And now, Fukushima (Journal of Radiological Protection)

A good summary - including some bit I haven't seen reported.



Note - I believe that the Journal allows free access to the latest issue for a short period of time (30 days?).

But it's used correctly in this case.

I have noticed that you get pretty exorcised over some pretty inconsequential happenings (no... no including fukushima in that category). Perhaps you're more sensitive to seeing the word because you don't recognize trivial events as being trivial?

Baggins is peddling a story about the 250mSv threshold, there must be some bad Fukushima radiation stories about to come out "officially".

that FBaggins uses a lot?

You should have no trouble finding a couple examples then, right?

Don't worry... I won't hold my breath.

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED, ALL:

http://counterpunch.org/nader04272011.html

April 27, 2011

Concealing the Consequences

Chernobyl 25 Years Later

By RALPH NADER

The disaster at Chernobyl's reactor on April 26, 1986 continues to expose humans, flora and fauna to radioactive lethality especially in, but not restricted to, Ukraine and Belarus. Western countries continue to reflect an under-estimation of casualties by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

IAEA's figures top off at 4000 fatalities since 1986 that is highly questionable given IAEA's conflict of interest between its role of promoting nuclear power and monitoring its safety. An agreement between the IAEA and the World Health Organization (WHO) provides for WHO's deference to IAEA's casualty figures which has compromised WHO's priority of advancing health in the world. The United Nations naturally adopts the IAEA figures and the West's nuclear regulatory agencies, similarly committed to promotional functions, ditto these under-estimations.

The position that the level of mortality and morbidity from Chernobyl over the past quarter century is much larger comes from a compendious of 5000 scientific studies, mostly in the Slavic languages edited by Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko titled Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. Dr. Yablokov, a biologist, is a member of the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences. The translated edition was published under the auspices of the New York Academy of Sciences...

MORE AT LINK <...>

The ability of corporate science and its regulatory apologists to inflict sanctions on dissenters is legion. There is a long history of censorship leading to self-censorship by those who otherwise might have applied Alfred North Whitehead's characterization of science as "keeping open options for revision" to the ideology of atomic power.

I call for an open rigorous public scientific-medical debate on the findings and casualty estimates of the Yablokov report, to determine its usefulness for necessary programs of compensation, quarantine, accelerated protective entombment of the still dangerous reactor, and expanded studies of the past and continuing ravages issuing from this catastrophe and its recycling of radioactivity through the soil, air, water and food of the exposed regions. Such a public review is what the science adviser to the President and the National Academy of Sciences should have done already and should do now. The continuing expansion of the Fukushima disaster in Japan provides additional urgency for this open scientific review.

-----------------------

http://www.amazon.com/Chernobyl-Consequences-Catastrophe-Environment-ebook/dp/B004X8DOQC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1303869671&sr=8-2

$2.99
Kindle edition - April 19, 2011

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment

Alexey Yablokov (Author), Vassily Nesterenko (Author), Alexey Nesterenko (Author), Janette Sherman-Nevinger (Editor), Dmitry Grodzinsky (Foreword)

------------------------

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/85736.html

OPINION: How to minimize consequences of the Fukushima catastrophe

By Alexey V. Yablokov
MOSCOW, April 15, Kyodo

The analysis of the health impact of radioactive land contamination by the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, made by Professor Chris Busby (the European Committee of Radiation Risk) based on official Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology data, has shown that over the next 50 years it would be possible to have around 400,000 additional cancer patients within a 200-kilometer radius of the plant.

This number can be lower and can be even higher, depending on strategies to minimize the consequences. Underestimation is more dangerous for the people and for the country than overestimation.

Based on Chernobyl experiences, it is necessary to understand that it may be impossible to quickly get back to life before the catastrophe and to accept the post-Fukushima realities as soon as possible...

