Mummy, mummy, there's a nuclear monster!

The total non-story of the Fukushima nuclear powerplant "disaster" – which has seen and will see no deaths or measurable health consequences for anyone anywhere – has received a shot in the arm today with the news that Japanese authorities have upgraded the incident to a Level 7 on the nuclear accident scale. This was reported …

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

@Mr Tapman

You are defeating your own argument:

"An increase of this magnitude would be very difficult to detect, even with long term epidemiological studies."

This is exactly what LP has been saying - the consequences so minuscule that they are impossible to measure. So the question begs what hole you have been talking out of?

[A.T. Tappman (Chaplain)]

o rly?

they are only difficult to measure, because several thousand extra deaths across a wide range of conditions is very difficult to measure unless you have a really good idea of how many deaths you are expecting. According to UNSCEAR and the WHO, the deaths are still estimated to be several thousand and not 60, however the direct evidence is hard to glean and so the estimates are based on epidemiological studies instead, which can never give direct causal results by their very nature.

[Andydaws]

A T Tappman

No, they MAY BE as high as 4,000 - but as things stand there's no epidemiological evidence whatsoever of excess deaths.

You're getting confused between estimates that derive from applying population dose estimates to assumed mortality rates derived from the so called "LNT" model. However, most authorities, including UNSCEAR advise specifically against doing that. And increasingly, many bodies working in the field are deciding that the LNT model itself is flawed - the American Society of Health Physicists and the French National Academy amongst them.

I'm trained as an engineer / applied scientist. If an effect's not measurable, then as a rule, it's best not to assume it exists. I can see why in your profession you might feel differently....

[A.T. Tappman (Chaplain)]

hi andy..

loving the dig - "If an effect's not measurable, then as a rule, it's best not to assume it exists. I can see why in your profession you might feel differently...."

my profession is in software and electromechanical engineering, A. T. Tappman is the chaplain Yossarian falls in love with at the start of Catch22 ;]

If an effect is not statistically measurable in a given sample population, and you have already calculated that the signal you are looking for is smaller than the noise in that sample, but for another sample population the effect by the same mechanism is statistically measurable, then it would not be a good idea to assume that there is no effect.

To put it another way, if you are looking at respiratory illness among a sample of smokers who do a long commute daily in a polluted city, then you are unlikely to be able to get good statistical evidence for illness caused from tobacco inhalation just from their public health data. That does not mean that there have been no deaths from tobacco within that sample population, but to estimate how many there are in that sample, we have to rely on other population studies as well.

[Andydaws]

you're logic is more than a little flawed:

"If an effect is not statistically measurable in a given sample population, and you have already calculated that the signal you are looking for is smaller than the noise in that sample, but for another sample population the effect by the same mechanism is statistically measurable, then it would not be a good idea to assume that there is no effect."

Rather, it's not a good idea to assume there is an effect - disprovable hypothesis, recall?

"That does not mean that there have been no deaths from tobacco within that sample population, but to estimate how many there are in that sample, we have to rely on other population studies as well."

It means that any contribution is very small indeed compared to other effects, if it exists at all. It certainly doesn't give you any evidence to claim that the effect exists.

And there we hit the challenge - the evidence for the LNT hypothesis. No-one argues an effect at 100mSv or above - but the evidence for exposures below that points all over the place. It varies from studies suggesting mild hormesis effects (notably, the post-code based radon exposure studies in both the US and UK), to those that show no effect (surprisingly, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivor studies, and UK and US radiation worker studies, UK Windscale fire follow-up of exposed individuals) to those that DO show a weak assocation (Canadian radiation workers).

That's led to the various authorities being ,frankly, all over the place. Some (BEIR in the US) hang onto LNT. Others (the French National Academy, the US Health Physics Society) state explicitly that the LNT model should NOT be used to estimate mortality from low doses. To quote the French:

"LNT concept can be a useful pragmatic tool for assessing rules in radioprotection for doses above 10 mSv; however since it is not based on biological concepts of our current knowledge, it should not be used without precaution for assessing by extrapolation the risks associated with low and even more so, with very low doses (< 10 mSv), especially for benefit-risk assessments imposed on radiologists by the European directive 97-43."

And the Health Physics society

"There is substantial and convincing scientific evidence for health risks at high dose. Below 10 rem (which includes occupational and environmental exposures) risks of health effects are either too small to be observed or are non-existent"

[Andydaws]

Eh?

"they are only difficult to measure, because several thousand extra deaths across a wide range of conditions is very difficult to measure unless you have a really good idea of how many deaths you are expecting. "

Statistics isn't a major part of theological training, I'm guessing...

It's bugger-all to do with "how many you're expecting" - it's to do, instead, as to whether there's a detectable increase, or whether the increase is so small it's masked by natural variations.

[Anonymous Coward]

@A. T. Tappman

Point well made.

It's also important to consider the pathology of the nucleotide(s) in question. Iodine concentrates in the thyroid, as previously mentioned, uranium in testes amongst others, polonium famously collects in bone marrow, and so on. The risk isn't uniform, so generalizations are both unwise and misleading. When you're getting them via an animal, of course, it's worth considering which bit you're eating.

It's kind of like the RAF advice to downed pilots in the Arctic: Never eat a polar bear's liver - the vitamin A concentrated there from the bear's diet of seals which have already concentrated the vit A from their diet of fish will give you hypervitaminosis which will likely kill you, assuming the bear doesn't. (Not unlikely if they still issue .22LR folding rifles in the survival kit)

[Highlander]

US Navy - Pacific Commander sees improvement at Fukushima

OK, now this is interesting. The US Navy's commander in the Pacific, Admiral Willard says that things are improving at Fukushima - "incrementally better". He also comments on the INES levels 7 rating...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-12/japan-nuclear-plant-crisis-incrementally-better-u-s-admiral-says.html

Pertinent quotes...

