Tokyo Radiation Less Than Paris’s Three Years After Meltdown | Hacker News Reader

Tokyo Radiation Less Than Paris’s Three Years After Meltdown

bloomberg.com

83 pointsblacktulip65 comments

...of course, the radiation levels have been in the "normal" zone for Tokyo since a week or two after the accident. It looks like the levels have been below background for (say) New York City as well.

A bigger concern than air radiation in Tokyo is the contamination of food -- the worst-hit areas of Japan also happen to be the major farming regions of the country. People are probably more worried about consuming food grown in cesium-contaminated soil than air contamination in the middle of Tokyo.

The idea is to hide the truth, not uncover it.

The snark may provoke some downvotes, but that is exactly what's happening here: hiding the inconvenient truth by focusing on the convenient, but not particularly relevant truths.

Which is pretty much the standard operating procedure when it comes to defending nuclear power, which makes it near impossible to have a constructive debate on the matter.

As a person formally trained in Nuclear Engineering, I am curious as to what relevant truths you are seeking to know that the "standard operating procedure" tells me we should be hiding.

I'm all for constructive debates on nuclear power generation, but I do want to point out that the snark is making it difficult for me to want to even try to engage you in a dialogue.

Well, what was then the "standard operating procedure" in dealing with all that radioactive waste? No, I'm not asking for quoted texts by the book for how things should go when everything's OK, I'm interested more in how a large scale contamination should be (or should have been) dealt with? That, if there ever was such an assumed scenario after Chernobyl, of course...

One could say the same about much of the unscientific hysteria that surrounds those attacking nuclear power. Not all mind you, but damn well enough. If you want to debate the subject, great - but don't make the same error you're accusing others of.

Well, my gripes with nuclear power are twofold: First, the topic of generating tons of waste that must be stored safely (as in must not spill and must not end up in the hand of hostile adversaries) and second the difference between a technology that is in theory safe, but human practice making it unsafe.

There's two pieces of news that should serve to illustrate my problems: First, the salt mine that germany used to store its low and medium radioactive waste in suffers from a water leak and may be about to collapse. It's currently unclear how fast the problem is spreading and they're trying to retrieve the waste but the current timeline spreads out into 2030 and beyond - if it's at all possible. If the mine collapses, we have a major spill right under germany. Now, there's other waste that's dangerous but there are only few substances that are as difficult to handle as radioactive substances. You can shields against most things with appropriate hazmat suits, but hard radiation is a serious problem, even for robots.

The technological implementation of power plants sacrifices safety on a lot of points due to budget constraints and human error: The pressure vessels of the most common (and most powerful) type of nuclear power plants are welded at critical points. The safety of these welds is being questioned [1] - the point that's interesting is that welds in those spots would not be allowed in "regular" pressure vessels for like coal power plants in Austria, for example. This is one of the reasons the only Austrian nuclear plant never went into service. Now, since the pressure vessel is obviously the most irradiated part of the plant it's really to expensive to check those welds from inside and outside - nobody wants to go for a dive in the plant. It's certainly up for debate whether the welds will hold or not. There's no real protection against airplanes crashing into a nuclear plant - it certainly could be done, but well - too expensive. There's a lot of risk that in theory don't matter, but humans and nature as a team have so far proven a strong tendency to overcome theory and make those risk matter - as seen in Fukushima.

All in all I think that fission power is theoretically safe, but to make it safe in practice is economically unfeasible.

[1] http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/technik/laengere-akw-lauf... (sorry, german)

So instead of nuclear, what would you propose is used?

100% renewable energy for electricity production is certainly feasible, despite what some people say.

Some countries like Denmark already get 44% of their electricity from wind and biomass (other countries get more, but those are exceptions with hydroelectric plants).

