Thursday, September 22, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Jeffrey D. Sachs - The Economics of Happiness
NEW YORK – We live in a time of high anxiety. Despite the world’s unprecedented total wealth, there is vast insecurity, unrest, and dissatisfaction. In the United States, a large majority of Americans believe that the country is “on the wrong track.” Pessimism has soared. The same is true in many other places.
Against this backdrop, the time has come to reconsider the basic sources of happiness in our economic life. The relentless pursuit of higher income is leading to unprecedented inequality and anxiety, rather than to greater happiness and life satisfaction. Economic progress is important and can greatly improve the quality of life, but only if it is pursued in line with other goals.
In this respect, the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan has been leading the way. Forty years ago, Bhutan’s fourth king, young and newly installed, made a remarkable choice: Bhutan should pursue “gross national happiness” rather than gross national product. Since then, the country has been experimenting with an alternative, holistic approach to development that emphasizes not only economic growth, but also culture, mental health, compassion, and community.
Dozens of experts recently gathered in Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu, to take stock of the country’s record. I was co-host with Bhutan’s prime minister, Jigme Thinley, a leader in sustainable development and a great champion of the concept of “GNH.” We assembled in the wake of a declaration in July by the United Nations General Assembly calling on countries to examine how national policies can promote happiness in their societies.
All who gathered in Thimphu agreed on the importance of pursuing happiness rather than pursuing national income. The question we examined is how to achieve happiness in a world that is characterized by rapid urbanization, mass media, global capitalism, and environmental degradation. How can our economic life be re-ordered to recreate a sense of community, trust, and environmental sustainability?
Here are some of the initial conclusions. First, we should not denigrate the value of economic progress. When people are hungry, deprived of basic needs such as clean water, health care, and education, and without meaningful employment, they suffer. Economic development that alleviates poverty is a vital step in boosting happiness.
Second, relentless pursuit of GNP to the exclusion of other goals is also no path to happiness. In the US, GNP has risen sharply in the past 40 years, but happiness has not. Instead, single-minded pursuit of GNP has led to great inequalities of wealth and power, fueled the growth of a vast underclass, trapped millions of children in poverty, and caused serious environmental degradation.
Third, happiness is achieved through a balanced approach to life by both individuals and societies. As individuals, we are unhappy if we are denied our basic material needs, but we are also unhappy if the pursuit of higher incomes replaces our focus on family, friends, community, compassion, and maintaining internal balance. As a society, it is one thing to organize economic policies to keep living standards on the rise, but quite another to subordinate all of society’s values to the pursuit of profit.
Yet politics in the US has increasingly allowed corporate profits to dominate all other aspirations: fairness, justice, trust, physical and mental health, and environmental sustainability. Corporate campaign contributions increasingly undermine the democratic process, with the blessing of the US Supreme Court.
Fourth, global capitalism presents many direct threats to happiness. It is destroying the natural environment through climate change and other kinds of pollution, while a relentless stream of oil-industry propaganda keeps many people ignorant of this. It is weakening social trust and mental stability, with the prevalence of clinical depression apparently on the rise. The mass media have become outlets for corporate “messaging,” much of it overtly anti-scientific, and Americans suffer from an increasing range of consumer addictions.
Consider how the fast-food industry uses oils, fats, sugar, and other addictive ingredients to create unhealthy dependency on foods that contribute to obesity. One-third of all Americans are now obese. The rest of the world will eventually follow unless countries restrict dangerous corporate practices, including advertising unhealthy and addictive foods to young children.
The problem is not just foods. Mass advertising is contributing to many other consumer addictions that imply large public-health costs, including excessive TV watching, gambling, drug use, cigarette smoking, and alcoholism.
Fifth, to promote happiness, we must identify the many factors other than GNP that can raise or lower society’s well-being. Most countries invest to measure GNP, but spend little to identify the sources of poor health (like fast foods and excessive TV watching), declining social trust, and environmental degradation. Once we understand these factors, we can act.
The mad pursuit of corporate profits is threatening us all. To be sure, we should support economic growth and development, but only in a broader context: one that promotes environmental sustainability and the values of compassion and honesty that are required for social trust. The search for happiness should not be confined to the beautiful mountain kingdom of Bhutan.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
World's Nuclear Reactors
Some info about where the nuclear reactors are. Find one near you!
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Pressurised water reactors (PWRs) This is the most common type worldwide. Enriched uranium oxide is formed into rods and water is used both as a coolant, flowing through the reactor core to transfer heat away, and as a moderator, slowing down neutrons released by fission so that they promote further nuclear reactions. The main cooling circuit transfers heat via a steam generator to a second circuit, which drives the electricity-generating turbine.
Boiling water reactors This is the next most common type, used in countries including the US, Sweden and Japan – the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi are ageing examples. The fuel is enriched uranium oxide, and water is used both as a coolant and as a moderator. However, these reactors differ from PWRs in that there is only one cooling loop, flowing between turbine and reactor.
Heavy water-moderated reactors These all use heavy water as a moderator. Most reactors of this type are known as pressurised heavy water reactors, favoured especially in Canada. PHWRs are similar to PWRs, but use raw uranium rather than enriched uranium oxide as fuel, and deploy heavy water – in which hydrogen is replaced by deuterium – as both moderator and coolant.
Gas-cooled reactors Developed in the UK, these reactors use graphite to moderate neutrons and carbon dioxide to cool the core. Older versions, known as Magnox reactors, use uranium metal as fuel, while newer ones use enriched uranium oxide.
Fast breeder reactors These reactors are cooled by liquid sodium, which is not an efficient moderator. In addition to driving fission reactions, 'fast' neutrons are readily captured by uranium-238, which is then converted to plutonium-239. These reactors therefore 'breed' plutonium, which can be used to make more fuel or nuclear weapons.
Light water-cooled graphite-moderated reactors Fuelled by low-enriched uranium oxide, these reactors use graphite as a moderator and water to cool the core. The most common variant of this type, known as RBMK, was responsible for the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The design is considered inherently hazardous because graphite can react explosively with metal pipes, yet some reactors of the type continue to be operated in the former Soviet Bloc.
Map showing the population size living within 75 kilometres of each of the world's nuclear power plants. Population increases with circle size and with colour, from green (< 0.5 million) to red (> 20 million). You need to download the Google Earth plug-in to view this graphic. See 'How population sizes were estimated' for an explanation of how the analysis was carried out.
Atomic Deserts: A Survey of the World's Radioactive No-Go Zones
Everyone knows about Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and, now, Fukushima. But what about Semipalatinsk, Palomares and Kyshtym? The world is full of nuclear disaster zones -- showing just how dangerous the technology really is.
Wednesday, Mar. 28, 1979. In the Three Mile Island nuclear power station in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the nightmare scenario of nuclear physicists was about to unfold. At four in the morning, employees in the control room noticed the failure of a pump in the reactor's water cooling loop. When a bypass valve failed to trip, water stopped flowing to steam generators, resulting in an emergency reactor shutdown. But the reactor continued to generate so-called decay heat. A relief valve opened automatically but then failed to close, allowing coolant to flow out at a rate of one ton per minute. The control panel erroneously indicated that the cooling system was functioning normally, meaning technicians initially failed to recognize the problem.
By 6 a.m., the top of the reactor core was no longer covered in cooling water -- and the fuel rods began to melt. At the last moment, a technician noticed the problem and closed the relief valve. A full-scale meltdown was only barely averted.
Still, the series of events had a devastating effect: Not only was radioactivity released into the atmosphere, but contaminated coolant escaped into the nearby river. Cancer rates in the local population later rose dramatically. In addition, large parts of the reactor and the power plant site were contaminated. The clean-up operation in Harrisburg took 14 years and cost more than $1 billion. And the reactor ruins are radioactive to this day.
The case is instructive. It was the result of tiny construction errors and a small dose of human error. And now, as the world watches on in horror as the catastrophe in Fukushima continues to unfold, the debate on the safety of nuclear power has been reignited. The area around Fukushima will likely remain contaminated for decades, if not centuries. And many are once again wondering if the returns from nuclear technology justifies the risks. How can anything be considered under control which can so quickly mutate into an apocalypse?
Sadly, though, disasters like Three Mile Island and Fukushima are not as rare as one would hope. There have been plenty of atomic accidents resulting in significant radioactive leaks, spills and explosions. And the Chernobly Exclusion Zone, for all the attention it gets, is far from the only nuclear no-go area on the planet. A look at some of the worst incidents is enough to demonstrate just how high the price of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons truly is.
A New Age Dawns
On Jul. 16, 1945, at 05:29:45 local time, the atomic era began as the first ever nuclear bomb, called "The Gadget", was detonated at the White Sands missile testing grounds in New Mexico. A similar device exploded over Nagasaki just a few weeks later. Beforehand, some of those involved in the test expressed fears that the explosion might ignite the atmosphere and destroy all life on the planet -- or completely incinerate New Mexico. But despite these concerns, the 18 kiloton bomb was detonated, creating a twelve-kilometer high mushroom cloud and a blast heard 320 kilometers away. Sand at the site of the explosion turned into green, radioactive glass -- also called Trinitit.
'Now I Am Become Death'
The scientific director of the project, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, said later the explosion had reminded him of a line from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." In 1952, the bomb crater was filled in and most of the Trinitit removed. More than 60 years after the "Trinity" test, radiation at the site is still 10 times higher than normal. The site was declared a historic monument in 1965 and can be visited -- but only on two days a year.
