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Navy sailors have radiation sickness after Japan rescue

181 points by SuperChihuahua 13y ago

ams6110 13y ago
Guam turned us away That sounds suspicious. Guam is a U.S. Territory.
- cpleppert 13y ago
  Right, the notion it turned away an aircraft carrier a hundred miles away from fukushima is ridiculous.
- cmgreen 13y ago
  It may be the lack of capabilities to deal with a mass radiation event. I can't find any references to how many crew are typically assigned to the USS Ronald Regan. Guam doesn't seem like it has a lot of healthcare support for a full-aircraft carrier of irradiated seamen.
fidotron 13y ago
Of all groups you'd hope to be able to detect and protect their staff against radiation, wouldn't the US Navy be fairly near the top of the list? Much as TEPCO may be at fault over the actual reactor the sailors being exposed unnecessarily sounds more like Naval negligence.
- gwern 13y ago
  Yeah. It does say that > By the time the Reagan realized it was contaminated and tried to shift location, the radioactive plume had spread too far to be quickly outrun. > > “We have a multimillion-dollar radiation-detection system, but . . . it takes time to be set up and activated,” Cooper said. But... if you're on the coast helping deal with the tsunami damage like them and then a nuclear disaster starts, setting it up & activating it seems like a priority task.
  - rgbrenner 13y ago
    CBS - March 2011: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radiation-detected-on-us-warship-near-japan/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radiation-detected-on-us-warship... The U.S. Seventh Fleet said Monday it had moved its ships and aircraft away from a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear power plant after discovering low-level radioactive contamination. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that there were two separate radiation exposures on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. The first was to air crews who were swabbed upon returning from search and rescue (SAR) missions, 17 of whom were found to have received the equivalent of a month's radiation and had to be decontaminated. The second exposure occurred when the carrier's shipboard alarms went off. Since the Reagan is nuclear-powered, it has sensors to detect radioactivity, said Martin, and those went off as soon as the radiation levels went above the naturally-occurring background. ... The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was about 100 miles offshore when its instruments detected the radiation. The fleet said the dose of radiation was about the same as one month's normal exposure to natural background radiation in the environment, and no one was exposed to levels that would have made them sick, reports CBS News correspondent Celia Hatton. The power plant and its plume are south of Sendai, so as long as the wind doesn't shift, the Reagan can stay out of the plume and still be in position to conduct SAR missions.
- stcredzero 13y ago
  During the height of the Cold War, US Navy ships were equipped with a "wash down" system to enable operations after sailing through nuclear fallout. I'm surprised to learn that no means of detecting radiation in the drinking water was thought of back then. Then again, many of those systems were thought of as a way of continuing to operate for just a few weeks more. Many of those scenarios would have included the end of civilization.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
lukateake 13y ago
Out of related curiosity, weren't there efforts to ban Geiger counters in the US post-9/11? Were any laws enacted?
tzakrajs 13y ago
Negligence triumphed over excellence this time...
mateodelnorte 13y ago
As the reactors have now dumped thousands of tons of nuclear runoff water into the ocean which then drifts to the North American West Coast, is this not something we should be much more aware of and acting to protect against? Is the US West Coast at danger of increased incidence rates of radiation related illness?
- anon1385 13y ago
  >Is the US West Coast at danger of increased incidence rates of radiation related illness? No.
- cdash 13y ago
  The answer is no, it is not even close to something we should be worried about.
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    Is that because it's going to be diluted to unnoticeable levels even near the origin?
    - cdash 13y ago
      Yes
  - stan_rogers 13y ago
    Unless, of course, you're a homeopath. On a slightly more serious note, I would expect to see a variety of illnesses occurring at a statistically ordinary rate around the variously-projected times of arrival to be blamed on radioactive seawater regardless of the actual concentrations (which will probably be in the high-C, or incredibly powerful because it's incredibly weak, homeopathic dilution range).
- zequel 13y ago
  Remember the US used to do multiple nuclear detonation tests off Pacific islands after WWII. The Pacific Ocean has a lot of water to dilute the effects.
elleferrer 13y ago
A failed multimillion-dollar radiation-detection system. Why didn't they have this activated? "The toxic seawater was sucked into the ship’s desalinization system, flowing out of its faucets and showers — still radioactive — and into the crew member’s bodies."
- skriticos2 13y ago
  They could have sidestepped the whole issue with a simple reverse-osmosis water filter. Somehow I get the impression that they did not think the ABC (edit: CBRN) thing through.
  - JshWright 13y ago
    A "simple" reverse-osmosis system? A Nimitz class carrier can produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 400,000 gallons of desalinated (potable) water a day. Desalination is very energy intensive, but energy is something that a nuclear powered carrier has plenty of. There are obviously some consumables involved, but it's mostly just energy, and lots of it. RO, on the other hand, requires a lot of high quality, small pore filters and membranes that need to be cleaned and changed regularly. RO systems have dramatically lower throughputs than desalination systems of similar size. An RO system capable of producing 400,000 gallons/day (especially one capable of filtering radioisotopes that are (while larger than a water molecule), still quite small) would be very large, and very maintenance intensive. But hey... you're probably right... The folks who designed the potable water infrastructure for the Nimitz class aircraft carriers were probably idiots...
    - scotty79 13y ago
      > The folks who designed the potable water infrastructure for the Nimitz class aircraft carriers were probably idiots. You are not an idiot just for doing something stupid. All people, even the smartest ones have capacity to do dangerously stupid things. In this case they probably just weren't ordered to built a system that can provide clean water in case of the ship being covered in radioactive snow. So the people doing stupid things (possibly, but not necessarily, idiots) were the people who gave orders. Still hard to imagine for a country that treats nuclear war sort of seriously. Of course I think you are totally right about RO being non-easy. I have no idea about RO and desalination systems but my motto is "nothing's ever easy".
ChristianMarks 13y ago
