Showing posts with label nuclear radiation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nuclear radiation. Show all posts
19 September 2011
21 August 2011
'People Are Suffering from Radiophobia'
'People Are Suffering from Radiophobia'
REUTERS
SPIEGEL interviewed Yamashita about the expected effects of exposure in Fukushima and his plans to conduct one of the largest scientific studies even undertaken in the region. As part of the study, he hopes to examine the health effects of the nuclear disaster on some 2 million people.
SPIEGEL: The government of the Fukushima prefecture has invited you to inform people in the affected region about radiation risks. Right at the beginning, you said: "The effects of radiation do not come to people who are happy and laughing, they come to people who are weak-spirited." What did you mean by that?
Yamashita: That was on March 20 during the first meeting. I was really shocked. The people were so serious, nobody laughed at all.
SPIEGEL: These people's villages and home towns are contaminated. Nobody knows about the invisible dangers. What did you expect?
Yamashita: The mood of the people was really depressed. From animal experiments with rats we clearly know that animals who are very susceptible to stress will be more affected by radiation. Stress is not good at all for people who are subjected to radiation. Besides, mental-state stress also supresses the immune system and therefore may promote some cancer and non-cancer diseases. That is why I told people that they also have to relax.
SPIEGEL: And to help people relax, you also said that doses of 100 millisievert per year would be fine? This is normally the limit for nuclear power plant workers in emergency conditions.
Yamashita: I did not say that 100 millisievert is fine and no reason to worry. I just said that below that threshold we cannot prove a higher risk for cancer. That is the evidence from research in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl.
SPIEGEL: But you didn't understand that your reassurances would make people even more angry and frightened?
Yamashita: I think it really contributed to the confusion that the Japanese government decided to set the standard for yearly maximal dose at 20 millisievert. The International Commission on Radiological Protection suggests a limit between 20 and 100 millisievert in a situation with a nuclear emergency. Which threshold you pick is a political decision. You must weigh the risks and benefits, because any evacuation will also have risks. The Japanese government chose the most careful radiological approach. That made people more confused and insecure.
SPIEGEL: Your comments have made you a controversial figure. A Japanese journalist wants to sue you. Anti-nuclear activists ..
.
Yamashita: ... they are not scientists, they are not doctors, they are not radiation specialists. They do not know the international standards, which researchers worked on very hard. It makes me sad that people believe gossip, magazines and even Twitter.
SPIEGEL: Why should the people trust experts who have been telling them for decades that nuclear power plants are 100-percent safe?
Yamashita: I was surprised when I arrived in Fukushima that nobody was prepared for such a disaster. I used to advise China and states of the former Soviet Union on radiation protection. Now we have a tremendous accident in my own country and are not prepared. People in Fukushima did not even know that there are 11 reactors in their region. The medical faculty of the University of Fukushima didn't have a single specialist in radioprotection medicine.
SPIEGEL: Would you address the people affected by the accident in a different manner today?
Yamashita: In a situation where people had no understanding of radioactivity at all, I wanted to be very clear. I have now changed my communications approach from black-and-white to gray scale.
SPIEGEL: People want clear answers. Where is it safe? And where is it not?
Yamashita: We don't have those answers. When people ask me: "Are doses below 100 millisievert 100 percent safe?" Then I have to answer as a scientist: "I don't know."
SPIEGEL: From previous studies we have learned that if 100 people are exposed to levels of 100 millisievert, statistically speaking, one person will get cancer because of the radiation. Is it possible to project the level of danger of lower doses?
Yamashita: That could be. The problem is that to estimate the risk for disease we use the so-called linear-nonthreshold dose-response model, which assumes that even a small additional radiation dose would cause a small increase in cancer incidence in an exposed population. Such an increase is theoretically measurable, but with the doses below 100 millisievert it is statistically insignificant and thus cannot be considered as an argument in support of excessive risk. Also, with a tumor we do not know what caused it. Radiation does not leave a diagnosable signature. From radiation biology we also know that smaller doses can damage human DNA. But the human body can effectively repair those injuries within a short time; this is a natural intrinsic protective mechanism. That is what I am trying to tell the people.
SPIEGEL: And what should people do with this kind of information?
Yamashita: With low radiation doses the people have to decide for themselves whether to stay or to leave. Nobody can make that decision for them. They have to weigh the risks and benefits: Moving can mean a loss of jobs and having to change schools for the children. These factors cause stress. On the other hand, this family might be able to avoid the risk of cancer, even if it is only minimal.
SPIEGEL: That families affected by the nuclear accident are being forced to make any such decision is a terrible burden.
Yamashita: Yes. Therefore Tepco and the Japanese government should support people in their decisions. They should support those who want to stay as well as those who think even more than one millisievert is too high.
SPIEGEL: What kind of health risk from the radiation will the people around the plant in Fukushima have to face?
Yamashita: I do not think there will be any direct effect of the radiation for the population. The doses are too small.
SPIEGEL: So you don't think there will be any cases of cancer or cancer deaths?
Yamashita: Based on the data, we have to assume that. Of course, the situation is different for the workers in the plant.
SPIEGEL: Now you are already talking about something you actually intend to research. You plan to monitor the health condition of the residents of Fukushima for the next 30 years.
Yamashita: In the current situation, it is very difficult for us to be accepted by the local residents. We have to make the best medical care possible for these people the first priority.
SPIEGEL: Do you think adopting a more understanding tone than you have up until now would help you to gain acceptance?
Yamashita: Because of the accident, Tepco and the Japanese government have lost the trust of the people in Fukushima completely. The people are suffering, not only because of the earthquake and the tsunami, but also from severe radiation anxiety, real radiophobia. Therefore we have to lower the anxiety (and) give them some emotional support. And, later, we can open the discussion about epidemiological studies. Without the support of the local people, we cannot do anything. In this situation it doesn't even help that I am the expert from Nagasaki and Chernobyl. This is why I moved to Fukushima.
