Expected: 120,000 Cases of Cancer in Tokyo

One of the experts mentioned is the same Dr. Chris Busby noted elsewhere for his knowledge on the effects of nuclear radiation on the human body. Remember, (I believe) there was over a 1,000 tons of MOX fuel rods stored in the dome of building three when it blew. MOX is a mixture of Plutonium and Uranium, neither of which produce any health benefits unless of course you believe Ann Coulter.
www.bestmetalresearch.com...

I wonder how long does it take someone to die from radiation poisoning, or cancer via radiation.
Surely the heroic 50 must be dead by now, right?

Chernobyl is expected to kill between 9,000 (IAEA/WHO) and 60,000 (TORCH) people in total from cancer, however given the immediate evacuation of areas of the Fukushima prefecture and the fact that the total radiation release has been 10% that of Chernobyl, I expect that this incident will kill between 500 people and 6,000, probably closer to 500. It has been one month since the incident, hence this is the first month in the history of nuclear power (using western designs) where nuclear power was actually as bad as coal (in the United States). That's a first.

The number 137 has been in the news lately, because of an isotope of cesium that has that mass number (as opposed to atomic number) has leaked out of some reactors in Japan struck by a tsunami. The amount of cesium-137 that has leaked out of the reactor is estimated to be about 12,000 curies, (or as our media likes to point out hundreds of thousands of trillions of becquerels), which is roughly about 10 times as much cesium-137 as was produced in the vaporization of a nuclear weapon over the Japanese city of Hiroshima near the end of a famous oil war.

As a result, we are now safe to conclude, since rationality is not an issue, that everyone in Japan who has recently died has been killed by radiation sickness; by contrast driving cars in a tsunami is very, very, very, very, very safe, just as "they" always told it would be.

Right?

Wrong?

Who cares? Don't worry, be happy.

The amount of cesium-137 produced in a single bomb explosion - about which I once wrote a fun diary called Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining, Even Mushroom Clouds: Cs-137 and Watching the Soil Die - the "Tsar Bomba" explosion over Novaya Zemlya Island
in the Arctic, released in a matter of a few seconds, about 280,000 curies of cesium-137 (along with vast quantities of other radioisotpes), meaning that the "Tsar Bomba" blast aerosolized as much cesium-137 as 23 Fukushima's.

www.dailykos.com...

His prediction is only about Tokyo. I'd be interested to see his expectations for the 2+ million people who lived in Fukushima prefecture, 1.3 Million in Iwate, and whther he is referring to the city of Tokyo itself or the prefecture...

I'd say 120,000 cancer deaths would be considered a huge "win" at this point.

To the member who claimed this is 10% as bad as Chernobyl, the same TEPCO official who originally made that claim said just 2 or 3 sentences later that Fukushima had emitted more radiation than Chernobyl. They cannot get their story straight and have demonstrated they have no honor.

To the member who claimed this is 10% as bad as Chernobyl, the same TEPCO official who originally made that claim said just 2 or 3 sentences later that Fukushima had emitted more radiation than Chernobyl. They cannot get their story straight and have demonstrated they have no honor.

Source?

Everything I have seen indicates that while both are INES 7 level events, Fukushima has involved release of 10% of the radionuclides.

www.nisa.meti.go.jp...

It was an estimate made by NSA, not TEPCO.

Also there's a difference between cancer cases and cancer deaths. One measurable (rather than.. uhm, theoretical) effect of Chernobyl was an increase in thyroid cancer incidence (because the Soviets did nothing little to prevent I-131 uptake). >95% is/was treated effectively. Part of the discussion in the OP was about Iodine-131 which usually causes relatively benign thyroid cancer. I presume the math from the gamma dose was accurate through. Also the risk value they use for radiation (ECRR) is controversial, probably bunk, as shown here.

reply to post by C0bzz


This is not the source I originally read the quote from, but it is essentially the same aside from the "eventually could" portion, which was just "fear it exceeds: in the article I originally read.
spectrum.ieee.org...

Today, several Japanese officials stressed that radiation emissions have decreased dramatically since those first few days. “The amount of radiation leaks is on the decline," said Prime Minister Naoto Kan in a televised address. NISA deputy director-general Hidehiko Nishiyama also gave a press conference, in which he declared that the radiation released from Fukushima Dai-1 so far is one-tenth the total released from Chernobyl. (It's not clear what estimate Nishiyama was using of Chernobyl's emissions.)

But at a separate press conference, a TEPCO official had a bleaker assessment based on the continued, low-level emissions. “Our concern is that the amount of leakage could eventually reach that of Chernobyl or exceed it,” said Junichi Matsumoto. That alarming evaluation has been challenged by NISA's Nishiyama. He told The New York Times that he didn't understand why the TEPCO officials had made such a statement, and said that "almost all" of the plant's radioactive emissions were behind it.