It was much worse than was reported. An online forum of nuclear engineers (I may still have the link) was the most informative source of news about the disaster at the time. EDIT: found the link. http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=8b5b840e5e92174eb7a22932b9d60c0f&t=501974 http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=8b5b840e5e9217...
- scotty79 13y ago
  I hope I won't offend anyone by saying that some of the reported health problems after radioactive disaster are usually exaggerated to get reparations.
  - ChristianMarks 13y ago
    It's only an assertion without specific evidence. The threads linked above run for tens of thousands of pages and form an important part of the historical record.
  - Alex_MJ 13y ago
    It's a two way street - they're usually dramatically downplayed by authorities and anybody who would otherwise have to pay. If you're not loud and exaggerated, nobody with any ability to do anything listens and powerful people actively want you to not be heard. For illustration, the official number of deaths attributed to the Chernobyl disaster is 31.
    - markdown 13y ago
      > For illustration, the official number of deaths attributed to the Chernobyl disaster is 31. Link to a reputable source contradicting the official death toll please.
      - radiobat 13y ago
        http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20403-25-years-after-chernobyl-we-dont-know-how-many-died.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20403-25-years-after-c...
forktheif 13y ago
Wikipedia says the USS Ronald Regan has a total crew of 5,680. How statistically significant is 70 people out of 5,680 suffering serious health problems over 2.5 years? I'm guessing that most people on board were fairly young and in good health.
- skriticos2 13y ago
  Radiation overdose is happy to cause you all kind of cancer 50 years down the road. Having been overexposed is really not something you want, even if you don't show symptoms so quickly. The psychological pressure on these people alone must be maddening. Imagine waking up every day for the rest of your life and wondering if you have cancer today? Not good.. Edit: and let's not talk about the increased likelihood of disfigured offspring.
  - scotty79 13y ago
    > Imagine waking up every day for the rest of your life and wondering if you have cancer today? Not good.. 30% of us will have it at some point, also you have chance 1 in 1000-2000 that you'll die next year.
    - simulate 13y ago
      > you have chance 1 in 1000-2000 that you'll die next year. You have a 1000-2000 chance that you'll die when you are no longer an infant but still young. Your chances of dying next year go up as your get older. If you had only 1 chance in 1000 to die each year that would mean that people would live to be 1000 years old on average. A good estimate of human mortality rates can be calculated from Gompertz law: http://forio.com/simulate/mbean/death-probability-calculator/simulation http://forio.com/simulate/mbean/death-probability-calculator...
      - WalterBright 13y ago
        > If you had only 1 chance in 1000 to die each year that would mean that people would live to be 1000 years old on average. Actually it means your chances of living to be 1000 would be 37%. 0.999 ^ 1000 = .37
pagekicker 13y ago
Not the most credible publication, and plaintiff's attorneys are clearly the primary sources for the article.
CookWithMe 13y ago
At the TC Disrupt Europe hackathon, there was one team that build a hardware/software hack to crowdsource radioactivity data / warnings. Basically, a Geiger counter attached to your computer that sends readings to a server. I think it was a really cool hack and one of my favorites, but it didn't go anywhere with the jury (I guess no business model and all :) ). http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/26/open-radioactivity-warning-system/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/26/open-radioactivity-warning-... http://techcrunch.com/video/open-radioactivity-warning-system-demo-at-hackathon-europe-2013/517988760/ http://techcrunch.com/video/open-radioactivity-warning-syste... (Video)
zequel 13y ago
This is why I wouldn't let my kids EVER enlist. The government has no regard for its enlisted. Doesn't take a genius to think our navy would be in harm's way during a RADIOACTIVE DISASTER. Reminds me of when soldiers were being electrocuted in showers in Iraq because of totally incompetent contractors wiring electricity near the showers.
- joenathan 13y ago
  >Reminds me of when soldiers were being electrocuted in showers in Iraq because of totally incompetent contractors wiring electricity near the showers. The details of which are the showers needed water pumps,and the water pumps were not properly grounded.
- JanezStupar 13y ago
  Sure, better let somebody else's kids take care of the shitty work. I agree wholeheartedly.
  - lostlogin 13y ago
    There is, of course, the better option. Invade less people and spy on less people and then the number of people needed and the danger they face is decreased. Additionally, using the military as a social welfare system may not be the great system some think it is. My perspective is skewed however, as being a New Zealander the threat level is zero (except from our so-called allies, who have bombed us in the past - thanks France).
  - alan_cx 13y ago
    "Sure, better let somebody else's kids take care of the shitty work." Bullshit. That was never implied, let alone said, you simply made it up.
- ams6110 13y ago
  Because incompetent electricians never cause death anywhere but in military combat zones?
floodcow 13y ago
Sad story and and it pisses me off that so many countries denied the carrier to dock up.
- markdown 13y ago
  > it pisses me off that so many countries denied the carrier to dock up. Why is that? Countries that don't have the technical expertise to judge how dangerous it could have been for their people are absolutely right to have prevented them from docking. Their only loyalty is to their own people, as it should be. As long as they don't have the expertise to verify that their is no risk to their own people, they should default to GTFO. Do you think the US would allow a shipload of people with the SARS coronavirus or Ebola to dock at one of their ports?
VLM 13y ago
"The levels were incredibly dangerous and at one point, the radiation in the air measured 300 times higher than what was considered safe, Sebourn told The Post." This doesn't mean anything, its technobabble. How many REM or mSv total exposure? "I said something complicated and science-y sounding, so you are supposed to be scared right now". The biggest misfortune is they may even accidentally be correct, just completely incompetent about it. A big epidemiology problem is identifying the actual cause by symptom, and avoiding the assumption that participation in something big and scary therefore means all problems must be caused by big n scary. Some goofball tipping over a barrel of solvent in the maint bay could cause many cancers later, and is marginally more likely.
- platz 13y ago
  Amazing how you think your claim is better informed than those from a primary source. You're right, the mystery solvent must have been it.
  - yapcguy 13y ago
    You can't argue with some people, perhaps like the original poster. Even if figures and readings are produced, some will talk about bananas, flying in an aeroplane, and background radiation. The biggest joke of all has been how the "safety limits" of different types of radiation were all magically raised after Fukushima.