Moving forward, the question of nuclear waste becomes far less of a concern than it was in the past. One of the principal benefits of Gen IV reactors is the ability to consume nuclear waste products as fuel. I could talk about the relatively low volume of waste generated to date, but none of that really matters: the ability to reprocess fuel (on-site no less) to such an extent makes the point--if not effectively mute--then at least even less of a concern than it is today. Coincidentally, it also presents a solution to some of the issues with scaling long-term geological storage. Not just by limiting future waste, but also by actively reducing current waste.

It's too easy for people to reject nuclear energy based on an impossible standard that's applied nowhere else. No fuel source, even renewables once you start to consider the storage question, is "perfectly" safe. Everything, from wind to nuclear to the coal currently being burned, can only be considered in terms of risk. You weight those risks by a matter of degree. Coal sucks, for instance. Not just for the miners, who see significant increases in health risks such as cancer as a result of their work, but also for the communities near coal-burning plants that have to deal with released fly ash and the resulting radiation up to 100x that released from a nuclear plant generating the same amount of energy [1]. And that's not even taking into the account the very real and defined global implications.

Take your airplane example, for instance. Can you quantify it? Not really, given how insignificant the risk for such an event. Reasonable precautions, certainly. But putting the breaks on nuclear energy out of concern for potential destruction-by-airplane scenarios is no different than doing so for fear of potential destruction by asteroid strike. You're right that engineering is always weighing things through a cost/benefit analysis. That's the point, and it's not just limited to nuclear energy. But we need to be intellectually honest and hold different energy sources to the same standard when doing so, not cherry-picking at will.

In the linked article, I saw a few glaring problems. First, we're talking about decades-old reactor implementations (old BWRs, for which embrittlement is of less concern). Second, to date, there's no empirical evidence to support the concern that existing monitoring techniques are insufficient for monitoring embrittlement over time. If you're curious about reading about what issues have occurred (and have been caught), see [2].

I also have some large misgivings over Kropp's willingness to make a comparison to Chernobyl that has no basis in fact. Even if his nightmare scenario were to play out exactly as described, you wouldn't get a Chernobyl event. The RBMK reactor's flaws were well-known even during early design stages, but a number of factors converged in the accident (lack of training, over-classification that kept critical information from workers, disabled/limited safety mechanisms, corners that were cut in construction, lots and lots of graphite, etc.). Plus, you know, no containment vessel (!).

Quite frankly, you couldn't build a reactor like Chernobyl's in the United States (or even the western world more broadly). Even going so far as to imagine a scenario where some fiendish element wanted to purposely recreate the disaster here, they couldn't do it. So when people start drawing comparisons to Chernobyl, and use it to influence modern risk analyses, they're highlighting their own political biases and scientific ignorance. I don't think you were making this mistake, but some of the comments in that article certainly were.

Debating the subject is good. But we really do need to make sure that we're actually debating the options themselves, rather than skewed representations of one. That sort of flawed reasoning only serves to hamper us in the long-run. Given our energy requirements, current global trends, and the long-term environmental concerns, nuclear represents the only commercially viable energy source capable of solving our problems. We naturally want to do so safely, but there's a difference between risk management and risk aversion that amounts to sticking one's head in the sand. It's far, far too easy for the debate to shift towards the latter.

[1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-r... [2] http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/pr... [3] http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Power-R...

I think the biggest issue with nuclear energy is public trust. It was broken with Chernobyl, and broken again with Fukushima. I've always been pro-nuclear, and have spent a lot of time arguing why it's better than many of the alternatives, especially coal. But people just don't trust it anymore. It may not be a problem in China, but in democratic countries it's a big problem.

One of the things I and many pro-nuclear people claimed was that todays reactors were designed with so many safeguards and precautions and what-ifs that the risk of a large scale disaster was so slim that it could pretty much be discounted. Chernobyl was an understandable one-off.

And people believed this story. The public's perception of nuclear energy was just about recovered when Fukushima happened.

Fukushima exposed real problems with TEPCO and their planning that went undiscovered by Japans nuclear agency or the IAEA. You would think that they would have planned for this worst case scenario, but they didn't (they did not expect a tsunami to knock out the generators). So how can we expect people to feel safe about other nuclear plants? We can again try to explain all the safeguards, but they will remain unconvinced because the trust is again lost.

