There’s so much going on at the moment that I should be writing about that I’m having a hard time keeping up! Anyway here’s the next piece.
There was an interesting, and I suggest important, “Opinion” article in last week’s New Scientist (dated 17 March 2012). In it Don Higson, a fellow of the Australasian Radiation Protection Society, argues for the total revision scale on which nuclear accidents are measured and points up the lack of true comparison between Fukushima and Chernobyl. Along the way he highlights the major differences between the two in health effects, adding some further important perspective on the situation.
The article itself is behind a paywall, so I hope I’ll be forgiven for reproducing some factual highlights here.
Everybody who gets cancer in Japan over the next 40 years will no doubt blame their misfortune on radiation from Fukushima Daiichi […] This would be entirely understandable but will have no basis in science […]
[T]here is no possibility that the physical health consequences of Fukushima Daiichi will be anywhere near as bad as those of Chernobyl.
As far as anyone knows, no member of the public received a significant dose of radiation attributable to the Fukushima Daiichi reactor emergency […]
Chernobyl was the worst that could happen. Safety and protection systems failed and there was a full core meltdown in a reactor that had no containment […]
237 Chernobyl workers were taken to hospital with suspected acute radiation sickness; 134 of these cases were confirmed; 28 were fatal; about 20 other workers have since died from illnesses considered to have been caused or aggravated by radiation exposure […]
On top of that, it has been estimated that about 4000 people will die […] from radiation-induced cancer […]
At Fukushima Daiichi, the reactors shut down safely when struck by the magnitude-9 Tohoku earthquake […] problems arose after they were inundated by a much larger tsunami than had been anticipated when the nuclear plant was designed […] The reactor containments were partially effective […]
There were no deaths attributable to radiation. Two workers received burns from beta radiation. They were discharged from hospital after two days. Two workers incurred high internal radiation exposure from inhaling iodine-131, which gives them a significant risk of developing thyroid cancer.
Doses incurred by about 100 other workers have been high enough to cause a small risk of developing cancer after 20 or more years […] About 25 per cent of the population dies from cancer whether accidentally exposed to radiation or not. This rate might be increased by an additional one or two per cent among the exposed workers […]
[T]here have been no radiation injuries to children or to other members of the public […]
[T]he amount of iodine-131 escaping from all the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi was less than 10 per cent of the amount released at Chernobyl, and the release of caesium-137, the next most important fission product, was less than 15 per cent of the Chernobyl total […]
As I’ve said before, we need to keep this in perspective.
While there are clearly many, many lessons to be learnt Fukushima should be looked on as a success story in terms of reactor design. Yes there were shortcomings in the design of the resilience, the fall-back ability, the processes and the communications. And there have been massive knock-on effects on the population and the environment — and indeed it has been argued the worst of the health effects will be the devastating mental stresses on the Japanese people (see, inter alia, this Guardian report).
But given that those reactors are 40-ish years old, and that even before March 2011 we knew a lot better how to design safe and secure reactors, this should be viewed as a (limited) success story.
I am sure those displaced from their homes are glad for the success.100,000 people say thanks, I am sure.The 573 dead would also say thanks. Yes 573 dead on official figures.The workers who Tepco cannot locate to check their health, I wonder what they would say?Seriously Apologists – you are nasty nasty folk. Stop avoiding the real figures and talking only immediate deaths.And none of you bother to mention the Tepco figure of 150µSv/hr at 30 km from the reactor – that would equate to 1300 mSv/yr – yeah that's dangerous.Also the areas currently over 100 mSv/yr – above the much debated LNT model questions that the apologists are pushing right now.As for the age of the plant – or the relative danger, I go by amongst other things the NRC opinions.Spent Fuel Pool 4 was saved by a maintenance error and a faulty gate. The result of the error was to stop the SFP from going dry.The NRC was planning for 4-6 Fuel pool fires and 3 core events. Their 50 mile evac call was based on a single reactor, and not what they thought was likely.The NRC based their estimates on Tepco's information.Based on what they expected the evac area would have had to be greater than 50 miles, but their software couldn't calculate it.So the NRC's expectation was way above what the apologists were busy ridiculing the supposedly ignorant alarmists for.Fukshima was a success story only because the likely case was avoided by errors and minor details.
To clarify my hanging point:The SFPs are common to old and new reactors.The age and/or design issues are not relevant to SFP risks.A single SFP event could make Chernobyl look like a bad hair day.The industry expert studies say that an SFP event would be very very bad, but the frequency is so low that no need to worry.A frequency of 1 is bad enough though – and Fukushima was a small taste of that danger.The safety arguments for Nuclear power are based on a logical fallacy about probability.Defense in depth only works when you have single unrelated failures, and also have adequate and dilligent maintenace, which the record is that we don't have.
And apologies if Keith the blog owner is not an apologist – I did not intend to pre-judge you.i just realised that my post implied that I did.
I won't say that I'm an apologist for nuclear power. But I do not agree with the doom-sayers assessments. Look at the actual science and look at the overall environmental assessments for power production. IMO nuclear is the east worst option. That isn't to say nuclear is without problems or risks – but so is everything else; see my various posts on the environment over the years. It's time we looked at the whole of the environmental issues we're throwing up holistocally; they are all related; and somehow we have to constrain them and mitigate them. That means choosing a series of least worst options. Nuclear is one of them.