    - glenra 13y ago
      If actual measurements of radioactivity were produced rather than measurements in terms of "tons of water (with some tiny unknown percentage of radioactive component)" or "300 times the level considered safe (without saying what that level actually is)", then it would be possible to talk sensibly about how it compares to other exposure sources. Such as eating bananas, living in Colorado, getting a dental x-ray and so on. And it might still be scary if we knew the numbers, but without real numbers we can't know that it's worth worrying about.
      - 13y ago
tasty_freeze 13y ago
This story may or may not be accurate, but anything which comes from nypost is suspect.
melling 13y ago
We're either a one decade or two from having the necessary robotics technology needed to keep humans out of harm's way in these situations. http://singularityhub.com/2013/12/20/nasa-unveils-valkyrie-a-humanoid-robot-destined-for-space-exploration/ http://singularityhub.com/2013/12/20/nasa-unveils-valkyrie-a... It's really up to us if it's going to be 10 years or 20.
- Alex_MJ 13y ago
  We already can make simple ones, it's a matter of radiation shielding. They don't have to be huge expensive humanoid ones. Robots were used in the Chernobyl cleanup 25 years ago although they ended up getting fried from the radiation. I haven't done much research on the topic of what exists today regarding workarounds for electronics in radioactive environments (if someone has domain knowledge, please tell!), but I suspect we could fix that. For some interesting history, look up "Bio-Robots" to see how the Soviet Union dealt with the disaster. Basically they sent up humans in heavy lead suits for no more than 45 seconds at a time. Run up, get three or four shovelfuls (they were clearing radioactive debris from the roof), get out.
  - Qworg 13y ago
    There is much more to it than getting hardened electronics. For example, I was talking with some Westinghouse engineers and the biggest problem with the robots at Fukushima were the cameras. The radiation crazes the lenses and you become blind. Search and rescue is a hard problem and is terribly underfunded. It is also funded in a way that makes long term improvements hard. There is very little money until there's a disaster, then there is a ton of cash you have to spend right now.
    - Alex_MJ 13y ago
      Out of curiosity, do you have anything more on what destroys the lenses? Heat/melting? Some form of radioactive dust?
  - ChristianMarks 13y ago
    See the end of http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=711577&page=4 http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=711577&page=4 on why it isn't entirely straightforward to send in a robot.
losethos 13y ago
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wissler 13y ago
A Geiger counter is a simple, inexpensive device, and several should be present at all significant military installations and turned on at all times. Why wasn't that the case here?
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  It was. The Reagan is nuclear-powered and is capable of carrying nuclear missiles (and quite possibly was at the time). Unless Navy planning has entirely rotted away, that ship was plastered with radiation detectors, crewed with people trained for nuke decon, equipped with NBC (nuclear/bioweapon/chemical weapon) protection suits, and supplied with potassium iodide tablets for thyroid protection.
  - wissler 13y ago
    Then what really happened here?
    - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
      Probably mass hysteria. It seems unlikely that the captain blithley ignored basic safety measures, and the symptoms reported in the article are not typical for radiation sickness.
    - frankydp 13y ago
      I am a CBRN specialist in the Marine Corps. These ships run constant radiation detection, everywhere, especially in the water desal. The only probable cause for these kind of biological responses, would have to be inhalation of radiated particulates, but even that would be extremely difficult given the range from the source. Even the most basic respiratory protection(shirt over face) would prevent most of that type of contamination. The entire CBRN community was hyper focused on these operations Navy wide, and the possibility of an entire group of ships not taking every precaution is very very very low. I am not discounting the possibility of equipment failure(unknowingly) or execution failure by individuals, but the chances of that with so much attention on the issue would be low. EDIT: What do people do when they see snow? Think tounge out.
joshvm 13y ago
"Tokyo Electric Power also knew that radioactivity was leaking at a rate of 400 tons a day into the North Pacific, according to the lawsuit and Japanese officials." I'm sorry, what? What does that even mean? 400 tons of.. Uranium? Water? Pure radioactive essence? This article is shocking on many levels, but the lack of journalistic standards is appalling.
- glenra 13y ago
  400 tons of slightly radioactive coolant water, I believe. Or of groundwater that had been mixed with the slightly radioactive coolant water. Journalists don't seem to realize the more water there is, the less harmful it is per unit volume, or that the sea rapidly dilutes it further into harmlessness. There's a little more detail on the claim here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/fukushima-radioactive-water-leak_n_3784399.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/fukushima-radioacti...
- nobody_nowhere 13y ago
  We're talking about the NY Post! It would be more surprising if it exhibited any standards at all.
  - jrockway 13y ago
    They have standards. They pick a Tumblr at random and say, "I bet we can have higher journalistic standards than that guy." And 50% of the time, they're right!
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
AnotherDesigner 13y ago
The nuclear apologists are out in full force today. I love how you guys, mostly computer programmers, are so much more informed than experts in nearly every other field of science existing. It must be amazing to be that smart.
- haimez 13y ago
  As long as you're going to use amorphous group affiliations to create an ad-hominem attack, let me do the same: "AnotherDesigner"
- sitharus 13y ago
  It is amazing, but the diodes down my left side hurt all the time.
- cheeseprocedure 13y ago
  Even someone with an anti-nuclear stance should look at an article whose primary source is an attorney suing TEPCO and think "this is not adding anything valuable to the conversation."
- mikeash 13y ago
  Er, the opinions expressed by the "nuclear apologists" generally line up with those of experts in the field. It's the fools who talk about "400 tons of radiation" who are committing the sin of hubris in thinking that they know more than the experts.
  - lostlogin 13y ago
    If you want an independent opinion upon the pros and cons of disbanding my field of work, don't ask me.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      You have to make up your mind: do we trust experts, or not? The person I was replying to was clearly on the "yes" side of that. You can certainly disagree, but then your argument is going to be radically different.