“I monitor reactor status -- minute-by-minute,” Willard said. Japan’s rating increase for what the disaster represented “against the international standard is of much less consequence to me than understanding the actual status of the reactors at any given time,” he said.

“Though that status has changed to 7, we continue to see incremental improvement in the overall stability of the situation,” he said. “We are conducting very close monitoring of all the bases.”

Can we end the doom mongering now?

[interested_reader]

Not this again

"That is serious radiation: after an hour exposed to it you'd be likely to suffer actual radiation sickness, though you'd be just about certain to recover. Two hours, and you might die: four hours, a fatal result would become likely."

A fatal result would become likely? What would Mr. Page's description of getting shot with an Uzi be like?

"That is serious firepower: after being exposed to a few rounds you'd be likely to suffer actual gunshot wounds, though you'd be just about certain to recover. Ten rounds, and you might die: twenty rounds, a fatal result would become likely."

But not to worry:

"But these were in fact very brief spikes right next to a damaged core, resulting mostly from very short-lived isotopes that were decaying before they could drift beyond the plant fence. Nobody at all has been exposed to such levels."

Really? Because the one constant theme to this story has been how much more fucked up everything is in reality, compared to the official press releases. Nobody really knows what isotopes got out into the wind, water, and ground. In contrast to Mr. Page's assurances that nothing leaked but "mostly very short-lived isotopes", we have Reuters reporting that

"TEPCO appears to be no closer to restoring cooling systems at the reactors, critical to lowering the temperature of overheated nuclear fuel rods. On Tuesday, Japan's science ministry said small amounts of strontium, one of the most harmful radioactive elements, had been found in soil near Fukushima Daiichi."

www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/12/us-japan-idUSTRE72A0SS20110412

Mr. Page studiously avoids any extended discussion of the effects of ingesting radioactive isotopes, which is the real health risk that will be the legacy of Fukushima (as it was with Chernobyl).

No mention of radioactive cesium at all in Mr. Page's article this time around. Though doubtless if it was mentioned, it would be something along the lines of "if you ate nothing but sushi fished from the waters off the coast and salad made from lettuce harvested just outside the reactor core building for a year, the most you could expect would be a 0.0000000001% chance of hair, which is readily curable by having your hair cut on a regular basis, which 90% of the population does already, so there! Plus, billions of people died for your windmills and solar panels, hippies. So get a fucking haircut and a shave."

And: saying x people die per terawatt of energy source X blah blah blah is a false comparison.

Accidents that occur during the process of mining coal, refining oil, etc. are not directly attributable to the properties of coal and oil themselves. If you spill oil all over yourself, you wash it off with soap and water. You can pick up a lump of coal, then wash your hand and have a sandwich. Falling off a windmill doesn't contaminate the ground for centuries. When you're done with a solar panel, you don't have to stick it in a salt mine for a few millennia and hope no one digs it up.

These two flaws in Mr. Page's reasoning-- A) that we don't have to worry about what happens if we eat radioactive isotopes and B) deaths per energy form is a valid statistical measure of the safety of that energy form-- irk the shit out of me. That, and his condescending, sneering tone. It ill-serves the Register; and these trolls of his and Mr. Orlowski's masquerading as articles on the Fukushima nuclear disaster (yes! it is a disaster!) do not inform, they only inflame.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Andydaws

If I understand it correctly, what they've done is invoke 3954/87 incorporating the amendments listed in the annex of 2218/89 (in what appears to be the ancient text substitution format to be applied to the former). I didn't bother to work it out though - Perhaps you'd oblige?

These aren't post Chernobyl limits, they're emergency regulations "laying down maximum permitted levels of radioactive contamination of foodstuffs and of feedingstuffs (sic) following a nuclear accident or any other case of radiological emergency" in EU argot. Whereas it's true to say that these limits are not new, they certainly aren't obvious either, assuming these are what was being referred to.

The US changes seem to be based on the word of a whistleblower, "confirmed" (ha ha) by an email exchange you can read on http://www.collapsenet.com/free-resources/collapsenet-public-access/item/723-fallout. The whisleblower information appears to be supplied by PEER (peer.org).

You say:

"So, in other words, it's yet more internet mentery, prompted by some lazy bastard who can't be bothered to research something - despite having the most powerful research tool in hsitory accessible from their desktop."

That's a bit strong, given that you appear to have looked at the wrong thing. It's the Internet, FFS - Of course it's bollocks. :)

"News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is just advertising."

Reuven Frank

[Andydaws]

In fact, from what I see

The only change is that radiological inspections of food imports from Japan will be enforced - it's not routine to test imports otherwise.

And the point re the dates was that these were the limits imposed on the back of the Chernobyl experience. As I said, check the dates, and particularly the press release I listed.

"Whereas it's true to say that these limits are not new, they certainly aren't obvious either, assuming these are what was being referred to."

I rather suspect they're obvious to those involved in food inspections and radiological protection, who are the audience that matters.

"The US changes seem to be based on the word of a whistleblower, "

You have looked at "collapsenet", have you?

A short extract from one of the items on there from the owner/founder

"...A book cannot be an ultimate authority. The earth is. It is possible, however, to direct you to an indigenous elder named Red Elk who conveys, as clearly and as eloquently as I have ever seen, what I understand to be earth-based spirituality. I strongly encourage everyone to take the time to watch this short and poignant video which well-summarizes earth-based spiritual philosophies (video below) as I know them and what we ascribe to here at CollapseNet...."