SPIEGEL: Who do you want to examine in your study?
Yamashita: There are three groups. The workers, the children and the general population. The workers are exposed to high-dose radiation. We surely need to monitor them to follow the effects concerning cancer and other diseases. The general population would be divided into two groups: One that was exposed to relatively low radiation and one that was exposed to relatively high radiation. The Fukushima government health office is just finishing a pilot study with which they have questioned 26,000 people.
SPIEGEL: But the people don't know how much radiation they were exposed to.
Yamashita: That is what we have to find out. We ask where the people were on March 11 at what time and then we ask those questions for every day in March. We also ask what people ate the first two weeks after the accident, what material their house or apartment is built out of. We want to connect these data with information of the distribution of the radioactive cloud and calculate the dose after the fact.
SPIEGEL: How many people should participate?
Yamashita: All 2 million residents of Fukushima prefecture. It is a big task and would set a science record. The government just decided about compensation payments for people affected by the nuclear accident. Through such applications we want to try to contact also those who moved outside of Fukushima.
SPIEGEL: What about the children?
SPIEGEL: Are you also researching the mental effects of the disaster?
Yamashita: Of course. We know from Chernobyl that the psychological consequences are enormous. Life expectancy of the evacuees dropped from 65 to 58 years -- not because of cancer, but because of depression, alcoholism and suicide. Relocation is not easy, the stress is very big. We must not only track those problems, but also treat them. Otherwise people will feel they are just guinea pigs in our research.
Fukushima Now Radiating Everyone: ‘Unspeakable’ Reality ‘Will Impact All Of Humanity’
CBS 60 Minutes – Fukushima Now Radiating Everyone: ‘Unspeakable’ Reality ‘Will Impact All Of Humanity’
Thursday, August 18, 2011 4:29
Australia’s CBS exposed the “unspeakable” realities of the Japanese catastrophe in its 60 Minutes program Sunday night during which leading nuclear scientist Dr. Michio Kaku said radiation from Fukushima will impact of all of humanity.
The ExaminerAugust 16, 2011
CBS exposes extreme Fukushima radiation human rights violations while U.S. media remains silent.
Australia’s CBS exposed the “unspeakable” realities of the Japanese catastrophe in its 60 Minutes program Sunday night during which leading nuclear scientist Dr. Michio Kaku said radiation from Fukushima will impact of all of humanity. The nuclear energy power industry violation of the right to health is apparent throughout the new Australian report.
“In fact the whole world will be exposed from the radiation from Fukushima,” Dr. Kaku told CBS reporter Liz Hayes.
“We are already getting radiation from Fukushima,” Dr. Kaku said.
Just as Australia’s SBS exposed in depth the reality of the 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico catastrophe unlike any U.S. mainstream news station, Sunday, Australia’s CBS has now exposed in depth the Fukushima catastrophe.
Chernobyl is about three-and-a-half hour’s drive from Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine, a country still carrying the scars of a human and environmental catastrophe.
“The Fukushima crisis is far from over. The crippled nuclear power plant is still leaking; and, judging from Chernobyl, recovery will not be measured in years, more like centuries,” reported the Australian presenter Liz Hayes.
Best known in Australia for reporting on 60 Minutes, Hayes is also known as former co-host of Australia’s Today, a position she held by popular demand for a decade.
As Hayes traveled through now deserted areas of rubble, that were once houses, toward Fukushima, the silence was shattered by the beeping of deadly gamma radiation fallout 40 kilometers from the crippled nuclear power plant.
“We are already getting radiation from Fukushima,” Dr. Kaku said.
Just as Australia’s SBS exposed in depth the reality of the 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico catastrophe unlike any U.S. mainstream news station, Sunday, Australia’s CBS has now exposed in depth the Fukushima catastrophe.
Quotes From Liz Hayes 60 Minutes Blog
Liz Hayes: Fallout
Liz Hayes From CBS TV Show 60 Minutes
In April, 1986, a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant exploded, ironically during a safety test. What followed affected the world. A massive plume of smoke and a cloud of radiated particles swept across Europe and around the globe.
[...]
Frank was our radiation expert, because after Chernobyl we travelled to Japan and the contaminated territory of Fukushima.
Japan’s nuclear disaster in Fukushima is ongoing. There is an exclusion zone and thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes.
These are not earthquake or tsunami victims. These are radiation refugees – people who miraculously survived the horrors of that dreadful natural disaster in March, only to be made homeless by the meltdown of nuclear reactors in their region.
[...]
Much of the region is rural and deceptively peaceful. A Geiger counter the only indication radiation, the invisible enemy, is present.
The human face of this dreadful situation can be seen in shelters in public buildings. It’s where you’ll find families, old and young, struggling to retrieve their lives – a near impossibility when all you have is a cardboard box to mark out your spot, your home.
I don’t know how Japan will recover, and how these refugees will survive. Like Chernobyl, Fukushima could well become a dead zone, where no one will ever be able to return.
[...]
Read The Entire Article
[...]
Frank was our radiation expert, because after Chernobyl we travelled to Japan and the contaminated territory of Fukushima.
Japan’s nuclear disaster in Fukushima is ongoing. There is an exclusion zone and thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes.
These are not earthquake or tsunami victims. These are radiation refugees – people who miraculously survived the horrors of that dreadful natural disaster in March, only to be made homeless by the meltdown of nuclear reactors in their region.
[...]
Much of the region is rural and deceptively peaceful. A Geiger counter the only indication radiation, the invisible enemy, is present.
The human face of this dreadful situation can be seen in shelters in public buildings. It’s where you’ll find families, old and young, struggling to retrieve their lives – a near impossibility when all you have is a cardboard box to mark out your spot, your home.
