Beyond Nuclear explains why radioactivity harms us and no dose is “safe”
nations that rely on the use — and marketing — of nuclear technology, will do everything possible to suppressknowledge about its dangers. This has resulted in public relations campaigns endeavoring to persuade its citizens — as is happening in post-Fukushima Japan —that their “hysteria” and “radiophobia” are causing more illnesses than any radiation that might have gotten out.
This tactic is embedded in a strategy to “normalize” radiation exposures so that exposure limits can be raised. In Japan, the 1 millisievert a year “acceptable” level of exposure was raised to 20 mSv a year after the Fukushima disaster, simply because the Japanese government cannot ever hope to “clean up” areas contaminated with radioactivity back down to the 1 mSv level. Thus, an annual dose rate that is completely unacceptable, especially for children, becomes the new “normal.”
![]() A “small” dose can do immense damage; our new handbook explains how and why, By Cindy Folkers and Linda Pentz Gunter, 4 Oct 18All nuclear power plants routinely release radioactive gases and water contaminated with radioactive isotopes. When a nuclear plant has a serious accident — as occurred at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima — orders of magnitude more radioactivity is released into the environment. Uranium mining also releases harmful radioactive isotopes and leaves behind radioactive waste. The 1979 uranium tailings pond spill at Church Rock, NM — 90 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste and 1,100 tons of solid mill waste — was the largest accidental release of radioactive waste in US history and permanently contaminated the Puerco River. Radioactive releases occur all along the uranium fuel chain, beginning with uranium mining and culminating in radioactive waste “management.” All of these releases — whether large or small (because there is no “safe” dose) — impact human health with The fact remains, however, that both the immediate and long-term damage done to human health — which can last for generations — is the single, most compelling reason not to continue with the use of nuclear power and the extractive, polluting industries that must support it. The Radiation and Harm to Human Health chapter of the Beyond Nuclear anti-nuclear handbook, is available now for download and printing as a standalone booklet. In it, we endeavor to both explain and synthesize the many ways that radioactivity released through the nuclear power sector damages human health, especially the most vulnerable members of our population — women, pregnancy, babies and young children. We begin with some simple explanations about radiation and radioactive releases. When we make the case that nuclear power harms us, it’s necessary to understand the differences between types of radiation and exactly what is released by the different phases of the nuclear industry fuel chain.
We also break down the “natural” versus “man-made” argument. Too often, you may hear suggestions that exposures caused by nuclear plants are no worse than flying in an airplane. The sin of omission is a common tactic by the nuclear lobby. In this booklet, we describe why these arguments are deliberately misleading and unscientific. It is important to remember that the negative health effects caused by the uranium fuel chain are not restricted to radiation exposures. Uranium mining, for example, also releases heavy metals such as lead and even arsenic, just as harmful and in some cases even worse than radiation, depending on the dose. The whole issue of “dose,” of course, and what this means, is also used to cloud facts with mythology in order to suggest that some radioactive releases are not high enough to do real damage. But differentiating between high and low doses is very tricky, depending on whether the doses are delivered to a whole body, an individual organ, or a few cells. For example, even just a single alpha-emitting isotope — such as uranium, radon or thorium —when inhaled or ingested, can impart a huge dose to the cell or cells it travels through. The dose may sound small, but the damage is immense. Medical science is in agreement that women are more susceptible to damage from radiation exposure than men. Accidents such as Chernobyl have led to lasting and widespread health problems. But these have been hard to record and quantify. Many affected people were never registered, others moved away or have died. The “burden of proof” that Chernobyl harmed them remains on the victim rather than the obvious perpetrator. This has allowed authorities such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (whose mandate is to promote the use of nuclear power) to capitalize on uncertainty by spreading statistics that grossly underestimate the health impacts of nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl.
