More “radiation sickness” in the media:
Workers at the disaster-stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan say they expect to die from radiation sickness as a result of their efforts to bring the reactors under control, the mother of one of the men tells Fox News.
The so-called Fukushima 50, the team of brave plant workers struggling to prevent a meltdown to four reactors critically damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, are being repeatedly exposed to dangerously high radioactive levels as they attempt to bring vital cooling systems back online.
Speaking tearfully through an interpreter by phone, the mother of a 32-year-old worker said: “My son and his colleagues have discussed it at length and they have committed themselves to die if necessary to save the nation.
Look, if you don’t know anything about a topic, don’t write a news story about it. Here you’ve got this poor hysterical little old lady; she’s scared, and no one can blame her. Especially if, God forbid, she reads the US press.
“He told me they have accepted they will all probably die from radiation sickness in the short term or cancer in the long-term.”
The woman spoke to Fox News on the condition of anonymity because, she said, plant workers had been asked by management not to communicate with the media or share details with family members in order to minimize public panic.
Does that surprise you? Remember what I said about “yamato gokoro”, “Japanese guts”? But there’s much less chance of anyone dying of anything except plain mechanical industrial accidents, like the poor guy whose crane fell on him.
She could not confirm if her son or other workers were already suffering from radiation sickness. But she added: “They have concluded between themselves that it is inevitable some of them may die within weeks or months. They know it is impossible for them not to have been exposed to lethal doses of radiation.”
In other words, you called up some poor little old lady who is probably just seen her home washed away and and lost friends, family members, and pets, and got her crying on the phone to tell you that she’s frightened — but you don’t look at the mass of information that IAEA and TEPCO and the Japanese ministries and agencies involved have been releasing three or four times a day — to complaints they’re being “secretive”. If you had, you’d know that the real radiation doses measured have been up to 17-18 rem “whole body dose” — with 100 rem being the level at which you get “radiation sickness”. And the guys with burned feet?
The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (or TEPCO), says medical teams conduct regular testing on the restoration workers for signs of contamination-related illness. It claims there have been no further cases following the three workers who were treated last week after coming into direct contact with radioactive water. There are no reports of new members of the Fukushima 50 developing radiation sickness.
Nor any old reports of anyone developing radiation sickness.
Although two suffered radiation burns to their legs and ankles and absorbed radiation internally, they have since been released from the hospital and are regularly being checked for signs of any deterioration in their condition, says TEPCO.
Back on the 28th (which was the 27th US time) NHK had already reported they’d been sent home with a clean bill of health. No observable burns.
When all those radiation deaths happen, there’s going to be a tsunami of stories about them.
Today is the day to keep my promise of March 16.
Here is the original text of it.
To fullfill the above promise: I hereby personally and gladly express my gratitude to all the heroic workers at TEPCO’s reactors. I hereby acknowledge too that throughout this disaster, and continuing into the future, I have greatly feared that some of these brave workers will incur fatal radiation doses. And finally, I acknowledge that according to TEPCO’s corporate officers, no such radiation-related worker deaths have occurred as of the present date.
I further acknowledge my continued hope—which however does not amount to confidence—that none of these brave workers will come to an early death, or otherwise suffer adverse health consequences, as a result of the radiation doses that they have already sustained, and that the nation of Japan has asked them to continue to sustain.
These workers are heroes, and they deserve all of our praise and gratitude.
URL: http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/03/31/fox-news-blows-one-more-media-translation/#comments
Very good, John.
FOX gets more disappointing by the hour.
Decon for radiation exposure usually just involves showering with soap and water.
Don’t panic.
The point though still stands: How do we cut through all this hysteria?
It is extremely bizarre, or, rather, it would be if one did not understand the real agenda behind this–that agenda being one of undermining rational and free market driven development of energy resources free of centralized (and socialist) control.
We take pride in the notion that we live in a more rational and “scientific age”, whatever that might mean, but we are in fact appear to be living in a age of of the deepest superstition and irrational primitivism.
“proreason” is a case in point here, his moniker notwithstanding.