I don’t know how Japan will recover, and how these refugees will survive. Like Chernobyl, Fukushima could well become a dead zone, where no one will ever be able to return.
[...]
Read The Entire Article
“The Fukushima crisis is far from over. The crippled nuclear power plant is still leaking; and, judging from Chernobyl, recovery will not be measured in years, more like centuries,” reported the Australian presenter Liz Hayes.
Best known in Australia for reporting on 60 Minutes, Hayes is also known as former co-host of Australia’s Today, a position she held by popular demand for a decade.
As Hayes traveled through now deserted areas of rubble, that were once houses, toward Fukushima, the silence was shattered by the beeping of deadly gamma radiation fallout 40 kilometers from the crippled nuclear power plant.
“Gamma radiation is a stronger form of radiation and will go through most things apart from lead,” warned Frank Jackson, refusing to to drive Hayes any further.
Hayes stated after the Fukushima assignment, ”When I realised my only safety devices on my latest assignment were a couple of Geiger counters, some pretty flimsy pieces of protective clothing and a burly bloke named Frank, I must say I feared this was one of those times when the risks didn’t add up.”
Introducing Dr. Kaku on the Fukushima 60 Minutes program, Hayes said, “If you thought nuclear power had been averted in Japan, then meet physicist Michio Kaku.”
Dr. Kaku told Hayes, “If you’ve been exposed to Cesium because you’re a nuclear power worker, even after your long dead and buried, your grave site will be radioactive.”
“Your great grand kids can come to your grave site with a Geiger counter and see that great granddaddy still has radiation at his grave site.”
Unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe: Nuclear refugees
So far, over 135,000 Japanese people have been forced to evacuate according to Hayes.
Riding toward Fukushima, through piles of rubble for stretches where homes once stood, documented in CBS program, Hayes said, ”Streets and towns and villages are deserted.”
“And locals have been told their food and water may be contaminated.”
Stopping along the way, the Geiger showed that a head of cabbage registered as much radiation as an X-ray.
“So every time you have a cabbage, you have an X-ray,” said Hayes.
Radiation refugees by the thousands, wearing masks, live in cardboard shelters, sleeping on the floors of public buildings, with few possessions and little to no privacy, as Hayes saw first-hand and was documented by CBS.
“People have gone to a lot of trouble to make cardboard box into their home.”
Many Japanese people fear their country will never fully recover.
Hayes stated after the Fukushima assignment, ”When I realised my only safety devices on my latest assignment were a couple of Geiger counters, some pretty flimsy pieces of protective clothing and a burly bloke named Frank, I must say I feared this was one of those times when the risks didn’t add up.”
Introducing Dr. Kaku on the Fukushima 60 Minutes program, Hayes said, “If you thought nuclear power had been averted in Japan, then meet physicist Michio Kaku.”
Dr. Kaku told Hayes, “If you’ve been exposed to Cesium because you’re a nuclear power worker, even after your long dead and buried, your grave site will be radioactive.”
“Your great grand kids can come to your grave site with a Geiger counter and see that great granddaddy still has radiation at his grave site.”
Unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe: Nuclear refugees
So far, over 135,000 Japanese people have been forced to evacuate according to Hayes.
Riding toward Fukushima, through piles of rubble for stretches where homes once stood, documented in CBS program, Hayes said, ”Streets and towns and villages are deserted.”
“And locals have been told their food and water may be contaminated.”
Stopping along the way, the Geiger showed that a head of cabbage registered as much radiation as an X-ray.
“So every time you have a cabbage, you have an X-ray,” said Hayes.
Radiation refugees by the thousands, wearing masks, live in cardboard shelters, sleeping on the floors of public buildings, with few possessions and little to no privacy, as Hayes saw first-hand and was documented by CBS.
“People have gone to a lot of trouble to make cardboard box into their home.”
Many Japanese people fear their country will never fully recover.
“Do you think you’ll ever be able to take food, water and air you breathe for granted again?” Hayes asked Chia Maxamoto.
“Ah, knowingly? I don’t think so.”
Dr. Kaku asserted about the Japanese people, “These are guinea pigs, absolute human guinea pigs.”
Chernobyl plant and people still crippled and crippling Hayes of CBS went to Chernobyl to document the scene there that is still “incredibly radioactive.”“It is a terrible reminder of the horrors those rescue workers faced of not just a fire, but an invisible enemy.”
With what she called her “trusty producer, Phil Goyen, and crew, Scott Morelli and David Ballment, in toe,” Hayes “headed into the exclusion zone of Chernobyl, the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.”
Hayes wrote about the Chernobyl dead zone, “where remnants of lives once lived can be seen everywhere. Homes and schools and playgrounds frozen in time from the day workers and their families were ordered out, never to return.
“We entered a hospital where the first fire fighters to attend the exploding nuclear plant were taken. Their uniforms are still in the basement, and still highly radioactive.”
She said that entering the radiation hospital was a moment she will never forget, furthering, “For the first time I had a sense of the fear and horror those rescue workers must have felt. A terrible death from something they couldn’t see or touch or smell, but certainly felt.”
Children born years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster still develop cancer from it, as documented by CBS when Hayes was at Kievis Radiation Hospital built specifically for Chernobyl victims, some of whom Hayes interviewed.
These children are “battling cancer and other illnesses believed to be caused by the contamination,” she said.
Children over 32 miles from Fukushima ground zero are already suffering fatigue, diarrhea, and nosebleeds, the three most common of eight radiation sickness signs, the three in the earliest stage of the disease. Five hundred Fukushima children already have radiation in their thyroids.
Explaining that 5,000 tons of Boric acid, concrete and sand were used to bury Chernobyl’s reactor, Dr. Kaku added, ”It took years to do this and created a sarcophagus.”