Like if you tell an airline passenger that it's extremely unlikely for turbulence to cause damage to the aircraft and then half a wing breaks off, they're not going to trust you again no matter what you say, even though what you said was true.

So now we will have to wait even more years to gain the trust back by having a perfect safety record. Except for the next 20 years or so we will have gradual news to remind us about Fukushima as they bit by bit disassemble the plant and learn more about what exactly happened in the reactors.

I downvoted because the GP doesn't even bother to make a coherent point, let alone back it up. This isn't Facebook.

That's really not true; there has been scare-mongering about radiation in Tokyo since the accident happened.

HN seems to harbor an elite naiveté crowd who thinks there is no such thing as official misconduct in the world.

(Elite naivete is a term I coined from hanging around in the orbit of elite schools and noting that people from prep school / elite backgrounds are often shockingly naive about how boots-on-the-ground reality works beyond their enclaves.)

We must be on different HNs.

Likewise. The HN I read is full of anti-epistemological conspiracy theorists these days.

We're just suffering from 'just world' syndrome.

Thanks for the reference... this is precisely what I mean by elite naiveté... a bias toward thinking that the mechanisms of the world are more just and fair than they actually are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

I know, but I also think it has become a political nostrum that's used to shut down debate as often as open it up. It's easy to fall into a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_world_syndrome mindset as well; this used to be considered a mass media pehnomenon, but relatively small internet communities fulfil the same function. In short, not all good news is propaganda.

Some months after Chernobyl, background radiation in Munich wasn't a major concern. Consuming certain foods was. Wild mushrooms were found to concentrate fallout up to 400x. And not all producers and retailers knew or cared -- particularly those bringing product over from behind the iron curtain.

Or, you have a Polish friend who cooks up a delicious stew with mushrooms from home...

Yes. I remember arguments about the way the numbers were taken, but really the measurements for pollution in the air were only useful to state that no explosion was occuring anymore.

During the blowups, the worst thing that happened was clouds picking up radiation and bring it down with the rain. The level of radiation in the air got down really quick, but the rain left persisting peaks of ambiant radiation in Chiba and other regions, and these could only be solved by taking away huge amount of radiated soil, when possible.

An exemple of an article describing the phenomenon: [1], but for every news worthy hot spot, there would be a lot of "mildly" dangerous level of radiation areas that would be found by residents buying detectors. Of course during that time reports of the air quality were still the rage with a few reports of the hot spots on the side.

Focusing on how clean the air is at 20+m in the sky while part of the soil was infected really catches up the viewpoint taken by the media. That's part of the reason a lot of people are still taking the "it's ok, the numbers prove it's safe" arguments with very big grains of salt and sometimes point the middle finger.

[1] http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/radiation-h...

"“I wouldn’t have come here then,” said the 28-year-old German native after touring Tokyo’s Imperial Palace on Friday. “But now I have friends here and they are fine, so I guess I’m fine too. I don’t fear it at the moment.”

Which shows how well the general public understands the effects of radiation exposure.

> If sustained for a full year, that would be 154 times the maximum possible dose of 1 millisievert per year recommended for public exposure by the International Commission on Radiological Protection.

Note that this limit has no real meaning. There is no clear data indicating that x amount of millisieverts per year is harmful. We know radioactivity clearly kills at high doses, but the effects of low doses are largely undetermined. And people fly all the time and take CT scans in hospitals without realizing that they get more radioactivity exposure this way.

> There is no clear data indicating that x amount of millisieverts per year is harmful.

Radiation damage is a game of statistics: A single charged particle, electron (whatever) striking the right molecule in your body may be enough for you to develop cancer and die in a particularly nasty way. The chances of this singular event happening and at the same time all safeguard of your body failing are minuscule, though. But the more events you have (the higher the radiation), the higher the chances that it will happen. This is what we basically know about radiation: it damages cells and for some events the natural cleanup doesn't work. Basically you could say that every bit radiation is harmful, even the natural background radiation [1]. All guidelines and limits are based on the question whether the increased risk outweighs the possible gain. Early X-Rays had the problem of exposing the doctors to high doses, modern machines are designed with safety in mind. Still, patients and doctors wear protection when possible.

