Description:
The site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan remains a post-apocalyptic landscape of abandoned towns, frozen in time. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien got a rare tour inside the plant, where three nuclear reactors melted down after the earthquake and tsunami in 2011, to learn more about the long-term solutions for stemming the radioactive contamination.
Out here in the land of fruits and nuts, we’ve got quite a contingent of the “my body is my temple” crowd. Lots of worry about glow-in-the-dark seafood. So in addition to the depletion woes facing our fishermen, now they have to face off with skeptical moms who want their little Ariadne and Bunny to only face the most pristine foodstuffs on their plate.
Which leads to crummy sales.
So one enterprising fisherman/entrepreneur took it upon himself to do some private testing of our salmon stock.
http://nwpr.org/post/scientists-say-stop-worrying-about-fukushima-radioactivity-west-coast-fish
It turns out that Bobby McFerrin was right. Don’t worry, be happy. For some reason, that’s getting to a harder sell these days.
Bon Apetit!
I think most of the radiation that’s on the left coast beaches is just thorium related (black sand and such) that’s been washed down streams from inland where radiation rich geology is present and naturally eroding. Some of that stuff along the beach is like 4x background.
Oregon is pretty luck in that your freshwater fish don’t have as much mercury as the average stream fish, according to this thing:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2009/5109/pdf/sir20095109.pdf
In California, they’re getting hysterical about it. Meanwhile, in Brazil the thorium-rich monazite sand beaches of Guarapari are touted for their healthfulness. It’s called “the health city”.
There’s about 4 billion tons of dissolved uranium in the world’s oceans. It decays the same way it does in solid form. The uranium daughter isotopes make ocean water a little bit radioactive (about 0.033 Bq/liter). Compared to that, the 0.9 Bq/ton (0.0009 Bq/liter) of Cs-134 detected off California is nothing… and the 11 Bq/l of K-40 swamps both of them.
A sixty fish sample. Seriously. Sixty fish. Everything is A OK. I am glad it was so exhaustive and comprehensive and scientific. It probably is OK. Its just that that effort is never going to prove anything.
Does this dismissive attitude to evidence mean you are going to stop talking about the 15-fish sample from 2011? Particularly since even those low levels cannot recur, due to dispersion of that initial concentration of contamination?
Despite your flippant disrespect, the people doing the sampling are scientists. The values are trustworthy. The results aren’t scary enough for your agenda – I get that – but they are real.
Sixty fish is a statistically insignificant sample. If you feel otherwise, show some math, be my guest. Start by showing us the population of bluefin tuna in the North Pacific. I never said the values were not trustworthy. I said not much of statistical value could be implied from them.
You’re making the claim – you show the math.
Next you’ll be claiming that every tuna in the Pacific needs to be tested before you stop bad-mouthing the people who are try to help inform the debate.
More. “This summer, researchers plan to repeat the study using a larger sample size to determine just how radioactivity may affect tuna populations.”
The Southern California coast may have had the lowest percentage of locations with high contamination of mercury, but a new study has recently found elevated levels of radioactivity in blue fin tuna off the coast of San Diego. This radiation is directly linked to the nuclear power plant disaster in Japan following the March 2011 earthquake. Blue fin tuna are a highly migratory fish traveling across the Pacific Ocean from Japan all the way to Southern California, but researchers were shocked to learn the fish were not able to flush out all of the contamination from their system during their journey across the ocean.
http://fishbio.com/field-notes/angling/are-your-fish-safe-to-eat
Who is “bad-mouthing the people who are try to help inform the debate”?
More. If you read the original article, it says,
“The real test of how radioactivity affects tuna populations comes this summer when researchers planned to repeat the study with a larger number of samples. Bluefin tuna that journeyed last year were exposed to radiation for about a month. The upcoming travelers have been swimming in radioactive waters for a longer period. How this will affect concentrations of contamination remains to be seen.