“We all have Chernobyl radiation in our bodies.”
With the Chernobyl power plant in the background, Hayes said there “now a mere band aid over a molten core that is still hot and some still fear is still melting.”
A new sarcophagus has to built because the original one is breaking down.
“The Chernobyl nuclear disaster is still far from over,” said Hayes, reporting that to this day, there is still a 30 kilometer exclusion zone around the nuclear energy plant.
Since 1986, over 5 million people have been affected around Chernobyl according to scientist Iryna Lubunska, interviewed by Hayes.
“One of the things I feel I should know now is where a nuclear reactor is in any country, anywhere in the world, because it might affect me even if I don’t live in that country,” said Hayes.
Today, people as far away as in England are still being affected by Chernobyl.
Fukushima radiation is now combined in the U.S. with toxic radioactive tritium leaking from three-quarters of United States nuclear power plants, radiation from fracking, and radiation from the 2010 BP Gulf oil catastrophe.
Although a tight lid on Fukushima fallout information is keeping Americans in harms way after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed a secret pact with Japan to continue importing its untested food, and government agreed to downplay the fallout lethality, the nuclear energy silent killer continues devouring its victims, now and will for generations, as CBS documented.
Source: CBS 60 Minutes – Fukushima Now Radiating Everyone: ‘Unspeakable’ Reality ‘Will Impact All Of Humanity’ ©
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Related Posts
22 June 2011
1 of 12 things the media is strangely quiet about right now
The crisis at Fukushima continues to get worse. Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, recently made the following statement about the Fukushima disaster….
“Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind”
TEPCO has finally admitted that this disaster has released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl did. That makes Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster of all time, and it is far from over.
Massive amounts of water is being poured into the spent fuel pools in order to keep them cool. This is creating “hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water” that has got to go somewhere. Inevitably much of it will get into the ground and into the sea.
Arnold Gundersen says that the scope of this problem is almost unimaginable….
“TEPCO announced they had a melt through. A melt down is when the fuel collapses to the bottom of the reactor, and a melt through means it has melted through some layers. That blob is incredibly radioactive, and now you have water on top of it. The water picks up enormous amounts of radiation, so you add more water and you are generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water.”
The mainstream media is not paying as much attention to Fukushima these days, but that doesn’t mean that it is not a major league nightmare.
Elevated levels of radiation are being reported by Japanese bloggers all over eastern Japan. There are reports of sick children all over the region. One adviser to the government of Japan says that an area approximately 17 times the size of Manhattan is probably going to be uninhabitable.
Of course the mainstream media has been telling us all along that Fukushima is nothing to be too concerned about and that authorities in Japan have everything under control.
If the mainstream media is not going to tell us the truth, how are they going to continue to have credibility?
31 May 2011
Japan/TEPCO updates: Hot links
http://www.reuters.com/
;http://www.bloomberg.com/
;http://www.bloomberg.com/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/
<http://www.marketwatch.com/
<http://www.midasletter.com/
02 May 2011
Atmospheric radiation leak underestimated
Atmospheric radiation leak underestimated
Data released by the government indicates radioactive material was leaking into the atmosphere from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in early April in greater quantities than previously estimated.
Radioactive material was being released into the atmosphere from the plant at an estimated rate of 154 terabecquerels per day as of April 5, according to data released by the Cabinet Office's Nuclear Safety Commission on Saturday.
The NSC previously estimated radiation leakage on April 5 at "less than 1 terabecquerel per hour."
Iodine-131 and cesium-137 were released into the atmosphere that day at the estimated rates of 0.69 terabecquerel per hour and 0.14 terabecquerel per hour, respectively, the NSC said.
Emissions are converted into iodine-131 equivalents for assessment on the international nuclear event scale (INES), to arrive at the total 154 terabecquerels per day, the nuclear safety watchdog said.
One terabecquerel equals 1 trillion becquerels.
On April 17, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said in its plan for stabilization of the crippled reactors it would not start to get radiation leakage under control until the plan's fourth month of implementation.
This would mean 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances would be released into the atmosphere from the plant during the coming three months, according to simple calculations based on the estimated emission rate as of April 5.
Emissions in that three-month period alone would therefore exceed the level necessary for a Level 6 severity rating on the INES, the globally accepted measure for evaluating nuclear accidents.
The ongoing crisis at the Fukushima plant has been rated a maximum Level 7 on the scale, which was established by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 1992.
The total amount of radioactive material discharged from the plant from March 11 to early April was estimated between 370,000 and 630,000 terabecquerels, according to government sources.
The commission, however, said the figures were estimates only, "with a considerable margin of error." Radiation levels around the six-reactor complex have been slowly falling, it said.
(Apr. 25, 2011)
22 April 2011
How to Detoxify radiation from your body : FREE E BOOK
This one really highlights the Epsom Salt "solution", one which I can verify personally.
I spent THREE YEARS in a walker due to thyroid disease and fibromyalgia and this worked and IS working.
Please give it a read.
I spent THREE YEARS in a walker due to thyroid disease and fibromyalgia and this worked and IS working.
Please give it a read.
11 April 2011
FROM SQUARE ONE / How bad is the Fukushima fallout?
The crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has released a large amount of radioactive substances into the air and water, raising serious concerns over possible health risks.
The government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. have repeatedly said there will be no major health impact "for the time being" and that there will be no "immediate" effects.
But what consequences will the radiation fallout actually have?
The following will examine the impact of radioactive substances on people's daily lives, and look at how much radioactive fallout has occurred, possible health effects and how to prevent exposure.
How much radioactive material has so far been released into the atmosphere due to the Fukushima accident? Let's compare the radioactive contamination caused by the current crisis to past nuclear accidents.