Uninhabitable to This Day
The worst nuclear accident the world has so far seen occurred on Apr. 26, 1986 at the Chernoybl power plant near the town of Pripyat, in what was then the USSR (now Ukraine). The testing of a new voltage regulator led to an explosion in reactor 4 which destroyed the roof, exposing the melting core and hurling radiation into the air.
The Soviet authorities tried to cover up the incident for as long as possible. On the morning after the explosion, area residents were requested to stay indoors and to keep their windows closed. One day later, all 50,000 residents of Pripyat were evacuated. They were told they would be able to return home after three days, but they were never allowed back.
It was weeks before the full extent of the disaster became known outside of the Soviet Union as radioactivity reached large parts of Europe. An exclusion zone was set up prohibiting entry into an area 30 kilometers on all sides of the stricken reactor. Some say that as many as 110,000 people lost their lives with hundreds of thousands more still suffering from the effects of the radiation, but other estimates are much lower. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in 2006 that fewer than 50 people died from initial exposure to radiation from the reactor. At the scene of the accident, radiation exposure is still 700 times higher than permissible levels, and Pripyat remains uninhabitable.
The Radioactive Dilemma
Above ground, Germany has not yet suffered a nuclear disaster, despite numerous incidents in German nuclear power plants. Underground, however, is a different story: Electricity has been produced from nuclear fission in Germany for more than 60 years -- but there is no final repository for the resulting waste. Since the 1960s, much of the waste has ended up at the Asse storage facility (pictured), a salt mine which was to protect the radioactive garbage for the next 100,000 years.
But just 40 years later, massive problems with the site have become apparent. Despite assurances to the contrary, 12,000 liters of water are leaking into the site each day, rusting the drums and resulting in a release of radioactivity. As yet, there is no proposal for what to do with the resulting sludge nor is there a plan in place for solving the Asse problem. Many of the waste drums were simply piled up, instead of neatly stacked. It is impossible to get close enough to begin a clean up program.
Unrelenting Bombardment
During the Cold War's nuclear arms race, a total of 119 atomic devices were detonated at the Nevada Proving Grounds, northwest of Las Vegas. This image is from a test in 1953. After 1962, more than a thousand nuclear tests were conducted underground. The site -- about the size of Germany's Saarland region -- was finally decommissioned in 1992.
A Deadly Legacy
The lion's share of the plutonium used for the US nuclear arsenal during the Cold War came from the Hanford plant on the Columbia River in the US state of Washington. The plutonium used in the first atomic bomb test in July 1945 came from Hanford as did the material used in "Fat Man," the bomb which destroyed Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.
Fifty-two buildings at Hanford remain contaminated to this day, and 240 square miles are uninhabitable due to the radioactivity that has seeped into the soil and ground water: uranium, cesium, strontium, plutonium and other deadly radio-nuclides. Altogether, more than 204,000 cubic meters of highly radioactive waste remain on site -- two-thirds of the total for the entire US. In one area, discharges of more than 216 million liters of radioactive, liquid waste and cooling water have flowed out of leaky tanks. More than 100,000 spent fuel rods -- 2,300 tons of them -- still sit in leaky basins close to the Columbia River.
The plant is also notorious for the so-called "Green Run" -- the deliberate release of a highly radioactive cloud from the T-plant, the world's largest plutonium factory at the time. The radiation was almost 1,000 times worse than that released during the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the worst nuclear accident in American history. Fallout from the experiment drifted all the way to California. People wondered why they suddenly got sick. Studies would eventually show that some babies at Hanford were radiated twice as much as the children of Chernobyl.
A Nuclear No Man's Land
Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, now known as Semey, was host to the main nuclear test site of the former Soviet Union. Some 506 nuclear tests were carried out there during the Cold War. Since the closure of the site, the United States has invested more than $600 million (€420 / $ 596.62 million) in cleaning up the contaminated 18,500 square kilometers (7,142 square miles). The US has also invested $100 million (€70 million) in trying to better secure the site -- there are fears terrorists could obtain radioactive material there in order to build so-called dirty bombs.
The Kazakh government had hoped to make the site available for agricultural use once again. But some areas are still so contaminated with plutonium that they have to be covered with huge, two-meter thick steel plates to contain the radiation.
Unfathomable Destruction
On Aug. 6, 1945, the US bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Within seconds, much of the city was destroyed and 90 percent of the people in a half-kilometer (0.3 mile) radius were killed. Many others died in the aftermath of the bomb. By 1946, it is estimated that between 90,000 and 166,000 people had died from the immediate after-effects.
Long-Term Effects
In later years, countless people died from the effects of radiation. Its full magnitude is still being studied.
The Irradiated Buddha
On May 18, 1974, a new member joined the global nuclear family. In the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, near the border with Pakistan, and with expertise gained from a Canadian-built reactor, the first Indian atomic bomb -- called "Smiling Buddha" -- was detonated 107 meters below the ground. India insisted the explosion was for "peaceful" purposes.
In 1998, the site was used for five additional atomic weapons tests. It is unknown whether any radiation leaked to the surface -- officials have claimed that none was detected. To date, India has still not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but has pledged never to strike first with nuclear weapons.
Underground Time Bomb
East Germany stored its radioactive waste at a facility at Morsleben, in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Angela Merkel, then the environment minister, allowed considerable amounts of radioactive waste from the affluent West to be dumped in the Morsleben salt deposits -- despite the concerns of the Federal Authority for Radiation Protection and the opposition of local politicians. Because the facility is now classed as severely structurally damaged, it must be stabilized at great cost -- some €2 / $ 2.84 billion is needed for permanent closure.
The First Big Accident
The first large nuclear power plant accident -- and the largest until Chernobyl -- took place at Windscale, now Sellafield, in October 1957. There, by the Irish Sea, the British had hurriedly built two atomic reactors after World War II for power production and to make weapons-grade plutonium.
The speed of construction carried a great cost. In 1955, 251 workers were exposed to radiation during repair work. Then, on Oct. 10 1957, a reactor core began to burn. In an attempt to extinguish the fire, a radioactive cloud was released, followed by a second one the next day. The radiation reached as far as Switzerland. The fires were only brought under control after two days.
The authorities attempted to cover up the accident, initially saying only that there had been an incident, but that the workers involved had been able to scrub away the radiation with soap and water. The only warning was that cow's milk in a radius of 200 miles from the reactor should not be consumed. In reality, the population surrounding the reactor received radiation doses 10 times higher than that seen as permissible for a lifetime.
According to official figures, 33 people were killed by the after-effects of the disaster, with more than 200 diagnosed with thyroid cancer. To this day, 15 tons of damage fuel rods are still stored on site as is radioactive ash and mud, leftover from the fire. The reactor is now to be dismantled using a robot built exclusively for the project. In all, it is set to cost some 500 million pounds.
The Desert Rats
France was also determined not to get left behind in the nuclear arms race. The first French atomic bomb was called "Gerboise Bleue," named after a desert rodent, and was detonated on the morning of Feb. 13, 1960 in the Reggane district of Algeria, then a French colony. At 70 kilotons, it was bigger than the first nuclear tests of the UK, USSR and USA combined. Three more bombs were exploded soon thereafter. France moved its testing grounds to remote areas of the South Pacific after Algeria gained its independence in 1962.
An Ill-Advised Test
It was only in 2010, the 50th anniversary of that first French test, that the French paper Le Parisien published secret papers from the French Defense Ministry revealing that 300 soldiers were purposefully exposed to radiation during the last test to see what effect it would have on the human body. Most of the soldiers were later diagnosed with cancer, and the survivors still suffer from the effects of the radiation. The scandal prompted the French government to provide €10 / $ 14.21 million in compensation for those affected by the 210 nuclear bomb tests it has carried out.
A report completed by the IAEA in 2005 at the request of the Algerian government found that no further measures were necessary to clean up the Sahara testing grounds. Radiation levels, the report found, were very weak. But Algerian victims' groups complain that France never carried out a decontamination program They say that cancer rates in the region are high and that children are often born with abnormalities.
Mushroom Clouds in the South Pacific
In the 1960s, France moved all of its nuclear testing to the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls and ultimately conducted 41 atmospheric tests and 147 underground tests at the site. Testing at the site was the periodic target of official protest, most notably by the New Zealand government, which sent ships to the atoll in the 1970s to protest for a nuclear free pacific. The site was abandoned as a nuclear test area in 1996, but is still guarded by French forces. There is concern that underwater cracks discovered in the atoll may ultimately allow under ground radiation to escape.
France wasn't the only country to test nuclear devices in the South Pacific. The US detonated 23 nuclear bombs at Bikini Atoll, starting in 1946. One of the blasts contaminated 23 crew members of a Japanese fishing boat, an event which angered Japan and provided the inspiration for the 1954 film "Godzilla." Some 200 inhabitants of the islands were relocated, but several were returned in the 1960s once the US declared the islands safe for habitation. They were, however, removed once again when failed pregnancies and birth deffects began to mount. Fish caught in the atoll's lagoon are still not safe to eat.
The US also conducted nuclear tests at Enewetak Atoll. The photo above shows a Hydrogen bomb blast on Enewetak Atoll in 1952.