And you're the one who claims that others are being naive by litening to the output from NISA, etc..... and if that doesn't tick the "internet mentery" box, I'm buggered if I know what will!

"The whisleblower information appears to be supplied by PEER (peer.org)."

http://www.peer.org/news/index.php

The funny thing is, PEER themselves don't seem to think it worthy of having listed as "news"

[Andydaws]

@ Interested reader

"Really? Because the one constant theme to this story has been how much more fucked up everything is in reality, compared to the official press releases"

If anything, the opposite - TEPCO's shot itself in the foot several times by rushing out data that overstates releases, rather than the opposite.

" Nobody really knows what isotopes got out into the wind, water, and ground. "

you mean apart from the several hundred people sampling and monitoring radiation and isotope releases at multiple points around the areas, and those tracking the various aerial surveys

"Mr. Page studiously avoids any extended discussion of the effects of ingesting radioactive isotopes, which is the real health risk that will be the legacy of Fukushima (as it was with Chernobyl)."

you mean, apart from the iodine tablets issue, and the fact that (as UNSCEAR has it) ""there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure two decades after the accident."

"Accidents that occur during the process of mining coal, refining oil, etc. are not directly attributable to the properties of coal and oil themselves"

You mean apart from the buring of coal and oil releasing particulates which are a major cause of respiratory disease - epidemiological experts reckon about 30,000 cases per year in the US alone.

Or the radation releases from radon inherent in coal buring.

Or the fact that fly-ash from coal always contains uranium, thorium and their various decay products. The proportions are small, parts per million, but the quantities produced are huge. Depending on ash content a thousand megawatt coal plant will produce 50-100 tonnes of fly ash per HOUR. Over it's life, that plant will put between 300 and 500 TONNES of uranium into the environment, and about half as much Thorium. Oh, and a range of potassium isotopes, which behave much like the caesium and strontium you mention. Oil's somewhat better, but still shares some of these delightful properties.

That sounds pretty "attributable to the properties of coal itself". FWIW, I used to live about 5 miles from Drax power station. It's probable that I got more radiation exposure in the three years I lived there than in three years working on Heysham II nuclear plant. Including isotope ingestion.

[Highlander]

WOW - just wow...

Andy, I applaud your efforts, you have demolished so many mis-informed arguments, I think I have lost count. Thank you for continuing to cut through the crap like a laser with your expertise and insight.

[interested_reader]

Nice try, but you are trolling, Mr. Daws

The story out of Fukushima is constantly being revised; first we heard that the reactor core containments were intact... then we heard they were compromised... then we heard of radioactive water being dumped into the sea. Now it seems the evacuation zone has been widened-- but this is all merely needless overreaction in your and Mr. Page's book. We can be certain more unpleasant facts will continue to leak out about the Fukushima crisis and the contamination there is real, not imaginary.

On the subject of coal, I am afraid you have completely missed my point... and inadvertently proved it at the same time. My point is that energy from sources other than nuclear may or may not be safe... but that safety is largely dependent upon how well-constructed and well-run the energy plants are. You can dump fly ash into the atmosphere or recycle it into concrete. You can build a gasoline engine with high or low emissions. There is a degree of control over the pollution involved.

There is no cleaning up nuclear waste. It only accumulates. And the risk associated with exposure is enormous. You can't make nuclear waste less hazardous, or recycle it into bricks, or anything else. You're stuck with it.

There is simply no getting around the fact that nuclear power creates nuclear waste, which is highly toxic and has to be kept contained and isolated from the environment for thousands of years.

On a side note, your statistics are rather slapdash and spurious. Burning coal is not a nuclear reaction and produces no radioactive isotopes beyond what existed in the coal to begin with. So saying a coal plant will put tons of uranium into the environment is false... sort of overlooks the fact that the uranium contained within the coal was already in the environment in the first place. Coal burning does not create uranium. It does not create nuclear waste. More importantly, if a coal-fired power plant blows up, there is no risk of widespread radiation poisoning.

Your claim of experiencing more (negligible) radiation exposure from a coal-fired plant than from a nuclear one is a red herring. Radiation exposure from fly ash produced by a coal-fired plant is negligible nearby the plant (on the order of 2 millirems a year) because there is no nuclear reaction going on.

Radiation exposure from a nuclear power plant is only negligible so long as containment procedures are in place and do not fail. If they fail (see Chernobyl), they failure is by definition catastrophic and extremely dangerous.

For an objective report on Chernobyl, see:

http://www.chernobylreport.org/?p=summary

Of course, if you worked at a nuclear power plant, you doubtless would have heard of the TORCH report... interesting you fail to mention it as a credible source. Apparently you would rather make false claims that the UNSCEAR reports found no health impact.

Here are some quotes from the UNSCEAR reports:

http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html#Health

"For the last two decades, attention has been focused on investigating the association between exposure caused by radionuclides released in the Chernobyl accident and late effects, in particular thyroid cancer in children. Doses to the thyroid received in the first few months after the accident were particularly high in those who were children and adolescents at the time in Belarus, Ukraine and the most affected Russian regions and drank milk with high levels of radioactive iodine. By 2005, more than 6,000 thyroid cancer cases had been diagnosed in this group, and it is most likely that a large fraction of these thyroid cancers is attributable to radioiodine intake. It is expected that the increase in thyroid cancer incidence due to the Chernobyl accident will continue for many more years, although the long-term increase is difficult to quantify precisely."

And:

"The present understanding of the late effects of protracted exposure to ionizing radiation is limited, since the dose-response assessments rely heavily on studies of exposure to high doses and animal experiments. Studies of the Chernobyl accident exposure might shed light on the late effects of protracted exposure, but given the low doses received by the majority of exposed individuals, any increase in cancer incidence or mortality will be difficult to detect in epidemiological studies."

