Fukushima Report: 10,000 Excess Cancers Expected in Japan as a Result of 2011 Reactor Meltdowns, Ongoing Radiation Exposure
Report Gauges Cancer Prospects for Children, Rescue/Recovery Worker, and General Population; Japanese Government Criticized for “Disturbing” Failure to Examine Wider Radiation-Related Diseases
WASHINGTON, D.C. & BERLIN – March 9, 2016 – Residents of the Fukushima area and the rest of Japan will experience more than 10,000 excess cancers as a result of radiation exposure from the triple-reactor meltdown that took place on March 11, 2011, according to a new report from Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).
Titled “5 Years Living With Fukushima” and available online at www.psr.org/FukushimaReport2016, the PSR/IPPNW report laments that the full impact of Fukushima may never be known, due to Japan’s failure to immediately and fully track radiation exposures, as well as a “disturbing” lack of testing of the general population for radiation-related diseases and other impacts (miscarriages, fetal malformations, leukemia, lymphomas, solid tumors or non-cancerous diseases). The massive initial radioactive emissions were not recorded at the time of the triple-reactor meltdown and some radioactive isotopes (including strontium-90) have not been measured at all.
The PSR/IPPNW report uses the best available science and data to gauge the excess cancer rates among children, rescue and clean-up workers, and the general population of Japan. In addition to the 200,000 Fukushima residents relocated nearby into makeshift camps, the exposed include millions of others in Japan as a result of fallout-contaminated food, soil and water. Fukushima is often incorrectly seen as a “past” event; the reality is that radioactive emissions from the wrecked reactors continue to this day both into the atmosphere and in the form of 300 tons of leakage each day into the Pacific Ocean.
Key findings of the PSR/IPPNW report include the following:
- Children. “116 children in Fukushima Prefecture have already been diagnosed with aggressive and fast-growing, or already metastasizing, thyroid cancer – in a population this size about one to five case per year would normally be expected. For 16 of these children a screening effect can be excluded as their cancers developed within the last two years.”
- Workers. “More than 25,000 cleanup and rescue workers received the highest radiation dose and risked their health, while preventing a deterioration of the situation at the power plant site. If data supplied by the operator TEPCO is to be believed, around 100 workers are expected to contract cancer due to excess radiation, and 50 percent of these will be fatal. The real dose levels, however, are most likely several times higher, as the operator has had no qualms in manipulating the data to avoid claims for damages – from hiring unregistered temporary employees to tampering with radiation dosimeters and even crude forgery.”
- The rest of Japan. “The population in the rest of Japan is exposed to increased radiation doses from minor amounts of radioactive fallout, as well as contaminated food and water. Calculations of increased cancer cases overall in Japan range from 9,600 to 66,000 depending on the dose estimates.”
Catherine Thomasson, MD, report co-editor, and executive director, Physicians for Social Responsibility, said: “The health legacy of Fukushima will haunt Japan for years to come and it cannot be wished out of existence by cheerleaders for nuclear power. Unfortunately, the pro-nuclear Japanese government and the country’s influential nuclear lobby are doing everything in their power to play down and conceal the effects of the disaster. The high numbers of thyroid cancers already verified with 50 additional waiting for surgery in the children of Fukushima prefecture is astounding. The aim seems to be to ensure the Fukushima file is closed as soon as possible and the Japanese public returns to a positive view of nuclear power. This rush to re-embrace nuclear power is dangerous to the extent that it sweeps major and very real medical concerns under the rug.”
Dr. Alex Rosen, pediatrician and vice-chair, International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War, said: “One is of course reminded of the tobacco lobby disputing the notion that the horrific effects of its products have no adverse health impacts. This self-serving falsehood echoed for decades was made possible simply because the long-term health effects of smoking were not immediately observable. The 10,000 to 66,000 people who will develop cancer solely as a result of the “manmade disaster” are neither ‘negligible’ nor ‘insufficient,’ as Japanese authorities, the nation’s nuclear lobby, and various industry-dominated international bodies, would have you believe.”
Tim Mousseau, PhD, professor of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina, said: “It is unfortunate that, in some regards, we have better and more complete data about the impacts of Fukushima radiation on trees, plants and animals than we do on humans. We are seeing higher mortality rates, reduction in successful reproduction and significant deformities. A great deal of this research has been done to date and it has troubling implications. The research findings should be heeded to direct human studies, particularly regarding the question of genetic and transgenerational effects of radiation.”
Robert Alvarez, senior scholar specializing in nuclear disarmament, environmental, and energy policies, Institute for Public Studies, and former senior policy advisor, US Department of Energy, said: “Radioactive fallout from the reactors has created de faco ‘sacrifice zones’ where human habitation will no longer be possible well into the future. In November 2011, the Japanese Science Ministry reported that long-lived radioactive cesium had contaminated 11,580 square miles (30,000 sq km) of the land surface of Japan. Some 4,500 square miles – an area almost the size of Connecticut – was found to have radiation levels that exceeded Japan’s allowable exposure rate of 1 mSV(millisievert) per year. Fourteen of the nation’s 54 reactors are permanently shut down as they are on fault lines and only four have been restarted.”
The PSR/IPPNW report also cautions that Fukushima was far from a one-time radiation incident: “The wrecked reactors have been leaking radioactive discharge since March 2011, despite assurances by the nuclear industry and institutions of the nuclear lobby such as the International Atomic Energy Organization that a singular incident occurred in spring 2011, which is now under control. This statement ignores the continuous emission of long-lived radionuclides such as cesium-137 or strontium-90 into the atmosphere, the groundwater and the ocean. It also ignores frequent recontamination of affected areas due to storms, flooding, forest fires, pollination, precipitation and even clean-up operations, which cause radioactive isotopes to be whirled into the air and spread by the wind. Thus, several incidents of new contamination with cesium-137 and strontium-90 have been discovered during the past years, even at considerable distance beyond the evacuation zone.”
The report also notes: “Finally, there are frequent leaks at the power plant itself – particularly from the cracked underground vaults of the reactor buildings and from containers holding radioactive contaminated water, which were hastily welded together and already exhibit numerous defects. According to TEPCO, 300 tons of radioactive wastewater still flow unchecked into the ocean every day – more than 500,000 tons since the beginning of the nuclear disaster. The amount and composition of radioactive isotopes fluctuate widely so that it is not possible to ascertain the actual effect this radioactive discharge will have on marine life. What is clear, however, is that increasing amounts of strontium-90 are being flushed into the sea. Strontium-90 is a radioactive isotope that is incorporated into living organisms in a similar way to calcium – in bones and teeth. As it travels up the marine food chain, it undergoes significant bioaccumulation and, because of its long biological and physical half-lives, will continue to contaminate the environment for the next hundreds of years.”
ABOUT THE GROUPS
Physicians for Social Responsibility has been working for more than 50 years to create a healthy, just and peaceful world for both the present and future generations. PSR advocates on key issues of concern by addressing the dangers that threaten communities. www.psr.org.
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War is a non-partisan federation of national medical groups in 64 countries, representing tens of thousands of doctors, medical students, other health workers, and concerned citizens who share the common goal of creating a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation. www.ippnw.org
http://www.psr.org/news-events/press-releases/fukushima-report-10000-excess-cancers-japan.html
Radiation fears keep Japan’s nuclear refugees from returning
TOKYO (AP) — They feel like refugees, although they live in one of the world’s richest and most peaceful nations.
Five years ago, these people fled their homes, grabbing what they could, as a nearby nuclear plant melted down after being hit by a tsunami, spewing radiation. All told, the disaster in Fukushima displaced 150,000 by the government’s count.
About 100,000 are still scattered around the nation, some in barrack-like temporary housing units and others in government-allocated apartment buildings hundreds of kilometers (miles) away.
Although authorities have started to open up areas near the damaged reactors that were previously off limits, only a fraction of residents have returned. For example, in the town of Naraha, where evacuation orders were lifted in September, 459 people, or 6 percent of the pre-disaster population, have gone back.
Most say they don’t want to return for fear of lingering radiation. Some don’t want the upheaval of moving again after trying to start their lives over elsewhere.
With government housing aid set to end next year, many feel pressured to move back.
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Tokiko Onoda, 80, lives with her husband in a cramped, cluttered apartment on the 21st floor of a high-rise in the edge of Tokyo where about 1,000 people displaced by the disaster live in rent-free housing.