[1] to make matters worse, there's different kinds of radiation: alpha rad which doesn't even penetrate the skin, but is very harmful if dust is inhaled to high energy gamma rad that is basically impossible to shield without lead or other heavy metals around. So "1 millisievert" doesn't even tell you what it is, 1ms of alpha is probably better to handle than 1ms of gamma rad..

You're talking about the linear no-threshold model, which is used because it is conservative, but it is definitely not accepted as fact by the scientific community. Please don't present it as obvious or settled. There are good arguments that low doses are handled by the cell's mutation correction mechanisms in a way that cannot be done for high doses.

> One of the organizations for establishing recommendations on radiation protection guidelines internationally, the UNSCEAR, has recently recommended policies that do not agree with the Linear No-Threshold model at exposure levels below background levels of radiation to the UN General Assembly from the Fifty-Ninth Session of the Committee. Its recommendation states that "the Scientific Committee does not recommend multiplying very low doses by large numbers of individuals to estimate numbers of radiation-induced health effects within a population exposed to incremental doses at levels equivalent to or lower than natural background levels." This is a reversal from previous recommendations by the same organization.[2]

> Whether the model describes the reality for small-dose exposures is disputed. It opposes two competing schools of thought: the threshold model, which assumes that very small exposures are harmless, and the radiation hormesis model, which claims that radiation at very small doses can be beneficial. Because the current data are inconclusive, scientists disagree on which model should be used. Pending any definitive answer to these questions and the precautionary principle, the model is sometimes used to quantify the cancerous effect of collective doses of low-level radioactive contaminations, even though such practice has been condemned by the International Commission on Radiological Protection

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model

>There are good arguments that low doses are handled by the cell's mutation correction mechanisms in a way that cannot be done for high doses.

Might be better to present those arguments, or links to those arguments. The argument that scientific opinion isn't settled, but there may be a magic number that has to be reached within a short period of time for exposure to be dangerous sounds like pro-nuclear FUD, whether it is or not.

I don't think the statement "There are good arguments that this is not harmful" could reasonably be described as "fear, uncertainty and doubt."

So how does that account for the supposed idea that people who live in Denver, who get 2x to 4x the average radiation than the normal population have far lower rates of cancer than average.

Maybe because the background radiation is just one of many, many contributing causes of cancer?

For instance, airline pilots are exposed to more radiation than the average worker. But they also have a low percentage of smokers, and in order to keep their medical license they need to be in fairly good health. So, apart from skin cancer, they have lower than average rates of cancer compared to the general population:

https://www.alpa.org/portals/alpa/magazine/2001/March2001_He...

What do you propose is the lifestyle difference shared by the population of Denver that offsets their doubled exposure to low-level radiation?

Obviously cancer has many causes, but to the extent Denver shares those causes with Oregon, they should wash out and reveal Denver's radiation-linked cancer (which, after all, you're basically arguing exists).

I was just pointing out a flaw in his reasoning. I didn't argue that it exists (and from what I gather from other comments, it doesn't). But if it did, it could be offset by any number of things, some of which might not be shared to the same extent with other cities.

Or it might be that the baseline background radiation is so small that 2x that baseline is still statistically insignificant compared to other factors.

If you believe the latter statement, then you also aren't alarmed by radiation in Japan, right?

I don't believe anything in particular, that was just one of many potential explanations.

That said, I'm not alarmed by the radiation in Japan, I'm more alarmed about the situation of the Fukushima plant and the problems they face with potential leakage into the groundwater (among other things).

