
Fukushima: It's much worse than you think - lewispb
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html
======
klenwell
"In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano
published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality
in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well
be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant."

"The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San
Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time
frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the
disaster."

I tried to source this on Google. I can't find the article by Sherman and
Mangano, but found this discussion:

<http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/4550>

It appears the authors cited by AJE were using CDC data. Someone posts the
infant death numbers at the Berkeley link. The numbers are very small with a
lot of deviation. And it's not clear that they're even being measured against
total number of births.

I've heard a lot of praise for AJE's reporting and I wouldn't be surprised to
learn that TEPCO and the Japanese government were continuing to understate the
risk, but this article seems shoddy and sensationalistic.

~~~
jrwoodruff
I was very surprised to see statistics like that so soon after it happened.
Typically reliable statistics for data like infant mortality are not available
until awhile (read: a year) after the event.

And, frankly, even then it seems very early to draw a conclusive connection to
Fukushima. Correlation != causation.

------
Spyro7
"In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano
published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality
in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well
be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant."

Somehow, I'm not surprised by this. Janette Sherman is an anti-nuclear
activist:

<http://janettesherman.com/>

Joseph Mangano is the director of the "Radiation and Public Health Project":

<http://www.radiation.org/>

They are not exactly disinterested parties, and it is fair to say that their
article would never be published in a peer reviewed journal:

<http://www.counterpunch.org/sherman06102011.html>

Side Note: This is not the most scientific graph in the world, but (in the
event of another panicked radiation article) it is always worth linking to the
xkcd graph on radiation:

<http://xkcd.com/radiation/>

~~~
jdp23
Isn't this the kind of argument that Paul Graham charcterizes as "ad hominem"
and usually gets voted down on Hacker News?

Don't get me wrong, personally I think it's very valid to bring up and
important to keep in mind while reading their article. But it seems like a
double standard to me.

~~~
ahoyhere
Motive is incredibly important. Saying someone has a reason to be biased is
not ad hominem. Saying they're a fucking hippie is.

~~~
yummyfajitas
It's absolutely an ad hominem and a logical fallacy. The study itself is
given. We can evaluate it without any knowledge whatsoever of the authors. The
only time such a claim is not an ad hominem is when the target of the ad
hominem is arguing from authority rather than from facts.

Not ad hominem: "I'm a godlike scientist and I'm certain X is true. Trust me."
-> "No, he's a poopie head. Don't trust him."

In this case, the only reason we believe the speaker is because we believe him
to be a godlike scientist. If he is not, we have little reason to believe him.

Ad hominem: "Here is a study. The methodology and data are available. It
claims X." -> "Don't trust him, he's a poopie head."

In this case, the poopie-headed nature of the speaker is irrelevant. His
methodology is either valid or invalid. The ad hominem attack is a logical
fallacy in this case.

------
curtis
_In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano
published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality
in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well
be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant._

 _The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San
Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time
frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the
disaster._

I don't know why anyone should take this article seriously. Here's the thing
about radiation: We can measure it directly. And scientists have certainly
been able to measure radioactivity here in the U.S. that must be a consequence
of Fukushima. But here's the thing: those radioactive effects -- here in the
U.S. -- are very, very small.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Indeed. Berkeley's nuclear engineering department has been running one of the
better monitoring programs:

<http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/UCBAirSampling>

------
PaulHoule
There's a lot of nonsense in that article. First of all, they keep repeating
the words Plutonium and Uranium (particularly "enriched Uranium") and try to
suggest that these are the major threats from the accident.

They're not.

Uranium isotopes have a half-life of billions of years, so whatever
radioactivity they emit is spread out over a very long time. Overall, uranium
is toxic in the same way that lead is toxic, and the chemical toxicity is
probably worse than the radiotoxicity. Even in a completely melted reactor
core, uranium dioxide is relativly stable and won't be quickly transported
into the environment.

The isotopes of concern are primarily of Iodine and Cesium. Radioiodine from
the accident has almost completely decayed, although Cesium isotopes may still
be hazardous in heavily contaminated areas for years.

