Panic: That’s What they Want – OR – OMG!!! No Radiation!

This article seems designed to generate “PANIC,” so at least their being honest. Nuclear reactor PANIC: Russia shuts down three reactors in a WEEK following malfunction.

You could also say, that nothing happened and no radiation was released. But that won’t generate “PANIC!”

A short circuit cause 3 reactors to trip and shut down. In other words, the safety protocols worked exactly as intended.

The statement read: “The radiation level at the station and adjacent territory remains unchanged and is in line with natural background levels.” According to a source the reactors should be back up and running again within a day

But they use this non-event as an excuse to go on at length about Chernobyl, because that is all reporters know about nuclear power. (The last time they took a science class was in high school, and they got a C.) That the reactors in question where built in the 21st Century, to modern design, is beside the point. They just want PANIC! I’m sure they’ll get it.

Fear Killed After Fukushima Daiichi. Radiation, Not So Much

Fear. Fear of radiation. Fear of Math – because understanding the science requires a fair bit of calculus. These things killed after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011. Not radiation. When Radiation Isn’t the Real Risk – The New York Times

No one has died from radiation associated with Fukushima Daiichi. Say that again. NO ONE has died.

The workers in the plant AFTER the disaster will not develop cancers in measurable difference from the background rate. (Some people develop cancer, even if they have never worked in nuclear power.)

1600 people died as a result of the panic. And the stress it induced. Panic on the part of the government. On the part of the people. And on the part of Americans and Europeans. Because it is easier to cave into fear than convince you that you don’t know squat about radiation. But when politicians cave in to the “Do something!” demands, they often do the wrong thing.

“The government basically panicked,” said Dr. Mohan Doss, a medical physicist who spoke at the Tokyo meeting, when I called him at his office at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “When you evacuate a hospital intensive care unit, you cannot take patients to a high school and expect them to survive.”

Among other victims were residents of nursing homes. And there were the suicides. “It was the fear of radiation that ended up killing people,” he said.

For the most part the excess radiation in the evacuation zone is very low. There are a few hot spots, but they are easily identified. The excess radiation for the most part amounts to a dose of 4 milisieverts per year (4mSv/yr). A chest CT scan will give you about 7mSv. Flight crews on the New York to Tokyo route get about 9 mSv/yr. Certain parts of India and Iran have a natural background radiation of about 50 mSv/yr. Should we evacuate those regions? Some parts of Europe also have a high natural background radiation dose. (The minimum dose known to cause cancer is 100 mSv.)

This isn’t new information of course. I blogged about the following article in 2012 on the anniversary of the disaster. Fukushima’s Refugees Are Victims Of Irrational Fear, Not Radiation – Forbes

OMG!!! Radiation!!! – or – The Next Crazy Train Is Leaving the Station

It seems like the anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011 is always the cause for freaking out about radiation. Fukushima radiation has reached North American shores.

At least these folks include some actual data. Most journalists when faced with actual numbers that aren’t the number of drinks they had on Friday, resort to meaningless measures – like “one tenth the size of a human hair.” In this case I kept seeing “1000 times lower than the dose allowed by Canada in drinking water.” Which is fine if you trust Canadian authorities to set reasonable standards.

Still, these guys at least try not generate panic.

“Even if the levels were twice as high, you could still swim in the ocean for six hours every day for a year and receive a dose more than a thousand times less than a single dental X-ray,” Buesseler said. “While that’s not zero, that’s a very low risk.”

They have to give a tip of the hat to the Linear No Threshold hypothesis of radiation exposure, but that isn’t on the journalists so much, because that is how a lot of the policies are written. Even though we know that LNT is so much bovine scatology.

And while they do give the measurements – “1.5 becquerels per cubic meter (Bq/m3) of cesium-134, the Fukushima fingerprint, and 5 Bq/m3 of cesium-137” – they neglect to give any indication of what a Becquerel is (aside from a “basic unit of radioactivity”) or what the standards are.

