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Japan Confirms First Radiation-Linked Death Out of Fukushima (bbc.co.uk)
Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare announced for the first time that a man employed at the Fukushima nuclear power plant died of lung cancer linked to radiation exposure. "The man, who was in his 50s, died from lung cancer that was diagnosed in 2016," reports the BBC. "Japan's government had previously agreed that radiation caused illness in four workers but this is the first acknowledged death." From the report: The Fukushima reactor suffered meltdowns after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and a tsunami in March 2011. Cooling systems were wrecked at the plant on Japan's north-east coast and radioactive material leaked out. The employee who died had worked at atomic power stations since 1980 and was in charge of measuring radiation at the Fukushima No 1 plant shortly after its meltdown. He worked there at least twice after it was damaged, and had worn a face mask and protective suit, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare said. After hearing opinions from a panel of radiologists and other experts, the ministry ruled that the man's family should be paid compensation.
Indeed. Objecting to nukes because of safety is silly.
Objecting to nukes because of economics makes much more sense. They are far too expensive, and the cost is going up while the cost of solar, wind, and storage is falling.
First hand collected scientific data.
I collected data with a calibrated geiger counter and wrote a paper on it. Admittedly in High School. I grew up near Three Mile Island. By "near", I mean, I could literally see it every day. Naturally, it was kinda mentioned in school quite a few times. One of the projects was literally going to the location where the the damaged reactor was removed, near the live reactor, across the river at the visitor/training center. I also included data points from my house. Radiation was near background. Close enough it was within the error of margin of a pretty decent geiger counter. Even within literal stone's throw from the worst civil nuclear incident in American history.
Because I wanted to do something bit different, I also included data from a coal plant and an incinerator down the river a couple miles. Incinerator was less radioactive than a smoke alarm. New facility, they filter the hell out of the output and check for that sort of thing. In case someone tosses a load of smoke alarms in their trash, as one example they mentioned. Coal plant was older and put off (from memory, so give me a bit of leeway) roughly between 3x and 5x background downwind. This was due to uranium and thorium traces in the coal. Very very tiny amounts. But builds up when you're burning a lot of coal. I didn't do an extremely through pattern, it was every quarter mile of a road for like two miles. Coal plant verified, and explained it was within allowed levels and they do have radiation monitors to shut things down if it went too high. There was actually a lot of cooperation between the local coal plants and TMI out of necessity as coal plants in the area can set off extremely sensitive internal alarms at TMI.
I probably realize I sound overly enthusiastic about nuclear power, but having grown up nearing the radiation alarms being tested every noon on Saturday for several years, I'm well aware of the potential risk.
The USAF ref I made was Constant Phoenix. Buddy of mine I know was formerly a pilot of it. His job was to fly through a nuclear weapon plume. Mostly they flew downwind from countries being suspected of developing rogue nuclear weapons. Obviously NK, but other countries as well. US coal plants were better than most back in his day, and better now. Other countries do not filter NEARLY as well, and shot out insane amount of uranium and thorium into the air in fly ash plumes. Obviously an aircraft designed to find signs of underground nuclear testing could see it, as it was designed for that specific purpose. So, they could and did navigate using it.