Exposure to mild stressors over extended periods of time enhances the robustness of the organism against that stressor (eg: vaccination, mild stressor here is the weakened disease agent). It's called Hormesis in general, and Radiation hormesis in your specific case - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

It can be explained by the concept of radiation hormesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

Cite your source. This data suggests that you're wrong -- cancer rates are in line with national averages:

http://statecancerprofiles.cancer.gov/cgi-bin/ratetrendbycan...

Beyond that, it's like the parent said: you have to take into account the type of radiation, sources, method of exposure, etc.

Like I already mentioned: radiation != radiation. A raw number in MS does not tell you anything at all. For a light treatment of the topic, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose

"The absorbed radiation dose depends on the type and energy of the emitted particles, as well as on the location of the source in the body (external, inhaled, ingested, etc.), and the biological half-life of the compounds ingested."

There are probably other controlling factors that come into play in Denver, so yes, that is still possible (if it is so, I'll add the wikipedia-style "citation needed").

> For a light treatment of the topic, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose

Please don't. The "banana equivalent dose" people make the wrong assumption that the excess potassium brought in the organism by eating a banana stays there for 50 years. Because of the way potassium homeostasis works, the excess is eliminated within a few hours, when urinating.

So let's reduce the average exposure time from 50 years to 12 hours and the radiation exposure from 0.078 microsievert to 0.00000213 microsievert. We're losing respect for some cool comic strip in the process[1], but the reality is worth it.

[1]: http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/03/19/radiation-chart/

> Please don't. The "banana equivalent dose" people make the wrong assumption that the excess potassium brought in the organism by eating a banana stays there for 50 years.

As you probably have noted, the BED has other problems as well, namely the source and kind of radiation is not taken into account - it's actually discussed in the wikipedia article. So reading the article is an enlightening skim on the surface if that's all you need ATM. There's no use in calculating your radiation exposure in BEDs - we both agree on that account.

You're implying that accounting for the fact that people in Denver get "2x to 4x the average radiation" but "have far lower rates of cancer" is a problem for people who saying that small multiples of radiation exposure raise cancer risk, but ignoring that a lower incidence of cancer for Denver would have to be accounted for in any case, no matter what you believe about the relationship between radiation exposure and cancer.

Unless your actual argument here is that radiation prevents cancer - and I'd say that you have a higher burden of proof for that.

Denver is one of the most fit places in the US. Obesity is a major source of cancer. That or a million other such reasons.

Statements such as yours are exactly in vein with the the article and is exactly the type of BS pseudoscience used so commonly in the defense of nuclear power.

Speaking of CT scans, found this an interesting read on the topic:

"We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer"

"While it is difficult to know how many cancers will result from medical imaging, a 2009 study from the National Cancer Institute estimates that CT scans conducted in 2007 will cause a projected 29,000 excess cancer cases and 14,500 excess deaths over the lifetime of those exposed."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/opinion/we-are-giving-ours...

This article was heavily debated on HN. Needless to say, these numbers should be considered with a big fat grain of salt.

It's overly dismissive to say it has no meaning. We know increases in radiation lead to increases in cancer 20-40 years out. We also know we can't design controlled experiments to properly measure risk (because of medical ethics), so we have to rely on epidemiological studies and animal testing, which have holes that well-funded carcinogen-producing industries can drive trucks through.

It's a difficult problem to balance risks of CT scan radiation against diagnostic value. Nobody wants to have to make that call. And CT scans are the tip of the iceberg. The easy answer for doctors is to simply ignore the risks of CT scans, since the legal system will back them up, but it won't back them up if they don't do a CT scan but the standard of care calls for a CT scan to diagnose a relatively minor or relatively unlikely problem.

related book: The Secret History of the War on Cancer by Devra Davis

We also know some levels of radiation may actually have protective effects (killing some viruses/bacteria which cause some cancers).

And that says exactly nothing about the dangers of the accient, it could also just be that winds blow the radation away from Toyko and pollute other places.

