9 ms·

Tokyo Radiation Less Than Paris’s Three Years After Meltdown

83 points by blacktulip 13y ago

fxj 13y ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByZ1AyDEGSk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByZ1AyDEGSk our friend the atom
ekianjo 13y ago
> 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.
- harshreality 13y ago
  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
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    We also know some levels of radiation may actually have protective effects (killing some viruses/bacteria which cause some cancers).
- adventured 13y ago
  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-ourselves-cancer.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/opinion/we-are-giving-ours...
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    This article was heavily debated on HN. Needless to say, these numbers should be considered with a big fat grain of salt.
- Xylakant 13y ago
  > 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..
  - greggman 13y ago
    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.
    - logicchains 13y ago
      It can be explained by the concept of radiation hormesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
    - Xylakant 13y ago
      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 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").
blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago
So, I guess that everybody has seen that documentary about nuclear power then? It must be ok...I saw a documentary about it! (You fucking simpleton's.)
skrause 13y ago
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.
timr 13y ago
...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.
- CmonDev 13y ago
  The idea is to hide the truth, not uncover it.
  - bowlofpetunias 13y ago
    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.
    - api 13y ago
      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.)
      - tptacek 13y ago
        We must be on different HNs.
        jamesaguilar 13y ago
        Likewise. The HN I read is full of anti-epistemological conspiracy theorists these days.
Mc_Big_G 13y ago
"“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.
6cxs2hd6 13y ago
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.
- teamonkey 13y ago
  I'm not sure the Fukushima power plant is where you think it is.
  - jrockway 13y ago
    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.
  - 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
    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.
DeusExMachina 13y ago
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.
- anarchy8 13y ago
  I thought people were still living there now? I remember news reports from half a year ago.
- wpietri 13y ago
  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-decontamination-fukushima-idINDEE97D0G220130814 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-fukushima-aftermath-people-are-suffering-from-radiophobia-a-780810.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/studying-the-fukus...
- teraflop 13y ago
  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.
- maratd 13y ago
  > 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.
pohl 13y ago
Well that's the all-clear signal, folks. Let's go skinny dipping in the effluent!
nodata 13y ago
"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"
zebulom 13y ago
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.
digisign 13y ago
That's what happens when you have the Pacific Ocean to dump the waste into.

83 points by blacktulip 13y ago

fxj 13y ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByZ1AyDEGSk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByZ1AyDEGSk our friend the atom

> 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.

harshreality 13y ago
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
- ekianjo 13y ago
  We also know some levels of radiation may actually have protective effects (killing some viruses/bacteria which cause some cancers).
adventured 13y ago
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-ourselves-cancer.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/opinion/we-are-giving-ours...
- ekianjo 13y ago
  This article was heavily debated on HN. Needless to say, these numbers should be considered with a big fat grain of salt.
Xylakant 13y ago
> 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..
- greggman 13y ago
  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.
  - logicchains 13y ago
    It can be explained by the concept of radiation hormesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
  - Xylakant 13y ago
    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 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").

blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago

So, I guess that everybody has seen that documentary about nuclear power then? It must be ok...I saw a documentary about it! (You fucking simpleton's.)

skrause 13y ago

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.

timr 13y ago

...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.

CmonDev 13y ago
The idea is to hide the truth, not uncover it.
- bowlofpetunias 13y ago
  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.
  - api 13y ago
    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.)
    - tptacek 13y ago
      We must be on different HNs.
      - jamesaguilar 13y ago
        Likewise. The HN I read is full of anti-epistemological conspiracy theorists these days.

Mc_Big_G 13y ago

"“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.

6cxs2hd6 13y ago

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.

teamonkey 13y ago
I'm not sure the Fukushima power plant is where you think it is.
- jrockway 13y ago
  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.
- 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
  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.

DeusExMachina 13y ago

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.

anarchy8 13y ago
I thought people were still living there now? I remember news reports from half a year ago.
wpietri 13y ago
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-decontamination-fukushima-idINDEE97D0G220130814 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-fukushima-aftermath-people-are-suffering-from-radiophobia-a-780810.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/studying-the-fukus...
teraflop 13y ago
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.
maratd 13y ago
> 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.

pohl 13y ago

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

nodata 13y ago

"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"

zebulom 13y ago

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.

digisign 13y ago

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