One of the studies’ authors told the BBC:
The fish that will be arriving around now, and in the coming months, to California waters may be carrying considerably more radioactivity and if so they may possibly be a public health hazard.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/05/absolutely-every-one-of-the-15-bluefin-tuna-tested-in-california-waters-contaminated-with-fukushima-radiation.html
Pacific tuna biomass is estimated at 40,000 metric tons. A pacific bluefin tuna may weigh about 130 pounds at maturity, except for the linkers I caught. So 60 fish are hardly a representative sample.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_bluefin_tuna
http://tagagiant.org/policy/pacific/pacific-stocks
Now why couldn’t you do that? There is nothing scary about doing a little research.
In other news, Japan current administration has decided to no longer phase out nuclear power, but are still committed to “reducing [Japan’s] reliance on nuclear power.”
Please see:
Yes. And they decided to take over a lot of TEPCOs debt, because it was quickly being buried in it, due to the high and unending costs of the Fukushima cleanup. And they are getting more actively involved due to criticism of the cleanup. The current admin is trying to walk a fine line between public opinion and the economics of the disasters, trying to make some use of money sunk into existing reactors, but nuclear was never a good idea in earthquake, and tsunami prone Japan. There is a battle going on there and it will go on for a long time.
Large Pacific fish travel freely. A tuna caught in one part of the Pacific, could have spent time in the waters of Japan. We know fish in the waters near Japan have increased contamination. How do you know what the condition of the fish you eat are? Is that fish tested? No. Fish are sampled, but not all fish sold are tested. Is the risk low? Probably. It would be nice to know, not just guess. Testing beaches with Geiger counters is not useful. Its not external radiation that matters. Its how much radionuclides you ingest, by eating ocean foods, and how much contamination they have. The risk is that they may have increased contamination due to bioaccumulation. No one knows the exact risk, but no level of radiation is safe. Go over to Ian Fairlie site referenced by Arnie Gunersen for info on low level radiation. The risks are low, but it would be nice to know what they are, so people could make informed decisions.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/05/absolutely-every-one-of-the-15-bluefin-tuna-tested-in-california-waters-contaminated-with-fukushima-radiation.html
http://fairewinds.org/media/fairewinds-videos/west-coast-radiation-exposure-risks
I don’t like to make light of what happened at Fukushima, because I do in fact consider it a disaster. But I also get pretty frustrated with the alarmism of the anti-nuke folks, especially when they start “enhancing” the facts.
Probably most of you saw this report (or a variation of it) in mid-December:
Fukushima Radiation Damages Thyroid Glands Of California Babies – See more at: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/12/16/fukushima-fallout-damages-thyroid-glands-of-california-babies/#sthash.q46bha38.dpuf
It turned out to be a total fraud. The authors of the “report” played the same game as the AGW deniers – they cherry picked a tiny subset of data to get the results they wanted. They found a few small cities in the Pacific Northwest where the number of newborns had a higher than average number of thyroid problems during a 3-week period. But as soon as you expanded the survey to a few larger cities in the area, or extended the time period beyond 3 weeks, the results actually showed a slightly lower than average number of thyroid problems.
Christopher, I followed your link – this was probably the most important sentence to sum up the story:
“Tissue samples taken from 15 bluefin caught in August, five months after the meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, all contained reactor byproducts cesium-134 and cesium-137 at levels that produced radiation about 3% higher than natural background sources”
Well OK, it’s interesting, but 3% higher than natural background levels doesn’t really sound too alarming. When it comes to eating tuna, I’d actually be much more worried about the high levels of mercury rather than Fukushima-derived cesium contamination. Fact is, seawater naturally contains uranium and thorium, though at very low levels. While I wouldn’t recommend sprinkling radioactive metals on your breakfast cereal, I also don’t think it’s worthy of the paranoia that the anti-nuke enthusiasts are working hard to generate.
Mercury is indeed a bigger problem than radioactivity in fish, but we need to start worrying about all the plastic that is forming a “soup” of small particles out there in the Pacific Gyre and is being passed up the food chain. Plastics haven’t been around all that long, but they are just another ticking time bomb in man’s plan to destroy the biosphere.
PS If you’re worried about “radiation”, don’t spend too much time at high altitudes.