Several Fukushima towns that were deserted now are urging residents to return, saying it is safe to live in certain areas. An ambitious effort to decontaminate vast swaths of land by removing topsoil and razing shrubbery has turned farmland and coastlines into stretches of dirt with rows upon rows of black garbage bags filled with grass, soil and debris.
When housing aid ends in April 2017, people in apartments under the government program will have to start paying rent or move out. Those whose homes in Fukushima that are in areas still off-limits for living will continue to receive the aid.
Onoda fears hers will be cut off because her home is in Namie, where evacuation orders are gradually being lifted in parts of the town.
She doesn’t believe it’s safe to go back. She feels duped because she had believed that nuclear power was safe.
Onoda angrily talks about how authorities are treating people like her. Why didn’t the government give her land elsewhere to build a new home?
When she lived in Fukushima, she had a big house with a garden where she grew vegetables and peonies. She picked mushrooms and ferns in the hills.
“We worked so hard to build that house,” she said, often stopping to wipe away tears. “We had no worries in the world except to plan vacation trips to the hot springs.”
That home is now in shambles. Although it survived the 9.0 magnitude quake on March 11, 2011, burglars have ransacked it and rats have chewed the walls. The last time she visited, the dosimeter ticked at 4 microsieverts an hour, more than 100 times the average monitored in-air radiation in Tokyo. That’s not immediately life-threatening but it makes Onoda feel uncomfortable because of worries that cancer or other sicknesses may surface years later.
Before the disaster, the government had set the safe annual radiation dosage level at 1 millisievert. Afterward, it has adopted the 20 millisievert recommendation of the International Commission on Radiation Protection set for emergencies, and 1 millisievert became a long-term goal.
Onoda says she has done her best to cope. She has made friends. She keeps busy with tea parties, art classes and a sewing circle.
And now they want her to go back, after all she has gone through?
“Only someone who has gone through this evacuation can understand,” she said.
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Ryuichi Kino, a journalist who wrote, edited and compiled the 2015 book, “The White Paper on Nuclear Evacuees,” believes people like Onoda have been treated like “kimin,” which means “people who have been discarded” because they have been forgotten or abandoned by society.
“We don’t even know their real numbers,” he said, noting the government lacks a clear definition for “evacuees,” and bases its figures on tallies of those receiving aid. A recent count in Fukushima and a neighboring prefecture found the total number may be as high as 200,000, Kino said.
“Evacuation is a term that assumes the situation is temporary, and there is a place to go back,” said Kino.
The government is spending about 40 billion yen ($400 million) a year on housing aid for those displaced by the disaster. It’s also financially backing Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, to make monthly compensation payments, now at a cumulative 5.9 trillion yen ($59 billion) and rising.
Tests with volunteers who wore dosimeters for two weeks in the town of Naraha found average radiation exposure to be at a rate of 1.12 millsieverts a year.
Government official Yuji Ishizaki, who is overseeing the lifting of evacuation orders, says he is merely following policy.
“There is no clear boundary for what is safe or not safe for radiation,” he said. “Even 1 millisievert might not be absolutely safe.”
Fukushima Medical University, the main academic body studying the health effects of the nuclear disaster, says no sickness linked to radiation has been detected so far, although sickness from lack of exercise, poor diet and mental stress has been observed.
The more than 100 cases of thyroid cancer found among the 370,000 people 18 years old and younger at the time of the disaster the university calls “a screening effect,” or a result of more rigorous testing.
Some scientists say that is unusually high, given that thyroid cancer among children is rare at two or three in a million. Thyroid cancers among the young surged in the Ukraine and Belarus after the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
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Seiichi Nakate is relatively content in his new life with his wife and two children, 13 and 11, in the northern city of Sapporo, 600 kilometers (370 miles) from Fukushima. There, some 1,500 people from Fukushima have formed a support network, often getting together for drinks and helping each other find jobs.
Nakate recently bought a house and started a company that refers professional helpers to disabled people, and has hired former Fukushima residents. He vows to never return to Fukushima because of the radiation danger.
He believes that from the beginning, authorities underplayed those risks. He doesn’t trust them.
After the disaster, he immediately sent his wife and children to a relatives’ home in southern Japan. The family started living together in Sapporo a year later.
The end of government housing support makes people feel pressure to return, he says.
“The government abandoned the people of Fukushima, even the children. Now the policy is to push us to go back,” he said. “It’s a policy that forces radiation upon people.”
Megumi Okada, a mother of four, is fighting hard to keep her housing aid in Tokyo, getting people to sign petitions and meeting with government officials.
She scoffs at how officials keep saying that people are living “as normal” in much of Fukushima. She doesn’t want her children eating the food or breathing the air. They get periodic blood tests to make sure they are healthy.
Her husband has found a job as a construction worker in Tokyo. Their apartment is just two rooms and a kitchen, but the rent is covered. Okada wants to work, but publicly funded child-care is scarce in Japan, and private ones are costly.
“Nothing has progressed in five years,” she said. “We have the right to stay evacuated.”
Okada says she wants to apply for U.N. refugee status and move to Europe with her family, if she could.
“I know Japanese can’t become refugees now. But I wish we could,” she said. “It is about our staying alive.”
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Government evacuation map for Fukushima September 2011: http://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/roadmap/pdf/evacuation_map_111125.pdf
Government evacuation map for Fukushima September 2015:
http://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/roadmap/pdf/150905MapOfAreas.pdf
Nuclear Scars: The Lasting Legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima
There is no simple or easy way to clean up an aftermath of a nuclear accident. Indeed, this report shows that there is no such thing in reality as a complete decontamination of radioactively contaminated areas. The disasters that began at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in 1986 and at Fukushima NPP in 2011 have demonstrated not only the terrible initial consequences of major nuclear accidents; they also left us with long-term consequences for human health and the environment. These scars are still with us today and will be with us long after tomorrow.
The nuclear industry likes to frame these accidents in terms of downplayed numbers of deaths, but the reality is far more complex and insidious. The impacts go far beyond the tens of thousands of fatalities and hundreds of thousands suffering health consequences. Following a nuclear disaster, people are put under overwhelming pressures. They must evacuate their communities to avoid radiation risks. They are displaced from their friends, families and communities for years.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the nuclear industry and its government supporters continue to hide the threats of nuclear power from the public. The real risk of nuclear power, however, is inescapable for hundreds of thousands of Chernobyl and Fukushima survivors. Despite the immense suffering that accompanies losing your home or living in a contaminated environment, the scale and seriousness of these effects continue to be played down or misrepresented.
This report seeks to clarify how governments, reactor operators and nuclear regulators were unprepared to deal with not only emergency evacuations immediately after the accidents, but with the long-term management of hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, as well as with the contaminated communities and agricultural lands.
Nuclear scars: The Lasting Legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima
FIVE YEARS AFTER: Radioactive forests prevent logging revival in Fukushima
A logger cuts down a tree in a mountainous area of the Miyakoji district in Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture, in late February
TAMURA, Fukushima Prefecture–The once-thriving industry of log production for shiitake mushroom farming remains virtually nonexistent in Fukushima Prefecture after the 2011 nuclear disaster contaminated extensive mountain areas.
A year before the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, the prefecture produced logs for cultivating shiitake totaling 47,800 cubic meters, the third largest volume among Japanese prefectures.
But radioactive fallout from the nuclear accident meant that shiitake log production in the prefecture dwindled to about 1 percent of the pre-disaster level in 2014, which is having a serious impact on local industry.
In the Miyakoji district of Tamura, located about 20 kilometers inland from the crippled nuclear power plant, the lumber industry shipped around 200,000 logs annually before the 2011 disaster.
“More than 80 percent of this area’s land is covered by forests, and we cannot think of any other business opportunities that don’t involve forestry,” said Shoichi Yoshida, a 60-year-old executive of the Fukushima Central Forestry Association.
While the evacuation order covering an eastern strip of the district was lifted in 2014, radioactive levels of trees in the district remain above target levels, and the resumption of shipments is still nowhere in sight.
However, local forestry workers still routinely cut down oak and other trees, which are more than 20 years old, to maintain the mountain area’s capability of producing quality logs.
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/recovery/AJ201603090060
Five Years of Forgetting: The Fukushima Disaster and Nuclear Amnesia
Shunichi Yamashita, a proclaimed expert on the effects of radioactivity, was invited by the #Fukushima prefecture in the aftermath of the meltdowns to reassure rather than investigate.
“The effects of radiation,”he claimed, “do not come to people who are happy and laughing, they come to people who are weak-minded.”