MORE AT LINK <...>

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

More from the Nader op-ed (above):

"...At a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on March 25, 2011, attended by C-SPAN, CNN and independent media, but not the mainstream media, Dr. Yablokov summarized these studies and estimated the (Chernobyl) death toll over nearly twenty five years at about one million and mounting. Because of the mainstream media, including the major newspapers, blackout on the Yablokov report since its translated edition came out in 2009, I asked Dr. Yablokov this question at the news conference: "Dr. Yablokov, you are a distinguished scientist in your country, as reflected in your membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences, what has been the response to your report by corporate scientists, regulatory agency scientists and academic scientists in the West? Did they openly agree in whole or in part or did they disagree in whole or in part or were they just silent?"

Academician Yablokov replied that the compilation of these many reports has been met with silence. He added that science means critical engagement with the data and implied that silence was not an appropriate response from the scientific community.

Silence, of course, is not without its purpose. For to engage, whether to rebut, doubt or affirm, would give visibility to this compendium of scientific studies that upsets the fantasy modeling by the nuclear industry and its apologists regarding the worse case scenario damage of a level 7 or worse meltdown. It would require, for example, more epidemiological studies ranging into Western Europe, such as the current review of 330 hill farms in Wales. It would insistently invite more studies of the current health and casualty data involving the 800,000 liquidators—workers passing through since 1986 who have been exposed in and around the continuing emergency efforts at the very hot disabled Chernobyl reactor. And much more.

Public silence has not excluded a sub silentio oral campaign to delegitimize the Yablokov compendium. A quiet grapevine of general dismissals—unavailable for public comment or rebuttal—has cooled members of the press and other potential disseminators of its contents, including the National Academy of Sciences, the science advisers to the President and any other thinking scientists who decide that there isn't enough time or invulnerability to justify getting into a contentious interaction over the Yablokov report..."

...also see the cost in human terms by published personal accounts:

Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich (Author), Keith Gessen (Translator)

Chernobyl Heart by Adi Roche available from AMAZON UK.

Chenobyl: Forbidden Truth by Alla Yaroshinskaya (Author), Michell Kahn (Translator), Michele Kahn (Translator), Julia Sallabank (Translator), David R. Marples (Introduction), John Gofman (Foreword)
(NOTE: Yaroshinskaya and Gofman both won the Right Livelihood Award - alternate Nobel Prize - in 1992)
From a customer at AMAZON:
"Chernobyl: The Forbidden Truth is about the inadequate care of the victims of Chernobyl, the inadequate immediate response to the accident, the inadequate records-keeping of the investigaters, and the continuing cost in human and animal suffering caused by this tragedy. Dr. Gofman's foreward is an important addition that ties the book's litany of problems together with a description of what should be done instead regarding investigating the exact size of the calamity. Millions of Curies of various radioactive substances were released (some long-lived, some not so long-lived), but no one really knows where it all went and who is absorbing a dose right now. This is, however, a chronic problem with nuclear activities around the world, and not limited to Chernobyl.

In particular, Gofman's NINE ESSENTIAL RULES OF INQUIRY should be required reading for everyone involved in such research. It outlines important requirements for all such testing. Gofman is a Professor Emeritus of Medical Physics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a co-discoverer of Uranium-233 and isolated the world's first "working quantities" of plutonium at Robert Oppenhiemer's personal request for the Manhattan Project during WWII. Since that service to America he has continued to research radiation and its effect on human health and is referred to as "brilliant" by even his adversaries.

His comments belong not only in the foreward of this important book, but they also belong pasted to the desks of every nuclear scientist who ever tried to answer the question of just how low a level of radiation is actually "safe".

Perhaps if/when they find an answer to that question Gofman's comments will no longer apply, but that day appears to be far off, when our best "research event" ever in the field of human radiation experiments (at least, the best "research event" since Hiroshima and Nagasaki) is as poorly handled as it was -- and is -- being handled, as is made clear! in Alla Yaroshinskaya's monumental book."

http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment

Alexey Yablokov (Author), Vassily Nesterenko (Author), Alexey Nesterenko (Author), Janette Sherman-Nevinger (Editor), Dmitry Grodzinsky (Foreword)


Link from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the_Catastrophe_for_People_and_the_Environment



Thank you poster #5 for the information!