Dangerous Negligence
In 1997, highly toxic uranium escaped from around 2,000 barrels of nuclear waste at the Tokai atomic power plant in Japan after rainwater seeped into the shafts where they were stored, causing them to rust. As early as 1982, the authorities had told the firm responsible to fix the problem.
In March of 1997, 35 workers were contaminated with radiation at a nuclear reprocessing facility nearby, at the time, the worst nuclear accident in Japan's history. Just two years later at a uranium reprocessing facility in Tokaimura, 80 workers were contaminated and two died in an accident.
Hydrogen Drama in Spain
On Jan. 17, 1966, an American B-52 bomber and a tanker plane collided over the Spanish coast near Almeria during a refueling maneuver. The bomber, which had been on a routine patrol flight, was carrying four hydrogen bombs. Three fell to the ground near the Andalusian village of Palomares where it required an eight-week clean up operation by US forces to remove several thousand tons of contaminated soil and take it to the US for storage. The photo shows barrels containing the radioactive earth. The fourth bomb was recovered intact from the bottom of the ocean on April 7 that year.
Forty-five years later, the Palomares region still faces aftereffects of the accident. The Spanish government in Madrid has recently promised that cleaning up remaining contamination was a priority and a US team of experts was dispatched to help advise the effort. An estimated half a kilogram of plutonium is believed to still be in the soil.
Harrisburg Horror
In March 1979, the area around Three Mile Island in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was contaminated with radioactivity. Technicians released irradiated gas and water into the environment in order to prevent a full reactor meltdown. The clean-up operation of the surrounding area lasted 12 years and cost around €1 / $ 1.42 billion.
The Unknown Catastrophe
One of the worst nuclear accidents took place on Sep. 29, 1957, but was only made public years later. On that day, a tank containing 80 tons of highly-radioactive liquid waste exploded at the Mayak plutonium plant in the southern Urals, 15 kilometers east of the Russian city of Kyshtym. The blast produced a radioactive cloud that was about 300 kilometers long and 40 kilometers wide, and which traveled northeast. The radiation did not reach Europe, but was at the same level of that released during the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. About 15,000 people who lived in the area were evacuated, and the houses located in a 25-kilometer zone surrounding the location were destroyed. No one was allowed to go back. The plutonium production at the plant, which also delivered the material for the Soviet Union's first atomic bomb, was not discontinued.
It wasn't until the 1970s that information about the catastrophe leaked to the West. The Soviet regime first admitted it in 1989. The number of deaths and details of the long-term effects remain unknown. The 150-square-kilometer area over which the radioactive cloud dispersed remains closed off to this day and entry is forbidden.
Japan's Nuclear Cartel Atomic Industry Too Close to Government for Comfort
After the oil crisis of the 1970s, Japan embraced atomic power with a vengeance. Since then, the ties between the government and the nuclear industry have become so intertwined that public safety is at threat. Inspections are too lax, and anyone who criticizes the status quo can find themselves out of a job.
It was a Friday morning, and Yukio Yamaguchi had left his gray cardigan at home and was wearing his good, dark-brown suit instead. He had boarded the Shinkansen, Japan's high-speed train, to travel to Kashiwazaki-Kariwa on the west coast, home to the world's largest nuclear power plant.
The reserved physicist with horn-rimmed glasses and a gray goatee is an anti-nuclear activist with the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center. He was on his way to attend the meeting of a commission that addresses earthquake safety for power plants. This meeting, together with TEPCO, the operator of the Kashiwazaki plant, was being held to discuss the subject of earthquake and tsunami safety.
It was the morning of March 11, 2011.
Shortly after 1 p.m., Yamaguchi sat down in his usual seat, the second from the left in the first row, in a wood-paneled conference room at the Niigata Prefecture administration building. But what good was it to warn people about the dangerous tidal waves? "It was the same as always," says Yamaguchi. "One man against a dozen TEPCO people. And they said that everything was in perfect order." Until 2:46 p.m., that is, when TEPCO's "perfect order" was destroyed.
The building suddenly started shaking. It was an earthquake, and everyone ran outside. The meeting was interrupted for 15 minutes, but then it was reconvened. A TEPCO spokesman pointed out, once again, how well the Kashiwazaki plant was protected against earthquakes and tsunamis.
No one in the room suspected that in those very minutes, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) farther to the east, a wave more than 14 meters (46 feet) high was rolling toward the six-meter protective wall at TEPCO's second-largest nuclear complex.
The meeting in Niigata ended at about 4 p.m. Just as Yamaguchi was checking into a local business hotel (the bullet train had stopped running, because of the earthquake), TEPCO was notifying the government that it had lost control over the reactors at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Making a Farce of Safety Claims
Time and again, the new realities have revealed the nuclear lobby's safety slogans to be a farce. Apparently the earthquake alone caused the first tubes to crack. The fuel rods melted down into redhot clumps of uranium, eating holes into the floor of the reactor pressure vessel in Unit 1 at an early juncture. And not even the risk of steam explosions has been averted.
TEPCO's and the Japanese government's reassurances have proven to be meaningless. Tens of thousands of people have had to leave their homes, possibly for good. Even the mountain village of Iitate, almost 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the disaster site, has begun to be evacuated.
For a full two months, TEPCO management tried to reassure the public and denied all responsibility, even during its ineffectual attempts to get the damaged reactors under control. It wasn't until last Friday that TEPCO President Masataka Shimizu and Vice President Sakae Muto finally announced their resignations -- a decision that was driven mainly by the company's massive quarterly loss of €10.7 / $ 15.20 billion ($15.1 billion).
The choice of Toshio Nishizawa, another top executive at TEPCO, to replace Shimizu will hardly change the company's inept crisis management strategy. The crisis team will continue to meet on the second floor of the TEPCO headquarters building in Tokyo, in a large conference room with pieces of paper taped to the inside of the windows. The top executives sit around a semicircular table. There is Muto, head of TEPCO's nuclear division until now, who used to chair the meetings, with Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata sitting to his left. Katsumata usually makes an appearance at 9 a.m. and returns between 6 and 7 p.m. Shimizu was rarely seen at the meetings recently, says another executive.
There are several smaller, round tables scattered around the conference table. Teams of outside experts, including specialists from the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and France's Areva nuclear power company, as well as Japanese scientists, sit at these tables. Everyone stares at a large video screen showing dedicated lines to all of TEPCO's power plants, including Kashiwazaki.
At the moment, however, they are usually looking at the bottom left corner of the screen, where there is an image of Masao Yoshida, 56, the head of the plant, who is reporting from the earthquake-proof room at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. "Yoshida often has trouble getting his message across," says one of the meeting participants. "The people at the site have to make an effort to convey how serious the situation really is."
Too Big to Fail
It isn't even entirely clear who is actually responsible for crisis management. A few weeks ago, when SPIEGEL asked a TEPCO spokesman who was running the crisis team, he replied: "Prime Minister (Naoto) Kan." When a member of the Japanese parliament asked the government the same question, it replied: "Primarily TEPCO." Meanwhile, the country's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) announced: "We all support TEPCO in a unified manner in its management of the crisis." One of the government's contributions to this support is financial -- Tokyo is spending the astronomical sum of €43 / $ 61.08 billion to protect TEPCO from ruin. The axiom "too big to fail," which guaranteed the survival of the major European and American banks during the financial crisis, is also proving to be applicable to Japan's largest electric utility.
TEPCO, the world's fourth-largest power company, employs more than 52,000 people and most recently posted annual revenues of about €35 / $ 49.72 billion. Before World War II, the government nationalized all electric utilities and merged them into regional monopolies. The resulting 10 companies are now private, but they have retained their regional dominance.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has consistently treated the electric utilities as tools with which to execute its industrial policy. In return, the utilities enjoy guaranteed profits. Some 45 million people in the Tokyo region get their electricity from TEPCO. The company is ubiquitous. It pays for research and sponsors many news programs. It even built a giant electricity museum in the center of Tokyo's popular Shibuya shopping district.
The Fukushima disaster destroyed much more than a power plant. It has destabilized the entire system on which the Japanese nuclear industry is based.
In Japan, the term "The Atomic Village" refers to an isolated elite that has formed around the country's nuclear complex. Its residents include TEPCO's nuclear divisions and the corresponding departments at the METI. Scientists, politicians and journalists are also members of this exclusive nuclear club.
Activist Yamaguchi has repeatedly run up against the secure walls surrounding this Atomic Village. "They all feel connected," he says. "They all studied at the top university in Tokyo, and after that they worked here at TEPCO or at the agency that's supposed to regulate TEPCO."
A Threat to Japan's Democracy
Both the nuclear industry and its government regulators are also closely intertwined with the political sphere. TEPCO's management is among the key campaign donors to the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Meanwhile, the union that represents workers in the electricity industry supports Prime Minister Kan's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). So far neither of the two parties has taken a position critical of the nuclear industry.
It's as if Austrian writer Robert Jungk's horrific vision of the "nuclear state" had become reality. In his book "The Nuclear State," once required reading for Germany's protest generation, Jungk describes how a high-risk technology can erode a democracy, even without a nuclear disaster. Many of the protesters who faced water cannons, batons and concertina wire during demonstrations in the 1970s and 1980s at German sites like the Brokdorf nuclear power plant near Hamburg, already felt as if they were living in the dreaded surveillance state.