Similarly, nations that rely on the use — and marketing — of nuclear technology, will do everything possible to suppress knowledge about its dangers. This has resulted in public relations campaigns endeavoring to persuade its citizens — as is happening in post-Fukushima Japan —that their “hysteria” and “radiophobia” are causing more illnesses than any radiation that might have gotten out. This tactic is embedded in a strategy to “normalize” radiation exposures so that exposure limits can be raised. In Japan, the 1 millisievert a year “acceptable” level of exposure was raised to 20 mSv a year after the Fukushima disaster, simply because the Japanese government cannot ever hope to “clean up” areas contaminated with radioactivity back down to the 1 mSv level. Thus, an annual dose rate that is completely unacceptable, especially for children, becomes the new “normal.” Our handbook chapter on Radiation and Harm to Human Health endeavors to keep things concise and simple. We hope you will use it to help educate residents, politicians and the press about the true risks of accepting uranium mining operations, nuclear power plants or radioactive waste management schemes into your communities. We understand that a handbook should be something you can carry in your hand! To that end, we are raising funds to print copies of this booklet. If you would like to contribute, so that we can get this handbook out to the communities that most need it, please donate here. Choose “Handbook” from the pulldown menu to designate your gift. And thank you! Cindy Folkers is the radiation and health specialist at Beyond Nuclear and the primary author of the Radiation and Harm to Human Health handbook. Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear. If you’d like to be the first to read stories like these, sign up for our Monday email digest. We will send you a very brief synopsis of the new stories on our site, with links to read them and learn more. Sign up today! |
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Excuse me but there seems some misunderstanding about annual permissible level from 1 to 20 mSv in Japan and please allow me to add some back ground information with a little wider perspective.
1) US EPA visited Japan on May 19, 2012 to promote Hormesis to prevent potential claim of health hazards from Fukushima DNPP radioactive exposure. I have presentation slides they used for Japanese authority although I don’t know the participants.
You can read it at this web site if you paste and google it .
「EPA Documents Raise Doubts Over Intent of New Nuclear-Response Guide」(Sept. 11, 2013 By Douglas P. Guarino Global Security Newswire)
2)I know how a Japanese professor made statistically wrong interpretation of 「Studies of the Mortality of Atomic Bomb Survivors, Report 14, 1950–2003: An Overview of Cancer and Noncancer Diseases」published early 2012, which concluded non threshold linear line. I keep the video in Japanese which was aired on August 2012. It is taken as followup propaganda time wise.
3) IAEA Technical Volume 1/5 on Fukushima was published on-line August 2015. This report is full of technical contradiction but you will know how they manipulated to make radioactive contamination look smaller. They calculated arbitrary melt down rate of only reactor core inventory of Unit 1 to Unit 3 excluding radiation release from any of spent fuel pools of Unit 1 to Unit 4 saying that there was no void in the pool and no warming of fuel rods.
However, the water of SFP of Unit 4, even if there was water, was boiling around mid night of March 14, 2011 because the last measurement was 84 degree centigrade at 4:08 AM of the same day, 57 degree increase form 27 degree before the black out by the earthquake on March 11. As there was neither cooling means nor water injection until 8:00 of March 20, it was obvious that most water had gone to expose fuel rods to the air causing serious fuel damage.
4) IAEA report says by the same manipulation that plutonium release was lower than Chernobyl by five orders of magnitude while massive fallout of 239Pu, major component of weapon grade plutonium, was monitored both in Japan and California about 10 times the world fallout. Scientific research papers are available.
5) 234U, which did not exist in the reactor core inventory of Unit 1 to 3, was released from Fukushima. Monitoring data are available. As this particular uranium constitutes only 0.001% of natural uranium isotopes, the high concentration of its release indicates that there were fuel rods which used Fresh Depleted Uranium made from the enrichment of reprocessed uranium because higher concentration can’t be achieve by other processing.
6) SFP of Unit 4 stored 204 new assemblies and 1,331 spent fuels which were removed from the reactor core of Unit 4 four months before the earthquake. it had the largest inventory in Fukushima DNPP.
The only plausible explanation for the massive airborne 239Pu and 234U is that 204 new assembly was the source because 1331 spent fuels do not contain 234U. The logical speculation is that Unit 4 was being used for the experimental manufacturing of new type of MOX fuels using weapon grade plutonium mixing with Fresh Depleted Uranium, which has nothing to do with Fukushima DNPP operation.
7) You can read Hatric Penry’s Plume Gate for FOIA documents which show how badly Obama administration tried to hide the water loss of SFP of Unit 4.
8) The nuclear industry wanted to make Fukushima disaster trivial compared to Chernobyl for their survival need working with the US and Japanese government and other stake holders. Also the experimental manufacturing of MOX fuels in question, if it true, may be serious violation of non-proliferation.
Thank you for reading.
If anybody wants to write a story, I am willing to provide with you all the data and quotations to be needed. I need neither credit nor copy right because if you check everything, you would come to the same conclusion. It is the time to make this Fukushima cover up of corruption and collusion public.
Thank you, Hideo Watanabe, for this very interesting information. I have forwarded it to arclight2011 and to dunrenard, who write for this site. I myself would love to research and write about this – BUT – I am very short of time, and am focused on the nuclear manipulations that are going on in my own country – Australia. That is all that I have time for. An article from you would be welcome.