Fallout of cesium-137 has been monitored for every 24-hour period since March 18 at observation points in each prefecture, except quake-hit Fukushima and Miyagi. Cesium-137 is an international indicator for radioactive contamination.
Monitoring data has shown the total fallout of cesium-137 in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture, for 18 days through Tuesday morning was 26,399 becquerels per square meter. In Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, the figure was 6,615 becquerels per square meter.
Rain on March 21-22--the first since the nuclear crisis began--brought down a large amount of cesium-137, spreading the contamination to Tokyo and 13 prefectures in and around the Kanto region.
Although many people believe their lives have been free of radioactive contamination, history shows that radioactive materials were widely dispersed during the 20th century, sometimes dubbed the Atomic Age.
Domestic studies on radioactive fallout date back to 1957, three years after the exposure to radiation of the crew of the tuna boat Fukuryu Maru No. 5 after an atmospheric nuclear test by the United States. One crew member died six months after the incident.
This test took place amid the Cold War when the United States and the Soviet Union conducted a large number of nuclear tests. In 1962 alone, at least 178 nuclear tests took place, dispersing plutonium and other radioactive materials into the atmosphere. In Osaka, 688 becquerels per square meter of cesium-137 was measured in May 1963.
The worst case of radioactive contamination was the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, then a Soviet republic, in April 1986. About 7 tons of radioactive materials--about 400 times what was released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima--were released across the Northern Hemisphere. In Kanazawa, cesium fallout was 318 becquerels per square meter in May that year.
Areas within 30 kilometers of the Chernobyl plant were incredibly contaminated--as much as 1.48 million becquerels per square meter in some areas. Residents in these areas were evacuated. In parts of Germany and other nations, more than 70,000 becquerels per square meter were detected. In Belarus and Moldova, also Soviet republics at the time, and other nations such as Austria and Finland, the average amount of fallout exceeded 10,000 becquerels per square meter.
The level of radioactive fallout in Hitachinaka and some other areas in the wake of the Fukushima crisis is believed to be higher than that reported in the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States, and about the same as that reported in Europe after the Chernobyl incident.
Fallout levels in the Kanto region have been decreasing this month. Daily readings have been about the same as the early 1960s when so many nuclear tests were conducted. Some experts have said these levels pose no threat to people's health. However, highly radioactive water leaked from the Fukushima plant into the ocean could cause severe damage to marine life.
===
Upper limit changes in a crisis
There are two reference levels for the effects of radiation exposure on health--one for normal times and another for emergencies. The everyday yardstick for radiation exposure for ordinary people is set on the safe side.
According to the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), the annual intake limit for artificial radioactive substances--excluding natural radiation such as from cosmic rays and from medical devices such as X-rays--is 1 millisievert (mSv) for ordinary people.
A becquerel is a unit for measuring a substance's radioactivity, and is equal to the number of nuclear decays per second. A sievert is a unit to quantify the biological effects of radiation. Becquerels can be converted into sieverts through a formula that factors in elements including the type of nucleus and type of radiation exposure.
Research on atomic-bomb survivors suggests that the incidence of cancer increases if the radiation dose exceeds 100 mSV. The annual limit of 1 mSv was set on the grounds that if a person is exposed to this level every year until age 80, the total radiation dose will be less than 80 mSv.
But during emergencies, such as an accident at a nuclear power plant, this level is often increased. The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan has said people should stay indoors if the annual radiation dose exceeds 10 mSV.
The ICRP in 2007 issued an advisory saying the annual radiation limit for ordinary people can be raised to 20 mSv to 100 mSv during an emergency. The ICRP's suggestion of this temporary level is based on lessons learned from the Chernobyl disaster and other incidents.
"Even if people are exposed to 20 mSv of radiation in a year, they wouldn't experience any symptoms such as nausea or burns. Raising the upper limit could increase the risk of cancer, but if there are other merits, such as avoiding the need to evacuate, it might be a feasible option," according to Yasuhito Sasaki, an executive director at the Japan Radioisotope Association.
Whether to change the annual limit on radiation intake from the normal level to an emergency level is decided by the NSC after considering the scale of the radioactive contamination and doses in different areas and reporting on this to the government.
Radiation intake limits for workers at nuclear facilities are set at 100 mSv over five years, but this limit was raised to 250 mSv following the accidents at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
The ICRP has also issued an advisory that the emergency exposure limit for rescue and other personnel should be between 500 mSv and 1,000 mSv over five years.
(Apr. 11, 2011)
31 March 2011
Deconstructing Nuclear Experts: Counterpunch/Counter Currents
And the real world is increasingly being studied and reports are being published in the scientific literature: but none of the authorities responsible for looking after the public take any notice of this evidence.
Deconstructing Nuclear Experts
By Chris Busby
29 March, 2011
Since the Fukushima accident we have seen a stream of experts on radiation telling us not to worry, that the doses are too low, that the accident is nothing like Chernobyl and so forth. They appear on television and we read their articles in the newspapers and online. Fortunately the majority of the public don’t believe them. I myself have appeared on television and radio with these people; one example was Ian Fells of the University of Newcastle who, after telling us all on BBC News that the accident was nothing like Chernobyl (wrong), and the radiation levels of no consequence (wrong), that the main problem was that there was no electricity and that the lifts didn’t work. “ If you have been in a situation when the lifts don’t work, as I have” he burbled on, “you will know what I mean.” You can see this interview on youtube and decide for yourself.
What these people have in common is ignorance. You may think a professor at a university must actually know something about their subject. But this is not so. Nearly all of these experts who appear and pontificate have not actually done any research on the issue of radiation and health. Or if they have, they seem to have missed all the key studies and references. I leave out the real baddies, who are closely attached to the nuclear industry, like Richard Wakeford, or Richard D as he calls himself on the anonymous website he has set up to attack me, “chrisbusbyexposed”.