Germany was ultimately spared Jungk's vision, but in Japan it has proven to be prophetic. In a consensus-based society, the nuclear industry, electric utilities, political parties and scientists have created a sacrosanct refuge for themselves that has become a threat to Japan's democracy.
It is clear that wheeling and dealing in the Atomic Village played a role in the Fukushima disaster. According to TEPCO's calculations, the maximum possible height of a tsunami in Fukushima was 5.7 meters. The company acted on the authority of a committee made up of members of Japan's engineering society. But a majority of the commission's 35 members had once worked for electric utilities or think tanks funded by the utilities.
'The Japanese Public Is Partly Responsible'
Even many media organizations, as recipients of generous payments for the electricity industry, are part of the cartel. "The Japanese public is partly responsible for the disaster in Fukushima," says activist Yukio Yamaguchi. Nature triggered the catastrophe, but Japan itself created the conditions that allowed it to happen, he says.
Ironically, hardly any country on earth is more poorly suited for high-risk nuclear technology than earthquake-plagued Japan. A folk legend describes the islands as being perched on the back of a giant fish in the ocean, a fish that is constantly trembling and twitching -- not a good basis for operating the world's third-largest collection of nuclear reactors. Only the United States and France have more nuclear plants.
Nevertheless, until disaster struck Japan continued to forge ambitious expansion plans. To reach its goal of producing half of all the electricity it consumes with nuclear energy by 2030, the country had planned to build a double-digit number of new reactors.
The oil shock of the 1970s came as a wakeup call for Japan, a rising industrial nation at the time. It prompted the government to define the development of a strong nuclear industry as a national goal. Since then, Japanese politicians have inextricably linked the country's rise to prominence and prosperity with nuclear energy.
Buoyed by the prospect of being largely independent of imports of fuel for energy production, Japanese politicians even decided to establish a plutonium industry. Fast breeder reactors, which produce more fuel than they consume, seemed too tempting to pass up.
'Brainwashed'
While most of the world's nuclear nations were abandoning this risky and expensive option (Germany turned its fast breeder reactor in Kalkar near the Dutch border into the most expensive amusement park of all time), Japan inaugurated its Monju breeder reactor and, in 1993, laid the foundation for a reprocessing plant in Rokkasho on the northern tip of the main island, Honshu. At an estimated cost to date of more than €14 / $ 19.89 billion, the facility is one of the most expensive industrial plants in the world, and yet it has never been in full-fledged operation.
"Our country was literally brainwashed," says Taro Kono, a member of the lower house of the Japanese Diet for the conservative LDP. "Atomic energy is a cult in Japan."
Kono, 48, comes from one of Japan's major political dynasties. He has been a member of the parliament for almost 15 years and is notorious for his independent views. He is one of the few members of his parliamentary group to have dared to question Japan's nuclear policy. As a member of parliament who has one of the best election results in Japan, Kono feels even more emboldened to express his opinion. "This is the only reason I can afford to criticize the nuclear industry in the first place," he says with a smile.
"Now TEPCO is saying that the tsunami was much bigger than expected," says Kono. "But what were they expecting?" This, he says, was the conclusion reached by a commission dominated by the power companies, which included almost no earthquake or tsunami experts. "It determined how big the tsunami should be," Kono says. "That's why the electric utilities are the ones who are mainly responsible. It's as simple as that." But for Kono, finding allies is difficult in a country where any criticism of the nuclear industry can end the careers of scientists, journalists and politicians.
Scientists Keep Quiet
TEPCO's influence even extends into scientific laboratories. Many scientists, especially at the University of Tokyo, are partial to TEPCO. The company contributes millions to the university and supports many associations, think tanks and commissions. This form of public relations has been useful to the company until now.
Not a single scientist or engineer at the University of Tokyo has ever been known to have spoken critically about TEPCO, even after the accident in Fukushima. "If you are a critic of nuclear power, you are not promoted, you don't even become a professor, and you are certainly not appointed to key commissions," says Kono.
At times, doubts are indeed voiced about the system of crony commissions. Five years ago, for example, seismologist Katsuhiko Ishibashi resigned from the committee that had been tasked with revising the safety regulations for Japanese nuclear power plants. Of the 19 committee members, 11 were also members of committees within the Japanese electricity lobby. Ishibashi criticized the decision-making process on the committee for being "unscientific." "If we do not fundamentally improve our technical standards for nuclear power plants, Japan could experience a nuclear catastrophe after an earthquake," he warned at the time.
But it is difficult to get through to the Japanese public with such warnings, given the millions upon millions of euros TEPCO spends on media and public relations each year. Its image cultivation campaign even includes the sponsorship of news programs, including Tokyo station TBS's "News 23," Fuji's "Mezamashi TV" and TV Asahi's "Hodo Station." In TEPCO's world, everyone gets a piece of a very large nuclear pie.
Keeping the Media Sweet
The company also has a habit of placating journalists with luxury trips. For example, on the day the tsunami inundated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, TEPCO Chairman Katsumata was keeping journalists company in a nice new hotel in China -- on an "educational trip."
"We have built the structure in such a way that everyone has an interest in supporting nuclear power," says Kono. Stricter inspectors, critical reporters and obstreperous citizens would only get in the way.
There has been no lack of alarm signals, but they have never produced any consequences. The biggest scandal to date came to light through a disgruntled employee. In 1989, Kei Sugaoka, a US engineer with Japanese roots, inspected Reactor 1 at the now-stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant. He worked for General Electric (GE), the plant's manufacturer.
Sugaoka was startled to find cracks in the steam dryer, "pretty sizeable ones," as he recalls today. It later occurred to him that the device had been installed incorrectly -- by a 180-degree rotation. He notified his superiors. Then his team waited a few days for further instructions, while receiving their full pay.
Safety Revelations
When the men were called back to the power plant, their higher-ups had apparently agreed on the next steps. Sugaoka says that his supervisor at GE told him to edit the inspection video and remove the sections in which the cracks were visible. "And that was what my team did," says the engineer, "while two men from TEPCO looked on."
Nevertheless, he felt uneasy about the whole thing. After returning home, he wrote down what had happened and kept the documents. After being fired from GE in 1998, Sugaoka was determined to bring the affair to light. On June 28, 2000, he wrote a letter to Japan's nuclear safety agency NISA, describing what had happened. He wrote three or four similar letters after that.
Sugaoka's revelations shook the country. It soon became clear that TEPCO had systematically falsified safety reports. The company's president and four other senior executives had to resign over the affair, and the government temporarily shut down 17 reactors.
About that time, it was also revealed that several Japanese TEPCO employees had reported safety concerns to the regulatory agency. It, in turn, promptly disclosed the whistleblowers' identities to TEPCO, as a NISA spokesman confirmed.
Gentleman Whistleblower
The scandal had no long-term consequences in Japan. In Fukushima, however, it brought Eisaku Sato into the arena. Sato, the former governor of Fukushima Prefecture, is a distinguished, silver-haired gentleman. He loves antiques and golf, and he opposes nuclear energy.
After discovering how carelessly NISA had treated the complaints from inside the Atomic Village, he decided to get involved. From 2002 to 2006, 21 insiders contacted Sato directly, and members of his staff met secretly with the whistleblowers. After recording and documenting the complaints, they forwarded them to NISA.
Whenever nothing happened for a period of time after the complaints had been submitted, Sato's staff members made more inquiries. "No one was keeping tabs on TEPCO," says Sato, who is wearing dark-blue sports jacket with a pocket square. "Fukushima Prefecture took on the job that NISA really ought to be doing. The main problem wasn't TEPCO at all, but NISA. They simply didn't pass on the complaints."
The ministries, regulatory agencies and power companies are so closely intertwined that conflicts of interest are virtually built into the system. One of the objectives of the powerful industry ministry, METI, is to promote the nuclear industry. Another goal is to export Japanese nuclear technology to emerging economies. The problem, however, is that NISA, the agency that is supposed to monitor the nuclear industry, comes under the authority of the nuclear-friendly METI.
The Power of Amakudari
Not surprisingly, the controls are lax, reports nuclear engineer Tetsunari Iida. He once designed the Japanese version of the CASTOR containers that are used to transport highly radioactive nuclear waste in Europe. To this day, he remembers how shocked he was as a novice in the industry. "I was just a 20-year-old boy, but what I did was simply rubber-stamped," says Iida.
Even 20 years ago, Iida experienced how nuclear power plant workers would signal to each other when an inspector was approaching. A worker would quickly wipe off a leaking heat exchanger to make it look perfectly in order, and would then disappear. The inspector noticed what was going on but ignored it. "Our inspections are a complete sham," says Iida.
The close-knit relationship between the industry and regulators is so legendary that it even has a name: "amakudari," or "descended from the sky," which refers to the practice of government officials, after serving out their terms at a ministry, directly switching to lucrative positions with the electricity giants.
One of the vice-president positions at TEPCO has been reserved for an amakudari official for decades. A man named Takeo Ishihara was once a deputy state secretary, in a position titled "coordinator of nuclear policy." After TEPCO hired him in 1962, he became a managing director and then a vice-president.
In 1980, a state secretary at the Energy Ministry switched to TEPCO, where he performed the same duties. Other senior officials followed in 1990 and 1999. In April, a member of parliament with the Communist Party asked the government whether these industry jobs were "reserved slots." A spokesman said: "You could call it that."