A Becquerel is defined as one radioactive decay per second. And so one decay per second per unit of measure, which is cubic meters in this case.

Of course not all radiation is created equal, and so this doesn’t tell the whole story, but at least they are trying. Though I suppose going into the energy in the various types of ionizing radiation and the different effects they have is beyond the scope of something like this article. Still it would have been nice to see the dose listed in Sieverts (or millisieverts more likely) since that is a better measure of deleterious effects.

We can detect stupidly small amounts of radiation. And radiation isn’t all the result of nuclear testing and nuclear power. Radiation is everywhere; it rains down on us from outer-space and it comes out of the rocks in the earth. You can’t get away from it. So don’t Freak Out.

I suppose we can in part blame this on the Sendai conference on disaster preparedness and recovery that just finished. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to this, but the UN didn’t get what they wanted – which is usually more power and money.

Some additional posts on the topic:
TFS Magnum – Archives: The Banana Equivalent Dose, or Your Food is (always has been) Radioactive.

Once Again the Radiation Scare Rears Its Stupid Head | 357 Magnum.

Things Are Goin’ Great! | 357 Magnum.

Once Again the Radiation Scare Rears Its Stupid Head

It has been about a month since the 3rd anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the resulting Tsunami that devastated that part of the country, and damaged the Fukushima-Daiichi power plant. And true to form the folks who don’t understand radiation are screaming about government coverups. You see the government of Japan has recently reopened some of the areas that were evacuated after the disaster. And then it comes to light that the doses from residual radiation in the effected area are in the range of 1 millisievert per year. After reviewing several sources in the media, the best number I can find is “more than 1 millisievert per year, which for a story about a scientific subject is really pretty poor. (Is it 1.000001 mSv/a or a million? Both are more than 1. My guess is that it’s closer to the former.)

In the US, normal radiation exposure is between 4 and 6 millisieverts (mSv) per year. (Depends on who is counting and what is considered…) If you move to the Colorado plateau, you will receive more radiation than a low-lander, about .4 to .5 mSv per year due to the fact that there is less atmosphere protecting you on the plateau, than on the beach. Take a job as a flight attendant, you will get an additional 1.5 to 1.7 mSv per year. More if you specialize in long, international flights. If you live in a stone or brick or cement dwelling you will get more than someone living in a wood dwelling. If you work in a government building or a bank surrounded by lots of fancy marble or granite, you will have a higher exposure. (It is small, relax – I live in a brick dwelling.)

Now if you live in other parts of the world, the exposure from natural background radiation can be more or less. In some places much more. (Some places in Europe, the Middle East and the Indian-subcontinent can see exposures from background radiation which approach 10 times what they are on average in the US)

Now can you see why the 1 millisievert per year number in the Fukushima exclusion zone is a none-issue?

The smallest dose positively known to cause an increase risk in cancer: 100 millisieverts per year.

The insanity about radiation (there is even a new Godzilla movie with which to celebrate it!) revolves around the “Linear no-threshold dose hypothesis” of managing radiation. It was adopted by the so-called international community in the 1950s. The only problem with it is that it has no basis in the science. Radiation, like so many things in life, is a question of degree, not of kind. “Jumping off a chair is no big deal. Jumping of a cliff can be a problem.” Both are about jumping and falling. Do you see the difference?

You cannot escape from radiation. It rains down on us from outer space. It is in the food you eat. It is in you. It is no cause for alarm.

Sure, radiation can cause problems, but if you assume that because we can measure it, it is a problem you are kidding yourself. We can measure stupidly small amounts of radiation. Doubt it? Take a look at this diagram. As for you and your food, consider the Banana Equivalent Dose. (Don’t stop eating bananas. I had one yesterday, and half of one with my breakfast today. They are a good source of potassium – which is why they are radioactive.)

I was going to file this under Media Bias, but it isn’t so much that they are biased, they are just completely stupid, and running like the sheep they are.