“People’s understanding of disasters will continue to be constructed by media. How media members frame the presence of risk and the nature of disasters matters.” – Celine Marie Pascale, American University, Mar 10, 2015
Fearing radiation; terrified by the nuclear option. Perfectly sensible instincts that never seem to convince establishments and those who have long ceased to loathe nuclear power and its various dangerous by-products. Each nuclear disaster, such as the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plants five years ago, come with its treasure of apologetics and justifications. The reason is always the same: nuclear energy is safe and we cannot really do without it.
To that end, the emergence of “radiophobia” is a designation that dismisses as much as it supposedly diagnoses. It pokes fun at those ninnies who think that they are about to perish because of the effects of nuclear catastrophe and radiation contamination. Risk, according to this philosophy of concerted denial, is always exaggerated.
Shunichi Yamashita, a proclaimed expert on the effects of radioactivity, was invited by the Fukushima prefecture in the aftermath of the meltdown to reassure rather than investigate.
“The effects of radiation,” he claimed, “do not come to people who are happy and laughing, they come to people who are weak-minded.”
This Dr. Strangelove dismissiveness is as much an advertisement for the virtues of doom as it is about the brutal consequences, real and imaginary, of radiation poisoning. Radiation is the invisible killer that stalks the earth, but for many, it is hardly worth a thought. For one, it suggests a simple calculation in environments that are not, supposedly, that dangerous. “With low radiation doses,” argued this doctor of nuclear apologetics, “the people have to decide for themselves whether to stay or to leave.”
Despite this bubbling confidence on the part of his colleagues, Japanese American physicist Michio Kaku had little time for such views as Yamashita’s. In an interview soon after the meltdown, Kaku claimed that, “The slightest disturbance could set off a full-scale meltdown at three nuclear power stations, far beyond what we saw at Chernobyl.”
Smile with upbeat confidence, and the problem goes away. If people are depressed before radiation, suggests Yamashita, they will succumb as the negative dramatists they are. “Stress is not good at all for people who are subjected to radiation.” Then again, stress could hardly be deemed good for anybody in particular, irrespective of radiation.
Security checkpoint outside Fukushima following the disaster.
Such fabulously misguided nonsense is central to the amnesiac context of Fukushima. Makiko Segawa put it rather poignantly in his contribution in the Asia-Pacific Journal: initial enthusiastic snaps and coverage by the press corps, an insatiable lust for disaster imagery, quietened in due course. Writing a year after the disaster, Segawa noted how “the journalists have packed up and gone and by accident of design Japan’s government seems to be mobilizing its agenda, aware that it is under less scrutiny.”
Robert Jacobs similar notes that Fukushima conforms to that litany of disasters that has afflicted the human experience, a matter of rejection and experience rather than learning and adapting. “Fukushima is taking its place alongside the many forgotten nuclear disasters of the last 70 years.”
Sociologist Celine Marie Pascale of the American University, on scouring some 2,100 news stories from four media outlets (The New York Times, Washington Post, The Huffington Post and Politico) came to the conclusion that a strategy of minimisation was underway. The implications of such an event had to be downplayed, de-emphasising the risk of massive contamination and environmental disaster. A mere 6 percent of the articles examined the health implications of the event. “We see articles in prestigious news outlets claiming that radioactivity from cosmic rays and rocks is more dangerous than the radiation emanating from the collapsing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.”
A necessary process of mendacity has to come into play. The Tokyo Electric Power Plant (TEPCO), Japan’s largest power company and owner of the affected power plants, initially denied the existence of meltdowns when it knew three had taken place. It was a process of deception that continued for three months after the event, a situation made even more absurd for the fact that hundreds of thousands were evacuated in the vicinity. It is a disaster episode that keeps on giving.
Even in March 2015, their reassurances seemed less than comforting. Chief Decommissioning Officer Naohiro Masuda would claim rather blandly that, “Even if some contaminated water remains, I feel that we can reduce a substantial amount of risk.”
The nuclear genie is a creature that encourages the lie in planning establishments. There are lies about safety; there are lies about legacies. As Jacobs suggests, the Disneyfication of disaster sites affected by the nuclear or atomic scourge is all too real. The Manhattan Project that led to the development of the atomic weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki became “Disney theme parks of American exceptionalism.” The quest for the nuclear option in both the military and energy contexts saw massive environmental degradation.
Even now, the ghostly sense of Fukushima should be a reminder of errors and negligence rather than dismissal and indifference. Jacobs suggests a simple but necessary formula to combat nuclear amnesia: see the impacts of radiation exposure “before they become vaguely visible as cancers nestled in health population statistics.”
The Broken Maps of Fukushima
by Robert Jacobs, March 9, 2016
When we look at maps of Fukushima what we see is disinformation. The maps of the radioactive contamination of Fukushima contain contradictions that embody our inability to understand the true nature of the dangers to people living there. This is rooted in the difficulty in understanding radiation. If we can separate the maps, we may be able to grasp the dangers more readily, and thus understand the situation in a more functional way.
Similarly, one can hold a Geiger counter up in the air in a village in Fukushima prefecture and declare that there is no radiation present. The assumption, therefore, is that there is no danger. The ways in which this can be both true, but only partial truth, are part of what we need to fully grasp to understand the situation in Fukushima.
I will begin with the Geiger counter.
Radiation is a very difficult thing to understand. For starters, we tend to assume that radiation is a “thing.” Something is radioactive or it is not. We are affected by the radiation or we are not. This is not quite accurate. Radiation is a quality: it is a process—something radiates. How it radiates can differ, and it is in this difference that half-truths can be told as whole truths. While there are many aspects to this, for the present article I will concentrate on the differences between gamma, beta and alpha radiation. Most of the discourse that you hear about radiation related to Fukushima is describing gamma radiation. The danger to most of the people continuing to live in contaminated areas is in the form of alpha or beta radiation, so when we hear people talk about radiation in Fukushima, most of the time they are not talking about what is of most concern and danger.
Here is a quick primer. Gamma radiation comes off of radioactive materials in waves. These waves can penetrate anything, and they are partially filtered by heavy materials, such as lead. You can think of gamma radiation as similar to x-rays. This is why you have a lead apron placed on you when you have dental x-rays, and why the technician goes behind a lead-lined wall. When gamma radiation passes through your body it does not stay in your body. Like x-rays, when the source is turned off, they stop and there is no more danger. To limit the damage to the body from gamma radiation we limit the total cumulative dose received, hence the person working with it protects themselves behind the lead wall; the patient receives a small dose, but if the technicians received that same small dose repeatedly every day, they would be at much higher risk.
Alpha and beta radiation comes from specific irradiated particles, such as individual atoms of plutonium, or cesium-137. These particles cannot penetrate through materials: they cannot penetrate through skin, or even paper. They are primarily dangerous when we internalize them inside of our bodies and they permanently lodge there. They generally give off a small amount of radiation because they are single atoms. If there are a lot of them present, they give off more radiation. If one is internalized into the body, it will give this small amount of radiation to the same surrounding cells for 24 hours a day. While the amount is small, 24/7 exposure to this radiation may cause mutations to these cells, and then cancer.
Gamma radiation fills an area equally, lessening quickly as you get further from the source. This is what most Geiger counters are set to measure—the levels of gamma radiation present. When you have alpha and beta-emitting particles scattered in an area, the amount of detectable radiation will likely vary. In Fukushima City last year (about 50 miles away from the nuclear plants), I held a Geiger counter at chest level on a street and found a low level of radiation. However, moments later when I placed that same Geiger counter on the ground, I found much higher levels of radiation. That is because particles fall and collect on the ground. When I then moved my Geiger counter to the gutter at the side of the street, I found dramatically more radiation. This is because rain washes the particles to the gutter. So the distribution of the particles is irregular, depending on how long ago they fell-out of the sky (fallout) and how much wind and rain there has been.
This is how you can hold a Geiger counter in the air (or place a public Geiger counter five or twenty feet in the air) and show very low levels of radiation, and yet there can still be significant dangers present. If the danger is from alpha and beta-emitting particles, the readings taken in mid-air can be low. The way that such particles are dangerous to us is if we internalize them into our bodies, typically by inhaling them, swallowing them, of having them enter through cuts in our skin. Once inside the body, they may pass through, but they may also permanently lodge there. The body is tricked into thinking that these particles are useful chemicals. Strontium-90 “mimics” calcium, and the body can put it into the bones. Since the body puts iodine into the thyroid gland, if someone has internalized iodine-131 (a radioactive form of iodine) the body may put that in the thyroid gland. Thyroid cancer is one of the first cancers to develop from internalized particles, and that is why our conversation about the health impacts in Fukushima are currently focused on thyroid cancer. Other cancers will follow as we move through their latency periods.