I saw him a few times talking down the accident on the television, labelled in the stripe as Professor Richard Wakeford, University of Manchester. Incidentally, Wakeford is a physicist, his PhD was in particle physics at Liverpool. But he was not presented as ex- Principle Scientist, British Nuclear Fuels, Sellafield. That might have given the viewers the wrong idea. Early on we saw another baddy, Malcolm Grimston, talking about radiation and health, described as Professor, Imperial College. Grimston is a psychologist, not a scientist, and his expertise was in examining why the public was frightened of radiation, and how their (emotional) views could be changed. But his lack of scientific training didn’t stop him explaining on TV and radio how the Fukushima accident was nothing to worry about. The doses were too low, nothing like Chernobyl, not as bad as 3-Mile Island, only 4 on the scale, all the usual blather. Most recently we have seen George Monbiot, who I know, and who also knows nothing about radiation and health, writing in The Guardian how this accident has actually changed his mind about nuclear power (can this be his Kierkegaard moment? Has he cracked? ) since he now understands (and reproduces a criminally misleading graphic to back up his new understanding) that radiation is actually OK and we shoudn’t worry about it. George does at least know better, or has been told better, since he asked me a few years ago to explain why internal and external radiation exposure cannot be considered to have the same health outcomes. He ignored what I said and wrote for him (with references) and promptly came out in favour of nuclear energy in his next article.
So what about Wade Allison? Wade is a medical physics person and a professor at Oxford. I have chosen to pitch into him since he epitomises and crystallises for us the arguments of the stupid physicist. In this he has done us a favour, since he is really easy to shoot down. All the arguments are in one place. Stupid physicists? Make no mistake, physicists are stupid. They make themselves stupid by a kind of religious belief in mathematical modelling. The old Bertie Russell logical positivist trap. And whilst this may be appropriate for examining the stresses in metals, or looking at the Universe (note that they seem to have lost 90% of the matter in the Universe, so-called “dark matter”) it is not appropriate for, and is even scarily incorrect when, examining stresses in humans or other lifeforms. Mary Midgley, the philosopher has written about Science as Religion. Health physicists are the priests. I have been reading Wade Allison’s article for the BBC but also looked at his book some months ago. He starts in the same way as all the others by comparing the accidents. He writes:
More than 10,000 people have died in the Japanese tsunami and the survivors are cold and hungry. But the media concentrate on nuclear radiation from which no-one has died - and is unlikely to.
Then we move to 3-Mile Island: There were no known deaths there.
And Chernobyl:
The latest UN report published on 28 February confirms the known death toll - 28 fatalities among emergency workers, plus 15 fatal cases of child thyroid cancer - which would have been avoided if iodine tablets had been taken (as they have now in Japan).
This is breathtaking ignorance of the scientific literature. Prof. Steve Wing in the USA has carried out epidemiological studies of the effects of 3-Mile Island, with results published in the peer-review literature. Court cases are regularly settled on the basis of cancers produced by the 3-Mile Island contamination. But let us move to Chernobyl. The health effects of the Chernobyl accident are massive and demonstrable. They have been studied by many research groups in Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine, in the USA, Greece, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan. The scientific peer reviewed literature is enormous. Hundreds of papers report the effects, increases in cancer and a range of other diseases. My colleague Alexey Yablokov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, published a review of these studies in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2009). Earlier in 2006 he and I collected together reviews of the Russian literature by a group of eminent radiation scientists and published these in the book Chernobyl, 20 Years After. The result: more than a million people have died between 1986 and 2004 as a direct result of Chernobyl.
I will briefly refer to two Chernobyl studies in the west which falsify Wade Allison’s assertions. The first is a study of cancer in Northern Sweden by Martin Tondel and his colleagues at Lynkoping University. Tondel examined cancer rates by radiation contamination level and showed that in the 10 years after the Chernobyl contamination of Sweden, there was an 11% increase in cancer for every 100kBq/sq metre of contamination. Since the official International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) figures for the Fukushima contamination are from 200 to 900kBq.sq metre out to 78km from the site, we can expect between 22% and 90% increases in cancer in people living in these places in the next 10 years. The other study I want to refer to is one I carried out myself. After Chernobyl, infant leukaemia was reported in 6 countries by 6 different groups, from Scotland, Greece, Wales, Germany, Belarus and the USA. The increases were only in children who had been in the womb at the time of the contamination: this specificity is rare in epidemiology. There is no other explanation than Chernobyl. The leukemias could not be blamed on some as-yet undiscovered virus and population mixing, which is the favourite explanation for the nuclear site child leukemia clusters. There is no population mixing in the womb. Yet the “doses” were very small, much lower than “natural background”. I published this unequivocal proof that the current risk model is wrong for internal exposures in two separate peer-reviewed journals in 2000 and 2009. This finding actually resulted in the formation in 2001 by UK Environment Minister Michael Meacher of a new Committee Examining Radiation Risks from Internal Emitters CERRIE. Richard Wakeford was on this committee representing BNFL and he introduced himself to me as “BNFL’s Rottweiler”. No difference there.
Wade then turns to a comparison of contamination:
So what of the radioactivity released at Fukushima? How does it compare with that at Chernobyl? Let's look at the measured count rates. The highest rate reported, at 1900 on 22 March, for any Japanese prefecture was 12 kBq per sq m (for the radioactive isotope of caesium, caesium-137).