My point remains: nuclear power is extremely risky, with no way to minimize that risk. No one engineered Fukushima to fail-- on the contrary, it was built with multiple failsafes and it was built to survive a major earthquake by people living in one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. And yet, it failed. Reactor buildings blew up, radiation leaked and continues to leak into the air and water and ground, and with widespread effect.

Saying "well it only leaked a little, the tap water in Tokyo is fine for babies so long as the contamination doesn't last for a year" etc. etc. misses the point. A petroleum processing facility caught fire in Chiba after the earthquake-- we aren't reading of efforts to continue to get the plant under control weeks and weeks later, and we aren't hearing reports of petroleum showing up in small quantities in the water in Osaka as a result, or seeing people evacuated for miles around. And this is the difference between nuclear accidents and accidents with other forms of power.

[Michael Karnerfors]

Excellent article - I recognize all of it

As a proponent of nuclear power, this article was a joy to read. I recognize the sentiments exactly. And I know many others share this view when it comes to all kinds of scare-mongers out there... for things such as....

- cellphone radiation

- electromagnetism

- pitbulls and other dog breeds

- the supposed health effects of wind power

- food additives

- artificial sweeteners

- vaccines

- modern medicine...

My tribute to this article: http://tinyurl.com/npypmonster

/Michael

[Liam Johnson]

@interested_reader

Sorry, but you still haven't explained why "x people die per terawatt of energy" is false reasoning.

Your flawed logic lies in some sort of weird belief that dying from falling off a windmill is some how better than dying from radiation poising (remembering that nobody has yet died at Fukoshima, they have fallen off windmills).

Or that being evacuated because of an accident at a nuclear plant is somehow different from being evacuated from and accident at a chemical plant or refinery.

Or having to move to build a nuclear plant is worse than having your land compulsory purchased to build a hydro dam.

Or the long term effects of radiation are somehow much more dangerous than the long term effects of an oil or chemical spill. You do realise that radioactive elements decay, whereas none radioactive elements stay there until the end of the universe? If the ground were contaminated with mercury, it would be contaminated for trillions of years, not centuries. Of course, you could clean it up as you would after any chemical spill.

Your fears are irrational and your condescending, sneering uneducated tone irks the shit out of me too.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Oh, this... again.

"Accidents that occur during the process of mining coal, refining oil, etc. are not directly attributable to the properties of coal and oil themselves. If you spill oil all over yourself, you wash it off with soap and water. You can pick up a lump of coal, then wash your hand and have a sandwich. Falling off a windmill doesn't contaminate the ground for centuries. When you're done with a solar panel, you don't have to stick it in a salt mine for a few millennia and hope no one digs it up."

As I mentioned elsewhere, it all comes down to the superstitious belief that somehow if you die from a mountain falling upon you head or drown or get blown up by a methane explosion it is a "pure" death which is OK, but if radiation is involved it's "unnatural" and your death will be unholy, unpure and Gaia will reject you or something... Nothing more sophisticated than this - just that radiation is scary (can't see it) and coal isn't (can be seen).

You just confirm that with your irrational arguments. I won't even bother discussing with you the concept of your imaginary cleanliness but just consider living near a lead mine or in Bhopal or working in a sulfur mine somewhere...

And FYI, accidents in coal mines happen because of methane (invisible, by the way), which is an integral part of coal deposits. And, of course, if you spill oil all over yourself, soap and water won't help - you'll have to use a solvent of some sort (gasoline or acetone or vegetable oil will do).

[Andydaws]

Brace yourself for the next wave of hysteria

From NHK

"It is feared the number of victims will increase further as police on Thursday launch their first intensive search since the quake in the 10 kilometer area around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. An evacuation order is in place for a 20 kilometer area."

What's the betting we'll get at least one paper (and poster) presenting any discoveries of Tsunami casualties as though they're a result of the accident at the plant.

Oh, and it's obviously not instantly fatal, or even especially risky to enter the 10k zone, then. The police teams are just wearing paper overalls, and a cheap dust mask. About what they'd wear for handling corpses normally.

[A.T. Tappman (Chaplain)]

and what's the betting..

..that we won't.

if you were to have "a paper presenting any discoveries of tsunami casualties as though they're a result of the accident at the plant." , then it would have to include people who died before the nuclear incident.

I suspect that this would probably not pass peer review. Although given the Sokal text affair, you never know.

[Andydaws]

The NYT is already most of the way there, old son - I think you've missed the idea of "papers"

"Search for Bodies Edges Closer to Crippled Nuclear Plant"

"The Japanese police moved their search for bodies closer to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Thursday as workers continued to remove radioactive water from the facility"

halfway into the second paragraph, before the word "tsunami" is mentioned....

The Vancouver sun has - "Japan police find 10 bodies in nuclear zone"

CanadianBusines.com - "Police search for bodies near Japan nuclear plant, as operator runs into fresh glitches"

Beaumont Enterprise - "Fresh nuke plant woes as police search for bodies"

Not at all slanted, are they?

Any bets on how tomorrows "Sun" and "Mirror" will headline it? I'm more looking forward to the "Mail" - after all, on it's website it's giving us

"Fires STILL raging at stricken Fukushima nuclear reactor one month after it was destroyed by tsunami"

Apparently, there was a small fire in a battery housing - utterly routine stuff, put out in just seven minutes.

[Highlander]

The media has been doing this for weeks now already

How many papers and news articles online have started out talking about the events at Fukushima and then right at the end, almost as a throw away line, without *any* context they will mention the death toll from the earthquake/Tsunami subtly linking the death toll to the nuclear accident, despite them being utterly unrelated.