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Table 1
Some isotopes of concern after a nuclear accident:
Plutonium 239, half-life: 24,000 years, decay mode: alpha, decay energy: 5.24 MeV
Strontium 90, half-life: 29 years, decay mode: beta, decay energy: 0.546 MeV
Cesium 134, half-life: 2 years, decay mode: beta, gamma, decay energy: 0.698 MeV
Cesium 137, half-life: 34 years, decay mode: beta, gamma, decay energy: 1.76 MeV
Iodine 131, half-life: 8 days, decay mode: beta, gamma, decay energy: 971 keV
Tritium, half-life: 12 years, decay mode: beta, decay energy: 18.6 keV
Decay energy is measured in electron volts (eV), a measure of the particle’s momentum. 1 MeV is 1,000,000 eV, and 1 keV is 1,000 eV. According to the table, Plutonium 239 is the most dangerous internal emitter, but the hazards to public health depend on the relative quantities released and the relative quantities that people actually absorb. Some segments of the population are more vulnerable than others. Is it a matter of a single exposure or a continual exposure and accumulation? What parts of the body do different particles tend to go to, and how long on average do they tend to stay in the body (the biological half-life)? None of this complexity can be conveyed with a map and a simple declaration of a “safe” limit of external gamma radiation exposure. （Table added by Dianuke editor)
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These alpha and beta-emitters are particularly dangerous for children. Children are lower to the ground to start with, tend to put things into their mouths, and tend to play outdoors and suffer cuts and bruises, and since their bodies are growing rapidly, damage to cells can replicate faster. This is why parents agonize over whether to stay or evacuate an area that has had radiological fallout.
This is also why it is hard to be certain about the contamination to the food supply. It is virtually impossible to test all food, and so samples are tested: samples of rice from rice fields, samples of fish from catches, samples of fruit from orchards. Because the danger to these crops is not from gamma radiation, which would be equally distributed, but from their internalizing alpha and beta-emitting particles, portions of a crop, or haul of fish, can test negative while other portions contain significant amounts of radiation deposited on them or taken up through soil and water into the plant or fish itself.
Our ability to technologically determine the distribution of alpha and beta-emitting particles is limited because of the irregular deposit of the material from fallout clouds, and the subsequent scattering of the particles from wind and water. This is also why it is possible to “decontaminate” an area only to have it re-contaminated as the wind and rain redistribute the particles that fell on nearby forests. Technically it is not possible to “decontaminate” a natural area. The radioactive particles will remain dangerous for their natural life. For plutonium that is over 100,000 years. During that time, it cannot be decontaminated, it can only be moved. We can attempt to contain these particles, however most of them will long outlive the plastic bags into which we placed them, at which time they will re-enter the soil and the ecosystem and begin to cycle through it again.
Understanding the difference between the dangers from gamma, beta and alpha radiation is the key to understanding how the maps of Fukushima are broken. Below is a typical map that we see of Fukushima, produced by the Japanese government:
Map of Fukushima produced by MEXT of the Government of Japan and reproduced on the website of the IAEA.
There are two things that I want to point out. First, the concentric circles. These have the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant at their center. The second thing is the color coded splotches and streak. These show where the plumes of the three nuclear plant explosions deposited their fallout, in this case specifically measurements of cesium-134 and cesium-137. Notice how the representation of the areas of fallout are constrained by the outermost concentric circle.
These two things should be read separately.
Concentric circles describe relative distances from a point. In this case, distances from the nuclear plant. People were evacuated based on their distance from the plant. The mandatory evacuation zone was at 20 km and the suggested, or prepared evacuation zone was from 20-30 km (the key difference between “mandatory” and “suggested” evacuation is liability). The reason that people had to evacuate from these areas was because of the high levels of gamma radiation coming from the melted cores of the nuclear plants, and the high levels of gamma radiation where the plumes deposited the largest amounts of fallout close-by. The levels of gamma radiation near the reactors is lethally high. At this point, no human being can enter into the buildings where the nuclear cores melted. The gamma radiation levels are so high that they would be killed in minutes. We have yet to build robots capable of operating in these highly radioactive locations for longer than an hour or so. Moving away from the point at the center of these circles will decrease one’s exposure to radiation. The amount of gamma radiation coming from the plant is measurable and relatively constant across the areas at similar distances. Hence the use of circles, concentric circles marking decreasing levels of gamma radiation.
Here is a map of the evacuations:
Concentric Circles Showing Areas of Evacuation, No-Fly Zone, and U.S. Safety Zone Around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plants, and the Populations of Nearby Towns.
When we look, instead, at a map of the radiological contamination of the downwind area, we are reading entirely different information. The splotches of color marking the levels of radiation from the plumes is irregular, unlike the neat and cleanly measured concentric circles. The colors mark the different grades of radiation from the fallout. They are created based on the gamma radiation from the fallout, however, the primary danger to people living in these areas is not based on the levels of the gamma radiation, but from internalizing individual alpha and beta-emitting particles. Since there is no single source, like the melted cores, but rather billions of individual particles, once the plume has fallen out and the particles have reached the ground, they begin to move through the ecosystem via the dynamic motion of wind and water, and then they are internalized in the bodies of animals. Rain will collect them along gutters and gullies and transport them. Wind will blow them along hillsides and valleys. Once these particles begin to move through the ecosystem, there is no center, no specific source that people must move away from. The dangers are unevenly distributed, and they are constantly changing. Once you are over 30 km away from the nuclear plants, surrounded by their concentric circles, moving further away from the direction of the plants may or may not provide more safety. The contamination that comes from alpha and beta-emitting particles is unpredictable, irregular, and changes over time. Each specific particle has a specific period of radioactivity and during that period, it will move through the ecosystem, being taken up by plants, moved by wind, entering soil, eaten by animals and returning to the soil when the animals die. They may move in the same direction that you are moving to get away from the center of the concentric circles, if the wind is blowing that way.
Here is a map showing the radiological contamination of the region, which differs from the specific places where the plumes first deposited:
Map of Radiation Levels Downwind from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plants in 2014, Produced by the Nuclear Regulation Authority of the Government of Japan.
The maps of Fukushima are broken. These broken maps are reflections of the broken chain of information that has been provided to those living there and grappling with the dangers on a daily basis. Because these maps, and this information, are broken, disinformation can thrive and blossom. A March 7th editorial in the Yomiuri Shimbun in Japan makes use of these broken maps and the data that they convey to misinform people in Japan about the safety of former residents moving back into contaminated areas. With no sense of irony, it’s headline proclaims, “Correct Understanding of Radiation Needed to Speed Reconstruction.” Explaining that exposure to radiation is natural, the editorial claims that, “The government needs to continue carefully explaining to residents that there will be no health problems as long as the radiation exposure is at 20 millisieverts or lower.” For this reason, people need “correct understanding” to cooperate and return to areas that can only be decontaminated to 20 millisieverts. While there is significant debate about what level of gamma radiation is safe, and increasingly convincing data that no level is safe (see here), this argument ignores the fact that much of that 20 millisievert exposure is coming from alpha and beta-emitting particles, which pose an additional danger from that of the external exposure. For the people being advised to return, the areas they would return to are plagued by the more urgent risk of internalizing these particles, a danger that increases dramatically in areas where the external exposure is still measurably high. Their lives would be filled with the presence of large amounts of invisible atoms that will very likely cause cancers if inhaled or swallowed. These dangers are not factored into the 20 millisieverts the editorial writers so casually dismiss.
These broken maps, co-mingling the dangers of external and internal radiation in one graphic, present the idea that the dangers from radiation near Fukushima are fixed and knowable. This is not true. Massive amounts of radionuclides have deposited along large areas of Fukushima, and they will now pulse and fluctuate within the dynamics of that ecosystem for as long as each particle remains radioactive. Most of them will be hard to trace and difficult to control. People can be moved away from the plants, where the danger is in a fixed location and is measurable. Where the plumes deposited the particles the opposite is true. The dangers are unknowable and can move around, just like the people. This puts the health of those living there in a very different relationship to the risks.