As it is, each adult bigeye tuna contains enough mercury from coal powerstations and gold mining to make over 100 compact fluorescent lamps.
1 CFL contains about 1mg mercury.
Mean concentration of mercury in bigeye tuna:
0.689 ppm = 0.689 mg/kg
That’s 1mg Hg in 1.45 kg meat
So in a 180kg fish, that is 180/1.45 = 124 CFLs worth of Hg.
Sharks and swordfish contain even more – about 1mg per kilo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish
“Mad as a hatter” needs bringing up to date to “Mad as a sushi lover”
And don’t forget the Dancing Cats of Minamata.
Indeed… I was beginning to worry about you, until I googled it and found this:
One more thing the Japanese have to worry about again, now that they’re burning cinnabar-laced coal to generate electricity.
I wouldn’t worry too much about high altitudes. External whole body radiation is relatively innocuous compared to inhaling or ingesting radionuclides. Radiation energy falls inverse square law with distance. An ingested radionuclide has hundreds of times more effect and many like strontium, stay a lifetime. Worse if the nuclide lodges near vulnerable areas where cell division uncovers DNA. That’s why a walk on the beach or a hike in Colorado is relatively innocuous, but breathing radon is anything but.
How can we make informed decisions about the health effects of ionizing radiation? First you have to know which radionuclides and how toxic. The USFDA website says they determine levels by assuming amounts of substances consumed by the average person. The website gives a fairly broad vision of the US testing.
http://www.fda.gov/newsevents/publichealthfocus/ucm247403.htm
Unfortunately, FDA says:
“FDA has set Derived Intervention Levels for foods prepared for consumption. These levels do not define a safe or unsafe level of exposure, but instead a level at which protective measures would be recommended to ensure that no one receives a significant dose.”
via FDA Public Health Focus > Radiation Safety.”
The EPA sets much lower levels.
“The EPA’s MCL Goal, by contrast, is “the level of a contaminant in drinking water below which there is no known or expected risk to health.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2011/04/14/why-does-fda-tolerate-more-radiation-than-epa/
I don’t really sense an anti-nuke sentiment coming from Forbes.
There’s a parable I saw (YouTube, I think) of the four cookies, one a gamma-emitter, one a neutron-emitter, one an alpha-emitter, and one a beta-emitter. You have to eat one, carry one, pocket one and throw one away. Which one gets what treatment?
The gamma-emitter gives you about the same dose no matter where it is, so you eat it.
Alpha particles are stopped by dead skin, so carry the alpha-emitter in your hand.
Beta particles are stopped by paper, so you carry that one in your pocket.
Neutrons cause transmutations and neutron-capture gammas in atoms quite distant, so you throw that one away.
The FDA has no small familiarity with medicine, including radio-medicine. For that matter, radio-therapy session schedules are based on the known recovery of healthy tissues from sub-fatal prompt doses. The EPA and NRC guidelines are based on the unsupported linear-no-threshold model of hazard, while the FDA’s data-driven models appear to deny LNT. Who to believe? I lean toward the folks in the business of curing people.
Probably we can be informed by referring to the National Academy of Sciences. That would be a pro science approach.
On June 29, the National Acade- mies of Science (NAS) Research Council announced the release of a report that upholds the linear no- threshold (LNT) theory of radiation risk, stating, “A preponderance of scientific evidence shows that even low doses of ionizing radiation, such as gamma rays and x-rays, are likely to pose some risk of adverse health effects.”
“In living organisms, such radiation can cause DNA damage that eventu- ally leads to cancers. However, more research is needed to determine whether low doses of radiation may also cause other health problems, such as heart disease and stroke, which are now seen with high doses of low-LET radiation.”