Pitarou 13y ago
On its own, I can't treat this article as credible. The compensation lawyer presents the strongest possible case for his clients, and the journalist is clearly glossing over a great deal in order to get the juiciest quotes. From what little details are given, it sounds like the crew of the Reagan suffered from some kind of gut infection, not radiation poisoning. That would explain why they were denied port entry at Guam, and so on. I live on the fringe of the area where contamination from Fukushima can be detected. To my knowledge, doctors haven't noticed anything unusual yet, and believe me people are watching. Still, the article sends a chill...
- sitharus 13y ago
  The symptoms are credible, but the NY Post is not. It's like claiming the Daily Mail knows what the real effects of immigration are in the UK.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- greenyoda 13y ago
  "From what little details are given, it sounds like the crew of the Reagan suffered from some kind of gut infection, not radiation poisoning." Do gut infections cause thyroid problems, cancers and uncontrolled gynecological bleeding?
  - krschultz 13y ago
    Keep in mind in any sizeable group of people those things happen. I was a healthy 25 year old male with no issues what so ever. I'm now a 26 year old male who doesn't a have a thyroid and takes a pill every day. In between was an unexplained baseball sized growth on my thyroid that had nothing to do with anything and was thankfully not cancerous. Shit happens and we don't always know why.
  - Pitarou 13y ago
    I'm talking about the outbreaks of diarrhea, because those are the only symptoms that are clearly epidemologically significant. From a crew of 6,000, there's nothing that strikes me odd about the occasional case of thyroid or gynecological problems. Shit happens.
Juha 13y ago
Related post from NBC (27th of Dec 2012): US sailors sue Japan's TEPCO for post-quake radiation exposure (http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/27/16197507-us-sailors-sue-japans-tepco-for-post-quake-radiation-exposure http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/27/16197507-us-sa...). Interesting they used almost the same photo on the article.
dhughes 13y ago
You would think it would have been a good time to test or at least offer Ex-Rad to the sailors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Rad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Rad "Ex-Rad (or Ex-RAD), also known by the code name ON 01210.Na, is a drug developed by Onconova Therapeutics and the U.S. Department of Defense.[1][2] This newly developed compound is said to be a potent radiation protection agent. Chemically, it is the sodium salt of 4-carboxystyryl-4-chlorobenzylsulfone.[3"
patrickg_zill 13y ago
The meaning behind the story is far more sinister than the sad case of some people getting cancer... it is that TEPCO, which is the organization best suited to know and measure what was/is going on, has been shown to lie, even to its own government, about the situation. (mentioned in more detail here: http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/28/world/asia/japan-fukushima-lawsuit/ http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/28/world/asia/japan-fukushima-law... ) If it truly the case that TEPCO has been lying about things from the start, then nothing that they have said in the interim, or things that they say in the future, can be taken at face value, and whatever claims they make require independant third party confirmation.
josh-wrale 13y ago
If I were losing 60 or 70 pounds a month due to hyperthyroidism, I'd request that my thyroid be removed and I'd probably then be prescribed levothyroxine. I'd say it's a safe bet the thyroid isn't the root cause here. Thyroid removal is pretty common.
patrickgokey 13y ago
I served on the Reagan from 2003-2007 and am lucky enough to have finished my enlistment before the Fukushima incident. I still have a large network of friends in the military and work in the defense industry in San Diego so I was surprised when I first learned of this incident only a few weeks ago. I thought the post I was reading at the time was a sick hoax at first but have since learned otherwise. This doesn't surprise me much at all unfortunately, and I wish my fellow sailors the best of luck in not getting screwed by Uncle Sam, which is what I fully expect will happen.
dctoedt 13y ago
This has come up several times in the Navy-nuke Facebook group in which I lurk (I used to be one of them). The posters in that group have been, shall we say, scathingly skeptical of these claims of radiation sickness. The group includes a number of current- and former radiological-controls specialists, known as engineering lab techs or "ELTs." Navy-nuke ELTs are a select lot who are trained to face the facts and tell it like it is. As a general rule, they're very good at spotting BS, and they're not especially inclined to just passively accept it when they do spot it. Their skepticism about this radiation-sickness story is worth taking into account. EDIT: Consider some circumstantial evidence: - In the Navy nuclear-power subculture, people pay attention to detail (to put it mildly). This is true in general, and especially on the subject of radiation exposure to the crew or the public. - The commanding officer and executive officer of every U.S. aircraft carrier are nuclear-trained, on top of being senior aviators or naval flight officers; they must successfully complete the full, one-year, very-intense nuke qualification course even to be eligible to hold those jobs. Then before they assume those jobs they undergo still more training to be an XO and then CO. - On any U.S. aircraft carrier, the chief engineer (who "owns" the evaporators that produce the ship's drinking- and washing water) and the [chief] reactor officer (who "owns" the ELTs) are nukes, of course. They're among the most-senior officers on the ship. - Unambitious people don't put in the years of stressful work that it takes to get these jobs. It's a safe bet that these senior officers all want to be admirals someday. A radiological "incident" of the kind being described likely would severely impair their chances of ever being assigned to a responsible job again, let alone being promoted to flag rank. So: We're being asked to believe that, in a non-combat situation, somehow all of these career-minded senior officers aboard the Reagan inadvertently allowed the crew's radiation exposure to get to dangerous levels. Sorry, I just don't buy it. I suppose we can't categorically rule out the possibility, but to me it's another reason to be skeptical of the radiation-sickness claims.
- crazytony 13y ago
  can you tell us about the reasons for their skepticism?
  - dctoedt 13y ago
justin66 13y ago
If there's any government agency that will obfuscate, stonewall, evade responsibility and generally bullshit their way out of helping the people who get hurt on their watch, it's the DoD. When people sperg out over specific radiation claims being floated in the NY Post (of all places) they ought to keep in mind that if these people are anywhere near as sick as they're described to be they need help, and they're up against a nasty brick wall when it comes to getting that help. Picking a side here ought to be pretty damn easy unless this turns out to be some kind of outright fraud.