I'm certain that someone somewhere will find a way to mis-report it.

[Andydaws]

The problem is, it doesn't show up in multiple datasets...

large or small. Or, more strictly, it's in some, and not in others, and is flatly contradicted in others still.

Which begs the obvious questions - what makes you think it's a real effect at all? You seem to be holding those who argue for a lack of effect to satisfy the burden of truth - surely occams razor, consepts like the need for hypotheses to be disporvable, etc. places the burden of proof on those saying there IS an effect?

One of the better and notable even handed summaries I've come across is the US GAO report, done to evaluate the implications of differing models operated by the two US regulatory bodies that would have been in charge of Yucca Mountain - the EPA and the NRC.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/rc00152.pdf

"Epidemiological research has been part of the scientific basis for the linear

model and radiation standards. However, epidemiology may not soon fully

verify or disprove low-level radiation effects. Specific epidemiological

research correlating natural background levels in the United States and

around the world with cancer rates has been generally inconclusive,

showing mixed results. Much of this research has used methodologies that

have been widely considered too limited for the research to be influential in

setting radiation standards....

"...For example, historically DOE has funded over 40 epidemiological studies of radiation effects on workers at sites in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. According to DOE, the results

have shown elevated cancer levels from chronic exposure at some sites, among the most highly exposed workers, although the results have been inconsistent and, looking complex-wide, DOE has not found a clear pattern of excess risk for any specific cancer type...."

(So, evidence at hih dose, no consistent evidence at low dose)

"For this review, we hired a consultant, Dr. Thomas Gesell, Professor of

Health Physics, Idaho State University, a recognized expert in the field of

environmental radiation, to identify and summarize worldwide ecologic

and analytic studies of natural background radiation or radon. Through his

work, we found that many ecologic and analytic studies have been done in

the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America. Some focused mainly

on radon effects, and others focused more broadly on overall natural

background radiation effects. The results of such studies differ and are

inconclusive overall. Most showed no evidence of elevated cancer risk, but

a minority did show slightly elevated cancer risks. Taken together, the

studies may suggest that low-level radiation effects are either very small, or

nonexistent."

(so, more show no effect than suggest there is one)

"..With the help of our expert consultant, we examined 82 ecologic and

analytic studies of natural background radiation or radon, in the United

States and around the world. Of these studies, 45 were directly radon

Appendix IV

Overview of Epidemiological Research on

Low-Level Radiation Effects

Page 39 GAO/RCED-00-152 Radiation Standards

related. The studies examined a variety of different types of cancer, and

some examined cancer effects on children, while others examined genetic

effects. Results of the studies varied, and we did not independently assess

their quality. Some reported statistically significant results—elevated

cancer rates, no elevation in rates, or a negative correlation—and others

reported inconclusive results. (Some lacked basic information for

assessing their quality.) Of 67 radon-related cancer studies, 22 reported

results indicating a statistically significant correlation between natural

background radiation or radon and cancer rates, while 45 found no such

correlation (including 8 that found a negative correlation), and 4 were

inconclusive."

(so a few positive, most no correlation, and some showing a negative correlation).

Now, that may just be me, but that sound awfully like what you'd see when there was in fact, no effect, rather studies were trying to extract a non-existent signal from background noise.

Wade Allison goes rather further - he references not only animal studies that show a clear cut-off, but digs further into some of the "classic" studies. He points out that within the Japanese bomb survivors, the incidence shows no increase in leukemia risk at under 200msv, and for solid cancers, no statistical significance under 100mSv. For those tracked for exposure post Chernobyl (i.e. where longditifnal studies were done), the mortality rates almost perfectly track the sigmoid curve that's shown up in the animal studies.

I'm just wondering what makes you so certain there's an effect to be claimed - to the effect that you can say "4000 deaths caused by chernobyl". Especially when UNSCEAR themselves say

"The Committee has decided not to use models to project absolute numbers of effects in populations exposed to low radiation doses from the Chernobyl accident, because of unacceptable uncertainties in the predictions. It should be stressed that the approach outlined in no way contradicts the application of the LNT model for the purposes of radiation protection, where a cautious approach is conventionally and consciously applied [F11, I37]."

Curiously, they are willing to make very specific statements on observations of non-human populations:

"For acute exposures, studies of the Chernobyl accident experience had confirmed

that significant effects on populations of non-human biota were unlikely at doses

below about 1 gray."

That's 1000 millisieverts (for beta and gamma exposures, which are primarily what's relevant here).

[kissingthecarpet]

How does

it beg any questions?

http://begthequestion.info/

[Charles Thornton]

What? Lewis Page, Worry?

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/85295.html

Quote: "According to TEPCO, radioactive iodine-131 amounting to 220 becquerels per cubic centimeter, cesium-134 of 88 becquerels and cesium-137 of 93 becquerels were detected in the pool water. Those substances are generated by nuclear fission."

Or to put it another way Fukushima Daichi reactor 4 fuel pool is now an open air reactor.

[Robert Sneddon]

It's not rocket science, it's *ATOMIC* science !!

If there was any amount of moderated fission going on in the pool then the Bequerel count ratio of iodine to cesium would be massive as iodine-131 is much more active than either of the cesium isotopes, and Bequerel levels are tied in to activity. What those numbers show is that most of the iodine has died away because of its short half-life. There's still a lot of it in the sample because there was a massive amount (atomically speaking) to start with in the spent fuel rods. If any substantial amount of fission was going on in the pool then the amount of iodine-131 leaking out of the damaged fuel rods would result in counts in the kilo- or even mega-bequerel level per cubic centimetre.