Arrogance Meets Incompetence
In terms of the hands-on work at the plants, most workers are temporary workers and day laborers working for subcontractors and sub-subcontractors. But even the highly qualified specialists are often not employed by TEPCO, but by manufacturers like Hitachi and Toshiba, or even directly by General Electric in the United States.
These experts know all too well how little the TEPCO managers know about their own reactors. "The people at TEPCO," says Tsuneyasu Satoh, who worked as a subcontractor in Fukushima for many years, "are bureaucrats who stop by once in a while to tell us what to do."
TEPCO's engineers display a combination of arrogance and incompetence. When Sugaoka went public with the scandal over falsified safety reports, the company conducted an internal analysis and even admitted to significant deficiencies. According to the analysis, TEPCO engineers were "overly self-confident with regard to their nuclear expertise." For this reason, the analysis continued, they did not report problems to the government, "as long as they believed that safety was assured."
However, neither TEPCO nor NISA drew any conclusions from these insights. Even the scandal did nothing to stop the operating license for the extremely old Reactor 1 at Fukushima Daiichi being extended for another 10 years. Even worse, the regular intervals at which power plants are inspected can now be extended from 13 to 16 months.
"That's the consequence of the entire scandal for TEPCO," Aileen Mioko Smith, an anti-nuclear activist with the nongovernmental organization Green Action Japan, says derisively, "new standards and ultimately fewer inspections."
'No Commento'
When the TEPCO spokesman is asked whether the company has ever implemented a proposal by the anti-nuclear activists, he says: "I don't understand the question."
Even after the disaster, the company still tried to throw sand in the eyes of journalists. Reporters with the television stations and major newspapers have been camped out on the ground floor of the TEPCO headquarters building for the last 10 weeks. In press conferences, they are usually presented with a jumble of supposedly precise raw data. But what are reporters supposed to do with hundreds of pieces of data without any context at all, particularly as they often turn out to be incorrect soon afterwards?
TEPCO officials like to talk about the data but prefer to avoid the subject of responsibility. Whether it's amakudari, political contributions or funding for scientific research, a TEPCO spokesman has a similar response to questions on all of these issues: "No commento."
Fired After Reporting on Fukushima
Takashi Uesugi, a television journalist, is one of those reporting on how sensitively the electricity giant reacts when unflattering information manages to get out. He is a popular television and radio host in Japan, and his programs are both political and entertaining. Uesugi is normally an affable 43-year-old who likes to play golf. Until the Fukushima accident, he had little to do with nuclear power.
But he has always taken issue with his counterparts at the major newspapers, who he sees as little more than the PR agents of the ministers they report about. After the disaster in Fukushima, Uesugi also camped out in the TEPCO lobby, because he wanted to know what was happening in the reactor.
On March 15, at 1 p.m., Uesugi was conducting a live broadcast on the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS). He said that radioactivity was apparently escaping from Reactor 3 and that this was being reported abroad. "It was an obvious thing to report," he says. After the broadcast, however, his boss came to him and told him he was fired, says Uesugi. He hasn't worked for TBS since then. A spokesman for the TBS programming department says that the station had already decided earlier to sever its working relationship with Uesugi, and that there was no pressure from TEPCO.
Uesugi doesn't believe these claims, particularly as he also experienced problems soon afterwards on another TV program. The electric utility association ended its sponsorship of "Asahi Newstar" after Uesugi had invited a critic of nuclear power to appear as a guest on his program. The station claims that it had already planned to end the electric utility sponsorship. A TEPCO spokesman characterizes as "inconceivable" the notion that TEPCO would try to pressure a journalist like Uesugi.
Intimidated
Meanwhile, the Japanese government has begun asking Internet providers to remove "false reports" about Fukushima from the web, arguing that the population should not be troubled unnecessarily. "This is worse than in Egypt and China," says Uesugi. According to the government request, all reports that "harm the public order and morale" should be removed.
Nuclear critic Robert Jungk devoted an entire chapter to the industry's treatment of its adversaries. The chapter is titled: "The Intimidated."
In Japan, the insiders who talked about the abuses at TEPCO were intimidated, as were journalists who reported on these abuses, like Takashi Uesugi.
There are some indications that Eisaku Sato, the distinguished former governor of Fukushima Prefecture, was also a victim of intimidation. Sato attempted to oppose the power of the atom. He had aligned himself with the governors of other prefectures with nuclear plants, and he tried to establish an axis critical of nuclear power.
Sato, a relatively minor local politician, invited experts from all over the world to formulate a new Japanese energy policy. He was perhaps the most influential Japanese critic of the nuclear industry -- until his political career ended abruptly in 2006, when he was arrested on charges of corruption. He and his brother were accused of having collected an inflated price for a piece of property from a construction company that had worked for the prefecture.
'Same People as Always'
A court found Sato guilty, and although an appeals court in Tokyo later reduced the sentence, it did not overturn the guilty verdict. He has now taken his case to the Japanese Supreme Court, where he hopes to be declared innocent.
A former Tokyo prosecutor says that Sato's brother did not make any profit at all with the sale of the property. Besides, the public prosecutor assigned to the case at the time has since been sentenced to 18 months in prison for planting false evidence on a high-ranking government official he had investigated in another case.
But who, if not critics like Sato, can hold people responsible for the disaster? At least the statement made by Prime Minister Kan last Wednesday offers a hopeful outlook. He announced a new plan to decartelize the regulatory agencies, break up the regional monopolies of the Japanese electric utilities and rethink the country's energy policy "from the bottom up."
Aileen Mioko Smith, the activist with Green Action Japan, doesn't have much faith in such promises. She already dreads what she expects will be Japan's usual handling of such disasters. "A commission will be formed to examine the accident, and it will consist of exactly the same people as always."
By Cordelia Meyer. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Poisoned Fields The Painful Evacuation of a Japanese Village
Poisoned Fields The Painful Evacuation of a Japanese Village By Cordula Meyer
Contamination levels in the Japanese mountain village of Iitate are higher than in some parts of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Its evacuation has been a painful process for residents -- and many are more afraid of resettlement than they are of radiation.
Why on earth didn't she notice anything? It's a question that preoccupies Mieko Okubo. Why didn't she see the signs?
If she had only been more attentive, perhaps Fumio, her father-in-law, would still be alive today. He would be sitting with her at the table, gazing out at his rice fields through the open terrace door, just as he had done for years.
"Do we have to leave Iitate?" Fumio asked on April 11, when Japan's NHK television network reported that their village was probably going to be evacuated.
"If they say so on TV," she had replied off-handedly.
"Do we really have to go?" Fumio had asked again, and his daughter-in-law had thought nothing of it.
Mieko Okubo has short black hair and thin, petite hands. The ashtray in front of her is filled with at least a dozen cigarette butts, long and thin. "How on earth could I have failed to recognize how important that question was to him?" she wonders today.
She blames herself for not having noticed the little things: how he would sit there all day long, all hunched over and not bolt upright the way he usually did; that she didn't stop short when he didn't touch his chicken or mixed vegetables at dinner; and that she didn't react when he stopped responding to her questions.
'Why Does a 102-Year-Old Have to Suffer?'
The next morning Mieko got up at 5 a.m. to make breakfast, as usual. When she hadn't heard anything from her father-in-law by 8 a.m., she called out: "Breakfast is ready."
Then she opened the door to his room. She saw the tatami mat on the floor, laid out elaborately as if it were a special day. Then she saw her father-in-law. Fumio Okubo had hanged himself in his room. He was 102.
Okubo had spent his entire life in Iitate. The woman he had married at 17 died 80 years later. He made his first trip to the capital Tokyo, 250 kilometers (156 miles) away with a senior citizens' group. What would have been gained by evacuating such an old man?
Shortly after his death, Mieko Okubo cursed TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the company that killed her father-in-law. Now she weeps quietly, and asks: "Why does even a 102-year-old man have to suffer?"
In the days following the explosions inside the Fukushima reactors, the wind carried radiation clouds in a northwesterly direction, all the way into the mountains surrounding Iitate, about 40 kilometers away from the plant. The people working in the fields at the time knew nothing about the dangers in the sky. No one had warned them.
Later on, the authorities measured radiation levels of up to 45 microsievert per hour in Iitate. This is several times the level that led to the evacuation of Chernobyl. No expert today questions the decision to evacuate the village.
Lost Sense of Security
Iitate is surrounded by forests of fir and Japanese cedar, the mountains rise up to 1,000 meters (3,280 feet). In the summer, hikers pitch their tents alongside the clear waters of a mountain lake. For generations, the people in the region have worked hard to wrest a living from the land. For the farmers and craftsmen of Iitate, the loss cannot be measured in microsievert. The residents of Iitate are losing their home, and a sense of security that they will never regain.
In an overcrowded room on the ground floor of the town hall, a team headed by disaster relief manager Shuichi Sato is trying to organize the moves of local residents. "On April 22, the government in Tokyo announced that the people of Iitate were to evacuate within a month. But they said nothing about how this is supposed to work," Sato complains.
He and his team members spend much of their time searching for apartments. Before the Fukushima disaster, there were just under 7,000 people living in Iitate; there are now about 3,000 left. And because the victims of the earthquake and tsunami, in addition to residents of other parts of the restricted zone have already received emergency housing, there are almost no apartments available anymore in the entire region.