There are many problem statements in blogs and articles because people don’t know much about radiation. For example, showering with soap and water washes radioactive particles off of your skin. You can’t wash away radiation exposure because that term is usually used for whole body dose from gamma rays.
TEPCO’s news release about the contaminated workers is here: http://goo.gl/Sd1yp. They were sent to the hospital after their legs were decontaminated because TEPCO wanted them checked for burns. Yet news outlets everywhere were reporting “radiation burns” as though it was a fact.
Check the NEI website here http://goo.gl/lzUOk for a list of credible news sources. Apparently Fox News is no longer credible if they’re going to post weepy stories from little old ladies.
Back in the bare knuckle days, our guidelines were that we could take 100 rem to save a life and 50 rem to fight a fire or save plant equipment. That was a one-time dose for your lifetime, it had to be planned and not just spur of the moment, and volunteers should be over 45 years of age and past their child-rearing years. Other news stories I’ve seen said that the Fukushima 50 were now the Fukushima 180. They had to rotate out the workers so no one exceeded dose limits. I would bet that no one has taken or will take a lethal dose of radiation and these hysterics are being repeated because they’re sensational enough to get people to load web pages full of Google ads.
Here’s the story of the heroes of Chernobyl who really did take lethal doses. It also describes in sickening detail the failure of the Soviet reactor safety culture that allowed the operators to take the plant into an unstable region and the design flaws that brought it the rest of the way into the explosion. http://goo.gl/58CJ1
Sorry, that was 25 rem to fight a fire, not 50.
“It’s probably a given that we employees are to handle the situation even if the consequences may be dire for us. So we are doing what we can as best as we can. We will be carrying a cross on our back for the rest of our lives… We employees at TEPCO have not been able to make time to take care of our own health let alone check on our own families’ safety. ” – http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/03/emails-from-fukushima-workers.html
NHK has learned that Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, has not provided every worker at the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant with radiation monitors, breaking government rules.
…
TEPCO says the quake destroyed many radiation monitors, so in some work groups only leaders have them, leaving others struggling to manage exposure.
The government requires companies to provide each individual worker with a radiation monitor when working under such conditions.
One worker who helped restore electricity to the plant, says each man must have been exposed to different levels of radiation, and that he has no idea how much contamination he was exposed to – http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/31_31.html
Let’s find out more about this, NHK hasn’t been immune to the “OMG OMG oh well nevermind” pattern — like the “hospitalized with radiation burns”, “hospitalized with radiation burns to the feet“, “released from hospital, no burns” story.
kyodo news confirms:
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/82534.html
The government’s nuclear regulatory agency said Friday it had issued another warning to Tokyo Electric Power Co. over the management of workers’ radiation exposure at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, after it was found that there were not enough dosimeters to cover all of the workers.
Some workers were sharing dosimeters while doing the same job because many of the devices were destroyed in the March 11 quake and tsunami, a situation that was not ”desirable from the viewpoint of ensuring workers’ safety,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the agency.
…
Regarding the incident on March 24, it was found that a worker who should have been checking on-site radiation levels was absent and three workers had been engaging in work to lay cables without measuring the radiation dose.
Poul is right on the facts.
As Charlie says, it’s best to trust technical sources.
IEEE Spectrum has been providing reasonably comprehensive, technically accurate, independently validated coverage (although generally lagging 3-7 days behind events).
The IEEE site has called it right early-middle-and-late:
(early) March 12: Japan Nuclear Accident: Worse than Worst, Again
(middle) March 21: TEPCO Missteps Before and During Nuclear Crisis
(later) March 31: Nuclear Engineer Sees Evidence That Fuel Melted Through Reactor Pressure Vessel
(latest) March 31: IAEA Recommends Wider Evacuation Near Japan Nuclear Plant
As Mongoose asks: “How do we cut through all this hysteria?”
The IEEE is showing the way: in the long-run, hysteria is damped solely by the moderating effects of (1) transparency, (2) honesty, (3) accuracy, (4) accountability … and (5) vigorous democratic dialog.
On all other paths — market-driven and ideology-driven paths in particular — hysteria spreads around the world like wildfire. As it should.