181 points by SuperChihuahua 13y ago

ams6110 13y ago

Guam turned us away That sounds suspicious. Guam is a U.S. Territory.

cpleppert 13y ago
Right, the notion it turned away an aircraft carrier a hundred miles away from fukushima is ridiculous.
cmgreen 13y ago
It may be the lack of capabilities to deal with a mass radiation event. I can't find any references to how many crew are typically assigned to the USS Ronald Regan. Guam doesn't seem like it has a lot of healthcare support for a full-aircraft carrier of irradiated seamen.

fidotron 13y ago

Of all groups you'd hope to be able to detect and protect their staff against radiation, wouldn't the US Navy be fairly near the top of the list? Much as TEPCO may be at fault over the actual reactor the sailors being exposed unnecessarily sounds more like Naval negligence.

gwern 13y ago
Yeah. It does say that > By the time the Reagan realized it was contaminated and tried to shift location, the radioactive plume had spread too far to be quickly outrun. > > “We have a multimillion-dollar radiation-detection system, but . . . it takes time to be set up and activated,” Cooper said. But... if you're on the coast helping deal with the tsunami damage like them and then a nuclear disaster starts, setting it up & activating it seems like a priority task.
- rgbrenner 13y ago
  CBS - March 2011: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radiation-detected-on-us-warship-near-japan/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radiation-detected-on-us-warship... The U.S. Seventh Fleet said Monday it had moved its ships and aircraft away from a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear power plant after discovering low-level radioactive contamination. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that there were two separate radiation exposures on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. The first was to air crews who were swabbed upon returning from search and rescue (SAR) missions, 17 of whom were found to have received the equivalent of a month's radiation and had to be decontaminated. The second exposure occurred when the carrier's shipboard alarms went off. Since the Reagan is nuclear-powered, it has sensors to detect radioactivity, said Martin, and those went off as soon as the radiation levels went above the naturally-occurring background. ... The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was about 100 miles offshore when its instruments detected the radiation. The fleet said the dose of radiation was about the same as one month's normal exposure to natural background radiation in the environment, and no one was exposed to levels that would have made them sick, reports CBS News correspondent Celia Hatton. The power plant and its plume are south of Sendai, so as long as the wind doesn't shift, the Reagan can stay out of the plume and still be in position to conduct SAR missions.
stcredzero 13y ago
During the height of the Cold War, US Navy ships were equipped with a "wash down" system to enable operations after sailing through nuclear fallout. I'm surprised to learn that no means of detecting radiation in the drinking water was thought of back then. Then again, many of those systems were thought of as a way of continuing to operate for just a few weeks more. Many of those scenarios would have included the end of civilization.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

lukateake 13y ago

Out of related curiosity, weren't there efforts to ban Geiger counters in the US post-9/11? Were any laws enacted?

tzakrajs 13y ago

Negligence triumphed over excellence this time...

mateodelnorte 13y ago

As the reactors have now dumped thousands of tons of nuclear runoff water into the ocean which then drifts to the North American West Coast, is this not something we should be much more aware of and acting to protect against? Is the US West Coast at danger of increased incidence rates of radiation related illness?

anon1385 13y ago
>Is the US West Coast at danger of increased incidence rates of radiation related illness? No.
cdash 13y ago
The answer is no, it is not even close to something we should be worried about.
- StavrosK 13y ago
  Is that because it's going to be diluted to unnoticeable levels even near the origin?
  - cdash 13y ago
    Yes
- stan_rogers 13y ago
  Unless, of course, you're a homeopath. On a slightly more serious note, I would expect to see a variety of illnesses occurring at a statistically ordinary rate around the variously-projected times of arrival to be blamed on radioactive seawater regardless of the actual concentrations (which will probably be in the high-C, or incredibly powerful because it's incredibly weak, homeopathic dilution range).
zequel 13y ago
Remember the US used to do multiple nuclear detonation tests off Pacific islands after WWII. The Pacific Ocean has a lot of water to dilute the effects.

elleferrer 13y ago

A failed multimillion-dollar radiation-detection system. Why didn't they have this activated? "The toxic seawater was sucked into the ship’s desalinization system, flowing out of its faucets and showers — still radioactive — and into the crew member’s bodies."

skriticos2 13y ago
They could have sidestepped the whole issue with a simple reverse-osmosis water filter. Somehow I get the impression that they did not think the ABC (edit: CBRN) thing through.
- JshWright 13y ago
  A "simple" reverse-osmosis system? A Nimitz class carrier can produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 400,000 gallons of desalinated (potable) water a day. Desalination is very energy intensive, but energy is something that a nuclear powered carrier has plenty of. There are obviously some consumables involved, but it's mostly just energy, and lots of it. RO, on the other hand, requires a lot of high quality, small pore filters and membranes that need to be cleaned and changed regularly. RO systems have dramatically lower throughputs than desalination systems of similar size. An RO system capable of producing 400,000 gallons/day (especially one capable of filtering radioisotopes that are (while larger than a water molecule), still quite small) would be very large, and very maintenance intensive. But hey... you're probably right... The folks who designed the potable water infrastructure for the Nimitz class aircraft carriers were probably idiots...
  - scotty79 13y ago
    > The folks who designed the potable water infrastructure for the Nimitz class aircraft carriers were probably idiots. You are not an idiot just for doing something stupid. All people, even the smartest ones have capacity to do dangerously stupid things. In this case they probably just weren't ordered to built a system that can provide clean water in case of the ship being covered in radioactive snow. So the people doing stupid things (possibly, but not necessarily, idiots) were the people who gave orders. Still hard to imagine for a country that treats nuclear war sort of seriously. Of course I think you are totally right about RO being non-easy. I have no idea about RO and desalination systems but my motto is "nothing's ever easy".