Pregnant women and families with small children were evacuated on a Sunday two weeks ago, followed by families with children in middle school. Sato hopes that all families with children will soon have left. The remaining residents are expected to have left their houses by the end of June. Sato, who lacks the legal clout to force them to leave, says: "We're hoping they cooperate."
From One Meeting to the Next
A police line dangles in front of the entrances to the schools. The community center is closed. The only supermarket in town is still open, although some of the shelves are empty. A few construction workers are widening part of a village street, though soon it will no longer be used. A real estate broker's price sign is still posted in front of a newly built gray single-family home: 8 million yen (€70,000 / $ 99,437.10 , or $100,000).
"These people were born here. It's their home," says Sato. "And we can't even say when they'll be able to return." He is wearing light-colored overalls and ID cards attached to blue strings dangle from his neck. He rushes from one meeting to the next, and yet he makes time to attend the farewell ceremonies being held throughout the village.
Prior to the disaster, Iitate had faced the same fate as many Japanese villages: Its youth had left for the cities, leaving the old people behind. In response, the town organized neighborhood festivals, developed the local beef into a nationally recognized brand and created more jobs for young people.
Iitate was recently admitted to an association of Japan's most beautiful villages. The town's motto is "Madei," or "Being Mindful," and its symbol shows two hands carrying a heart. Local residents don't lock their doors at night.
Now the nuclear crisis has cut deep creases into the friendly face of Iitate's mayor, Norio Kanno. His hair is disheveled and his overalls are covered with oil. When Kanno is asked to name his most difficult decision since the crisis began, he says: "Every day since then has been the most difficult one. After all, I'm responsible for everyone in the village."
Deciding to Stay
As mayor, Kanno has worked hard to convince young people to stay in Iitate. Now he is furious with the government in Tokyo. "They say: As long as people are protected from the radiation, have a roof over their heads and enough food to eat, everything is just great." But the people in Iitate feel connected, he says, to their houses and to the village they call home. "TEPCO is responsible for their loss," says the mayor.
The Japanese government is apparently anxious to prevent such anger from reaching public ears. During the interview, an employee from the powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) suddenly appears. Kanno falls silent in the middle of a sentence, and then he is led away by the man from METI.
But METI cannot silence everyone in Iitate. Kayoko and Hideyoshi Hasegawa, for example, earned their living as dairy farmers. The meadows glisten in the fog at half past five in the morning, as Hideyoshi rolls hay into a large ball, places it on a wheelbarrow and distributes it to his 24 cows. The animals are emaciated, now that they haven't been fed concentrated feed for a while.
Hideyoshi's wife carefully washes each cow's udder with a fresh rag and hot water, and then she attaches the milking machine. When the cows have been milked, she simply opens the tap and allows the fresh milk to flow into the drain. "The cows use their own bodies to produce this milk," she says, with tears in her eyes. "And then we throw everything away."
With toxic radiation lurking in the barn and on their pastures, the Hasegawas are not permitted to sell the milk. Now they hope that they will at least be able to find someone to slaughter their cows. "Then someone will kill them for us. Killing and burying them ourselves would be too much for us," says Kayoko.
Little Reason to Hope
One of their daughters found a two-room apartment for the couple in the city of Fukushima. Hideyoshi Hasegawa plans to visit the farm once a week to look after things. He hopes that the family will be able to return after two years, although he has little reason to hope. The cesium 137 on the farm's fields has a half-life of 30 years.
Hideyoshi Hasegawa's father planted a bonsai garden on the family farm, complete with a pond for koi carp. The 84-year-old climbs onto a folding ladder to prune the next tree. "I won't leave this place," he says, "not even if they threaten to kill me."
He intends to follow the lead of the 107 residents of the Iitate retirement home. The mayor managed to secure permission for them to stay. He argued that the elderly hardly ever go outside, that they are well protected from the radiation inside the building and that forcibly removing them from their accustomed surroundings would sicken them immediately. The nurses and workers at the home plan to commute to what will become a ghost town. For anyone else who chooses to stay, the driver of a milk truck will continue to bring the bare necessities to the village once a week.
The retirement home was built in accordance with "Madei," at a cost of more than €20 / $ 28.41 million. It is heated with wood pellets, which is supposedly good for the environment and the future.
Twenty-nine-year-old Yukie Niigawa saw a future for her children in Iitate. She is holding her infant, Kurumi, on her arm. The girl was born on March 17, six days after the earthquake. Niigawa is still here with her four children because she is still recovering from the delivery. Brightly colored children's Crocs are lined up next to Niigawa's Hello Kitty sandals at the entrance to her apartment.
Losing a Home
The radiation level is even high in her living room: two microsievert per hour, higher than in many parts of the restricted zone. The needle on the Geiger counter quickly rises to eight microsievert outside. Niigawa only lets her children go outside for an hour a day now -- and only with boots, hats and breathing masks. She is a single mother.
After searching online, Niigawa found a small house for her family in the city of Fukushima. The government will pay the radiation refugee's rent.
But what will she do there? Until now, Niigawa made a living by leasing the family's rice fields to local farmers. Some paid in yen while others paid in rice. But nowadays, when the single mother has put her children to bed at night, she often lies awake and wonders how she will feed her children. She has already packed one box with the children's birth certificates and their photo album. It also contains the wooden plaque commemorating her own father, who died in January. "We don't know if we'll ever return," she says.
Twenty years after Chernobyl, the United Nations published a comprehensive report on the health of those resettled from the restricted zone there. According to the report, the people were traumatized by the loss of their homes and the fear of radiation damage. Believing that they are doomed to die, many drink and smoke excessively.
Workers with the aid organization Heart Rescue are taking a break in the parking lot at the town hall, wearing white protective overalls and breathing masks. Worried about the people who are staying behind in the evacuation zone alone, they roam the empty villages and question everyone they can find. They ask them about anxiety, crying fits, alcohol and thoughts of suicide.
Iitate Is Waiting
Many people exhibit signs of post-traumatic stress syndrome, says Bansho Miura. "Especially the young farmers. They don't know where they'll go from here." Some, he says, had converted their farms to organic farming, but now they will probably never sell organic products again.
Mieko Okubo, the woman who lost her father-in-law, is just trying to keep going. She tries to fight back remorse. More cigarette butts have accumulated in the ashtray. She had wanted to quit smoking, she says. "Now I'll probably never do it," she adds.
Her husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last October. When the tsunami arrived, she was visiting him in a hospital on the coast. She saw the wave coming, and she says that there are no words to describe what she saw next.
After that, her husband was transferred to the hospital in Niigata, a four-drive from Iitate. As a result, she doesn't visit him as often as before.
Every time she walks into the hospital now, she flicks a switch inside her head. Her husband knows nothing about the evacuation of his village and the death of his father. She doesn't want to make his last days even worse.
Instead, she talks about things that no longer exist. Her husband still believes that Iitate is waiting for him.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Contamination levels in the Japanese mountain village of Iitate are higher than in some parts of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Its evacuation has been a painful process for residents -- and many are more afraid of resettlement than they are of radiation.
Why on earth didn't she notice anything? It's a question that preoccupies Mieko Okubo. Why didn't she see the signs?
If she had only been more attentive, perhaps Fumio, her father-in-law, would still be alive today. He would be sitting with her at the table, gazing out at his rice fields through the open terrace door, just as he had done for years.
"Do we have to leave Iitate?" Fumio asked on April 11, when Japan's NHK television network reported that their village was probably going to be evacuated.
"If they say so on TV," she had replied off-handedly.
"Do we really have to go?" Fumio had asked again, and his daughter-in-law had thought nothing of it.
Mieko Okubo has short black hair and thin, petite hands. The ashtray in front of her is filled with at least a dozen cigarette butts, long and thin. "How on earth could I have failed to recognize how important that question was to him?" she wonders today.
She blames herself for not having noticed the little things: how he would sit there all day long, all hunched over and not bolt upright the way he usually did; that she didn't stop short when he didn't touch his chicken or mixed vegetables at dinner; and that she didn't react when he stopped responding to her questions.
'Why Does a 102-Year-Old Have to Suffer?'
The next morning Mieko got up at 5 a.m. to make breakfast, as usual. When she hadn't heard anything from her father-in-law by 8 a.m., she called out: "Breakfast is ready."
Then she opened the door to his room. She saw the tatami mat on the floor, laid out elaborately as if it were a special day. Then she saw her father-in-law. Fumio Okubo had hanged himself in his room. He was 102.
Okubo had spent his entire life in Iitate. The woman he had married at 17 died 80 years later. He made his first trip to the capital Tokyo, 250 kilometers (156 miles) away with a senior citizens' group. What would have been gained by evacuating such an old man?
Shortly after his death, Mieko Okubo cursed TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the company that killed her father-in-law. Now she weeps quietly, and asks: "Why does even a 102-year-old man have to suffer?"
In the days following the explosions inside the Fukushima reactors, the wind carried radiation clouds in a northwesterly direction, all the way into the mountains surrounding Iitate, about 40 kilometers away from the plant. The people working in the fields at the time knew nothing about the dangers in the sky. No one had warned them.
Later on, the authorities measured radiation levels of up to 45 microsievert per hour in Iitate. This is several times the level that led to the evacuation of Chernobyl. No expert today questions the decision to evacuate the village.