A map of Chernobyl in the UN report shows regions shaded according to rate, up to 3,700 kBq per sq m - areas with less than 37 kBq per sq m are not shaded at all. In round terms, this suggests that the radioactive fallout at Fukushima is less than 1% of that at Chernobyl
But the IAEA themselves, not known for their independence from the nuclear industry, report that contamination levels out to 78km were between 200 and 900kBq/sq metre. And Wade has been rather selective with his data, to put it kindly. The UN definition of radioactively contaminated land is 37kBq/sq metre just as he writes, but actually, in all the maps published, the inner 30km Chernobyl contamination exclusion zone is defined as 555kBq/sq metre and above. This is just a fact. Why has he misled us? In passing, this means that there are 555,000 radioactive disintegrations per second on one square metre of surface. Can you believe this is not harmful? No. And you would be correct. And another calculation can be made. Since the IAEA data show that these levels of contamination, from 200,000 to 900,000 disintegrations per second per square metre, exist up to 78km from Fukushima, we can already calculate that the contamination is actually worse than Chernobyl, not 1% of Chernobyl as Wade states. For the area defined by a 78km radius is 19113 sq km compared to the Chernobyl exclusion zone of 2827 sq km. About seven times greater.
Now I turn to the health effects. Wade trots out most of the usual stupid physicist arguments. We are all exposed to natural background, the dose is 2mSv a year and the doses from the accident are not significantly above this. For example, the Japanese government are apparently making a mistake in telling people not to give tap water containing 200Bq/litre radioactive Iodine-131 to their children as there is naturally 50Bq/l of radiation in the human body and 200 will not do much harm. The mistake is made because of fears of the public which apparently forced the International Commission on Radiological Protection, ICRP, to set the annual dose limits at 1mSv. Wade knows better: he would set the limits at 100mSv. He is a tough guy. He shoots from the hip:
Patients receiving a course of radiotherapy usually get a dose of more than 20,000 mSv to vital healthy tissue close to the treated tumour. This tissue survives only because the treatment is spread over many days giving healthy cells time for repair or replacement. A sea-change is needed in our attitude to radiation, starting with education and public information.
But Wade, dear, these people are usually old, and usually die anyway before they can develop a second tumour. They often develop other cancers even so because of the radiation. There are hundreds of studies showing this. And in any case, this external irradiation is not the problem. The problem is internal irradiation. The Iodine-131 is not in the whole body, it is in the thyroid gland and attached to the blood cells: hence the thyroid cancer and the leukaemia. And there is a whole list of internal radioactive elements that bind chemically to DNA, from Strontium-90 to Uranium. These give massive local doses to the DNA and to the tissues where they end up. The human body is not a piece of wire that you can apply physics to. The concept of dose which Wade uses cannot be used for internal exposures. This has been conceded by the ICRP itself in its publications. And in an interview with me in Stockholm in 2009, Dr Jack Valentin, the ex-Scientific Secretary of the ICRP conceded this, and also made the statement that the ICRP risk model, the one used by all governments to assess the outcome of accidents like Fukushima, was unsafe and could not be used. You can see this interview on the internet, on www.vimeo.com.
Why is the ICRP model unsafe? Because it is based on “absorbed dose”. This is average radiation energy in Joules divided by the mass of living tissue into which it is diluted. A milliSievert is one milliJoule of energy diluted into one kilogram of tissue. As such it would not distinguish between warming yourself in front of a fire and eating a red hot coal. It is the local distribution of energy that is the problem. The dose from a singly internal alpha particle track to a single cell is 500mSv! The dose to the whole body from the same alpha track is 5 x 10-11 mSv. That is 0.000000000005mSv. But it is the dose to the cell that causes the genetic damage and the ultimate cancer. The cancer yield per unit dose employed by ICRP is based entirely on external acute high dose radiation at Hiroshima, where the average dose to a cell was the same for all cells.
And what of the UN and their bonkers statement about the effects of the Chernobyl accident referred to by Wade Allison? What you have to know, is that the UN organisations on radiation and health are compromised in favour of the nuclear military complex, which was busy testing hydrogen bombs in the atmosphere at the time of the agreement and releasing all the Strontium, Caesium, Uranium and plutonium and other stuff that was to become the cause of the current and increasing cancer epidemic. The last thing they wanted was the doctors and epidemiologists stopping their fun. The IAEA and the World Health Organisation (WHO) signed an agreement in 1959 to remove all research into the issue from the doctors of the WHO, to the atom scientists, the physicists of the IAEA: this agreement is still in force. The UN organisations do not refer to, or cite any scientific study, which shows their statements on Chernobyl to be false. There is a huge gap between the picture painted by the UN, the IAEA, the ICRP and the real world. And the real world is increasingly being studied and reports are being published in the scientific literature: but none of the authorities responsible for looking after the public take any notice of this evidence.
As they say on the Underground trains in London: Mind the Gap. Wade Allison and the other experts I refer to need to do just this for their own sake. The one place that this gap is being closed rapidly and savagely is in the courts. I have acted as an expert witness in over 40 cases involving radiation and health. These include cases where Nuclear Test veterans are suing the UK government for exposures at the test sites that have caused cancer, they include cases involving nuclear pollution, work exposures and exposures to depleted uranium weapons fallout. And these cases are all being won. All of them. Because in court with a judge and a jury, people like Wade Allison and George Monbiot would not last 2 minutes. Because in court you rely on evidence. Not bullshitting.
Joseph Conrad wrote: "after all the shouting is over, the grim silence of facts remain". I believe that these phoney experts like Wade Allison and George Monbiot are criminally irresponsible, since their advice will lead to millions of deaths. I would hope that some time in the future, I can be involved as an expert in another legal case, one where Wade Allison, or George or my favourite baddy, Richard Wakeford (who actually knows better) are accused in a court of law of scientific dishonesty leading to the cancer in some poor victim who followed their advice. When they are found guilty, I hope they are sent to jail where they can have plenty of time to read the scientific proofs that their advice was based on the mathematical analysis of thin air.