ChristianMarks 13y ago

It was much worse than was reported. An online forum of nuclear engineers (I may still have the link) was the most informative source of news about the disaster at the time. EDIT: found the link. http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=8b5b840e5e92174eb7a22932b9d60c0f&t=501974 http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=8b5b840e5e9217...

scotty79 13y ago
I hope I won't offend anyone by saying that some of the reported health problems after radioactive disaster are usually exaggerated to get reparations.
- ChristianMarks 13y ago
  It's only an assertion without specific evidence. The threads linked above run for tens of thousands of pages and form an important part of the historical record.
- Alex_MJ 13y ago
  It's a two way street - they're usually dramatically downplayed by authorities and anybody who would otherwise have to pay. If you're not loud and exaggerated, nobody with any ability to do anything listens and powerful people actively want you to not be heard. For illustration, the official number of deaths attributed to the Chernobyl disaster is 31.
  - markdown 13y ago
    > For illustration, the official number of deaths attributed to the Chernobyl disaster is 31. Link to a reputable source contradicting the official death toll please.
    - radiobat 13y ago
      http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20403-25-years-after-chernobyl-we-dont-know-how-many-died.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20403-25-years-after-c...

forktheif 13y ago

Wikipedia says the USS Ronald Regan has a total crew of 5,680. How statistically significant is 70 people out of 5,680 suffering serious health problems over 2.5 years? I'm guessing that most people on board were fairly young and in good health.

skriticos2 13y ago
Radiation overdose is happy to cause you all kind of cancer 50 years down the road. Having been overexposed is really not something you want, even if you don't show symptoms so quickly. The psychological pressure on these people alone must be maddening. Imagine waking up every day for the rest of your life and wondering if you have cancer today? Not good.. Edit: and let's not talk about the increased likelihood of disfigured offspring.
- scotty79 13y ago
  > Imagine waking up every day for the rest of your life and wondering if you have cancer today? Not good.. 30% of us will have it at some point, also you have chance 1 in 1000-2000 that you'll die next year.
  - simulate 13y ago
    > you have chance 1 in 1000-2000 that you'll die next year. You have a 1000-2000 chance that you'll die when you are no longer an infant but still young. Your chances of dying next year go up as your get older. If you had only 1 chance in 1000 to die each year that would mean that people would live to be 1000 years old on average. A good estimate of human mortality rates can be calculated from Gompertz law: http://forio.com/simulate/mbean/death-probability-calculator/simulation http://forio.com/simulate/mbean/death-probability-calculator...
    - WalterBright 13y ago
      > If you had only 1 chance in 1000 to die each year that would mean that people would live to be 1000 years old on average. Actually it means your chances of living to be 1000 would be 37%. 0.999 ^ 1000 = .37

pagekicker 13y ago

Not the most credible publication, and plaintiff's attorneys are clearly the primary sources for the article.

CookWithMe 13y ago

At the TC Disrupt Europe hackathon, there was one team that build a hardware/software hack to crowdsource radioactivity data / warnings. Basically, a Geiger counter attached to your computer that sends readings to a server. I think it was a really cool hack and one of my favorites, but it didn't go anywhere with the jury (I guess no business model and all :) ). http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/26/open-radioactivity-warning-system/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/26/open-radioactivity-warning-... http://techcrunch.com/video/open-radioactivity-warning-system-demo-at-hackathon-europe-2013/517988760/ http://techcrunch.com/video/open-radioactivity-warning-syste... (Video)

zequel 13y ago

This is why I wouldn't let my kids EVER enlist. The government has no regard for its enlisted. Doesn't take a genius to think our navy would be in harm's way during a RADIOACTIVE DISASTER. Reminds me of when soldiers were being electrocuted in showers in Iraq because of totally incompetent contractors wiring electricity near the showers.

joenathan 13y ago
>Reminds me of when soldiers were being electrocuted in showers in Iraq because of totally incompetent contractors wiring electricity near the showers. The details of which are the showers needed water pumps,and the water pumps were not properly grounded.
JanezStupar 13y ago
Sure, better let somebody else's kids take care of the shitty work. I agree wholeheartedly.
- lostlogin 13y ago
  There is, of course, the better option. Invade less people and spy on less people and then the number of people needed and the danger they face is decreased. Additionally, using the military as a social welfare system may not be the great system some think it is. My perspective is skewed however, as being a New Zealander the threat level is zero (except from our so-called allies, who have bombed us in the past - thanks France).
- alan_cx 13y ago
  "Sure, better let somebody else's kids take care of the shitty work." Bullshit. That was never implied, let alone said, you simply made it up.
ams6110 13y ago
Because incompetent electricians never cause death anywhere but in military combat zones?

floodcow 13y ago

Sad story and and it pisses me off that so many countries denied the carrier to dock up.

markdown 13y ago
> it pisses me off that so many countries denied the carrier to dock up. Why is that? Countries that don't have the technical expertise to judge how dangerous it could have been for their people are absolutely right to have prevented them from docking. Their only loyalty is to their own people, as it should be. As long as they don't have the expertise to verify that their is no risk to their own people, they should default to GTFO. Do you think the US would allow a shipload of people with the SARS coronavirus or Ebola to dock at one of their ports?

VLM 13y ago

"The levels were incredibly dangerous and at one point, the radiation in the air measured 300 times higher than what was considered safe, Sebourn told The Post." This doesn't mean anything, its technobabble. How many REM or mSv total exposure? "I said something complicated and science-y sounding, so you are supposed to be scared right now". The biggest misfortune is they may even accidentally be correct, just completely incompetent about it. A big epidemiology problem is identifying the actual cause by symptom, and avoiding the assumption that participation in something big and scary therefore means all problems must be caused by big n scary. Some goofball tipping over a barrel of solvent in the maint bay could cause many cancers later, and is marginally more likely.

platz 13y ago
Amazing how you think your claim is better informed than those from a primary source. You're right, the mystery solvent must have been it.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  You can't argue with some people, perhaps like the original poster. Even if figures and readings are produced, some will talk about bananas, flying in an aeroplane, and background radiation. The biggest joke of all has been how the "safety limits" of different types of radiation were all magically raised after Fukushima.
  - glenra 13y ago
    If actual measurements of radioactivity were produced rather than measurements in terms of "tons of water (with some tiny unknown percentage of radioactive component)" or "300 times the level considered safe (without saying what that level actually is)", then it would be possible to talk sensibly about how it compares to other exposure sources. Such as eating bananas, living in Colorado, getting a dental x-ray and so on. And it might still be scary if we knew the numbers, but without real numbers we can't know that it's worth worrying about.
    - 13y ago

tasty_freeze 13y ago

This story may or may not be accurate, but anything which comes from nypost is suspect.

melling 13y ago

We're either a one decade or two from having the necessary robotics technology needed to keep humans out of harm's way in these situations. http://singularityhub.com/2013/12/20/nasa-unveils-valkyrie-a-humanoid-robot-destined-for-space-exploration/ http://singularityhub.com/2013/12/20/nasa-unveils-valkyrie-a... It's really up to us if it's going to be 10 years or 20.