The fission the report refers to happened months ago when about half of the rods now in the pool were in the operating reactor core which was defuelled in November last year. The other half of the rods are from the last time this reactor was defuelled, probably three years or so ago. Those older rods were probably scheduled to be removed to the off-reactor common pool storage or prepped for dry-cask storage when the tsunami hit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lewis gets his information from a PR agency and did not warn us. Journalistic standards my foot.

Hey. Remember this, from way back in Lewis' first article?

>"Spread the word. And if you doubt us on any of this, please read this excellent early description [2] of the events, or follow the reports from the IAEA [3] and World Nuclear News [4]. Very few other channels of information are much use at the moment. ®"

Now, I may be wrong, but I don't think "journalistic standards" are about telling people to go and accept any one party's word as gospel, I think they're about critically evaluating the evidence and reporting (remember that word?) it to your readers. So I was a bit perturbed at what, on the face of it, was a bald-faced instruction to just accept one source at face value. In connection with the whole notion of journalistic standards, aren't multiple independent sources really important?

Anyway, I tried to find out who WNN actually is and what they are about. After all, from the name, you might easily assume this is some small independent press-wire operation that focuses on nuclear industry issues. So when I looked at their "About us" page, what stood out to me was that they don't tell you anything about who they actually are.

You might have expected a mission statement. You might have expected full disclosure about what kind of organisation they are, and what they exist to do. But you would have been disappointed. The "About WNN" page is remarkably devoid of any organisational details. It says that the WNN is there to provide news. It says that they get admin and tech support from something called the "World Nuclear Association".

But it doesn't say anything about who or what they are. You can read that page and you still don't know if WNN is a press agency, a private business, a charity or non-profit or co-op or whatever. It omits all the salient details about the nature and purpose of the organisation; you read the whole thing and you still don't know anything about what WNN actually is.

So, you go to the WNA's site to find out what it says about WNN, and suddenly you realise what's going on.

Because if you check WNN's "Contact us" page, you see that they list one "Jeremy Gordon" as the editor.

And if you go to WNA's "Contact us" page, you see "Jeremy Gordon" listed as their first "Media Contact".

In short, WNN is a wholly-owned subsidiary PR operation belonging to the nuclear industry's trade body.

You might think that if they had an obvious axe to grind, Lewis would have warned us. But he didn't. I think that was a serious omission. I think a journalist would have still pointed us at this source of information, but labelled it with an appropriate health warning.

I don't think anyone who tells us to go and unquestioningly listen to what a PR outfit has to say and purports it to be some kind of unambiguous even-handed truth has any right to lecture anyone else about "journalistic standards". As I said before, Lewis, in seeking to destroy, has become what he despises.

[Andydaws]

I think you misunderstand what WNN's about.

It's hardly a PR channel - it's basically a house magazine for people in the energy and nuclear industry. I'd suspect that 90% of it's usual readership are engineering professionals of one form or another.

Which is why it's probably been several notches above the mass media in the quality of it's analysis - it has to be, since its readership know there stuff. For example, most of the mainstream media have struggled with understanding the differences between the primary and secondary containments, and the reactor vessels. WNN's not prone to that sort of simplistic error, simply because maitaining its own credibility with its core readership depends on it.

On the same sort of basis, so far as I know WNN was the first media source that set out the details of the detection of plutonium on the plant site, and the isotopic analysys that suggested that a couple of the five samples weren't likely to be bomb fallout. The media in general steered well clear of that, not least because 99% of journalists wouldn't understand the significance.

[Mike Flex]

AC & the WNN

> Anyway, I tried to find out who WNN actually is and what they are about. After all, from the name, you might easily assume this is some small independent press-wire operation that focuses on nuclear industry issues. So when I looked at their "About us" page, what stood out to me was that they don't tell you anything about who they actually are.

> In short, WNN is a wholly-owned subsidiary PR operation belonging to the nuclear industry's trade body.

Er, yes. That's what the About Us page told me. That, and the sidebar entry proclaiming

"This information service is supported by World Nuclear Association". Bit of a hint, I thought.

And they still manage better coverage than the mass-market media.

[Andydaws]

there's a few other clues, too

Like the lack of an intense neutron flux (probably tens of thousands of sieverts) .

Or the production of a few megawatts of heat per metre length of fuel assembly.

(as an aside, if as little as 10 metres of assemblies, of the 3,000 metres or so of assemblies in the pool were producing criticality levels of heat, it'd be enough to boil it dry in a matter of a few hours).

FWIW the fuel management policy at Fukushima seems to be that in normal circumstances, one reactor's worth of spent fuel is held in the individual reactor ponds (which is three refuelling cycles worth). After that, the fuel is moved to a common storage pond for a decade or so, then into dry casks.

Finally, those contaminant levels suggest a couple of things. One, it's only a few rods/assemblies damaged, not the majority. Those levels would be MUCH higher if the lot had been bust. Second, as seems to be consistent across this story, there's little or no release of actinides or the less volatile fission products. Which suggests can damage, but no burning/melting of fuel per se.

[Andydaws]

I've just run across the best bit of self-panicking yet

http://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/radio-lanthanum-reported-in-fukushima-fallout-the-nuclide-list-grows/

leaving aside the amusing use of units - instead of of using Bequerels (1 decay event per second), they use "microbequerels" - 1 decay event per 1,000,000 seconds, or one event per 278 hours, the levels are striking. They report an initial reading of just over 1Bq/m3, falling to 0.05Bq/M3 five days later. Or, to put it another way, were they'll (on a typical sample of 1 litre), they'll see a single beta ray every 5 1/2 hours or so.