Because nuclear power has proven far too dangerous to the public safety, to be entrusted to incompetent corporations and technically ignorant politicians and pundits.
TEPCO executives and Japanese politicians take heed … and learn from the IEEE coverage.
——–
Japan’s Nuclear Emergency: Breaking news and analysis from IEEE Spectrum editors and correspondents
URL: http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/japans-earthquake-and-nuclear-emergency
Oh. I’m so glad that you’ve decided that calm rationality to cut through the hysteria is now your approach, John. It must be a relief to no longer be frightened by fantasies of using atomic bombs to blow up the reactors as a way to keep them from spreading contamination (!!).
Not that you’re above a little selectivity in what you quote. For example, the “Worse than Worst, Again” piece — which is a little hard to find among the technical reporting, because it’s actually in the “Commentary” section at top right — is about how design-for cases aren’t as bad as what happens in actual accidents, rather than Fukushima being worse than the worst previous accident.
I’ve got to admit that my reaction to that revelation is “well, duh!” If it weren’t worse than design-for it wouldn’t be an accident at all. And the Chernobyl accident was the equivalent of an old steamboat captain tying down the relief valve on the boiler.
It’d be instructive, I think, for someone with more time than I have this morning to compare your dire predictions with the actual timeline here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/energy/nuclear/timeline-the-japanese-nuclear-emergency
Charlie, that IEEE timeline is a very sobering summary, which amply justifies the concerns that the spouses and families of the TEPCO workers are expressing.
[Which would be why I said "Here you’ve got this poor hysterical little old lady; she’s scared, and no one can blame her." Straw man.]
If on the first day after the disaster, the world had been gifted with fore-knowledge of this IEEE summary, the global reaction would have been shock and horror at the scale of the disaster, and the utter dereliction of duty shown (so far) by TEPCO executives in dealing with it.
[So what? No one thinks there's been no accident and no problem. But the scale of the accident is still thousands of times less than Chernobyl, not much worse than Chernobyl as you've been arguing.]
That is why ridiculing the concerns of these brave workers and their families serves no purpose … these concerns are real and they are justified by the facts.
[Straw man. I'm not ridiculing them -- I'm ridiculing this Fox News report.]
You know, Charlie … for almost a decade now, the families of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have lived with fears for their loved-ones serving.
[Ah, let's go for a flag-waving red herring now.]
And yet, there’s been no shortage of ignorant pundits who deploy cherry-picked statistical arguments to the effect that those fears are irrational … that it is actually more dangerous for young soldiers to stay home.
[Citation? Or are you just being an ass?]
Nowadays, most folks appreciate that these Iraq/Afghanistan “more dangerous at-home” pundits are morons … right?
And so are the Fukushima “not much worse than a medical x-ray” pundits, who nowadays are busy discounting the legitimate fears of the disaster workers’ families.
[What perhaps amazes me the most is how you can, with a straight face, repeat the very same strawman here. But guess what, John? Not only did I quote myself with "she’s scared, and no one can blame her", I just had a piece published at Daily Caller praising those very Japanese for their yamato gokoro. You've made a fool of yourself twice-over with this, since I made rather a point of saying the exact opposite of what you're suggesting. No small trick, that.]
These pundits are wrong on-the-facts, and they’re wrong morally too. All the way around, these pundits are utterly, completely, entirely, dead-wrong.
[Why, then you should be able to muster some facts to demonstrate it. But you're just not into that whole fact-based thing, are you?]
There’s not much sense in arguing with these pundits … but the families know the truth … and the public knows it too.
[And yet you do. The more fool you, I suppose.]
That’s my 2¢.
URL:
charlie, how do you square “the scale of the accident is still thousands of times less than Chernobyl” with this?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20285-fukushima-radioactive-fallout-nears-chernobyl-levels.html
Japan’s damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors – designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests – to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl.
——————–
note that almost all post-chernobyl deaths are attributed to these two isotopes.
Do we have to REPEAT links, for God’s sake, Poul? That would be exactly the same article, from 24 March, that I commented on in this Tattle:
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/03/24/new-scientist-and-the-wall-of-zeros/
Remember, “New Scientist and the Wall of Zeros”?
