nuclear-news

Scrutiny on the misleading spin about the health effects of Fukushima nuclear disaster being “tolerable”

Fukushima and the institutional invisibility of nuclear disaster, Ecologist, John Downer 20th December 2014  “………..Two: the accident was tolerable

The second basic narrative through which accounts of Fukushima have kept the accident from undermining the wider nuclear industry rests on the claim that its effects were tolerable – that even though the costs of nuclear accidents might look high, when amortised over time they are acceptable relative to the alternatives.

The ‘accidents are tolerable’ argument is invariably framed in relation to the health effects of nuclear accidents.“As far as we know, not one person has died from radiation”, Sir David King told a press conference in relation to Fukushima, neatly expressing a sentiment that would be echoed in editorials around the world in the aftermath of the accident.

“Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small”, concluded Monbiot in one characteristic column.

“History suggests that nuclear power rarely kills and causes little illness”, the Washington Post reassured its readers (Brown 2011). See also eg McCulloch (2011); Harvey (2011).“Fukushima’s Refugees Are Victims Of Irrational Fear, Not Radiation”, declared the title of an article in Forbes (Conca 2012).

In its more sophisticated forms, this argument draws on comparisons with other energy alternatives. A 2004 study by the American Lung Association argues that coal-fired power plants shorten the lives of 24,000 people every year.

Chernobyl, widely considered to be the most poisonous nuclear disaster to date, is routinely thought to be responsible for around 4,000 past or future deaths.

Even if the effects of Fukushima are comparable (which the majority of experts insist they are not), then by these statistics the human costs of nuclear energy seem almost negligible, even when accounting for its periodic failures.

Such numbers are highly contestable, however. Partly because there are many more coal than nuclear plants (a fairer comparison might consider deaths per kilowatt-hour). But mostly because calculations of the health effects of nuclear accidents are fundamentally ambiguous.

Chronic radiological harm can manifest in a wide range of maladies, none of which are clearly distinguishable as being radiologically induced – they have to be distinguished statistically – and all of which have a long latency , sometimes of decades or even generations.

How many died? It all depends …

So it is that mortality estimates about nuclear accidents inevitably depend on an array of complex assumptions and judgments that allow for radically divergent – but equally ‘scientific’ – interpretations of the same data. Some claims are more compelling than others, of course, but ‘truth’ in this realm does not ‘shine by its own lights’ as we invariably suppose it ought.

Take, for example, the various studies of Chernobyl’s mortality, from which estimates of Fukushima’s are derived. The models underlying these studies are themselves derived from data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, the accuracy and relevance of which have been widely criticised, and they require the modeller to make a range of choices with no obviously correct answer.

Modellers must select between competing theories of how radiation affects the human body, for instance; between widely varying judgments about the amount of radioactive material the accident released; and much more. Such choices are closely interlinked and mutually dependent.

Estimates of the composition and quantities of the isotopes released in the accident, for example, will affect models of their distribution, which, in conjunction with theories of how radiation affects the human body, will affect conclusions about the specific populations at risk.

This, in turn, will affect whether a broad spike in mortality should be interpreted as evidence of radiological harm or as evidence that many seemingly radiation – related deaths are actually symptomatic of something else. And so on ad infinitum: a dynamic tapestry of theory and justification, where subtle judgements reverberate throughout the system.

The net result is that quiet judgrments concerning the underlying assumptions of an assessment – usually made in the very earliest stages of a study and all but invisible to most observers – have dramatic affects on its findings. The effects of this are visible in the widely divergent assertions made about Chernobyl’s death toll.

The ‘orthodox’ mortality figure cited above – no more than 4,000 deaths – comes from the 2005 IAEA-led ‘Chernobyl Forum ‘ report. Or rather, from the heavily bowdlerised press release from the IAEA that accompanied its executive summary. The actual health section of the report alludes to much higher numbers.

Yet the ‘4,000 deaths’ number is endorsed and cited by most international nuclear authorities, although it stands in stark contrast to the findings of similar investigations.

Two reports published the following year, for example, offer much higher figures: one estimating 30,000 to 60,000 cancer deaths (Fairlie & Sumner 2006 ); the other 200,000 or more (Greenpeace 2006: 10).

In 2009, meanwhile, the New York Academy of Sciences published an extremely substantive Russian report by Yablokov that raised the toll even further, concluding that in the years up to 2004, Chernobyl caused around 985,000 premature cancer deaths worldwide.

Between these two figures – 4,000 and 985,000 – lie a host of other expert estimations of Chernobyl’s mortality, many of them seemingly rigorous and authoritative. The Greenpeace report tabulates some of the varying estimates and correlates them to differing methodologies. http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2684383/fukushima_and_the_institutional_invisibility_of_nuclear_disaster.html

December 22, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, health, spinbuster