To fix the maps, we need to fix the knowledge chain. Radiation is difficult to understand, and that difficulty allows disinformation to take root–disinformation like that contained in the editorial of the Yomiuri cited above, and in so many pronouncements from experts who omit information about alpha and beta-emitting particles and the dangers of internalized radiation when they speak down to people who must live with these dangers. For most people having to live with the radiation scattered by TEPCO’s meltdowns, clear information about internalized radiation and how these dangers persist in their communities is essential for them to map their own paths to a future of their choosing. No one should insist that they live with higher levels of radiation by changing their understanding to the “correct understanding.”
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Robert Jacobs is a historian of nuclear technologies and radiation technopolitics at the Hiroshima Peace Institute of Hiroshima City University.
Japan’s Fukushima radioactive water and debris – out of control
It’s time the Japanese government tackles the issues head-on. Either it takes the exceedingly unpopular step of imposing a more secure facility on one or more unwilling communities, or it must acknowledge the obvious, which is that the core of Fukushima’s exclusion zone will become a gigantic de facto nuclear waste dump indefinitely.
Playing Pass the Parcel With Fukushima http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/opinion/playing-pass-the-parcel-with-fukushima.html?_r=0 PETER WYNN KIRBYMARCH 7, 2016 OXFORD, England — In the five years since the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns that devastated Fukushima Prefecture, the Japanese government has undertaken mammoth efforts to decontaminate irradiated communities.
Thousands of workers have removed millions of tons of radioactive debris from backyards and fields, roadsides and school grounds. They have scraped away acres and acres of tainted soil, collected surface vegetal matter, wiped down entire buildings and hosed and scrubbed streets and sidewalks.
The cleanup effort is staggering in scale, and unprecedented. Japan’s leaders hope to restore for human habitation more than 100 cities, towns and villages scattered over hundreds of square miles. The government has allocated more than $15 billion for this work.
The Japanese authorities call these efforts josen (decontamination), but the word is misleading and the activity largely a fallacy. What’s happening is more like transcontamination: Once the radioactive debris is collected and bagged, it is transferred from one part of Fukushima to another, and then another.
The waste is placed in bags, which are periodically collected and brought to provisional storage areas (kari-kari-okiba), before being moved to more secure, though still temporary, storage depots (kari-okiba). Officials at the Ministry of the Environment have said up to 30 million tons of radioactive waste will eventually be moved to yet another, third-level interim storage facility near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant. But no significant construction has begun. In fact, the authorities haven’t even managed to convince all the relevant absentee landowners in the area to sell the necessary plots.
So for now the radioactive waste is either lying around or being moved around. Throughout Fukushima, there are large cylindrical plastic sacks — each roughly the size of a hot tub and weighing about a ton when full — stacked in desultory heaps by the side of roads, near driveways or in abandoned lots. In the town of Tomioka in mid-October, I saw three dozen bags piled along the edges of a small cemetery, overtaken by weeds.
The bags deteriorate after three years, meaning that the waste has to be repackaged regularly. Sacks are sometimes moved from one facility to another, based on their levels of radioactivity, which vary and can shift over time. By last fall, there were more than 9 million one-ton bags of radioactive waste. Standard trucks carry fewer than 10 bags at a time — meaning that radioactive material is regularly rotating around Fukushima in a slow-motion version of pass the nuclear parcel. Continue reading
Fukushima’s million-ton headache – radioactive water everywhere
Fukushima Nuclear Disaster 5 Years On: Water, Water Everywhere (Part I), Forbes,
John Boyd , 7 Mar 16 “……….Now, on the fifth anniversary of what is known here as the Great East Japan Earthquake, how much progress has TEPCO and the government made in dealing with what was fundamentally a man-made disaster?
The answer is they continue to face the same four huge challenges they grappled with in 2011: dealing with contaminated water that has grown into a million-ton headache; locating and somehow retrieving the molten fuel debris; removing spent fuel rods from the damaged reactor storage pools; and disposing of millions of cubic meters of radioactive waste.
Most evident of these challenges is the contaminated water. Cooling water must be continuously circulated through the damaged reactors Units 1, 2 and 3, where nuclear fuel has melted through at least the inner containment vessels. Consequently, the cooling water injected into the reactor becomes contaminated and finds its way down into the turbine basements adjacent to each reactor; there, it mixes with incoming ground water to greatly compound the problem.
Some of the pooled water is partly decontaminated, cooled and recirculated through the reactors again, the rest is treated and pumped out and stored in tanks to prevent it flowing into the Pacific Ocean.
Naohiro Masuda, TEPCO’s Chief Decommissioning Office, told the foreign press in Japan March 2nd that there are over 1,000 such storage tanks located inside and outside the plant, each holding as much as 1,000 metric tons of treated water. And with groundwater streaming in at 150 metric tons a day, a new tank is being added weekly.
The stored water, while filtered and largely decontaminated, still contains tritium—radioactive hydrogen, which can cause cancer if ingested………http://www.forbes.com/sites/jboyd/2016/03/07/fukushima-nuclear-disaster-5-years-on-water-water-everywhere-part-i/#148a72ac1a35
Dentist urges people to keep kids’ baby teeth to study Fukushima radiation exposure
A movement calling on people to retain their children’s baby teeth to help study radiation exposure in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster is gaining momentum in Japan.
The radioactive material strontium-90 is easily absorbed into baby teeth, and last year a group of experts formed the “Preserving Deciduous Teeth Network (PDTN),” urging people to keep their children’s baby teeth.
“Baby teeth are evidence of exposure to radiation. We urge people to keep them for the future,” says Takemasa Fujino, 67, a joint head of the network.
Fujino is president of a medical institution that operates three dental clinics in the Tokyo metropolitan region. One clinic is in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, which was regarded as a “hot spot” with relatively high levels of radiation following the March 2011 outbreak of the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster.
With residents feeling uneasy, in 2011 Fujino began calling for people to preserve their children’s baby teeth, wanting to do something as a dentist to protect children’s lives and health.
So far, Fujino has had about 500 baby teeth donated, and has commissioned a Swiss testing facility to analyze some of them. Next year the network plans to establish its own testing facility in central Japan.
Baby teeth are formed from when the child is in the womb. “The teeth of children that were fetuses five years ago at the time of the accident will be coming at about this point exactly, and the movement to preserve them will become even more important,” Fujino says.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160307/p2a/00m/0na/015000c
5 years after disaster, reactor decommissioning faces troubling shortage of workers
Workers are seen undertaking construction work on the premises of the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant on May 7, 2015
A total of 21 companies involved with the decommissioning of reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant — half of the firms that responded to a survey conducted by the Mainichi Shimbun — revealed that they are facing concerns due to an insufficient number of employees for the work.
The risk of radiation exposure from the decommissioning work means that the companies are having trouble attracting young people, with the ongoing aging of the population pointing toward a possible hollowing-out with respect to the technical abilities of the workforce in this regard. This could mean that the problem of securing workers will become an ongoing problem that would result in a delay of reactor decommissioning — which could in turn hinder local reconstruction efforts.
At the administrative building located at the nuclear plant’s point of entrance and exit, workers are routinely met with a greeting of “Please be safe” as they come and go in order to encourage them to fulfill their tasks without any incidents occurring.
While the plant was known immediately after the nuclear accident as a disaster zone, now — five years later — a sense of calm has been restored. The radiation exposure risks and the aging of employees, however, have meant that problems continue to plague the workplace environment.
The survey was sent to a total of 246 companies connected to the reactor decommissioning work, including prime contractors, as well as additional firms whose names were included in construction work-related approval and licensing documents that were submitted to Fukushima Prefecture and other local government offices. Responses were received from 42 companies, or around 20 percent of the total number contacted.
Asked whether they had a sufficient number of employees, 21 firms responded either “No, we have an insufficient number of employees,” or “Basically speaking, we have an insufficient number of employees” — a figure eclipsing the 20 firms that responded, “We have a sufficient number of employees,” or “Basically speaking, we have a sufficient number of employees.”
Asked to name the reasons for the insufficiency (with multiple responses allowed), the answer with the highest number of responses was “Numerous employees are leaving the company due to retirement, and young people are not coming (to take their place),” at 10 firms. The second- and third-highest answers, respectively, were “it’s difficult to pass down the (required) technical skills,” at seven firms; and “the number of aspiring employees is decreasing due to the high radiation levels,” at six firms.
“Although people respond when we announce job openings, they do not have the necessary qualifications — such as being able to hoist and lower suspended loads,” commented the 52-year-old president of a construction firm in the Fukushima prefectural city of Iwaki that is contracted by the nuclear plant for reactor decommissioning-related work.
