Expert Opinions on Nuclear Accident - Not Mass Media Tabloid Scaremongering

Here are some opinions from experts in the field as to the risk to humans from the nuclear accident at Fukushima. This information is presented to you as a counter balance to some of the hysterical tabloid scaremongering that the mass media have been guilty of.

FDR: THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF

Yes the situation must be take very seriously. Yes, it is prudent to take precautions. Yes, everything is being done at the nuclear reactors. Most importantly, people at refugee centers who have lost their loved ones and homes need your help. And also extremely important is to just report the facts.


First off, here is a fact from Yahoo news about events unfolding currently: 


The government raised the accident classification for the nuclear crisis from Level 4 to Level 5 on a seven-level international scale. That put it on a par with the Three Mile Island accident in Harrisburg, Pa., in 1979, and signified its consequences went beyond the local area.


Moving from a level 4 to a level 5 sounds serious, but what does it really mean? What are the parameters to judge this? How are we to decided what this information means to all of us without an explanation? We can't.


One thing we can judge, though, is we can investigate how many people died at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident. How many people died at Three Mile Island? 


I found the answer on Wikipedia: 


The Kemeny Commission Report concluded that "there will either be no case of cancer or the number of cases will be so small that it will never be possible to detect them. The same conclusion applies to the other possible health effects". Several epidemiological studies in the years since the accident have supported the conclusion that radiation releases from the accident had no perceptible effect on cancer incidence in residents near the plant, though these findings have been contested by one team of researchers.


These are facts. Also, a fact, is that, at Three Mile Island, the evacuation zone was 10 miles (about 16 kilometers). The current evacuation zone from Japanese authorities is 18 miles (30 kilometers).


There is also a wild piece of disinformation floating around the Internet now that claim that winds have shifted from blowing from south to north - away from Tokyo - to north to south into Tokyo. This is patently false.


NHK reports:


The winds are blowing from west to east near the nuclear reactor.


This means that any radiation leaking from the crippled plant is heading out over the Pacific ocean. Currently, it is raining in Kagoshima in southern Kyushu and that rain front is moving from the south towards the north (the prevailing winds in Japan always move from the south or the west) and the Kanto plain (where Tokyo is) will have rain tomorrow.

Weather today, Saturday, March 19, 2011

Weather tomorrow, Sunday, March 20, 2011

(note the rain has moved from the south towards north)

Finally, my friend Michael Anop sends me this great information from experts and not TV pundits.


From News.com Australia eight experts chime in on, "Japan's nuclear crisis is not Chernobyl, say experts"

Some of my favorite quotes:


Sir John Beddington, Chief Scientific Officer for the UK government:

"If you then couple that with the worst possible weather situation ... and you had maybe rainfall which would bring the radioactive material down - do we have a problem? The answer is unequivocally no. Absolutely no issue.

"The problems are within 30 km of the reactor.  And to give you a flavour for that, when Chernobyl had a massive fire at the graphite core, material was going up not just 500m but to 30,000ft (10km).  It was lasting not for the odd hour or so but lasted months, and that was putting nuclear radioactive material up into the upper atmosphere for a very long period of time.  But even in the case of Chernobyl, the exclusion zone that they had was about 30km. And in that exclusion zone, outside that, there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate people had problems from the radiation.

"This is very problematic for the area and the immediate vicinity and one has to have concerns for the people working there. Beyond that 20 or 30km, it’s really not an issue for health.”

Dr Richard Wakeford, Dalton Nuclear Institute and Visiting Professor of Epidemiology, University of Manchester:

“Words like ‘apocalypse’ and ‘catastrophe’ used about the situation at the Fukushima nuclear power plant are utterly inappropriate for the position there, as far as the radiation exposure of members of the public are concerned. No expert would use terms like these to describe the situation at Fukushima.

“To put radiation doses into context, many Japanese undergo CT scans for cancer screening purposes, and these scans produce radiation doses of about 10 millisieverts (10,000 microsieverts) - much more than they are receiving from the Fukushima reactors.

“Radiation sickness and other early effects of radiation exposure are caused by high doses of radiation (about 1,000 millisieverts - 1,000,000 microsieverts)."

Dr. Philippe Blondel, Deputy Director, Centre for Space, Atmospheric & Oceanic Science, University of Bath:

The current fears about nuclear safety should not shadow the huge plight of the refugees and the difficulties of on-going search and rescue operations


Absolutely correct. Please help out the relief efforts if you can. In Japan? Here. 

Outside of Japan? Here.



Finally, Japan's Mainichi Newspaper reports:


Kotani Morihiko science and technology advisor for the International Atomic Energy Agency said that measurements of radiation in Tokyo showed no elevated levels and no danger. 

A huge thanks to Michael Anop and Tim Rabone