I'm still a bit soured on any disaster reporting from monitoring agencies and corporations following BP's original claims (which were backed up by US agencies) of 1,000 barrels per day gradually being adjusted to a figure 62 times that original claim (and one which was still believed to be lowballed by quite a few experts in the field not financially connected to BP or the Feds.) If we apply BP logic to Fukushima, we're about 6 times Chernobyl right now.

Originally posted by C0bzz
Chernobyl is expected to kill between 9,000 (IAEA/WHO) and 60,000 (TORCH) people in total from cancer, however given the immediate evacuation of areas of the Fukushima prefecture and the fact that the total radiation release has been 10% that of Chernobyl, I expect that this incident will kill between 500 people and 6,000, probably closer to 500.

The IAEA/WHO risk model is based off the IRPC risk model. The IRPC model is a pile off useless garbage that does not take into account ingesting or inhaling radiation. I don't think you know much about Chernobyl and the lasting effects it has had across europe.

ECRR Risk Model and radiation from Fukushima
Chris Busby
Scientific Secretary
European Committee on Radiation Risk
March 19th 2011

Radioactivity from the Fukushima Catastrophe is now reaching centres of population
like Tokyo and will appear in the USA. Authorities are downplaying the risk on the
basis of absorbed dose levels using the dose coefficients of the International
Commission on Radiological Protection the ICRP. These dose coefficients and the
ICRP radiation risk model are unsafe for this purpose. This is clear from hundreds of
research studies of the Chernobyl accident outcomes. It has also been conceded by the
editor of the ICRP risk model, Dr Jack Valentin, in a discussion with Chris Busby in
Stockholm, Sweden in April 2009. Valentin specifically stated in a videoed interview
(available on www.llrc.org and vimeo.com) that the ICRP model could not be used to
advise politicians of the health consequences of a nuclear release like the one from
Fukushima. Valentin agreed that for certain internal exposures the risk model was
insecure by 2 orders of magnitude. The CERRIE committee stated that the range of
insecurity was between 10 and members of the committee put the error at nearer to
1000, a factor which would be necessary to explain the nuclear site child leukemia
clusters. The ECRR risk model was developed for situations like Fukushima.

Since the ECRR 2003 Radiation Risk Model, updated in 2010, was developed for just
this situation it can be employed to assess the risk in terms of cancer and other ill
health. See www.euradcom.org. It has been checked against many situations where
the public has been exposed to internal radioactivity and shown to be accurate.

Using the ECRR 2010 radiation risk model the following guide to the health effects of
exposure can be employed.

Take the dose which is published by the Japanese authorities. Multiply it by 600. This
is the approximate ECRR dose for the mixture of internal radionuclides released from
Fukushima. Then multiply this number by 0.1. This is the ECRR 2010 cancer risk.

Example 1: According to Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano, the dose
from exposure to radioactive milk from Fukushima is so low that you would have to
drink milk for a year to get the equivalent of a CT scan dose. A CT scan dose is about
10 milliSieverts (mSv) Assuming you drink 500ml a day, the annual intake is
180litres so the dose per litre is 0.055mSv. The ECRR dose per litre is at maximum
0.055 x 600 = 33mSv. Thus the lifetime risk of cancer following drinking a litre of
such contaminated milk is 0.0033 or 0.33%. Thus 1000 people each drinking 1 litre of
milk will result in 3.3 cancers in the 50 years following the intake.
From the results in Sweden and elsewhere following Chernobyl, these cancers will
probably appear in the 10 years following the exposure.

Example 2: External doses measured by a Geiger counter increased from 100nSv/h to
500nSv/h. What is the risk from a week's exposure? Because the external dose is only
a flag for the internal dose we assume that this is the internal ICRP dose from the
range of radionuclides released which include radiodines, radiocaesium, plutonium
and uranium particles, tritium etc. A week's exposure is thus 400 x 10-9 x 24 x 7days
or 6.72 x 10-5 Sv . We multiply by 600 to get the ECRR dose which is 0.04Sv and
then by 0.1 to get the lifetime cancer risk which is 0.4%. Thus in this case, in 1000
individuals exposed for a week at this level, 4 will develop cancer because of this
exposure. In 30 million, the population of Tokyo, this would result in 120,000 cancers
in the next 50 years. The ICRP risk model would predict 100 cancers from the same
exposure. Again we should expect to see a rise in cancer in the 10 years following the
exposure. This is due to early clinical expression of pre-cancerous genomes.

Other health effects are predicted, including birth effects, heart disease and a range of
other conditions and diseases. For details see ECRR2010.

These calculations have been shown to be accurate in the case of the population of
Northern Sweden exposed to fallout for the Chernobyl accident, and also are accurate
for the increased in cancer in northern hemisphere countries following the 1960s
weapons testing fallout (the cancer epidemic). The public and the Japanese and other
authorities would do well to calculate exposure risks on the basis of these
approximations and to abandon the ICRP model which does not protect the public.
This was the conclusion of a group of international experts who signed the 2009
Lesvos Declaration (this can be found on
www.euradcom.org...)