Currently there seem to be "hotspots" at considerable distances from the plant
where doses on the ground are in a range that's at the edge of what nuclear
power workers are permitted to get (but rarely do.) There's no proof that
radiation at that level is harmful, but no proof that it's completely safe to
have that exposure for your lifetime either.

Now, it's also BS to say that the threat from spent nuclear fuel that's been
sitting around for 10 years is as high as the threat from an active core or
one that's been sitting around for three months -- it just isn't;
radioactivity decays and heat generation goes down, so it's really unfair to
count the number of "cores" worth of danger here.

That said, I wouldn't blame people for mistrusting Japanese government,
industry and even society. Japan has been the world's leader in nuclear
accidents for the past 20 years, and it's often said that they're not
completely honest about industrial accidents in general (such as in the auto
industry.)

Nuclear safety requires a person who's disciplined and (for the most part)
follows orders but who also has a strong individual sense of right and wrong
and won't follow a bad order. America's nuclear navy works hard to cultivate
this ethos, but I'm not sure if it's easy to cultivate this in Japan.

~~~
marshray
_Overall, uranium is toxic in the same way that lead is toxic, and the
chemical toxicity is probably worse than the radiotoxicity._

You know darn well we're not talking about "overall uranium".

We're talking about very hot uranium and plutonium directly from the cores of
active nuclear reactors and the entire spectrum of elements and isotopes that
get produced when you take that core, rods, and support structure and melt it
out through the bottom of a containment vessel onto a concrete foundation that
wasn't designed as a core catcher. Mix in seawater, steam, hydrogen explosions
and gord knows what else and you have a reaction that is insufficiently
modeled.

What we do know is that a large area of land is not being occupied in Japan
due to contamination. The Japanese have very expensive land, know a thing or
two about radioactive contamination, and are not exactly known for
exaggerating the impact of industrial accidents.

~~~
Confusion
The uranium in that reactor isn't different from overall uranium, except that
it's concentrated and its composition differs from what naturally occurs.
However, that's _over there_. Uranium would be dangerous to US citizens if the
uranium was _in the US_. It isn't. And so far, not even the worst doomsayers
that actually know their stuff have worried about uranium or plutonium. That's
just not the stuff you care about after a nuclear meltdown. You care about the
other isotopes that were produced and that are much more easily carried
outside and are easily used to compose other molecules that can spread
further.

Secondly, what on earth is 'hot uranium'? If you are speaking about the
temperature: it certainly isn't hot anymore by the time it reaches the US. If
you are speaking about it's radioactivity, you're wrong: individual uranium
atoms from that reactor, once escaped, do not behave differently than
naturally occurring uranium atoms.