You should, you commented twelve times on it, including a fairly silly point that it was inappropriate to compare exponential decay to the expected lifetime of a single iodine atom, because after all a single iodine atom could survive 1000 half-lives, just like someone could flip heads a thousand times in a row with no tails.
But then there was another comment on that same thread,
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/03/24/new-scientist-and-the-wall-of-zeros/#comment-16781
like this:
And who made that comment?
Why, his name was “Poul”.
Just tp save you sopme time, i’ll reprise my comments:
(1) the inital statement is simply misstated: those numbers were for I-131 and Cs-137 alone; the total amount of radioactivity released at Chernobyl was 3 to 4 orders of magnitude higher.
(2) the total release at Chernobyl was primarily of much longer-lived isotopes
(3) the total incidence of pediatric thyroid cancer, which was the only medium term (1-2 years) health effect observed according to the various UN reports, could have been nearly completely avoided if the goddamned Soviets would have stopped feeding people contaminated milk.
(4) there is no observable long-term health effect from the radioactivity release itself, again according to the World Health Organization report. The only long-term effect was the mental health effect of having every damn fool in the western world telling the people around Chernobyl that they’re doomed.
Now, there’s a fifth point about this that I didn’t note them, but that it’s worth noting now: the estimates they’re using for the article are based on the average per day release for the first 10 days of Chernobyl, compared against the estimated per day release from Fukushima in the first two days.
We know from that very comment thread that exponential decay is a little tough for you, so I’ll simplify: if the average per day release from Chernobyl is the same, averaged across ten days, as the average per day release forf the first two days at Fukushima, then comparing apples to apples, Chernobyl was inevitably releasing much more, even of I-131 and Cs-137. So even in the limited, and as you note, incompetent sense of the New Scientist piece, it’s still simply wrong.
Next?
“silly point that it was inappropriate to compare exponential decay to the expected lifetime of a single iodine atom, because after all a single iodine atom could survive 1000 half-lives, just like someone could flip heads a thousand times in a row with no tails
if you finally admit that it *could*, my point is made, despite your blatant ignorance of quantum mechanics (which I tried to explain to you, but you won’t listen). maybe you would listen to some doctor of nuclear physics that we may or may not have in this thread?
”the inital statement is simply misstated: those numbers were for I-131 and Cs-137 alone…the total incidence of pediatric thyroid cancer, which was the only medium term (1-2 years) health effect observed according to the various UN reports”,
which is in turn caused by I-131. so you claim that “the only medium term…health effect observed “ of Chernobyl was caused by I-131, which was released at Fukushima at 73% of Chernobyl levels.
thank you for making the point for me again.
“there is no observable long-term health effect from the radioactivity release itself, again according to the World Health Organization report”
other, no less respectable, health organizations estimated it at 4000 cancers, mostly due to Cs-137. choosing WHO report just because it suits your agenda is a tad disingenuous, don’t you think?
“if the average per day release from Chernobyl is the same, averaged across ten days, as the average per day release for the first two days at Fukushima, then comparing apples to apples, Chernobyl was inevitably releasing much more, even of I-131 and Cs-137.”
are you somehow assuming that Fukushima release of iodine drastically decreased after the first 2 days? the voices in your head told you so?
Poul, we just have to follow Charlie’s advice, and rely on technical sources. Like the IEEE engineers. Who just posted this story:
Hmmmm … “”We don’t really know where the fuel is” … this engineer (and many other engineers like him) is talking like what Charlie calls “HYSTERICAL OLD WOMAN” … whose reports are damaging to Japan’s vital YAMATO GOKORO!
[John, you get one warning. Anything that misquotes me, or pulls a quote that screamingly out of context, in the future will be deleted.]
We all must applaud TEPCO’s executives’ three-step plan for sustaining yamata gokoro … (1) release very little information … (2) release very much radiation … and (3) send workers into the radiation zone … without radiation badges.
Ooops … now early reports are appearing that the “ethereal blue flash” of nuclear recriticality events is being seen.
Yeah, that’ll keep the yamata gokoro levels high, all right.