Lost Sense of Security
Iitate is surrounded by forests of fir and Japanese cedar, the mountains rise up to 1,000 meters (3,280 feet). In the summer, hikers pitch their tents alongside the clear waters of a mountain lake. For generations, the people in the region have worked hard to wrest a living from the land. For the farmers and craftsmen of Iitate, the loss cannot be measured in microsievert. The residents of Iitate are losing their home, and a sense of security that they will never regain.
In an overcrowded room on the ground floor of the town hall, a team headed by disaster relief manager Shuichi Sato is trying to organize the moves of local residents. "On April 22, the government in Tokyo announced that the people of Iitate were to evacuate within a month. But they said nothing about how this is supposed to work," Sato complains.
He and his team members spend much of their time searching for apartments. Before the Fukushima disaster, there were just under 7,000 people living in Iitate; there are now about 3,000 left. And because the victims of the earthquake and tsunami, in addition to residents of other parts of the restricted zone have already received emergency housing, there are almost no apartments available anymore in the entire region.
Pregnant women and families with small children were evacuated on a Sunday two weeks ago, followed by families with children in middle school. Sato hopes that all families with children will soon have left. The remaining residents are expected to have left their houses by the end of June. Sato, who lacks the legal clout to force them to leave, says: "We're hoping they cooperate."
From One Meeting to the Next
A police line dangles in front of the entrances to the schools. The community center is closed. The only supermarket in town is still open, although some of the shelves are empty. A few construction workers are widening part of a village street, though soon it will no longer be used. A real estate broker's price sign is still posted in front of a newly built gray single-family home: 8 million yen (€70,000 / $ 99,437.10 , or $100,000).
"These people were born here. It's their home," says Sato. "And we can't even say when they'll be able to return." He is wearing light-colored overalls and ID cards attached to blue strings dangle from his neck. He rushes from one meeting to the next, and yet he makes time to attend the farewell ceremonies being held throughout the village.
Prior to the disaster, Iitate had faced the same fate as many Japanese villages: Its youth had left for the cities, leaving the old people behind. In response, the town organized neighborhood festivals, developed the local beef into a nationally recognized brand and created more jobs for young people.
Iitate was recently admitted to an association of Japan's most beautiful villages. The town's motto is "Madei," or "Being Mindful," and its symbol shows two hands carrying a heart. Local residents don't lock their doors at night.
Now the nuclear crisis has cut deep creases into the friendly face of Iitate's mayor, Norio Kanno. His hair is disheveled and his overalls are covered with oil. When Kanno is asked to name his most difficult decision since the crisis began, he says: "Every day since then has been the most difficult one. After all, I'm responsible for everyone in the village."
Deciding to Stay
As mayor, Kanno has worked hard to convince young people to stay in Iitate. Now he is furious with the government in Tokyo. "They say: As long as people are protected from the radiation, have a roof over their heads and enough food to eat, everything is just great." But the people in Iitate feel connected, he says, to their houses and to the village they call home. "TEPCO is responsible for their loss," says the mayor.
The Japanese government is apparently anxious to prevent such anger from reaching public ears. During the interview, an employee from the powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) suddenly appears. Kanno falls silent in the middle of a sentence, and then he is led away by the man from METI.
But METI cannot silence everyone in Iitate. Kayoko and Hideyoshi Hasegawa, for example, earned their living as dairy farmers. The meadows glisten in the fog at half past five in the morning, as Hideyoshi rolls hay into a large ball, places it on a wheelbarrow and distributes it to his 24 cows. The animals are emaciated, now that they haven't been fed concentrated feed for a while.
Hideyoshi's wife carefully washes each cow's udder with a fresh rag and hot water, and then she attaches the milking machine. When the cows have been milked, she simply opens the tap and allows the fresh milk to flow into the drain. "The cows use their own bodies to produce this milk," she says, with tears in her eyes. "And then we throw everything away."
With toxic radiation lurking in the barn and on their pastures, the Hasegawas are not permitted to sell the milk. Now they hope that they will at least be able to find someone to slaughter their cows. "Then someone will kill them for us. Killing and burying them ourselves would be too much for us," says Kayoko.
Little Reason to Hope
One of their daughters found a two-room apartment for the couple in the city of Fukushima. Hideyoshi Hasegawa plans to visit the farm once a week to look after things. He hopes that the family will be able to return after two years, although he has little reason to hope. The cesium 137 on the farm's fields has a half-life of 30 years.
Hideyoshi Hasegawa's father planted a bonsai garden on the family farm, complete with a pond for koi carp. The 84-year-old climbs onto a folding ladder to prune the next tree. "I won't leave this place," he says, "not even if they threaten to kill me."
He intends to follow the lead of the 107 residents of the Iitate retirement home. The mayor managed to secure permission for them to stay. He argued that the elderly hardly ever go outside, that they are well protected from the radiation inside the building and that forcibly removing them from their accustomed surroundings would sicken them immediately. The nurses and workers at the home plan to commute to what will become a ghost town. For anyone else who chooses to stay, the driver of a milk truck will continue to bring the bare necessities to the village once a week.
The retirement home was built in accordance with "Madei," at a cost of more than €20 / $ 28.41 million. It is heated with wood pellets, which is supposedly good for the environment and the future.
Twenty-nine-year-old Yukie Niigawa saw a future for her children in Iitate. She is holding her infant, Kurumi, on her arm. The girl was born on March 17, six days after the earthquake. Niigawa is still here with her four children because she is still recovering from the delivery. Brightly colored children's Crocs are lined up next to Niigawa's Hello Kitty sandals at the entrance to her apartment.
Losing a Home
The radiation level is even high in her living room: two microsievert per hour, higher than in many parts of the restricted zone. The needle on the Geiger counter quickly rises to eight microsievert outside. Niigawa only lets her children go outside for an hour a day now -- and only with boots, hats and breathing masks. She is a single mother.
After searching online, Niigawa found a small house for her family in the city of Fukushima. The government will pay the radiation refugee's rent.
But what will she do there? Until now, Niigawa made a living by leasing the family's rice fields to local farmers. Some paid in yen while others paid in rice. But nowadays, when the single mother has put her children to bed at night, she often lies awake and wonders how she will feed her children. She has already packed one box with the children's birth certificates and their photo album. It also contains the wooden plaque commemorating her own father, who died in January. "We don't know if we'll ever return," she says.
Twenty years after Chernobyl, the United Nations published a comprehensive report on the health of those resettled from the restricted zone there. According to the report, the people were traumatized by the loss of their homes and the fear of radiation damage. Believing that they are doomed to die, many drink and smoke excessively.
Workers with the aid organization Heart Rescue are taking a break in the parking lot at the town hall, wearing white protective overalls and breathing masks. Worried about the people who are staying behind in the evacuation zone alone, they roam the empty villages and question everyone they can find. They ask them about anxiety, crying fits, alcohol and thoughts of suicide.
Iitate Is Waiting
Many people exhibit signs of post-traumatic stress syndrome, says Bansho Miura. "Especially the young farmers. They don't know where they'll go from here." Some, he says, had converted their farms to organic farming, but now they will probably never sell organic products again.
Mieko Okubo, the woman who lost her father-in-law, is just trying to keep going. She tries to fight back remorse. More cigarette butts have accumulated in the ashtray. She had wanted to quit smoking, she says. "Now I'll probably never do it," she adds.
Her husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last October. When the tsunami arrived, she was visiting him in a hospital on the coast. She saw the wave coming, and she says that there are no words to describe what she saw next.
After that, her husband was transferred to the hospital in Niigata, a four-drive from Iitate. As a result, she doesn't visit him as often as before.
Every time she walks into the hospital now, she flicks a switch inside her head. Her husband knows nothing about the evacuation of his village and the death of his father. She doesn't want to make his last days even worse.
Instead, she talks about things that no longer exist. Her husband still believes that Iitate is waiting for him.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
why radiation is a health hazard
http://peaceandhealthblog.com/2011/03/25/ruff-radiation-health/
Just in case you missed it, here’s why radiation is a health hazard
March 25, 2011
tags: health, Japan nuclear crisis, nuclear energy, radiation
by IPPNW
by Tilman Ruff
The March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and complicating nuclear crisis throw into sharp focus concerns about exposure to ionising radiation. What is it, how is it harmful, how much is too much? Inside a nuclear reactor, the radioactivity is increased about a million times as some of the uranium or plutonium is converted to a cocktail of hundreds of different radioactive elements.
There are many different pathways through which people can be exposed to radiation: inhalation of gases or particles in the air, deposits in soil or water, ingestion of food, water or dust. Some radioisotopes mimic normal chemical elements in living systems and therefore make their way up the food chain and onto our plates.
Ionising radiation
Radiation is called “ionising” when it has sufficient energy to knock the electrons off atoms to produce ions (atoms which have a net positive or negative electrical charge).
Ionising radiation damages large complex molecules either directly or by creating highly reactive chemicals inside cells.
The biological potency of ionising radiation is not related to the amount of energy it contains so much as that this energy is packaged in a form which can reach and damage complex molecules – particularly the DNA that is our genetic blueprint, that is passed on to form each new generation.
A lethal dose of radiation may contain as little energy as the heat in a cup of coffee. Our senses cannot warn us about ionising radiation – it cannot be seen or touched or felt or tasted or smelt.
Levels of exposure
Some effects of radiation only occur above certain thresholds.
In the short term, high levels of radiation exposure can cause acute radiation sickness. In the longer term there is an increased risk of cataracts, birth defects, sterility and hair loss.