Alex_MJ 13y ago
We already can make simple ones, it's a matter of radiation shielding. They don't have to be huge expensive humanoid ones. Robots were used in the Chernobyl cleanup 25 years ago although they ended up getting fried from the radiation. I haven't done much research on the topic of what exists today regarding workarounds for electronics in radioactive environments (if someone has domain knowledge, please tell!), but I suspect we could fix that. For some interesting history, look up "Bio-Robots" to see how the Soviet Union dealt with the disaster. Basically they sent up humans in heavy lead suits for no more than 45 seconds at a time. Run up, get three or four shovelfuls (they were clearing radioactive debris from the roof), get out.
- Qworg 13y ago
  There is much more to it than getting hardened electronics. For example, I was talking with some Westinghouse engineers and the biggest problem with the robots at Fukushima were the cameras. The radiation crazes the lenses and you become blind. Search and rescue is a hard problem and is terribly underfunded. It is also funded in a way that makes long term improvements hard. There is very little money until there's a disaster, then there is a ton of cash you have to spend right now.
  - Alex_MJ 13y ago
    Out of curiosity, do you have anything more on what destroys the lenses? Heat/melting? Some form of radioactive dust?
- ChristianMarks 13y ago
  See the end of http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=711577&page=4 http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=711577&page=4 on why it isn't entirely straightforward to send in a robot.

losethos 13y ago

family-estate No calf certain pursued foul City finish afford honoured show Alas C:\TAD\Text\BIBLE.TXT her utterly: let nothing of her be left. 50:27 Slay all her bullocks; let them go down to the slaughter: woe unto them! for their day is come, the time of their visitation. 50:28 The voice of them that flee and escape out of the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of the LORD our God, the vengeance of his temple. 50:29 Call together the archers against Babylon: all ye that bend the bow, camp against it round about; let none thereof escape: recompense her according to her work; according to

wissler 13y ago

A Geiger counter is a simple, inexpensive device, and several should be present at all significant military installations and turned on at all times. Why wasn't that the case here?

Daniel_Newby 13y ago
It was. The Reagan is nuclear-powered and is capable of carrying nuclear missiles (and quite possibly was at the time). Unless Navy planning has entirely rotted away, that ship was plastered with radiation detectors, crewed with people trained for nuke decon, equipped with NBC (nuclear/bioweapon/chemical weapon) protection suits, and supplied with potassium iodide tablets for thyroid protection.
- wissler 13y ago
  Then what really happened here?
  - Daniel_Newby 13y ago
    Probably mass hysteria. It seems unlikely that the captain blithley ignored basic safety measures, and the symptoms reported in the article are not typical for radiation sickness.
  - frankydp 13y ago
    I am a CBRN specialist in the Marine Corps. These ships run constant radiation detection, everywhere, especially in the water desal. The only probable cause for these kind of biological responses, would have to be inhalation of radiated particulates, but even that would be extremely difficult given the range from the source. Even the most basic respiratory protection(shirt over face) would prevent most of that type of contamination. The entire CBRN community was hyper focused on these operations Navy wide, and the possibility of an entire group of ships not taking every precaution is very very very low. I am not discounting the possibility of equipment failure(unknowingly) or execution failure by individuals, but the chances of that with so much attention on the issue would be low. EDIT: What do people do when they see snow? Think tounge out.

joshvm 13y ago

"Tokyo Electric Power also knew that radioactivity was leaking at a rate of 400 tons a day into the North Pacific, according to the lawsuit and Japanese officials." I'm sorry, what? What does that even mean? 400 tons of.. Uranium? Water? Pure radioactive essence? This article is shocking on many levels, but the lack of journalistic standards is appalling.

glenra 13y ago
400 tons of slightly radioactive coolant water, I believe. Or of groundwater that had been mixed with the slightly radioactive coolant water. Journalists don't seem to realize the more water there is, the less harmful it is per unit volume, or that the sea rapidly dilutes it further into harmlessness. There's a little more detail on the claim here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/fukushima-radioactive-water-leak_n_3784399.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/fukushima-radioacti...
nobody_nowhere 13y ago
We're talking about the NY Post! It would be more surprising if it exhibited any standards at all.
- jrockway 13y ago
  They have standards. They pick a Tumblr at random and say, "I bet we can have higher journalistic standards than that guy." And 50% of the time, they're right!

deleted 13y ago

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AnotherDesigner 13y ago

The nuclear apologists are out in full force today. I love how you guys, mostly computer programmers, are so much more informed than experts in nearly every other field of science existing. It must be amazing to be that smart.

haimez 13y ago
As long as you're going to use amorphous group affiliations to create an ad-hominem attack, let me do the same: "AnotherDesigner"
sitharus 13y ago
It is amazing, but the diodes down my left side hurt all the time.
cheeseprocedure 13y ago
Even someone with an anti-nuclear stance should look at an article whose primary source is an attorney suing TEPCO and think "this is not adding anything valuable to the conversation."
mikeash 13y ago
Er, the opinions expressed by the "nuclear apologists" generally line up with those of experts in the field. It's the fools who talk about "400 tons of radiation" who are committing the sin of hubris in thinking that they know more than the experts.
- lostlogin 13y ago
  If you want an independent opinion upon the pros and cons of disbanding my field of work, don't ask me.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    You have to make up your mind: do we trust experts, or not? The person I was replying to was clearly on the "yes" side of that. You can certainly disagree, but then your argument is going to be radically different.