"Closer to the wrecked plant in Fukushima, levels remain high enough to prevent the return of many of the 160,000 residents evacuated after the nuclear accident"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByZ1AyDEGSk

our friend the atom

It's not about background radiation level. It's about the risk of ingesting or inhaling a speck of radioactive material. If this particle settles somewhere in your body, it means that the cells in the immediate vicinity of this particle are going to subjected to very intense radiation.

Well, Shinjuku is on the West side of Tokyo. I wonder how the measurements compare on the East side, very near the bay. And in Chiba. And at Narita airport, closer to Fukushima.

I'm not sure the Fukushima power plant is where you think it is.

Well I know it's in Sendai region.

But I forgot how much Japan bends up at Tokyo. Sendai isn't North East like I imagined. It's more directly North.

Also, although Narita feels like an exhausting distance from Tokyo after you get off a plane, Sendai is of course much much farther away.

Are you saying it's not in the middle of Tokyo Bay, and doesn't have a little sprayer on top spraying radioactivity equally in all directions? I HAVE BEEN MISLEAD.

That's what happens when you have the Pacific Ocean to dump the waste into.

Well that's the all-clear signal, folks. Let's go skinny dipping in the effluent!

What is this article meant to signify? Is it just to reassure people who travel to Tokyo?

Fukushima is 300 Km north of Tokyo, so while the radiations in the latter might be low, the former, (correct me if I'm wrong), is a lost city that won't be possible to inhabit for thousands of years. That, in my opinion, is a more relevant fact.

> Fukushima ...(correct me if I'm wrong), is a lost city that won't be possible to inhabit for thousands of years.

Please edit your comment. You're completely wrong, and it's unsubstantiated speculation like this that drapes everything in FUD. People are already returning to the immediate vicinity of the power plant, having only been excluded this long because of ludicrously conservative recommendations.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/1065957...

(The actual city of Fukushima and the rest of the Fukushima prefecture have been safe, even according to the highly conservative recommendations, for a long time now. I'm not sure they were ever even evactuated. As teraflop notes, the above article refers to the small town of Ōkuma in which the reactor was located.)

As expected, the actual harm caused by the meltdown is essentially undetectable above background levels, and is trivial compared to the tsunami disaster that precipitated it. Most of the harm done comes from fear mongering when no actual risk exists.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/10/us-japan-fukushima...

> when no actual risk exists

Now who's over-stating their case? 0% risk?

Please don't stoop to this level of discourse. If there are two possible readings of a comment, one reasonable and one unreasonable, it's best to choose the reasonable one.

Some clarification: Fukushima is a prefecture covering 14,000 square kilometers, with about 2 million residents. The town of Ōkuma, where the Fukushima Daiichi power station is located, had a population of 11,000 and has been evacuated to a radius of 10 km. That's a very conservative exclusion zone that reflects a slightly increased lifetime risk of certain cancers; the area that's actually "uninhabitable" is extremely small. No need to blow things out of proportion.

Do you have a source for that? What I've read suggests that the towns involved are seen as safe to return to:

http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/08/14/japan-decontaminati...

The main problems from what I've seen are psychological and social. Which are still real problems. One expert says:

"We know from Chernobyl that the psychological consequences are enormous. Life expectancy of the evacuees dropped from 65 to 58 years -- not [predominately] because of cancer, but because of depression, alcoholism and suicide. Relocation is not easy, the stress is very big. We must not only track those problems, but also treat them. Otherwise people will feel they are just guinea pigs in our research." -- http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/studying-the-fukus...

> the former, (correct me if I'm wrong), is a lost city that won't be possible to inhabit for thousands of years.

You are horribly wrong. The radiation levels there have fallen off as well.

And as far as people are concerned, there are people living in Chernobyl right now, which was far worse.

> And as far as people are concerned, there are people living in Chernobyl right now, which was far worse.

[citation needed]

Aside from that Pripyat is what should be discussed.

Fukushima-the-city, the capital of the Fukushima prefecture, has almost nothing to do with the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. It was practically not affected at all and is certainly not "lost".

I thought people were still living there now? I remember news reports from half a year ago.

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