“the availability of new and more extensive data have strengthened confidence in these es- timates,” especially the LNT model. “The scientific research base shows that there is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial,” said commit- tee chair Richard R. Monson, associ- ate dean for professional education
Its unequivocal.
http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/46/8/47N.full.pdf
Cy – You are correct that there are some sources with garbled health risk information. If you watched the faire winds video, you notice Gundersen says the bluefin tuna are not a concern. Fairewinds is a responsible and knowledgeable source of information. He specifically states that people monitoring radiation on beaches with Geiger counters is not meaningful as I also stated. That does not mean there are no hazards. Watch or read the rest of the references and you can find out more about what they are and decide for yourself. That’s why I posted them. Its hard to get a good picture with the distortions on both sides. Its definitely about ingestion rates and not about external exposure from airplane trips. The damage done by radiation is an inverse power law of distance. Thats why radionuclides and bioaccumulation are relevant, not external exposure.
Christopher,
Consider the banana.
This is what researchers did when they sampled several Pacific Blue Fin tuna caught off San Diego and tested them for Fukushima contamination. Yes, they did find that the fish had been tainted. But they discovered that the danger of radiation from eating a delicious tuna steak (I advise sashimi, personally) was about 1/20 as much radiation as one would ingest by eating a banana.
Sometimes it’s good to put things in perspective, as this Forbes writer did when he made a Stanford fish study more digestible:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/11/16/fukushima-radiation-in-pacific-tuna-is-equal-to-one-twentieth-of-a-banana/
***
Here’s a pretty level headed look at what’s going on at Fukushima:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/08/130807-fukushima-radioactive-water-leak/
***
If I were to briefly be allowed an opportunity to review the quality, comprehension and truthfulness of the work of Michael Rivero (Washington’s Blog) and Arnie Gunderson (Fairwinds.org), I’d say that these are scribblings that should not be put down politely. They should be hurled away with great force.
The banana argument is another one of the things that does not bring things into perspective.
“The tiny radiation exposure due to eating a banana lasts only for a few hours after ingestion, the time it takes for the normal potassium content of the body to be regulated by the kidneys. The body’s level of potassium-40 doesn’t increase after eating a banana. The body just gets rid of some excess potassium-40.
This is of infinitely less significance than internal exposure to cesium-137 or strontium-90, for example, that lodge in muscle and bone respectively, and irradiate a person from within. The releases of cesium, strontium and plutonium from the stricken Fukushima reactors are a threat not only to the health of currently exposed populations, but potentially to their progeny, since internal radiation exposures can cause mutations in DNA, including in genes.”
Unfortunately, people who have no idea of what BEIR means have done a lot to obfuscate the information. Anyone comparing radionuclides like those of plutonium or cesium with bananas is just that. Bananas. I like to get my science regarding the biological effects from peer reviewed papers, not Forbes. But if you want a reference from another journalistic source, try this:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/11/last-gasps-of-the-nuclear-evangelists/
If you prefer the NAS,
“The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) report, NAS BEIR VII was an expert panel who reviewed available peer reviewed literature and writes, “the committee concludes that the preponderance of information indicates that there will be some risk, even at low doses”.[6]”
There was no observed increase in major birth defects in the hibakusha, many of whom received radiation doses high enough to induce some level of radiation sickness. This threat to progeny is entirely imaginary, belied by decades of evidence.
(Watch DOGgie go ape over my use of “hibakusha”. Hey… TROFIM Lysenko!!!!)
Hey (_?_),
Why should DOGgie “go ape” over a perfectly good word that the Japanese use? I don’t have time to play with you today, Pot.
I’ve just come back from the library with a hot-off-the-press 440 page book titled ATOMIC ACCIDENTS: A HISTORY OF NUCLEAR MELTDOWNS AND DISASTERS, by James Mahaffey. I must start reading it right now if I plan to finish it in a couple of days—busy weekend coming up.
Perhaps I will one day take you to task for your “looked up” understanding of radiation biology. It is only slightly better than your understanding of bacterial genetics. (Hey…. TROFIM PLASMID !!!!!!!)
See comments below. Absence of evidence is not evidence do absence. A typical fallacy.