Originally posted by C0bzz
It has been one month since the incident, hence this is the first month in the history of nuclear power (using western designs) where nuclear power was actually as bad as coal (in the United States). That's a first.

I have seen this propoganda in many pro-nuclear articles that have just started poping up everywhere. Such nonsense.

Dangers to miners
Historically, coal mining has been a very dangerous activity and the list of historical coal mining disasters is a long one. In the U.S. alone, more than 100,000 coal miners were killed in accidents over the past century,[16] with more than 3,200 dying in 1907 alone.[17] Open cut hazards are principally mine wall failures and vehicle collisions; underground mining hazards include suffocation, gas poisoning, roof collapse and gas explosions. Firedamp explosions can trigger the much more dangerous coal dust explosions, which can engulf an entire pit. Most of these risks can be greatly reduced in modern mines, and multiple fatality incidents are now rare in some parts of the developed world. Modern mining in the U.S. results in approximately 30 deaths per year due to mine accidents.

Coal Mining

I can almost say for certain that more people across europe have have died as a result of Chernobyl fallout in the last 25 years. Over 100,000 of the Chernobyl liquidaters have died unnatural deaths alone, and thousands more suffer effects from radiation. There is also the fact that coal is only a danger to the miners, not to surrounding populations. Coal does not poison the environment for hundreds and thousands of years.

Just even trying to equate the dangers of coal mining with a nuclear accident on the scale of Fukushima or Chernobyl is plain stupidity.

being 58 yrs old, i heard my share of BS from corps and govs. ....if any of these places are relatively safe and the company and government says that people are being hysterical...i say prove it!....move these officials families into the area as a good faith gesture...
guess what, none of them do...you think the CEO of BP would move his family to the coast of mississippi or new orleans? dream on....do you think the CEO of TEPCO would move his family just outside the exclusion zone?...again, dream on. they say this crap to cover their own ass, nothing more, nothing less.

Originally posted by FreeSpeaker
There is also the fact that coal is only a danger to the miners, not to surrounding populations. Coal does not poison the environment for hundreds and thousands of years.

.

what's the half life of heavy metals emitted from coal plants again? infinite, right?

i'll leave the conclusions to the reader but i can't help but notice that the life expectancy of people in the former USSR has drastically fallen since 1989 and it would truely be unnatural if all 'liqudators' of Chernobyl were still alive after 25 years...

these people were aged, 20-45, the IAEA says

www.iaea.org...

Russia's death rate is currently above 10/1000 per year for the total population, go firgure if 100k deaths is abnormal in 800k people after 25 years.

Originally posted by Long Lance

Originally posted by FreeSpeaker
There is also the fact that coal is only a danger to the miners, not to surrounding populations. Coal does not poison the environment for hundreds and thousands of years.

.

what's the half life of heavy metals emitted from coal plants again? infinite, right?

i'll leave the conclusions to the reader but i can't help but notice that the life expectancy of people in the former USSR has drastically fallen since 1989 and it would truely be unnatural if all 'liqudators' of Chernobyl were still alive after 25 years...

these people were aged, 20-45, the IAEA says

www.iaea.org...

Russia's death rate is currently above 10/1000 per year for the total population, go firgure if 100k deaths is abnormal in 800k people after 25 years.

Yes, heavy metals from coal mining present their own dangers but two things stand out to me. First is the contamination stays at the proccessing site and second, the heavy metals are natural in the earths periodic table. The particles produced by nuclear fission are not. Fly ash is also no longer vented into the air but captured by electrostatic precipitators or other particle filtration equipment.

So you believe a 1 out of 6 death rate amongst liquidaters over 25 years is natural?

Originally posted by FreeSpeaker

Yes, heavy metals from coal mining present their own dangers but two things stand out to me. First is the contamination stays at the proccessing site and second, the heavy metals are natural in the earths periodic table. The particles produced by nuclear fission are not. Fly ash is also no longer vented into the air but captured by electrostatic precipitators or other particle filtration equipment.

So you believe a 1 out of 6 death rate amongst liquidaters over 25 years is natural?

Hg stays at the processing site? it's very volatile, you know. Hg in tuna, frequent warnings about sea food, yet people never seem to mentally connect what looks ever so slightly like cause and effect....


scrubbers are cool if you have them and they will help with fly ash. Hg is a vapor and needs special equipment. what will happen with the ash then? does it magically go away? the stuff is dumped in the open, some people wish to cover it durable grass so it stays put, but of course, stuff leaches out all the time. some people even want to mine it for uranium:

www.spartonres.ca...


mercury poisoning may be caused by naturally occurring isotopes, but is that any consolation? it's the damage that counts, imho, and we already have natural exposure from radioisotopes like Potassium 40, which is of course vastly more prevalent than fission products and hardly on anybody's mind.


now, let's consider your example of 800k people:

using a very simplified model, given a mortality of 1% per year - which is a conservative assumption, because the odds of death approach 100% as you age ('duh) and many of them are now ~70 years old - you get:

800 000 * (99%) ^ 25 (years) equals 622 257 people, which means ~22% dead.