A good summary here:

http://wonkythinking.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Charles-review.pdf

In the opinion of this reviewer, the wide range of estimates that can be found in the scientific literature is mainly due to different estimates of population dose, the use of different radiation risk figures and different interpretations of epidemiological data ( particularly the use of different control groups). Published estimates of excess deaths also frequently differ in terms of which countries and time periods they refer to. This often makes meaningful comparisons difficult or impossible although it often remains clear that there is a large disparity between different authors. With such a range of views, an already vast and increasing literature, and claims that there has been coercion on an international scale, how can professional scientists—such as most readers of this review—arrive at an informed opinion on the radiation-related adverse health effects from the Chernobyl accident? The answer is with great difficulty! I personally find it necessary to critically read at least selected contributions from the whole spectrum of views. For that purpose this book covers the high cancer mortality tail of the distribution of predictions of health effects from Chernobyl.

The one thing that both the Chernobyl Forum and the Greenpeace reports agree on is the fact that trying to estimate the health consequences from Chernobyl is extremely uncertain and may not, in fact, be possible. The Chernobyl Forum states, ‘It is impossible to assess reliably, with any precision, numbers of fatal cancers caused by radiation exposure due to the Chernobyl accident—or indeed the impact of the stress and anxiety induced by the accident and the response to it. Small differences in the assumptions concerning radiation risks can lead to large differences in the predicted health consequences, which are therefore highly uncertain’. Greenpeace notes, ‘It is widely acknowledged that neither the available data nor current epidemiological methodology allows holistic and robust estimations of the death toll caused by the Chernobyl accident’. This is an important point. During my 40 year carer in radiation protection I have observed fierce arguments (mainly related to differences of opinion on the magnitude of radiation risks) which have turned out in the fullness of time to be merely reflections of the large uncertainties inherent in the data. In recent years it has become an integral part of the deliberations of international organisations such as the ICRP to consider the impact of uncertainties in their evaluations.


Note that the bolded portions are not the opinion of the review, but admissions by Greenpeace and the Chernobyl Forum writers.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sa=X&ei=o-HfTaWxIo_egQeu_-HUCg&ved=0CBkQvwUoAQ&q=belarus+20%25+of+children+healthy&spell=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=de26a2d07a1966b3&biw=1362&bih=940
...according to official government studies.


*****

This is simple and informative:

CHERNOBYL: THE FORBIDDEN TRUTH
by Alla Yroshinskaya

FOREWORD
by Professor John Gofman

Nine essential rules of inquiry

Adherence to the following rules is essential for conducting scientifically credible studies of Chernobyl's radiation consequences short or long term. Specifically for the evaluation of a "Chernobyl', we are talking about comparing the fates of exposed and non-exposed groups of persons.

FIRST RULE: Comparable groups.
SECOND RULE: A real difference in dose.
THIRD RULE: A sufficiently big difference in dose.
FOURTH RULE: Careful reconstruction of dose.
FIFTH RULE: 'Blinding' of dose analysts.
SIXTH RULE: 'Blinding' of diagnostic analysts.
SEVENTH RULE: No change of input after any results are known.
EIGHTH RULE: No excessive subdivision of data.
NINTH RULE: No prejudgements.

Violation of the Rules of Research

The Rules of Research have ben massively violated in essentially all epidemiological studies ofhealth effects of radiation. Many, many studies in the literature fail to meet most of the Rules. The Hiroshima-Nagasaki studies have been justifiably criticized on these grounds, and, with possible rare exceptions, studies thus far into the effects of the CHernobyl accident have failed to meet the Rules...