Which, even were there no dispersal, would have now fallen to one every 45 years.

[John Deeb]

go with the flow

Yet a pointless article on this topic from The Register as well as many pointless comments on an ongoing event with so many variables turning most analysis into nothing more than guess work and prayer. Really there's no reason to thinkPage has more grip on the subject than a Kaku, and both an equal possible motive to posture.

Just some latest development which do not mean anything beyond written reports but it's there to indicate that there might still be a nuclear monster to fight:

"The level of radioactive iodine-131 spiked to 6,500 times the legal limit, according to samples taken Friday, up from 1,100 times the limit in samples taken the day before." Sat Apr 16, Yahoo news.

"Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) : groundwater by Unit 2 is 17-times higher than it was just one week ago. The problem is thought to be caused by an unknown leak or leaks in the basement of the unit’s turbine building or in the tunnel itself. On Friday, workers dumped more sandbags of zeolite, a radiation absorbing material, into the sea by Unit 3." NHK Sat Apr. 16

"The analysis of the health impact of radioactive land contamination by the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, made by Professor Chris Busby (the European Committee of Radiation Risk) based on official Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology data, has shown that over the next 50 years it would be possible to have around 400,000 additional cancer patients within a 200-kilometer radius of the plant." http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/85736.html

[Andydaws]

This Chris Busby?

http://junksciencewatch.wordpress.com/

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the most biased article I've seen on El Reg

http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/04/16/nuclear-expert-fukushima-worse-chernobyl-fukushima-kill-200000-17627/

for a more balanced view.....

[Andydaws]

Well, at least the plan's starting to emerge

I'll take a read at the "Alexander Higgins" blog later, when I'm not posting via a phone. For the moment, though, it's 29 years this year since I graduated in Nuclear Engineering, and, although I haven't worked in the industry itself for 20-odd years, I've followed it and the discussions on radiological risk pretty intensively. And that's a name I've never once come across.

So, I've no great expectation of it being other than yet more half-informed speculation.

Onto the TEPCO plan (although, to all accounts, there's a good deal of Toshiba and Hitachi input too).

The graphics being shown show a system where "feed and bleed" runs on for the next couple of months. The RPVs will be vented to the containment and/or wetwell. The water appears then to be allowed to drain into the secondary containment where it'll be picked up by a scavenge pump, and circulated to a treatment (presumably ion exchange and filtration) system, and be cooled before being re-used as coolant. What's not clear is if this applies to all three reactors, or only to R2 where there's a significant leak to the secondary containment. It'd perhaps make more sense to fully flood the R1 and R3 primary containments and circulate water from there - it'd almost certainly get to cold shutdown faster, as it'd raise water levels above the (apparently) leaking recirculation pump levels, and allow flooding of the RPVs.

There's also apparently a plan to patch wherever the damage is - which will be at interesting challenge to the robotics types. If the recirc pump damage is confirmed, they'll have to do that to allow eventual flooding of R2 anyhow.

As an aside, it's looking very much that R2 is the dominant cause of contaminated water leakage into the secondary containments -and turbine hall basements, especially as it now seems there's an interconnection between R1 and R2 turbine halls.

It looks a sensible plan. Not overly ambitious in terms of needing access into the secondary containments/reactor buildings themselves (although, on the numbers now beginning to emerge from robotic surveys, the radiation levels aren't as bad as might have been feared - with some fairly basic decontamination, they ought to be accessible for short periods of working).

Given that the iodine decay is now well advanced (and most of the volatiles that were going to come out of the damaged fuel are probably out already), the chemical removal of caesium and other contaminants should bring down radiation levels in the circuit reasonably effectively. I'd guess at a factor of 10-100 over three months or so. It also prevents build up of further volumes of water needing treatment. If they can get to a situation where at least some of the venting is of liquid water, as opposed to steam, flow conditions in the RPVs will improve, as salt is brought out in solution.

As to the fuel ponds, we'll know over the next few days if it's only the R4 pond where there's been fuel damage - again, those are the indiccations, but until it's confirmed by sampling the pond water, we won't know. In those ponds where there is damage, there's probably still some iodine coming off to atmosphere (not much, it'll be nearly all decayed, but it's volatile. Unless the pond(s) get to boiling, although there's caesium and other contamination, that's likely to stay put. It's a solid, not a gas, and unless there's enough heat to loft particulates, it'll just accumulate in the ponds.

They're proposing some sort of cover over the reactor halls. Interesting to see what form that takes.

[Andydaws]

full details here

http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2011/04/18/tepco-sketches-out-plan-for-cold-shutdown-at-fukushima-daiichi-in-3_2d00_6-months041802.aspx

Do the three downloads, and you'll get chapeter and verse.

Mostly, I wasn't far out - the only thing I'd missed was they plan to seal the breach in the R2 suppression chamber by grouting into the space between it and the biological shield, rather than welding in a patch. Easier to do, certainly, although it will depend how big the hole is - there appears to be a tacit assumption that it's a crack, rather than a significant hole.

[Highlander]

Thinking about how they'd patch that nwith robotics

Since they will undoubtedly use robots to do that work, grouting would appear to be the more forgiving solution since welding requires a greater level of precision and control. Also with grouting there is little to no chance that the operation could make it worse, where as a welding operation would present higher chances of creating a larger problem that the one being patched in the event of a mistake or failure during the weld.