The firm in question is mostly contracted for on-site work where radiation levels are high. When the government-set figures of 50 millisieverts per year and 100 millisieverts per every five years are exceeded, on-site work is not permitted — and the company must therefore compensate by hiring extra employees.
Because qualified individuals are not available, however, the firm contracts with another company — resulting in a situation whereby its labor insufficiency is filled by hiring the other firm’s employees as its own. This practice, which is known as fake subcontracting, runs the risk of infringing the Worker Dispatch Law and other regulations.
“We are aware that this is illegal,” the company president notes, “but everyone still does it.”
According to a worker survey conducted by the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), which operates the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, some 20 percent of all workers at the plant had been hired via fake subcontracting. And while TEPCO asks its business affiliates to comply with the law, it does not appear that this is a situation that is set to improve.
“With reactor decommissioning set to be entering its most crucial stage, the national government should be taking the initiative to put measures in place that are aimed at securing workers for this purpose,” points out Kazumitsu Nawata, a professor of econometrics at the University of Tokyo who is well-versed in the situation facing the nuclear plant workers.
In assessing the future prospects for the reactor decommissioning work, which is likely to go on for several decades, a matter exists beyond that of securing new laborers that is an additional cause for concern: the problem of workers’ exposure to radiation.
The estimated average monthly radiation exposure of workers was 32 millisieverts immediately following the nuclear accident, and has presently decreased to 0.44 millisieverts. No longer is there a need to wear full-face masks, which made breathing difficult.
Between the disaster and January 2016, however, the number of workers whose yearly radiation exposure level was greater than 5 millisieverts — a figure that the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare utilizes as a criteria when determining the recognition of workers’ compensation in cases of leukemia — was around 20,000 among the total of 42,000 workers.
When irradiated fuel from the spent nuclear fuel pools begins to be transported, moreover, there is a possibility that the dosage in this regard will increase even further.
A 23-year-old male worker from the city of Iwaki who was responsible for removing radioactively-contaminated vehicles that had been left on the premises of the nuclear plant said that he was surprised when the figures on his dosimeter began increasing immediately.
“I do not know what effects (this work) will have upon my body in 30 years,” he commented. “I do not want to do work involving high doses (of radiation).”
Also troubling are the effects of the withdrawal of seasoned workers from the field. According to TEPCO, veteran employees in their 50s or older comprise 45 percent of all total workers. With reactor decommissioning work — including the collection of melted nuclear fuel — expected to enter its main phase in 2021, it is possible that the continuing loss of experienced workers will lead to a situation characterized by a reduction in both human resources and technology.
“I will never again return to 1F (the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant),” asserted Yuji Takagi, 53, a former nuclear plant worker from the city of Iwaki.
Takagi, a veteran employee since the time prior to the nuclear disaster whose work included helping to measure the number of neutrons directly underneath the nuclear reactors, explained that with the sudden increase in the number of tank and other construction projects taking place following the accident, there was also a rising number of employees who were inexperienced with working at nuclear power plants.
As a result, Takagi felt like there was a mismatch wherein he was unable to utilize his job experience.
“If you do not understand the inner structure of nuclear plants, there will be problems with reactor decommissioning,” he commented, adding, “Know-how is indispensable.”
The system is comprised of a pyramid-like structure, whereby TEPCO and major general contractors — which serve as the original contractors at its peak — contract out work to the other companies that are fanned out beneath them. With work consequently compartmentalized, then, it accordingly becomes increasingly difficult to utilize employees’ expertise.
“The structure of subcontracting results in decreasing profits for lower-level companies, who are additionally burdened with taking up the slack (of companies further up on the pyramid),” commented Professor Nawata. “A mechanism is necessary to improve this treatment.”
Also involved with the reactor decommissioning work are numerous local residents of Fukushima Prefecture who are themselves victims of the disaster.
A 51-year-old worker from Futaba County who is responsible for analyzing contaminated water at TEPCO-owned facilities on the premises of the plant commented, “My work plays only a small part, but analysis of the contaminated water is an indispensable part of the reactor decommissioning process.”
The worker added, “I am happy to be of service to Fukushima Prefecture, as well as to the next generation.”
The feared scarcity of workers, then, has also resulted in a situation of dependence upon Fukushima workers to fill this employment need that exists within the reactor decommissioning sector.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160307/p2a/00m/0na/020000c
32,000 workers at Fukushima No. 1 got high radiation dose, Tepco data show
A Reuters reporter measures a radiation level of 9.76 microsieverts per hour in front of Kumamachi Elementary School inside the exclusion zone in Okuma, near Tokyo Electric Power Co’s tsunami-crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power planton Feb. 13
A total of 32,760 workers at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant had an annual radiation dose exceeding 5 millisieverts as of the end of January, according to an analysis of Tokyo Electric Power Co. data.
A reading of 5 millisieverts is one of the thresholds of whether nuclear plant workers suffering from leukemia can be eligible for compensation benefits for work-related injuries and illnesses.
Of those workers, 174 had a cumulative radiation dose of more than 100 millisieverts, a level considered to raise the risk of dying after developing cancer by 0.5 percent. Most of the exposure appears to have stemmed from work just after the start of the crisis on March 11, 2011.
The highest reading was 678.8 millisieverts.
Overall, a total of 46,490 workers were exposed to radiation, with the average at 12.7 millisieverts.
The number of workers with an annual dose of over 5 millisieverts increased 34 percent from fiscal 2013 to 6,600 in fiscal 2014, when workloads grew to address the increase in radiation-tainted water at the plant. The number was at 4,223 in the first 10 months of fiscal 2015, which ends this month, on track to mark an annual decline.
A labor standards supervision office in Fukushima Prefecture last October accepted a claim for workers compensation by a man who developed leukemia after working at the plant, the first recognition of cancer linked to work after the meltdowns as a work-related illness. Similar compensation claims have been rejected in three cases so far, according to the labor ministry.
The average radiation dose was higher among Tepco workers at the plant than among workers from subcontractors in fiscal 2010 and 2011. Starting in fiscal 2012, the reading was higher among subcontractor workers than among Tepco workers.
The average dose for subcontractor workers was 1.7 times the level of Tepco workers in fiscal 2013, 2.3 times in fiscal 2014 and 2.5 times in fiscal 2015 as of the end of January.
A separate analysis of data from the Nuclear Regulation Authority showed that the average radiation dose of workers at 15 nuclear power plants across the country, excluding the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 plants, fell to 0.22 millisievert in fiscal 2014, when none of the plants was in operation, down 78 percent from 0.99 millisievert in fiscal 2010
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/03/07/national/science-health/32000-fukushima-no-1-workers-got-high-radiation-dose-tepco-data-show/#.Vt2gKfl95D8
Experts divided on causes of high thyroid cancer rates among Fukushima children
A child undergoes an ultrasound screening at Hirata Chuo Clinic in Hirata, Fukushima Prefecture, on Feb. 23, 2016. The local clinic conducts separate checkups from the prefectural government’s thyroid cancer examinations.
A total of 166 children in Fukushima Prefecture had been either diagnosed with thyroid cancer or with suspected cases of cancer by the end of 2015 through screening conducted by the Fukushima Prefectural Government, following the 2011 nuclear plant crisis.
- 【Related】Child thyroid cancer in Fukushima many times national average: report draft
- 【Related】Cases of thyroid cancer up among Fukushima kids in 2nd screening: prefectural panel
- 【Related】Fukushima Pref. to examine incidence of thyroid cancer in children
- 【Related】4 new thyroid cancer cases emerge in latest checks on Fukushima children
The figure is several dozen times higher than the estimated number of thyroid cancer patients based on national statistics, according to a panel of experts with the prefectural government. While the panel and the Environment Ministry say the effects of radiation in these cancer cases are unlikely, opinions are divided among experts about the causes of such a high occurrence rate of cancer in children.
“Compared to the estimated prevalence rates based on the country’s statistics on cancer, which are shown in data including regional cancer registration, the level of thyroid cancer detection is several dozen times higher (in children of Fukushima Prefecture),” said the final draft for the interim report compiled by the prefectural government’s expert panel on Feb. 15.
Most experts of epidemiology agree on the view that the number of thyroid cancer cases is high among over 300,000 targets in health checkups that started six months after the nuclear meltdowns.