*****

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gofman

John William Gofman (September 21, 1918 - August 15, 2007) was an American scientist and advocate. He was Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology at University of California at Berkeley. Some of his early work was on the Manhattan Project, and he shares patents on the fissionability of uranium-233 as well as on early processes for separating plutonium from fission products. Dr. Gofman later worked in medicine and led the team that discovered and characterized lipoproteins in the causation of heart disease. In 1963, he established the Biomedical Research Division for the Livermore National Laboratory, where he was on the cutting edge of research into the connection between chromosomal abnormalities and cancer. Later in life, he took on a role as an advocate warning of dangers involved with nuclear power (see Nuclear power debate). From 1971 onward, he was the Chairman of the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility. He also described himself a libertarian and spoke at several events sponsored by the Students for a Libertarian Society in 1979 and 1980. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for his work on the effects of the Chernobyl disaster's low-level radiation exposure on the population.<1> John Gofman died of heart failure on August 15, 2007 in his home in San Francisco.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7366842n&tag=mncol

Radiation threatens future of Fukushima farms

The threat of radiation contamination is causing skepticism about the safety of food produced in Japan. And, as Lucy Craft reports, Fukushima farmers are concerned for their future.

---------------------------

(I only caught the end of the televised segment and can't watch the video online at the moment, but words like unfathomable, surreal and HEARTBREAKING come to mind.)

PART 1:

http://www.thailandoutlook.tv/tan/ViewData.aspx?DataID=1043397

Dying for TEPCO
By Paul Jobin
UPDATE : 4 May 2011
While Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) experiences difficulties in recruiting workers willing to go to Fukushima to clean up the damaged reactors, the World Health Organization (WHO) is planning to conduct an epidemiological survey on the catastrophe.

This is the first of two reports offering a worker-centered analysis of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Paul Jobin is director, French Center for Research on Contemporary China, CEFC, Taipei Office, and Associate Professor, University of Paris Diderot.

(Republished with permission from Japan Focus.)


PART2:

http://www.truthout.org/work-fukushima-you...-die/1302159600
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/ME05Dh01.html

"To Work at Fukushima, You Have to Be Ready to Die"
Sunday 17 April 2011
by Anne Roy, l'Humanite

This interview with Paul Jobin concludes a two-part account of the use of contract workers in the Japanese nuclear power industry and particularly at the Fukushima power plant largely destroyed by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
(Part 1: Dying for TEPCO, Asia Times Online, May 04, 2011.)

From truthout comments:

Sun, 2011-04-17 22:58
"If you are interested only in nuclear radiation in the abstract, then consult a physicist. If you are interested in how a nuclear power plant operates, then consult a nuclear engineer. If you are interested in how radiation affects humans, then consult a radiologist. But if you want to know what actually happens when people operate a nuclear power plant, and especially when something goes wrong, in the context of a society with complex social, legal, and economic inter-relations, it's not so bad to hear from a sociologist. I found the article very informative."


*****

http://enenews.com/huge-outcry-erupting-govt-is-leaving-fukushima-to-suffer-and-perish-impossible-to-evacuate-fukushima-city-home-to-300000
Huge Outcry Erupting: Gov’t is leaving Fukushima to suffer and perish — Impossible to evacuate Fukushima City, home to 300,000
May 26th, 2011 at 02:40 AM

*****

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/world/asia/26japan.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Angry Parents in Japan Confront Government Over Radiation Levels
By HIROKO TABUCHI
Published: May 25, 2011

FUKUSHIMA CITY, Japan — The accusations flew on Wednesday at the local school board meeting, packed with parents worried and angry about radiation levels in this city at the heart of Japan’s nuclear crisis...

> But if you want to know what actually happens when people operate
> a nuclear power plant, and especially when something goes wrong,
> in the context of a society with complex social, legal, and economic
> inter-relations, it's not so bad to hear from a sociologist.