Meanwhile, the dry-eyed traders on the Tokyo stock exchange keep hammering down TEPCO stock prices.
Do yah reckon those traders are just a bunch of “hysterical old women” too?
—————————
URL: http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/japans-earthquake-and-nuclear-emergency
Ooops … now early reports are appearing that the “ethereal blue flash” of nuclear recriticality events is being seen.
Yeah, from the same guy who reported “fusion” taking place in the reactor.
Ethereal Blue Flash of Criticality.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
You’ve never seen the inside of a reactor or a Spent Fuel Pool, have you?
OMG, It’s Critical!!!!!!!
http://cache.boston.com/resize/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2009/05/03/1241407279_5282/539w.jpg
Fuel Rod fresh from the core.
Poul, your “could” is the same kind of stupid argument I’ve been hearing from undergrads who think they’re supersmart for 40 years. Yes, it “could” be — but at a probability that is just barely representable in the dynamic range of an IEEE double precision floating point number.
It is, literally, the same probability as throwing heads 1000 times in a row. Actually, more like 1003 times now.
[Update: or, for another comparison, it's about the same probability as winning the Powerball lottery 38 times.]
are you somehow assuming that Fukushima release of iodine drastically decreased after the first 2 days? the voices in your head told you so?
Boy, that whole exponential decay thing really gives you trouble, doesn’t it?
By the way, Poul, who was that other guy using your name who said the NS article was “ridiculous and incompetent”? You should listen to him.
(By the way, he happens to be using the same IP address as you too.)
Actually, that estimate of 4000 deaths comes from the WHO report, and makes the exact point that such a small increase in premature deaths is not observable — the total number of cancer deaths per year is about 200 per 100,000 population. Since the population of Europe is in the neighborhood of 800 million, the death rate per year from cancer is around 1.6 million.
In other words, they’re pointing out that the total increase in death rate per year is 0.008 percent. 133 deaths in 1.6 million. From 200/100,000 to 200/100,000 within the number of significant figures available.
Please God tell me you don’t have a technical degree.
”It is, literally, the same probability as throwing heads 1000 times in a row. Actually, more like 1003 times now.”
it doesn’t matter. the question was “what is the minimal number of I-131 atoms that could survive two decades”? note that question doesn’t mention probability. the answer is “one”.
[Poul, this argument is now officially boring me. You're trying to cover this up under some ludicrous notion that you were making a non-probabilistic statement about something you know and agree is a probability-based topic. Forget it. You don't get the 2 points back on your exam.]
in science, one has to be precise. if you’re sloppy with your questions, you will get the answer you don’t expect, and will have to resort to stupid retorts about stupid undergraduates.
”
are you somehow assuming that Fukushima release of iodine drastically decreased after the first 2 days? the voices in your head told you so?
Boy, that whole exponential decay thing really gives you trouble, doesn’t it?”
in other words, you’re starting to realize you made another stupid claim, and decided not to elaborate on how you made your conclusion… that’s good, that’s good.
[No, I'm pointing out that you're persisting in the same error. Here's your hint: you have two exponential decays, let's say C and F. They both have the same distribution parameter lambda=192 hours. You know that the average value over 249 hours for C is some value X. You know that the average value for F over 48 hours is also X. Express as an inequality the relationship between the definite integral of C from 0 to 48, versus the definite integral of F over that same interval.
Extra credit: We know that X is approximately 1e17. Evaluate the definite integral defined.]
”who was that other guy using your name who said the NS article was “ridiculous and incompetent”? ”
that was me. as I demonstrated, your response is also ridiculous and incompetent, although to a lesser degree. sure you must understand that one does not preclude another, right?
this gets tiresome…
[Door's over there. Do let it hit you in the ass, as long as it's on the way out.]
last attempt of reasoning: Cs-137 has half life of 30 years. we are talking about days. but at least you know the word “integral”, so you have it going for you.
and finally, no, it is not a probability-based topic unless you specify the probability. you didn’t. our mutual online friend wormme, who, unlike you, is actually qualified to discuss these issues, and from whom you borrowed the question, accepted it and moved on. you should take an example.