A research team led by Shoichiro Tsugane, head of the Research Center for Cancer Prevention and Screening of the National Cancer Center and a member of the Fukushima government’s expert panel, published a research paper on the matter in January this year and another team headed by Okayama University professor Toshihide Tsuda also published their paper in October 2015. While their calculation methods differ, the two teams both concluded that the number of cancer cases found in Fukushima children was “about 30 times” that of national levels.
There has never been an attempt in Japan to check thyroid cancer among hundreds of thousands of children who are not self-aware about symptoms such as lumps. Because of this, some experts pointed out earlier that the screening detected cancer in advance in those who may develop the disease later, and as a result, the number of cancer patients spiked temporarily. While such a rapid increase in the number of patients by early detection has been reported in other types of cancer, the figure remains as high as “several times higher than national levels.” Tsugane and Tsuda both agree that the “30 times higher (than the national occurrence rates)” is unexplainable.
At the moment, the most likely theories for such a high rate of cancer detection are the “overdiagnosis theory” held by Tsugane’s team and the “radiation effect theory” that Tsuda’s team supports.
Overdiagnosis refers to the diagnosis of cancer by detecting hidden cancer cells that are not harmful even if left untreated.
The concept of cancer overdiagnosis has been argued for decades in areas including the lungs, chest and prostate, and its negative effects on cancer screening takers’ physical and psychological conditions have been pointed out as a problem. In 2004, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare canceled examinations for neuroblastoma, a type of pediatric cancer, saying that the test would impose large disadvantages on screening subjects due to overdiagnosis.
In South Korea, thyroid cancer screening has been rigorously carried out from the late 1990s targeting adults, and as a result, the number of thyroid cancer patients spiked 15 times. In the meantime, thyroid cancer death rates have not changed, which has been interpreted in a way that non-harmful cancer was detected in the screening process.
While the Fukushima screening mostly targets children, Tsugane argues that it’s rational to judge that the reason behind such a high prevalence is overdiagnosis as seen in South Korea’s studies, on the grounds that the maximum amount of radiation exposure in the thyroids of children in Fukushima Prefecture is estimated to be several dozen millisieverts, which is not enough to cause an increase of 30 times in the number of patients. He also argues that it appears that no phenomenon has been reported where the number of patients becomes higher in areas with high radiation levels. The prefectural government shares his opinion on the matter.
At the same time, Tsugane is not completely denying the effects of radiation in children’s cancer, saying, “It would not be strange if a small portion of cancer cases was caused by radiation exposure, but we do not know the precise percentage.”
Tsuda, on the other hand, took the difference in the timing of screening among children into account and argues that radiation exposure is the main cause of the high prevalence of cancer in children, saying that the occurrence rate is 4.6 times higher in Futaba County near the crippled nuclear plant compared to the city of Sukagawa and other areas that are farther from the power plant.
He does not deny the possibility of overdiagnosis, but because the spread of cancer cells to lymph nodes and other tissues could be seen in 92 percent of patients, Tsuda believes that overdiagnosis makes up 8 percent of the patients at most.
In addition, Tsuda pointed to three research papers on the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster that argue that thyroid cancer was not found in a total of 47,000 children who were born after the disaster and had not been exposed to radiation, and rejects the existence of overdiagnosis in children.
Tsuda also pointed out that non-harmful cancer should have been detected in the first round of screenings, drawing attention to the fact that 51 new patients were found in the second round that began in 2014.
In regard to the results of the second round of screening, Osaka University public health professor Tomotaka Sobue, who supports the overdiagnosis theory, confesses that while it is unlikely that the cancer was caused by radiation exposure, “overdiagnosis alone cannot explain the phenomenon for now.”
Cancer screenings of the same scale in other areas might help determine the main cause of the high prevalence in Fukushima children. Tsugane argues, however, that while screening is necessary in Fukushima Prefecture to confirm the effects of radiation, the same kind of screening should not be carried out in other prefectures as it will only increase the number of overdiagnosis cases.
Tsuda, on the other hand, pushes for screening in other prefectures, saying that the whole picture of thyroid cancer patients should be revealed so that the causal relationship is not blurred. In addition, he calls for the cancer registration and establishing certificates for “hibakusha” (those exposed to radiation) to confirm radiation-induced cancer patients.
Both Tsugane and Tsuda based their research on the first round of screening conducted between 2011 and 2015. About 300,000 children were screened, and thyroid cancer was detected in 113 subjects, including suspected cancer cases at the time of analysis.
Tsugane’s team estimated that if all 360,000 children targeted in the cancer screening had gone through the checkups, approximately 160 patients would have been found. The team also estimated that about 5.2 children out of 360,000 children in the same age group as the Fukushima screening subjects had thyroid cancer based on calculations on a national average of thyroid cancer patients. As a result, the team reached a result of “about 30 times higher” by comparing 5.2 and 160 drawn from the estimate on Fukushima children.
Tsuda, meanwhile, focused his attention on the national average of the thyroid cancer occurrence rate in the same age group as the targets in the screening in Fukushima Prefecture, which was around three in every 1 million children per year. A total of 113 cancer patients out of 300,000 screening takers have been found in Fukushima Prefecture, which can be converted into about 90 patients in 1 million children per year over a four-year period. With those figures, Tsuda’s team concluded occurrence rates of about “30 times higher.”
The prefectural government’s expert panel drafted the interim report based on Tsugane’s calculation method.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160307/p2a/00m/0na/022000c
Japanese People Shun Fukushima Survivors While Doctors Refuse Them Care
Those who do not fit the norm, for whatever reason no matter how abusive,
are outcasts.
The world is rapidly approaching the five year anniversary of the worst nuclear disaster in human history. The triple meltdown at the Fukushima daiichi nuclear power plant has seen shameful omissions by global leaders and officials at every level. To compound matters, Japanese survivors are forced to submit to a complicit medical community bordering on anti-human. While the solutions to the widespread nuclear contamination are few, media blackouts, government directives and purposefully omitted medical reporting has made things exponentially worse. Over the last five years, the situation on the ground in Japan had deteriorated to shocking levels as abuse and trauma towards the survivors has become intolerable.
Even before the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan endured another nuclear disaster as a testing ground for the US military’s new nuclear arsenal on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The numbers of Japanese civilians killed were estimated at around 226,000, roughly half of the deaths occurred on the first day. After the initial detonation of the two nuclear bombs, both Japanese cities endured a legacy of radiation damage and human suffering for decades after. Tomiko Matsumoto, a resident of Hiroshima and survivor of the bombing described the abuse and trauma she endured by her society:
“I was shocked because I was discriminated against by Hiroshima people. We lived together in the same place and Hiroshima people know what happened but they discriminated against each other. ..I was shocked.”
“There were so many different kinds of discrimination. People said that girls who survived the bomb shouldn’t get married. Also they refused to hire the survivors, not only because of the scars, but because they were so weak. Survivors did not have 100 percent energy.”
“There was a survivor’s certificate and medical treatment was free. But the other people were jealous. Jealous people, mentally discriminated. So, I didn’t want to show the health book sometimes, so I paid. Some of the people, even though they had the health book, were afraid of discrimination, so they didn’t even apply for the health book. They thought discrimination was worse than paying for health care.”
A similar scene is playing out today in Japan as residents of the Fukushima prefecture, who survived triple nuclear meltdowns, are forced to endure similar conditions over half a century later. Fairewinds Energy Education director and former nuclear executive Arnie Gunderson is currently embarked on a speaking tour of Japan as their population continues to search for the truth about nuclear risks and the reality of life in affected areas of Japan after the 2011 disaster. Many Fukushima prefecture residents are still displaced and living in resettlement communities as their city sits as a radioactive ghost town. Visiting one such resettlement community, Gunderson had this to say:
“Today I went to a resettlement community. There were 22 women who met us, out of 66 families who live in this resettlement community. They stood up and said my name is…and I’m in 6A…my name is…and I’m in 11B and that’s how they define themselves by the little cubicle they live in — it’s very sad.”
Speaking with the unofficial, interim mayor of the resettlement community, she told Gunderson
“After the disaster at Fukushima, her hair fell out, she got a bloody nose and her body was speckled with hives and boils and the doctor told her it was stress…and she believes him. It was absolutely amazing. We explained to her that those area all symptoms of radiation [poisoning] and she should have that looked into. She really felt her doctor had her best interests at heart and she was not going to pursue it.”
Speaking about how Japanese officials handled this resettlement community’s (and others?) health education after the disaster, Gunderson reported:
“They [the 22 women who met with Gunderson] told us that we were the first people in five years to come to them and talk to them about radiation. They had nobody in five years of their exile had ever talked to them about radiation before…Which was another terribly sad moment.”