In the meantime, I challenge each of them to debate this issue with me in public on television face to face, so that the people can figure out who is right. For the late Professor John Gofman, a senior figure in the US Atomic Energy Commission until he saw what was happening and resigned, famously said: "the nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity." This war has now entered an endgame which will decide the survival of the human race. Not from sudden nuclear war. But from the on-going and incremental nuclear war which began with the releases to the biosphere in the 60s of all the atmospheric test fallout, and which has continued inexorably since then through Windscale, Kyshtym, 3-Mile Island, Chernobyl, Hanford, Sellafield, La Hague, Iraq and now Fukushima, accompanied by parallel increases in cancer rates and fertility loss to the human race.
There is a gap between them and us. Between the phoney scientists and the public who don’t believe what they say. Between those who are employed and paid to protect us from radioactive pollution and those who die from its consequences. Between those who talk down what is arguably the greatest public health scandal in human history, and the facts that they ignore.
Mind the Gap indeed.
Chris Busby is Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk. He is visiting Professor at the University of Ulster and also Guest Researcher at the Julius Kuehn Institute of the German Federal Agricultural Institute in Braunschweig, Germany. He was a member of the UK Committee Examining Radiation Risk on Internal Emitters CERRIE and the UK MoD Depleted Uranium Oversight Board. He was Science and Policy Interface leader of the Policy Information network on Child Health and Environment based in the Netherlands. He was Science and Technology Speaker for the Green Party of England and Wales. He has conducted fundamental research on the health effects of internal radiation both at the theoretical and epidemiological level, including recently on the genotoxic effects of the element uranium.
20 March 2011
Nuclear Radiation Experts: 2,000 Tons Nuclear Materials Spewing Radioactivity for Months
Nuclear Radiation Experts: 2,000 Tons Nuclear Materials Spewing Radioactivity for Months
Earlier today, Earth & Industry had the chance to participate in a call with leading international radiation experts and learn what they had to say about the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Plant and the threats posed by nuclear fallout.
The Physicians for Social Responsibility news event was held to address concerns about misleading and incomplete information that is being provided about the Japanese nuclear catastrophe and was led by Dr. Ira Helfand, lifelong nuclear energy educator and former president of Physicians for Social Responsibility; Dr. David Richardson, associate professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health, University of North Carolina; and Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, an international consultant on radioactive waste issues.
A streaming audio replay of this telenews conference will be available here. Read on to learn more about areas of concern and the impact of this disaster.
2,000 Tons of Nuclear Materials at Fukushima Daiichi
Six reactors, seven fuel pools and a storage tank total almost 2,000 tons of nuclear material. The reactors alone are storing 1000 times as much nuclear energy as the Hiroshima bomb released in one concentrated dose and include waste that has been undergoing nuclear fission for 3 years. Continued exothermic reactions make for more radioactive contaminants and contribute to the gravity of the daunting situation in Japan, which has left at least 10,000 dead.
The Heat is On---For Months!
Steam explosions and burn off from exposed fuel pools are the hazards causing the most concern.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed a partial meltdown in reactors 1, 2 and 3 and workers have already experienced two fires at Reactor 4. They can no longer get close to problem areas because water, which serves to shield workers and cool the fuel, is not being dropped and gamma radiation is extremely high. As the water evaporates it exposes the nuclear fuel and uranium rods begin to burn, emitting more heat and radioactive cesium. Uranium is then able to mix with water and begin the reaction that sends radiation into the atmosphere.
Reactor #3 is especially dangerous, as it is fueled with a combination of Moxand uranium. Mox fuel releases plutonium, which has a 24,200 year half-life and can cause lung cancer at extremely low doses.
Roofless spent-fuel pools sit at the top of the reactors (70-80 feet up), if these pools aren't cooled to a temperature below 1800 F, hydrogen will be created and more explosions will occur.
Though water cannons are being deployed, Japan is having trouble resupplying water to cool the affected areas, which leads Dr. Resnikoff to believe thattemperatures could be soaring for months.
External Ionizing Radiation and Human Health
There remains a lack of information on the environmental levels of external ionizing radiation--the kind that moves through the body in waves (think: gamma and beta rays)--but knowing these measurements of total body radiation exposure doesn't indicate personal health risk as much as knowing the exposure rate to specific tissues. We do know that the "Fukushima 50" (the workers left battling the meltdown) are in a grave situation, facing hazards of extreme heat, explosions and fires, and that the workers must move through some sites in a matter of minutes to avoid acute radiation.
Radioactive Isotopes and Ambient Radiation
Ambient radiation and the dispersion of radioactive isotopes will cause numerous health problems, warns nuclear expert, Dr. Ira Helfand. Radioactive isotopes may be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed into the bloodstream through open wounds and pose more of a threat to the Japanese population than radiation waves or beams. Land 100 miles downwind of Chernobyl was contaminated with radioactivity and is still not safe to use, "if winds blow in the direction of Tokyo, it is conceivable that large parts of Tokyo could be contaminated in this way," he says. A forecast for easterly winds could be the city's saving grace.
Exactly how much ambient radiation will be released is impossible to say and measured levels vary dramatically moment to moment. We will likely not know the volume released to the environment until the materials that remain stored at Fukushima are assessed. The highest levels noted by Dr. Helfand are 40 rems-- a dose that would cause sickness after 2.5 hours of exposure.
Of the 200 different radioactive isotopes that could be released, 4 pose real risk to human health:
Iodine 131 - concentrates in the thyroid, has a half-life of 8 days, leads to thyroid cancer
Strontium 90 - concentrates in bone marrow, has a half-life of 90 years, leads to bone cancer and leukemia
Cesium 137 - prevalent in all tissues, has a half-life of 30 years, can cause multiple cancers
Plutonium 239 - concentrates in the lungs, has a half-life of 24,200 years, low doses lead to lung cancer
Image Credit: daveeza via Flickr
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