As for your other fears: it's perfectly well known what radioactive isotopes
controlled and uncontrolled fission processes can produce. That's why they've
been monitoring for things like cesium, iodine and basically every radioactive
isotopes that exists: the number is rather limited). No significant levels of
the stuff have been seen in the US.

~~~
marshray
_The uranium in that reactor isn't different from overall uranium, except that
it's concentrated and its composition differs from what naturally occurs._

That can be a pretty serious categorical difference, particularly in the
concentration.

 _However, that's over there. Uranium would be dangerous to US citizens if the
uranium was in the US. It isn't._

Duh.

Did you even read what I wrote or are you pasting this from some talking
points you got somewhere?

 _And so far, not even the worst doomsayers that actually know their stuff
have worried about uranium or plutonium._

Which is not to say it's not a problem, only that you find some reason to
dismiss the views you don't agree with.

 _That's just not the stuff you care about after a nuclear meltdown. You care
about the other isotopes that were produced and that are much more easily
carried outside and are easily used to compose other molecules that can spread
further._

That must be why they're setting limits on the acceptable level of uranium in
the rice then. To draw attention away from the things that are really
dangerous. [http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-28/fukushima-may-
ab...](http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-28/fukushima-may-abandon-rice-
planting-amid-radiation-in-soil.html) Riiight.

 _Secondly, what on earth is 'hot uranium'?_

What I said was "very hot uranium and plutonium directly from the cores of
active nuclear reactors and the entire spectrum of elements and isotopes that
get produced when ...".

 _If you are speaking about the temperature: it certainly isn't hot anymore by
the time it reaches the US. If you are speaking about it's radioactivity,_

In this case, the term 'hot' captures temperature (in Celsius), reactivity
(neutrons), and the health effects of radioactivity (Becquerels). It works on
many levels.

 _you're wrong: individual uranium atoms from that reactor, once escaped, do
not behave differently than naturally occurring uranium atoms._

You really seem to want me to be talking about specifically uranium atoms in
fallout on the continental US. The vast majority of that article is about
Japan with only a few sentences claiming some nonspecific particles could be
detected in the US.

Is it that you know only this one counter argument, the one that natural and
low-enriched uranium samples aren't wildly different in decay rates?

 _As for your other fears:_

I'm not afraid, you're just making that up.

 _it's perfectly well known what radioactive isotopes controlled and
uncontrolled fission processes can produce._

I don't think our knowledge of these meltdowns is anywhere close to "perfect",
but note that I said "the entire spectrum of elements and isotopes...".

They don't know what temperatures were reached what state of matter the cores
were in and for what time periods. The IAEA says there could have been
recriticality, but they don't know for sure one way or the other.

 _That's why they've been monitoring for things like cesium, iodine and
basically every radioactive isotopes that exists: the number is rather
limited)._

Do you think I've never heard of the periodic table or something?

------
nobody_nowhere
The quick onslaught of the "it couldn't possibly be a meltdown" message in the
mainstream media and the "MIT professor says" emails/webpages, etc all smacked
of a propaganda campaign to me. All the while the fuel rods were sitting in a
puddle at the bottom of the reactor... and probably leaking through into the
ground.

Of course, it's more likely that it was a lot of people not willing to believe
the scope of the catastrophe than a conspiracy to suppress information, but
the forcefulness of the response was striking.

I heard a great (and probably apocryphal) anecdote on the radio a few weeks
after -- "After three mile island, the Russians came to the US, performed a
detailed analysis, and concluded 'we can't have a three mile island'. Instead,
they had a Chernobyl. The Japanese went to Russia, did an analysis, and said
'we can't possibly have a Chernobyl', and instead had their own meltdown. Now
we're hearing how modern reactors couldn't possibly have a meltdown like any
of three so far."

~~~
Duff
I was shocked at the immediate "this is not a problem" reaction by many people
-- particularly here at Hacker News.

~~~
burgerbrain
Just think of it as a natural counterweight to all the people who equate
meltdown with a nuclear explosion.

~~~
pohl
Where are such people? From my perspective, you're suggesting a natural
counterweight to nobody.

~~~
tensor
Where are the "this is not a problem" people? I dont' recall a single person
claiming the failure at the plant wasn't a problem. As I recall it, there was
a "this is not Chernobyl" camp.

~~~
swaits
There were both. The HN (and "MIT") response was particularly disturbing to
me. You couldn't question the official reports of "everything is fine and
under control" around here without getting completely slammed, belittled,
berated, downvoted, etc.

And yet now we know that the total radiation release was probably as much or
more than Chernobyl.