When asked if the women felt isolated from the rest of Japan they described to Gunderson the following:
“Some of them had changed their license plates so that they’re not in Fukushima anymore — so their license plates show they’re from another location. When they drive back into Fukushima, people realize that they’re natives and deliberately scratch their cars…deliberately scratch their cars because they are traitors. Then we had the opposite hold true that the people that didn’t change their plates and when they left Fukushima and went to other areas, people deliberately scratched their cars because they were from Fukushima.”
Gunderson summed up the information he received by saying, “The pubic’s animosity is directed toward the people of Fukushima Prefecture as if they somehow caused the nuclear disaster.”
FIVE YEARS AFTER: Fukushima fishermen still struggle to prove catches are safe
Fishermen unload their catch in experimental operations from a boat anchored at the Matsukawaura fishing port in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture.
Fukushima fishermen have been stuck in a vicious circle over the past five years. Whenever a glimmer of hope arises that they can resume normal operations, something happens at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant that quashes the optimism.
“Just when we thought the fishing environment had progressed one step forward, it would take a step back,” said Yukio Sato, a 56-year-old fisherman. “The past five years have been such a forward and back zigzag.”
Although radioactivity levels in their catches have fallen considerably, the fishermen are still struggling to convince consumers that the fish are safe to eat.
Any leak of radioactive water from the Fukushima No. 1 plant–and there have been many–into the Pacific Ocean reinforces the negative image of Fukushima fish.
The catches have dropped in size, prices have plummeted and some fishermen are now giving up hopes of making a living from the fishing grounds.
Sato used to take his fishing trawler out five days a week.
But fishermen in the prefecture were forced to suspend operations immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Radiation levels exceeding national standards were detected in the fish they caught.
“We could not catch the fish that we knew were swimming in those waters,” Sato said. “It was just so frustrating.”
Sato now takes his fishing trawler out twice a week.
The waters off Fukushima Prefecture are bountiful because two currents collide there. Close to 200 different types of fish can be caught in those waters.
In early February, Sato’s boat and other trawlers returned to the Matsukawaura fishing port in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, carrying Pacific cod, monkfish, snow crab and other fish.
Sato’s catch totaled about 500 kilograms, and the fish were sent to local shops as well as the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo.
“It would be great if we could return to the fishing of the past while I am still alive,” Sato said.
The catch from the coastal waters is still only about 6 percent of the levels before the nuclear accident.
In June 2012, more than year after the triple meltdown at the nuclear plant, experimental operations started to determine the market reaction to fish considered safe in terms of radioactivity levels.
Despite that effort, problems with radiation-contaminated water flowing into the Pacific continued.
Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, is still facing difficulties bringing the water problem under control. Every day, tons of groundwater flow under the Fukushima plant and become contaminated with radiation.
At one time, TEPCO came up with a plan to pump up the groundwater and dump it into the ocean before it could reach the plant.
Local fishermen opposed the plan because even dumping safe water into the Pacific would hurt the image of the fish caught in coastal waters.
But if such measures were not taken, the volume of contaminated water could increase to levels that would make it impossible to process.
In March 2014, the fishermen reluctantly agreed to the water bypass plan.
However, a year later, contaminated rainwater spilled outside the port waters. TEPCO’s failure to immediately disclose that problem refueled general concerns about contaminated water.
Other measures have since been taken to deal with the contaminated water, but according to one individual in the fishing industry, “No matter what is done, only the negative image that arises from that time is highlighted.”
Fishermen now depend on compensation from TEPCO for their daily livelihoods. Even those who are not engaged in experimental operations receive compensation equivalent to about 80 percent of their actual catch before the nuclear accident.
With no prospects for a resumption of full-scale operations, some fishermen are not bothering to take part in the experimental operations.
The radioactivity levels in the water and fish have steadily declined.
Three months after the nuclear accident started, half of the fish sampled had radioactivity levels exceeding the national standard of 100 becquerels per kg.
In 2015, 8,500 samples were tested; only four exceeded the national standard.
The decline in radioactivity levels has led to an expansion in the types of fish that can be caught through experimental operations, from three to 72.
While a simple comparison is not possible because the catch level in Fukushima is so low, fish caught through experimental operations fetch between 80 and 90 percent of the prices paid for the same fish types caught in other prefectures.
“With the brand image having fallen so low, it would not be profitable even if operations were allowed to expand,” said Takashi Niitsuma, 56, an official with the Iwaki city fisheries cooperative.
Fish caught further out to sea are also affected. Regardless of where the fish are caught, if they are brought to Fukushima ports, they are classified as being from Fukushima. That has led fishermen to avoid anchoring at Fukushima ports.
According to Fukushima prefectural government officials dealing with the fishing industry, about 5,600 tons of fish, excluding those caught in coastal waters, were brought into Fukushima ports in 2014. The figure is only 40 percent of the pre-nuclear accident level.
The Aquamarine Fukushima aquarium in Iwaki holds monthly events to show that fish caught off Fukushima are safe. At one recent event, a fat greenling was placed in a device to measure radiation levels while visitors looked on. A message flashed on a screen: “None detected.”
“Fish born after the nuclear accident will never exceed the central government’s standard,” said Seiichi Tomihara, 43, a veterinarian at the aquarium.
Local residents are involved in the project to dispel doubts about the trustworthiness of information provided by TEPCO and the central government.
“I first of all want people to understand the fact that the waters off Fukushima are steadily recovering,” Tomihara said.
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/recovery/AJ201603070041
Fukushima Survey – A mere facade
2月15日に第22回福島県「県民健康調査」検討委員会(以下、検討委員会)が開催されました。この検討委員会で最も注目を浴びるのは甲状腺 検診結果です。「先行検査」での「悪性ないし悪性疑い」となった人数はさらに増加しました。前回と同じく口頭の説明だけでしたので、本格検査の二巡目も含 めた人数を表にまとめてみました。
On February 15th, the Fukushima Prefecture held its 22sd “Citizens Health Survey” Review Committee. Most of this session, the thyroid screening results was brought into focus. The number of cases with children being diagnosed with a “malignant or on suspicion of being malignant” from the “prior inspection” further increased. Since it was only announced verbally like the previous announcement, I made a table to summarize the results, including the full-scale testing of the second round.
表の結果を見れば明らかなように「悪性疑い」と診断された場合は、ほとんど「悪性」とみて間違いありません。しかし、検討委員会の見解は「放射能の影響は 考えづらい」と今までの見解を踏襲したものです。
It is clear from that table that the cases listed in “suspected malignant tumor” end up being very similar to the “malignant tumor” cases. Despite of this and following its earlier statement, the Review Committee is continuing to deny any possible impact from radioactivity and finds it “hardly considerable. ”
このことをみると、結論ありきで、この見解を変える気はないのかもしれません。
It is as if the Committee was not willing to change its view regardless of any survey’s results.
さらに、この流れに拍車をかけるかもしれないと思われるのは、今回の検討委員会に甲状腺外科の専門医である清水一雄委員が欠席したことです。このよ うな 専門家が誰一人出席しない中で、今回の検討委員会は開催されたわけです。また、前回、星北斗座長の「放射能の影響は考えづらい」という見解に対して質問を した春日文子委員も欠席しました。そして、すでに福島県立医大からは、甲状腺専門医である鈴木眞一医師に代わり内科医の大津留晶医師となっています。
What made this particular review even less valid this time around was that Dr. Kazuo Shimizu, who is the only specialist of thyroid surgery among the members, was absent from the Committee. This review was held in such circumstances without any thyroid specialists. Also, Ms. Fumiko Kasuga, who previously questioned the statement that the “the impact of radioactivity is hardly considerable,” to chairman Hokuto, was also absent from the Committee. In addition, replacing thyroid specialist Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, member from the Fukushima Medical University has changed to physician Dr. Akira Otsuru.
検討委員会としながらも、専門家不在の中で何が検討されようとしているのでしょうか? 第22回検討委員会は検討委員会が形骸化していることを示唆するような会でした。
What will the Committee do without any specialist? The 22nd Review Committee suggests that the review committee is a mere facade.
by Hiromi ABE あべひろみ
translated by Chiharu MUKUDAI for Evacuate Fukushima 福島の子供を守れ
Source Source ー参考ー http://fukushima-30year-project.org/?p=3685
http://www.evacuate-fukushima.com/2016/03/fukushima-survey-a-mere-facade/
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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