Miles O brien still had his left arm in this report. How long ago was this shot and is there any chance his visit there contributed or caused the condition that led to his arm having to be amputated? Just wondering. thanks, Peter
In a manner of speaking his visit to Japan did play into this sad situation,but only in the sense that it happened during his reporting trip to Japan and the Phillippines:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/25/health/miles-obrien-amputation/
According to his WIki he lost his arm as a result of an accident last month. News story about it is at http://www.thedenverchannel.com/lifestyle/health/pbs-correspondent-miles-obrien-has-arm-amputated
June 04, 2012
By YOHEI GOTO/ Staff Writer
A new study shows that children who were born within 10 years of both parents surviving the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima have a higher rate of developing leukemia than children who only had one parent who was a survivor within 10 years of the blast.
This is consistent with other studies that show the incidence of radiation induced heritable disease is linked mainly to men, and the incidence is higher, the closer the exposure is in time to the birth. The RERF study has many limitations, not the least of which is that a large number of those exposed died in wartime conditions.
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201206040076
On another note
“We are absolutely convinced,” said Katz on “Nuclear Hotseat,” “that if the health and environmental consequences of all nuclear activities were known to the public, the debate about nuclear power would end tomorrow. In fact, the public would probably exclude it immediately as an energy option.”
http://enformable.com/2014/03/third-anniversary-fukushima-daiichi-catastrophe/
Of course, there are many effects, the nuclear refugees, the economic impact, the health effects, so much more. And the disaster is nowhere near over, with the chronic danger of further impacts,… hurricanes, earthquakes…
The “new study” indulges freely in what is known as cherry-picking.
Take a large data set with rare events and start qualifying the whole dataset until you have a higher concentration of rare events. No effect on children born to A-bomb survivors? just trim down the qualifications… look only at children in a certain period, restrict the disease onset in certain ways (but not too much, or you throw away too many events).
The other name for it is “junk science”.
Your other article is a veritable parade of the usual fearmongering / conspiracy-theorist suspects.
No respect for scientists?
“The precise value of the abandoned cities, towns, agricultural lands, businesses, homes and property located within the roughly 310 sq miles (800 sq km) of the exclusion zones has not been established. Estimates of the total economic loss range from $250[iv]-$500[v] billion US. As for the human costs, in September 2012, Fukushima officials stated that 159,128 people had been evicted from the exclusion zones, losing their homes and virtually all their possessions. Most have received only a small compensation to cover their costs of living as evacuees. Many are forced to make mortgage payments on the homes they left inside the exclusion zones. They have not been told that their homes will never again be habitable. ”
“Decontamination in the exclusion zones is proving futile.”
http://www.psr.org/environment-and-health/environmental-health-policy-institute/responses/costs-and-consequences-of-fukushima.html
“(Reuters) – Japan will chip in more taxpayer money and other financial support to help Fukushima plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co clean up the world’s worst nuclear disaster in a quarter century, officials said on Friday, the latest government lifeline for the embattled utility.”
“Under the new plan, the government, which essentially nationalized Tepco last year with a 1 trillion yen ($9.59 billion) injection of public funds, will nearly double to 9 trillion yen ($86.35 billion) the amount of interest-free loans it provides the utility through the state-backed Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Corp (NDLFC)”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/20/us-japan-tepco-idUSBRE9BJ06I20131220
Here is a good synopsis of the obfuscation used by nuclear apologists. Its title?
“Fake Science Alert”
“The Bottom Line
Even though the nuclear industry and government have been covering up the dangers of radiation ever since nuclear weapons were invented, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that even low levels of radiation can damage our health.
Postscript: Any environmentalist who thinks that nuclear power is necessary to reduce greenhouse gasses has fallen prey to false propaganda from the nuclear industry.”
Another canard:
“Nuclear apologists also pretend that we get a higher exposure from background radiation (when we fly, for example) or x-rays then we get from nuclear accidents.”
There are two problems with this.
1. “there was exactly zero background radioactive cesium or iodine before above-ground nuclear testing and nuclear accidents started.”
2.”radioactive particles which end up inside of our lungs or gastrointestinal track, as opposed to radiation which comes to us from outside of our skin are much more dangerous than general exposures to radiation.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/04/fake-science-alert-fukushima-radiation-cant-be-compared-to-bananas-or-x-rays.html