What I said at the very beginning of this disaster.. If there's one thing
everyone should know by now about nuclear reactor emergencies - it's that the
authorities never tell the truth in the beginning, through ignorance or
otherwise. We have an admittedly small sample of such accidents, but I'm
sticking with it.

~~~
gjm11
> And yet now we know that the total radiation release was probably as much or
> more than Chernobyl.

We do? Evidence, please.

For what I think is the conventional view, see e.g.
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13050228> which indicates more
than 10x more radiation release from Chernobyl. That was a couple of months
ago; has the situation changed drastically since then?

(On 2011-04-12, when the incident was reclassified at IAEA level 7, a TEPCO
spokesman made some comment about the Fukushima disaster having released more
radiation than the Chernobyl one. I'm pretty sure that was simply not true.)

I think the "MIT" response was basically correct and remains so despite
scaremongering like that linked to here. The Fukushima plant was hit by an
enormous natural disaster; yes, the results were very bad, but they were very
much smaller in both human and economic terms than those of the
earthquake+tsunami itself and so far the known death toll (due to radiation as
opposed to, e.g., things falling on people's heads) from the damage to the
nuclear reactors is ... zero.

That doesn't mean the damage isn't a problem, it doesn't even mean it's not a
disaster. It does, however, mean this: A large, aging nuclear facility was
struck by a huge natural disaster, much worse than it was ever designed for
(which was, yes, a Bad Thing) -- and the result, so far at least, has not
involved death or disease on a large scale.

If that's as bad as the downside of nuclear power gets, it's looking pretty
good.

(What's the downside of the alternative? Well, imagine that the Fukushima
reactors hadn't been built and that the energy they provided had come from
coal-fired power stations instead. Generating energy from coal costs about 15
deaths per TWh in the US, according to
[http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-
so...](http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html);
Japan is probably similar. The Fukushima plant produced a bit less than 880
TWh of energy over its lifetime. That's about 13,000 deaths. Even with the
disaster, there's no way that the Fukushima plant has caused anything near to
that many.)

------
natural219
I love AJE, but I'm regularly surprised over the amount of balls AJE reporters
have in making value judgements on the fly. For instance:

 _Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US?

Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest
campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama
was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his political campaigns,
thus far. Obama also appointed Exelon CEO John Rowe to his Blue Ribbon
Commission on America's Nuclear Future._

~~~
code_duck
On the flip side, I'm regularly impressed by how the US media almost _never_
questions, mentions or takes note any of the money and power connections which
influence US politics so heavily.

I think the story is deeper than one company who gave $269,000 however.

~~~
tkahn6
The solution is to find higher quality news outlets. NPR and PBS come to mind.

~~~
code_duck
While they, along with the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and a few
other magazines are better than average, they still don't question things in
the way I'd like. There's still plenty things that seem to be unspeakable in
their journalism.

------
dreamux
"Most of the reactors in Japan were designed by US companies who did not care
for the effects of earthquakes,"

As an Engineer I call bullshit on this.

~~~
Duff
Around the time of the disaster there were stories about a GE engineer who
resigned in protest in 1970 over this particular model of reactor.

If I recall correctly, the engineering team's concerns about fail-safes in the
event of a loss of electrical power were overruled or dismissed.

~~~
tsotha
The potential problems resulting from loss of electrical power were and are
well understood. What happened in Fukushima wasn't a flaw in the reactor
design - it was a flaw in the design of the power station.

~~~
Duff
It's a flaw in the system. A system built around a reactor with known risks if
electrical supplies are interrupted.

This is a region of a country where tectonic activity is significant enough
that seaside villages are cutoff from the sea by 15 foot reinforced walls.

A reactor with the failure characteristics of the Fukushima reactors sound
like the wrong tool for the job to me.

------
nl
I'm not a big fan of the automatic approval many on HN give to nuclear power,
and I agree that we haven't heard the last of Fukushima.

But this article is bullshit. There is no conceivable mechanism for it to have
occurred, and no pattern in other cases of nuclear exposure.

------
Shenglong
One disaster, and people forget the half century of prosperity that nuclear
power brought. Worse, the general public is going to see Fusion (fingers
crossed) in the same way as fission just because it's also "nuclear power".
I'm disheartened.

~~~
mattdeboard
Uh, yeah, I mean, these are human being we're talking about. We can't even get
people to accept evolutionary theory. I won't hold my breath waiting for
people to be even-handed and partake in critical thought about the vagaries of
nuclear power.

------
walexander
"'Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind,'
Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al
Jazeera"

OK, after reading the first sentence, I was already suspicious of this
article. Quick tab back to HN comments seems to confirm it. Thanks for saving
my time, HN.

~~~
Natsu
I have to wonder why he ranked it above Bhopal, Deepwater Horizon, or even
Chernobyl. Chernobyl had burning graphite and a fully exposed core. There were
also lots of people dying of radiation sickness.

Thankfully, none of the plant workers appear to have died from that, though
they have more reason to fear overexposure than anyone.