Pitarou 13y ago

On its own, I can't treat this article as credible. The compensation lawyer presents the strongest possible case for his clients, and the journalist is clearly glossing over a great deal in order to get the juiciest quotes. From what little details are given, it sounds like the crew of the Reagan suffered from some kind of gut infection, not radiation poisoning. That would explain why they were denied port entry at Guam, and so on. I live on the fringe of the area where contamination from Fukushima can be detected. To my knowledge, doctors haven't noticed anything unusual yet, and believe me people are watching. Still, the article sends a chill...

sitharus 13y ago
The symptoms are credible, but the NY Post is not. It's like claiming the Daily Mail knows what the real effects of immigration are in the UK.
deleted 13y ago
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greenyoda 13y ago
"From what little details are given, it sounds like the crew of the Reagan suffered from some kind of gut infection, not radiation poisoning." Do gut infections cause thyroid problems, cancers and uncontrolled gynecological bleeding?
- krschultz 13y ago
  Keep in mind in any sizeable group of people those things happen. I was a healthy 25 year old male with no issues what so ever. I'm now a 26 year old male who doesn't a have a thyroid and takes a pill every day. In between was an unexplained baseball sized growth on my thyroid that had nothing to do with anything and was thankfully not cancerous. Shit happens and we don't always know why.
- Pitarou 13y ago
  I'm talking about the outbreaks of diarrhea, because those are the only symptoms that are clearly epidemologically significant. From a crew of 6,000, there's nothing that strikes me odd about the occasional case of thyroid or gynecological problems. Shit happens.

Juha 13y ago

Related post from NBC (27th of Dec 2012): US sailors sue Japan's TEPCO for post-quake radiation exposure (http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/27/16197507-us-sailors-sue-japans-tepco-for-post-quake-radiation-exposure http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/27/16197507-us-sa...). Interesting they used almost the same photo on the article.

dhughes 13y ago

You would think it would have been a good time to test or at least offer Ex-Rad to the sailors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Rad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Rad "Ex-Rad (or Ex-RAD), also known by the code name ON 01210.Na, is a drug developed by Onconova Therapeutics and the U.S. Department of Defense.[1][2] This newly developed compound is said to be a potent radiation protection agent. Chemically, it is the sodium salt of 4-carboxystyryl-4-chlorobenzylsulfone.[3"

patrickg_zill 13y ago

The meaning behind the story is far more sinister than the sad case of some people getting cancer... it is that TEPCO, which is the organization best suited to know and measure what was/is going on, has been shown to lie, even to its own government, about the situation. (mentioned in more detail here: http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/28/world/asia/japan-fukushima-lawsuit/ http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/28/world/asia/japan-fukushima-law... ) If it truly the case that TEPCO has been lying about things from the start, then nothing that they have said in the interim, or things that they say in the future, can be taken at face value, and whatever claims they make require independant third party confirmation.

josh-wrale 13y ago

If I were losing 60 or 70 pounds a month due to hyperthyroidism, I'd request that my thyroid be removed and I'd probably then be prescribed levothyroxine. I'd say it's a safe bet the thyroid isn't the root cause here. Thyroid removal is pretty common.

patrickgokey 13y ago

I served on the Reagan from 2003-2007 and am lucky enough to have finished my enlistment before the Fukushima incident. I still have a large network of friends in the military and work in the defense industry in San Diego so I was surprised when I first learned of this incident only a few weeks ago. I thought the post I was reading at the time was a sick hoax at first but have since learned otherwise. This doesn't surprise me much at all unfortunately, and I wish my fellow sailors the best of luck in not getting screwed by Uncle Sam, which is what I fully expect will happen.

dctoedt 13y ago

This has come up several times in the Navy-nuke Facebook group in which I lurk (I used to be one of them). The posters in that group have been, shall we say, scathingly skeptical of these claims of radiation sickness. The group includes a number of current- and former radiological-controls specialists, known as engineering lab techs or "ELTs." Navy-nuke ELTs are a select lot who are trained to face the facts and tell it like it is. As a general rule, they're very good at spotting BS, and they're not especially inclined to just passively accept it when they do spot it. Their skepticism about this radiation-sickness story is worth taking into account. EDIT: Consider some circumstantial evidence: - In the Navy nuclear-power subculture, people pay attention to detail (to put it mildly). This is true in general, and especially on the subject of radiation exposure to the crew or the public. - The commanding officer and executive officer of every U.S. aircraft carrier are nuclear-trained, on top of being senior aviators or naval flight officers; they must successfully complete the full, one-year, very-intense nuke qualification course even to be eligible to hold those jobs. Then before they assume those jobs they undergo still more training to be an XO and then CO. - On any U.S. aircraft carrier, the chief engineer (who "owns" the evaporators that produce the ship's drinking- and washing water) and the [chief] reactor officer (who "owns" the ELTs) are nukes, of course. They're among the most-senior officers on the ship. - Unambitious people don't put in the years of stressful work that it takes to get these jobs. It's a safe bet that these senior officers all want to be admirals someday. A radiological "incident" of the kind being described likely would severely impair their chances of ever being assigned to a responsible job again, let alone being promoted to flag rank. So: We're being asked to believe that, in a non-combat situation, somehow all of these career-minded senior officers aboard the Reagan inadvertently allowed the crew's radiation exposure to get to dangerous levels. Sorry, I just don't buy it. I suppose we can't categorically rule out the possibility, but to me it's another reason to be skeptical of the radiation-sickness claims.

crazytony 13y ago
can you tell us about the reasons for their skepticism?
- dctoedt 13y ago

justin66 13y ago

If there's any government agency that will obfuscate, stonewall, evade responsibility and generally bullshit their way out of helping the people who get hurt on their watch, it's the DoD. When people sperg out over specific radiation claims being floated in the NY Post (of all places) they ought to keep in mind that if these people are anywhere near as sick as they're described to be they need help, and they're up against a nasty brick wall when it comes to getting that help. Picking a side here ought to be pretty damn easy unless this turns out to be some kind of outright fraud.