You know, so far I think that the TEPCO folks on the ground and in general have handled this pretty well. There's been no evidence of panic, and a great deal of very practical, and educated creative thinking going on there. IAEA and other bodies with people on the ground there appear to have no issues with how things are proceeding, and apart from the politically motivated decisions coming out of the government this appears to be going about as well as could be expected given the nature of the damage at Fukushima Daiichi.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people have a blind distrust of he very people who know the facility and situation best, and yet at the same time exercise blind trust in organizations far removed from the situation simply because the take an extremely pessimistic view that contradicts the rather more level headed and entirely factual picture emerging via TEPCO, NISA, IAEA and others there on the ground. Give that there is really no one better qualified or experienced with the specific reactors, site, equipment and situation than the people there, why on earth would anyone want to bring in external interference with the efforts to recover the plant?

A well, I guess it's a function of the combination the blind mistrust and blind trust. I can't help but feel that there is a rather large dose of xenophobia involved in lot of those reactions as well, because I constantly hear an undertone that suggests that some simply don't think that the Japanese are capable of dealing with it, despite the fact that the Japanese have perhaps more experience than any one else in Nuclear energy, earthquake damage and recovery, and the effects of radiation on human beings and the land. The Japanese people are an extremely industrious people and it should be immediately evident to any casual observer that Japan have some of the best engineered infrastructure and construction in the world, their manufacturing prowess and density of construction also testifies to their excellence in engineering as a nation.

Personally, I suspect that when all is said an done, in 10 years time when the history of these events is written, we will be surprised at how quickly Japan was able to recover. I think many will be surprised at the disparity between the actuality of Fukushima and the fiction spun but media and politicians over the last month and a bit.

A final thought for this post. The IAEA as covered Fukushima daily since March 11th. The most recent update of their information page was on April 15th. Although the situation at Fukushima Daiichi is still described as "remaining very serious", the IAEA is not providing a new information update until April 18th. If the situation remained critical or there was a risk of rapid change in the condition at the reactors I feel certain that the IAEA would continue their daily reporting. So while it remains very serious, it's also clear that the IAEA considers the situation to be stable enough to cease the daily updates. That suggests greater stability and control over the situation, if not a decline in the seriousness of the situation there.

[Highlander]

That's a lot of work that TEPCO has laid out

I'm actually quite impressed by their plans. There is a lot of work laid out there for them to do, on a site that still remains significantly damaged and active.

Considering that there really isn't a playbook for this kind of thing, nor is there really any one with specific expertise of the situation, I find their approach or stabilizing first along with a growing program of sober damage assessment and calm planning to be far more reassuring than the various calls to bury the site under concrete, or sand or some of the other more whacky proposals we've seen. I'd rather the calm sober approach be used than the more emotional and irrational ones.

[Robert Sneddon]

Earthquakes

I saw the proposal to flood the primary containment of one or more of the reactors on a Japanese news website. My worry about doing something like that would be the effects of the extra mass in the reactor building if another major earthquake came along, with several hundred extra tonnes of water sloshing around and damaging the pressure vessel support structures and even the secondary containment.

I think the idea of flooding was to passively cool the cores by circulation and conduction through the water to the much larger surface of the primary containment vessel. This might effectively bring the whole thing to cold shutdown without requiring actively circulating water to remove decay heat as they are doing to Daiichi reactors 5 and 6 at the moment as well as the Daini, Tokai and Onagawa plant reactors.

[Andydaws]

reasonable points

Remember the containments are routinely flooded for refuelling and maintenance operations which can last for three months or more. I'd be surprised if they're not seismically qualified.

[Andydaws]

there's a few other clues, too

A lot of work certainly, and some of it not easy, but nothing that's obviously infeasible. The key factor will be the condition of the drain-down pipework systems for the containments (especially on R1 and R3). If they're intact - and there's no obvious reason to assume them to be damaged - it should be viable to get closed-loop cooling running.

Even if the on-site heat exchangers from systems like the rhrs aren't usable, it's only 5MW or so that needs to be dumped. Heat exchangers for that sort or capacity should be available "off the shelf".

I assume they intend to set up an isotope removal system for each reactor individually. That will probably require some "bespoke" kit, but again, nothing scarily unusual. I assume they'll build it up as a module, then crane it in, or something similar, to minimise exposures.

As to R2, having thought a bit more, there's an option that's likely to work irrespective of the size of the breach, and that's to grout directly into the suppression torus itself. I assume that the area around the breach will be far too hot to be approached by people, but the challenege for the robots should be limited to getting a concrete pipe into the breach. The concrete can be pumped remotely (and they've a lot of concrete pumps on site). Still some questions about how good a seal can be expectec, though.

[Dr Andrew A. Adams]

Great Story. One Minor Correction

Great story. However, one correction. The rolling blackouts. The announcements by TEPCo were quite correctly forecasts of what they would do if the people in Tokyo (and surrouding regions) did not conserve power. Most people did and so MOST 8but not all) of the predicted backouts were not put into practice. Some were. The only reson they have stopped now is the change in the weather. When the earthquake hit and the power plants went off-line (not just Fukiushima but a number of others went offline from power production but were not scrammed) it was still the tail end of winter and quite cold, plus businesses took some time to figure out power saving optins -like reducing the number of fluorescent lights and large TV screens in use. Now that the weather has warmed up, the power cuts have stopped. Even though most of the power plants will be back online within a few months, before then the weather in Tokyo will start getting deadly hot (literally - in a hot summer here there can be many deaths from heat stroke, particularly among the elderly). Without air conditioning people WILL suffer significant health effects. The rolling balckouts are expected to have to be put into practice during the summer months, gradually reducing as the rest of the plants (including the Fukushima Daini reactors) come back ons-stream. If the nuclear scary monster crowd get their way and have Fukushima Daini closed down (as they're calling for in some places) then they will be likely killing (and certainly shortening the life spans) of elderly people in and around Tokyo due to rolling blackouts leaving them without air conditioning.