How Fukushima Led to a Radiation Panic

[FBaggins]

One year after Fukushima, independent scientists working for the UN say bluntly that irrational fears of radiation poisoning will cause far more harm than the radiation itself. Not a single individual from the Japanese public received a dangerous dose, according to the early and informal analyses by the scientists. (Conspiracy theories cannot survive against the constant independent radiation measurements uploaded on Twitter.) Even the 70 altruistic plant workers who stayed behind gained an additional cancer risk of just 0.002% -- effectively zero in a country where four out of ten people get cancer.

All of this would likely come as a shock to most readers of the New York Times, which shunted its coverage of the actual health consequences of Fukushima to its Green blog, and instead repeatedly hyped "worst case scenario" speculations by scared government officials. (By contrast, NPR, WaPo, and Nature, prominently ran informative pieces on the harms of hysteria.)

Bending to a panicked public, Japan shut down its nuclear plants, and has had to spend the eye-popping sum of $100 million more every day to import and burn fossil fuels. Cancer-causing pollution fumes are up, as are greenhouse gases (four percent despite reduced overall energy use, according to a Breakthrough analysis). The turn back to fossil energy has turned Japan's decades-long trade surplus into a trade deficit. Higher energy costs exacerbate the nation's ability to deal with its $12 trillion debt, which at 212% of its GDP is far higher than even that of Greece (165%) or Italy (128%).

Despite the over-reaction in Japan and Europe, Fukushima has not slowed the pace of new nuclear plant construction globally (something we predicted last year). Against claims made in this week's Economist, the number of reactors planned and under construction is virtually unchanged. In the US, the main obstacle to the expansion of nuclear has not been fear of radiation but rather the abundance of cheap natural gas from shale -- a reality which similarly challenges the expansion of renewables.


http://theenergycollective.com/breakthroughinstitut/79341/making-radiation-panic

[bluecoat_fan]

1. "according to the early and informal analyses" what the heck does that mean?(nt)

[FBaggins]

2. This expands on that a bit.

It's the link from the original article re: that piece.

Dose levels
It is already evident that rapid evacuation and careful screening protected Fukushima's citizens from harm, says Wolfgang Weiss, a physicist at Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection in Munich and chair of UNSCEAR. Early and informal analyses by his colleagues suggest that no members of the public received a dangerous dose of radiation.

That finding is supported by a sweeping public-health study begun last summer at Fukushima Medical University. With a ¥78.2-billion (US$958-million) budget, the survey is designed to monitor the health of some 2 million people from the region for 30 years. According to the latest estimates, released on 20 February, 99.3% of 9,747 people living in towns or villages close to the plant received less than 10 millisieverts (mSv) in accumulated effective dose in the first four months after the accident. The highest recorded dose was 23 mSv, well below the acute 100-mSv exposure levels linked to a slight increase in cancer risk.

Yet suspicion is hampering the ambitious health survey, which hopes to nail down the long-term impact of Fukushima on ordinary citizens. Despite efforts to promote the study among evacuees, participation stands at just 21%. “Most of the people I've met here refuse to fill in the questionnaires. They don't see credibility in what the government does, and they say, 'this is just a survey of guinea pigs',” says Shizuko Otake of the non-profit organization Shalom, which supports refugees in neighbouring Minamisoma and Iitate.

http://www.nature.com/news/japan-s-nuclear-crisis-fukushima-s-legacy-of-fear-1.10183?utm_source=The+Making+of+a+Radiation+Panic&utm_campaign=Fukushima&utm_medium=email

So it's probably better to say that there's a lack of credible evidence demonstrating that someone did receive a dangerous dose, rather than claiming that they know that nobody did.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

3. I love how we can now rest assured that the poisoning of our planet

by radioactive isotopes can be so calmly dismissed. Thank you for setting my mind at ease.

However, in 5-10 years when cancer rates spike and dead zones are confirmed in the area, who will shoulder the blame? It WILL be hard to pinpoint, as the future time-frame can absolutely increase the potential causal variables.

But, thank you for the absolution you continue to espouse in favor of the nuclear power industry's shortfalls.

[PamW]

4. The planet was already radioactive; always has been.

The Earth hasn't been "poisoned" by Fukushima.

This planet was already radioactive; always has been. So many here have this romantic notion that the Earth was pristine and free of radioactivity until the activiities of Man. Of course, anyone that has studied science and is versed in same, knows better.

This Earth and all the material on it was formed from the effluent of the supernova explosions of stars. That material was radioactive when it was created, and it hasn't all died away. Most of the natural world consists of elements with radioactive constituents.

Fukushima only added very marginally to that inventory of radioisotopes. Even a nuclear accident can't compete with Mother Nature.

We know how much radiation exposure it takes to cause cancer spikes; and the exposure due to Fukushima didn't reach those levels by a long shot. So the prediction of cancer spikes in the near future is out of order; there will be no spikes in the cancer rate, and no need to blame anyone.

Again, Fukushima is a negligible increase to a planet that was already radioactive.

PamW

[FBaggins]

5. More lies!

As an industry insider, you obviously know for a fact that human cells can differentiate between alpha particles caused by natural radiation and those from manmade radiation! Manmade radiation is far more dangerous!

[PamW]

6. You wouldn't believe..

You wouldn't believe the number of times I've had anti-nukes attempt to make that argument; that the human body can tell the difference between "natural" radiation and "man-made" radiation.

Consider the very common beta radiation. When a radioactive nucleus decays in beta radiation; it emits an electron. There are not multiple flavors of electrons. An electron is an electron is an electron.

It slows down due to the Coulomb reaction, and so the initial energy isn't all that important.

An electron slowing down looks the same to the atoms it pass regardless of what radionuclide made it.

Does water that your get from rainfall differ from the water you make burning hydrogen and oxygen?

The world is made of building blocks of particles and bits of energy. If we create radiation using the same physics and same methods as does Mother Nature, our radiation products don't look any different than the ones that Mother Nature makes.

PamW