workers that have been monitored closely for 50 years have no higher cancer mortality than the general population but have had up to ten times the average dose. People living in Colorado and Wyoming have twice the annual dose as those in Los Angeles, but have lower cancer rates. Source

      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?

      Well of course background radiation can be tolerated to much higher levels because it is natural. Processed, highly concentrated radiation from nuclear power plants is much more dangerous.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  8. I want trn style "Kill Files". by Mike+Van+Pelt · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I do not care what fevered notions pass through the brain of mdsolar. Nothing he has to say has the slightest relevance; he's an endless spewer of anti-nuke propaganda. I want to never see anything by him ever again.

    On Usenet, I had "Kill files" that could trim the idiots out of my newsfeed. Can we get something similar on Slashdot? Please? Pleeeeease???

  9. Re:Seriously... by DRJlaw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't give a shit who the fuck submitted this; I'm [somewhat] pro-nuke and even I'm not interested in playing "shoot the messenger;" how about the rest of you refrain as well? (Yeah, right.)

    "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.

  10. Use the one Sievert rule. by fizzup · · Score: 4, Informative

    Duration of exposure matters, of course, but one should always keep in mind this rule: one sievert is dangerous. It's not always fatal, but sometimes it is. Some corollaries:

    • A factor of 100 less (10 mSv) does not matter
    • A factor of 10 less (100 mSv) is risky.
    • A factor of 10 more (10 Sv) is almost always fatal.
    • A factor of 100 more (100 Sv) means irradiating a corpse.

    The fellow who got dosed with nearly 700 mSv has my sympathy and gratitude. The mantle of leadership and duty falls where it falls, and we all owe a debt to the ones who bear the burden.

  11. SOLAR KILLS PEOPLE by roman_mir · · Score: 5, Funny

    So in a disaster area a nuclear power plant can cause some radiation leakage and it affects the people who work there. Ok.

    Under normal operating conditions the Sun causes cancer and kills people with Renewable Solar Radiation!!!!!

    Headline: SUN CAUSES CANCER AND KILLS MILLIONS OF PEOPLE!!!

    From WHO:

    Currently, between 2 and 3 million non-melanoma skin cancers and 132,000 melanoma skin cancers occur globally each year. One in every three cancers diagnosed is a skin cancer and, according to Skin Cancer Foundation Statistics, one in every five Americans will develop skin cancer in their lifetime.

    In 2012 alone 232,000 people had new incidents of melanoma, and 55,000 people died from it.

    The SUN is MURDERING people! We need to find safer methods to produce energy, I suggest nuclear.

    --
    You can't handle the truth.
  12. Re:Seriously... by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm shrugging over here. This reads like a feel good fluff piece in a scary voice.

    Its not even news. A bunch of workers at the plant got some very low exposure to radiation, on the order of what a pilot gets in his/her job. Throw in some minute mention of increase in cancer risk, and you have the recipe for a FUD meal served up for the uninformed.

    The wording of the summary is a good indication of not even knowing the information.... "a level considered to raise the risk of dying after developing cancer by 0.5 percent". So, IF you develop cancer, your chances of death go up by 1/2 a percent? These are the front line workers, and there is essentially no danger. And this is from the same people telling us what a human health disaster Fukushima is? They wont' even try to reconcile that.

  13. Re:Please let us vote on articles on the front pag by Orgasmatron · · Score: 4, Informative

    Several of them will get cancer anyway. We expect one extra to get cancer.

    But even that is bullshit, since that is based on a model called "Linear, No Threshold" or LNT.

    At large doses, ibuprofen will kill you. I've got a bottle of 160 pills in my desk drawer, which should be plenty. According to LNT, since 160 pills at once into one person would cause one death, one pill each into 160 people would also cause one death. So if I gave one pill, one time, to 160 of the Fukushima workers, one more than normal of them would die of liver failure eventually.

    Where the analogy breaks down is that in reality, everyone would be getting 1 to 10 ibuprofen pills per day from their environment, and the people living and working in places with higher natural doses get less liver failure. (See hormesis)

    --
    See that "Preview" button?
  14. Re:Seriously... by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Throw in some minute mention of increase in cancer risk, and you have the recipe for a FUD meal served up for the uninformed.

    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"
  15. Re:Seriously... by blindseer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  16. Re:Seriously... by quenda · · Score: 3, Informative

    good for the current two generations. For the next 20000

    Thats kind of backward. The biggest hazard after Fukushima was iodine-131, which has all gone already. next, the caesium-134 with a 2-year half-life will soon be gone. Caesium-137 is most of what remains, and has a 30-year half-life. So the atoms will be around up to 10 or 20 generations, but it is highly water soluble, so ...

    All things leak, diffuse and mix with each other.

    Yep, the small proportion of remaining caesium will be long washed away to become an insignificant part of the background before the "current two generations" are gone.

    20,000 gen? Pure propaganda. Even now, the radiation from plutonium etc around Fukushima is miniscule.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...