High doses of radiation can kill cells – this is the reason targeted radiation is used in the treatment of some cancers.
Acute radiation exposure at doses over 100 milliSieverts (mSv), and particularly over 1000 mSv, has most impact on our rapidly dividing cells. These are the blood-forming cells of the bone marrow, lining of the gut, and ovaries and testis. The symptoms of acute radiation sickness therefore include vomiting and diarrhea, bleeding, and reduced ability to fight infection.
The major long-term effect of ionising radiation exposure is an increased risk of a wide variety of cancers. There is no “safe” level of radiation below which there is no increase in cancer risk. The earliest to appear, after around three to five years, are leukemia and thyroid cancer. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster, for instance, has resulted in an epidemic of thyroid cancer with 6,500 children affected so far.
Other cancers begin increasing after 10 years – lung, breast, colon, ovary, bladder and many others. Excess rates of cancer in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors continue to rise.
Sources of exposure
All of us are exposed to ionising radiation all the time – from the stars, from the earth and rocks, from common equipment and appliances. The global average estimated human exposure is 2.4 mSv per year.
The biggest natural source is radon gas produced from radium, part of the decay chain of uranium, which is widely distributed in the Earth’s crust. After smoking, radon is the second most important cause of lung cancer worldwide.
The bulk of ongoing exposures of human origin are from medical X-rays, and there is considerable concern about the rapidly rising medical radiation exposures, particularly from the growing number of CT scans being performed. CT scans involve radiation doses of between 3 and 11 mSv.
Exposure to ionising radiation from all sources should be kept as low as is feasible.
In Australia and most countries, it is recommended that 1 mSv per person per year be the maximum permissible exposure from non-medical sources for the general population; and 20 mSv per year the annual permissible limit for nuclear industry workers. In Japan the maximum permissible dose for the emergency nuclear workers in Fukushima has been increased to 250 mSv.
Health harms
The most authoritative current estimates of the health effects of low dose ionising radiation are contained in the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation VII report from the US National Academy of Sciences (BEIR VII).
This report reflects the substantial weight of scientific evidence that there is no exposure to ionising radiation that is risk-free. The greater the exposure, the greater the risk.
BEIR VII estimates that each 1 mSv of radiation is associated with an increased risk of solid cancer (cancers other than leukemia) of about 1 in 10,000; an increased risk of leukemia of about 1 in 100,000; and a 1 in 17,500 increased risk of cancer death.
But while radiation protection standards are typically based on adult males, it is important to note that not everyone faces the same level of risk. For infants (under 1 year of age) the radiation-related cancer risk is 3 to 4 times higher than for adults; and female infants are twice as susceptible as male infants.
Females face a lower risk of leukemia, but a 50% greater risk of developing a more common solid tumour, so their overall risk of cancer related to radiation exposure is 40% greater than for males. Fetuses in the womb are the most radiation-sensitive of all.
Over time, estimates of the health risks associated with radiation exposure have inexorably risen.
Some of these risks are probably still under-estimated, particularly the impact of internal contamination, such as from plutonium particles lodging in the lung. Internal contamination may not be picked up by external devices designed to detect gamma radiation alone, such as the hand-held radiation monitors now being widely used to screen people in Japan.
In Germany, a recent national study showed that normal operation of nuclear power plants in Germany is associated with a more than doubling of the leukemia risk for under five year olds living within 5 km of a nuclear plant, and increased risk was seen to more than 50 km away. This was much higher than expected.
The longevity of some radioactive minerals is almost incomprehensible. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,400 years. It will take almost a quarter of a million years for it to decay to less than one thousandth of the starting level. So the same particle inhaled into someone’s lung could go on to increase cancer risk for other individuals over successive generations.
Dr. Ruff is Associate Professor, Disease Prevention & Health Promotion Unit, Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne. He is IPPNW’s regional vice president for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and is Chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). This article was originally published in The Conversation, an independent source of information, analysis and commentary from the university and research sector in Australia.
Just in case you missed it, here’s why radiation is a health hazard
March 25, 2011
tags: health, Japan nuclear crisis, nuclear energy, radiation
by IPPNW
by Tilman Ruff
The March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and complicating nuclear crisis throw into sharp focus concerns about exposure to ionising radiation. What is it, how is it harmful, how much is too much? Inside a nuclear reactor, the radioactivity is increased about a million times as some of the uranium or plutonium is converted to a cocktail of hundreds of different radioactive elements.
There are many different pathways through which people can be exposed to radiation: inhalation of gases or particles in the air, deposits in soil or water, ingestion of food, water or dust. Some radioisotopes mimic normal chemical elements in living systems and therefore make their way up the food chain and onto our plates.
Ionising radiation
Radiation is called “ionising” when it has sufficient energy to knock the electrons off atoms to produce ions (atoms which have a net positive or negative electrical charge).
Ionising radiation damages large complex molecules either directly or by creating highly reactive chemicals inside cells.
The biological potency of ionising radiation is not related to the amount of energy it contains so much as that this energy is packaged in a form which can reach and damage complex molecules – particularly the DNA that is our genetic blueprint, that is passed on to form each new generation.
A lethal dose of radiation may contain as little energy as the heat in a cup of coffee. Our senses cannot warn us about ionising radiation – it cannot be seen or touched or felt or tasted or smelt.
Levels of exposure
Some effects of radiation only occur above certain thresholds.
In the short term, high levels of radiation exposure can cause acute radiation sickness. In the longer term there is an increased risk of cataracts, birth defects, sterility and hair loss.
High doses of radiation can kill cells – this is the reason targeted radiation is used in the treatment of some cancers.
Acute radiation exposure at doses over 100 milliSieverts (mSv), and particularly over 1000 mSv, has most impact on our rapidly dividing cells. These are the blood-forming cells of the bone marrow, lining of the gut, and ovaries and testis. The symptoms of acute radiation sickness therefore include vomiting and diarrhea, bleeding, and reduced ability to fight infection.
The major long-term effect of ionising radiation exposure is an increased risk of a wide variety of cancers. There is no “safe” level of radiation below which there is no increase in cancer risk. The earliest to appear, after around three to five years, are leukemia and thyroid cancer. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster, for instance, has resulted in an epidemic of thyroid cancer with 6,500 children affected so far.
Other cancers begin increasing after 10 years – lung, breast, colon, ovary, bladder and many others. Excess rates of cancer in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors continue to rise.
Sources of exposure
All of us are exposed to ionising radiation all the time – from the stars, from the earth and rocks, from common equipment and appliances. The global average estimated human exposure is 2.4 mSv per year.
The biggest natural source is radon gas produced from radium, part of the decay chain of uranium, which is widely distributed in the Earth’s crust. After smoking, radon is the second most important cause of lung cancer worldwide.
The bulk of ongoing exposures of human origin are from medical X-rays, and there is considerable concern about the rapidly rising medical radiation exposures, particularly from the growing number of CT scans being performed. CT scans involve radiation doses of between 3 and 11 mSv.
Exposure to ionising radiation from all sources should be kept as low as is feasible.
In Australia and most countries, it is recommended that 1 mSv per person per year be the maximum permissible exposure from non-medical sources for the general population; and 20 mSv per year the annual permissible limit for nuclear industry workers. In Japan the maximum permissible dose for the emergency nuclear workers in Fukushima has been increased to 250 mSv.
Health harms
The most authoritative current estimates of the health effects of low dose ionising radiation are contained in the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation VII report from the US National Academy of Sciences (BEIR VII).
This report reflects the substantial weight of scientific evidence that there is no exposure to ionising radiation that is risk-free. The greater the exposure, the greater the risk.
BEIR VII estimates that each 1 mSv of radiation is associated with an increased risk of solid cancer (cancers other than leukemia) of about 1 in 10,000; an increased risk of leukemia of about 1 in 100,000; and a 1 in 17,500 increased risk of cancer death.
But while radiation protection standards are typically based on adult males, it is important to note that not everyone faces the same level of risk. For infants (under 1 year of age) the radiation-related cancer risk is 3 to 4 times higher than for adults; and female infants are twice as susceptible as male infants.
Females face a lower risk of leukemia, but a 50% greater risk of developing a more common solid tumour, so their overall risk of cancer related to radiation exposure is 40% greater than for males. Fetuses in the womb are the most radiation-sensitive of all.
Over time, estimates of the health risks associated with radiation exposure have inexorably risen.
Some of these risks are probably still under-estimated, particularly the impact of internal contamination, such as from plutonium particles lodging in the lung. Internal contamination may not be picked up by external devices designed to detect gamma radiation alone, such as the hand-held radiation monitors now being widely used to screen people in Japan.
In Germany, a recent national study showed that normal operation of nuclear power plants in Germany is associated with a more than doubling of the leukemia risk for under five year olds living within 5 km of a nuclear plant, and increased risk was seen to more than 50 km away. This was much higher than expected.
The longevity of some radioactive minerals is almost incomprehensible. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,400 years. It will take almost a quarter of a million years for it to decay to less than one thousandth of the starting level. So the same particle inhaled into someone’s lung could go on to increase cancer risk for other individuals over successive generations.
Dr. Ruff is Associate Professor, Disease Prevention & Health Promotion Unit, Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne. He is IPPNW’s regional vice president for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and is Chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). This article was originally published in The Conversation, an independent source of information, analysis and commentary from the university and research sector in Australia.
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