~~~
sesqu
Interestingly, a documentary I saw on the on-site group studying Chernobyl
mentioned that most of the group died prematurely, but not of radiation
sickness or cancer. They died of heart failures and stress-induced health
problems.

A long time afterwards, some of the survivors saw non-terminal cell damage
related problems.

------
Ixiaus
Fukushima is a disaster, yes, but this article (particularly the little
subsection blaming the USA) is full of appeals to emotion.

------
patrickgzill
It will be interesting to see if, in a few years, dentists and doctors start
collecting baby teeth, which can then be analyzed for uptake of radioactive
materials into bone.

This was done in the 50s and 60s in the USA - the large number of above-ground
nuclear tests put material in the air, which was detectable in teeth from
children living at that time.

(link may be biased against nuclear but contains overview of the study):
<http://www.radiation.org/projects/tooth_fairy.html>

------
nevinera
No it's not. The long-term environmental impact from fukushima is _far_
smaller than that from the BP oil leak last year. The extra radiation being
received by people who live a _mile_ from the site is on par with eating two
bananas every day.

The impact isn't nothing; this is a significant catastrophe. But that article
is sensational bullshit.

------
krschultz
This article really lowers my opinion of Al Jazeera english.

~~~
iskander
I read/watch AJ English most days and I've found that their on-the-ground
reporting is excellent but they also publish a lot of marginal rubbish.

------
sudonim
From the article, it seems as though experts are saying the design of the
reactors by GE didn't take into account that Japan has earthquakes.

GE was never named directly, but wikipedia says it was their design.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant)

~~~
marshray
AFAICT the plants reacted to and withstood the earthquakes fairly well. The
tsunami on the other hand...well I guess nuke plants and 14 meter high walls
of water don't mix.

~~~
nathanb
I believe the main problem wasn't the damage to the plants so much as the loss
of power and unreliability of backup power, a known and critical flaw in an
earthquake-prone area.

~~~
marshray
The term "plant" includes all the surrounding equipment. Batteries, backup
generators, fuel reserves, etc.

My understanding is that if a functioning subset of generators had survived
they could have powered the cooling pumps and the problem would have just been
keeping them refueled. You can truck-in or airlift-in fuel quicky, so this
would have been a very manageable problem in the short and medium terms, much
more so than repairing long spans of downed electrical distribution lines.

------
fleitz
What exactly are "hot" particles that can't be measured with a Geiger counter?
I assume they are talking about radioactive particles and not particles with
increased temperature. This article sounds like pseudo science to me.

------
guscost
If our best scientific assessments are based on absurdly low-confidence
ancillary statistics like these, doesn't that automatically suggest that we
shouldn't decide anything based on the results?

------
berntb
In addition to the other criticism.

From the article: _TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more
radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst
nuclear accident on record._

Is there a reference supporting this? I've only seen values for Fukushima
radiation as a fraction of Chernobyl (and if I remember correctly, not as bad
isotopes)?

A while ago, I got multiple comments modded to -10, for questioning the
trustworthiness of Al Jazeera. The web site is not connected to the tv
channel?

(For the record: I don't really know about al J. I distrust most media, except
NY Times/Washington Post/BBC as long as they don't write about advertisers.)

~~~
3am
With zero effort, I found this for you:

[http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110413005584.htm<b...](http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110413005584.htm<br/>);

"Junichi Matsumoto, acting head of Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Nuclear Power &
Plant Siting Division, acknowledged the seriousness of the Fukushima accident
at a press conference Tuesday. 'Although the details of the [Chernobyl and
Fukushima] accidents are different, from the standpoint of how much radiation
has been released, [Fukushima] is equal to or more serious than Chernobyl.'"

That was just a citation in the Wikipedia page for the incident.

~~~
nitrogen
Could they be referring to the INES disaster scale, on which Fukushima rates
equal to Chernobyl?

Also, the direct release of radiation from the reactor is significantly less
serious than the release of certain radioisotopes. If they're only comparing
absolute radiation levels, and (hypothetically) most of Chernobyl's was in
radioactive cesium, while most of Fukushima's was in alpha/beta/gamma
particles or short-lived radioactive oxygen/nitrogen/etc., then the comparison
is not very useful.