... a "sociologist" would have about as much accuracy in his/her speculation
as a random stranger down the pub ...

http://www.thailandoutlook.tv/tan/ViewData.aspx?DataID=1043397

EXCERPT:
Before the catastrophe ...
According to data published by NISA, in 2009, there were 1,108 regular employees (seisha'in at Fukushima NP1. These were TEPCO employees, but may also include some employees from General Electric or Toshiba, Hitachi and Mitsubishi. But the vast majority of those working at Fukushima 1 were 9,195 contract laborers (hiseisha'in).

These contract employees or temporary workers were provided by subcontracting companies: they range from rank and file workers who carry out the dirtiest and most dangerous tasks - the nuclear gypsies described in Horie Kunio's 1979 book Nuclear Gypsy and Higuchi Kenji's photographic reports - to highly qualified technicians who supervise maintenance operations...

Why subcontracting?
As early as the mid-1970s, the use of subcontracting labor in the nuclear industry was well established in Japan. In France, this trend would develop after 1988, reaching a rate of 80% by 1992. According to NISA's data, in 2009, Japan's nuclear industry recruited more than 80,000 contract workers against 10,000 regular employees. The initial goal was not necessarily to hide the collective dose, but to limit labor costs. But the fact is that whether in France or Japan, the nuclear industry nurtures a heavy culture of secrecy concerning the number of irradiated workers.

As far as we can know, based on the figures published by the Ministry of Health and Labor, before Fukushima's catastrophe, only nine former workers received compensation for an occupational cancer linked to their intervention in nuclear plants. <5> This number is probably very far from the reality of the victims, given the number of workers exposed and the numerous opacities of that system beginning with the fact that TEPCO and other electric power companies have always refused to disclose the list of their subcontractors...

The objective of epidemiological surveys
...One problem is that the survey only calculates mortality ratios, ignoring people who might have cancer but are still alive at the time of the survey. Such obvious methodological bias is frequent in this sort of surveys. In France and other countries, another bias is the tendency to ignore contract workers, though they receive the highest cumulative radioactive doses. Therefore, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the very goal of these epidemiological surveys is to minimize the risks of nuclear radiation and encourage the nuclear industry's business as usual.

The same logic has prevailed at the WHO and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in their evaluation of Chernobyl's legacy. Compared to a mere 4,000 in the "definitive" United Nations report published in 2005, <6> the report published in November 2009 by the New York Academy of Sciences (based on more than 5,000 articles translated from Belorussian, Ukrainian and Russian) evaluated the total number of victims 985,000. <7> Of the 830,000 liquidators mobilized at Chernobyl, the Academy of Sciences report estimated that at least 112,000 had already died, compared to some 50 in the UN report.

While the conclusions of the two reports remain contested, even Nakajima Hiroshi, a former WHO director, has acknowledged that the control of WHO by IAEA on nuclear issues was problematic. <8> Therefore we can anticipate that the survey WHO is planning to conduct on Fukushima may provide the same anodyne conclusions.
Notes
1. In the 1980-90s, Fujita Yuko, then professor of physics at Keio University, distributed leaflets warning day laborers not to accept these dangerous jobs. See Higuchi Kenji's documentary in Kamagasaki.
2. Link.
3. On the decommissioning of nuclear plants, see NHK's recent documentary.
4. See the reaction of the chairman of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations to this decision, and the protest petition online.
5. For more details, see the reports of the Citizen Nuclear Information Center's homepage, mainly written by Watanabe Mikiko, who has provided constant follow up and support for these workers (use the following keywords: workers, worker exposure, Nagao Mitsuaki, Kiyuna Tadashi, Umeda Ryusuke, Shimahashi Nobuyuki.).
6. Link.
7. For a presentation of this survey, see this link. Alexey V. Yablokov (Center for Russian Environmental Policy, Moscow, Russia), Vassily B. Nesterenko, and Alexey V. Nesterenko (Institute of Radiation Safety, Minsk, Belarus). Consulting Editor Janette D. Sherman-Nevinger, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 2009).
8. See the following reports (French only) on the protests in Switzerland about the control of WHO by AIEA on nuclear issues: 1, 2.