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No Public Health Concern From Radiation Levels in Blue Fin Tuna

Published June 3, 2012 Nuclear Risk Assessment 1 Comment

Eric McErlain at NEI provides much-need context to the NAS study. As we have learned to expect, the media coverage is hyper-ventilating with absolutely no frame of reference to indicate how harmless the tuna are.

I’m impressed by this tracking study demonstrating how we can exploit our exquisitely sensitive abilities to detect vanishingly small amounts of radioactive material. The value of this study is that the tiny traces of cesium told the researchers where this population of tuna had been on their pelagic travels:

Over the Holiday weekend here in the U.S., the news wires were humming with reports that Blue Fin tuna caught off the coast of California had been found to contain radioactive cesium from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Before anyone thinks twice about eating tuna, there are a couple of facts that you should keep in mind.

As I wrote previously at our SafetyFirst microsite:

  • The report by the National Academy of Sciences did not conclude that there was any food safety or public health concern related to radiation from tuna of any kind. The trace amount of radiation found in the tuna is less than radiation that is found naturally in the Pacific Ocean from Potassium 40.
  • The species of tuna mentioned in the report, Blue Fin tuna, is not used in the canned tuna sold in your local supermarket. In fact, Blue Fin is only served as sushi, and most Americans don’t eat much of it at all. According to the National Fisheries Institute, per capita, Americans only eat a few paper clips worth of Blue Fin every year.
  • According to Dr. Robert Emery of the University of Texas Health Science Center, a person would have to eat 2.5 to 4 tons of Blue Fin in a year to ingest enough cesium to cause a health problem.

“The finding should be reassuring to the public. As anticipated, the tuna contained only trace levels of radioactivity that originated from Japan,” said Timothy J. Jorgensen, associate professor of radiation medicine at Georgetown University, told ABC News. These levels amounted to only a small fraction of the naturally occurring radioactivity in the tuna, and were much too small to have any impact on public health … Thus, there is no human health threat posed by consuming migratory tuna caught off the west coast of the United States.”

Aspirin, by this logic

Published April 22, 2012 Nuclear Risk Assessment 1 Comment

There is a promising new science-based blog titled “things worse than nuclear power“, which is “the take from a couple of MIT engineers”. The first few posts show promise, such as this one explaining the illogic of the LNT hypothesis in terms of the deadly aspirin tablet:

In small doses, aspirin and other NSAIDs are helpful painkillers. In fact, small doses of aspirin therapy prevents lethal heart attacks and strokes and saves thousands, possibly millions of lives annually.

If aspirin were evaluated like radiation exposure, the estimated number of deaths due to taking the recommended dose, which is 1/10 the lethal dose*, would be 1 in 10 people.
If 1 in 10 people taking aspirin died, this would be up to hundreds of millions of people annually worldwide, which is clearly not the case. Aspirin is the most widely taken painkiller worldwide, and has been for hundreds of years.

Can you imagine if every product were regulated like radiation exposure? There simply would not be any pharmaceuticals, and millions of lives would be lost or have a lower quality of life.

(…)

Read the whole thing, and be sure to add this new education effort to your RSS feeds.

Exploring biological effects of low radiation from the other side of background

Published March 21, 2012 Nuclear Risk Assessment Closed
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Please comment if you know where to find an online version of the captioned Health Physics paper by Dr. Geoffrey Smith et al. The NIH PubMed entry doesn’t even have an abstract. Dr. Smith describes the research area as:

Low-level Radiation Effects in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Permian-age Salado Formation. We are studying the effects of shielding cells from normal levels of radiation by growing them 650 meters underground at the WIPP site in a pre-World War II 6-in thick steel chamber. The effort is to test the Linear No-threshold Theory from the “other side of background”, in a radiation-shielded environment that is well below natural levels of radiation (Smith et al. 2010). Additionally, the Permian-age halite is being examined for biochemical evidence of ancient life.

This study could make an important contribution to verification or refutation of the Linear No-threshold (LNT) hypothesis.

Fukushima Syndrome

Published March 21, 2012 Nuclear Power , Nuclear Risk Assessment 1 Comment
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Martin Freer is Professor of Nuclear Physics at the University of Birmingham and Director of the Birmingham Center for Nuclear Education and Research. He is a member of the University of Birmingham’s policy commission on nuclear energy, which later this year will publish Nuclear Power: What Does the Future Hold?

The dramatic events that unfolded at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant after last year’s tsunami are commonly referred to as “the Fukushima disaster.” We need look no further than this description to begin to understand the significant misconceptions that surround nuclear energy.

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It was the tsunami, caused by the largest earthquake ever to strike Japan, that killed more than 16,000 people, destroyed or damaged roughly 125,000 buildings, and left the country facing what its prime minister described as its biggest crisis since World War II. Yet it is Fukushima that is habitually accorded the “disaster” label.

In fact, although what happened was shocking, the events in the hours and days after a giant wave slammed over the nuclear plant’s protective seawall might be interpreted as a remarkable testament to nuclear power’s sound credentials. To be sure, the environmental impact on those living close to Fukushima may take many years to remediate. But the response in many quarters – not least in Germany, Switzerland, and other countries that immediately condemned and retreated from nuclear energy – once again typified an enduring lack of knowledge concerning two fundamental issues.

The first is safety; the second is radiation. We need to promote a much more inclusive and informed dialogue about both if nuclear power is to be assessed on its genuine merits, rather than dismissed on the grounds of little more than ignorance and intransigence.

Would the many people who would ban nuclear power also prohibit air travel? After all, the parallels between the two industries are central to the question of safety.

We are often told that air travel, statistically speaking, has a better safety record than any other form of transport. The numerous interrelated reasons for this might usefully be summarized by comparing an airplane to a bicycle.

(…)

Read more. The Freer article is one of several in Project Syndicate’s Fukushima special issue.

The chart at left, of fatality rates for our main energy options, is courtesy of Cambridge physicist David MacKay, from his not to be missed “Sustainable energy without the hot air“. Dr. MacKay is now Chief Scientific Advisor for DECC (UK Government Department for Energy and Climate Change).

Scientists attack European Commission over Fukushima overreaction

Published March 19, 2012 Energy Policy , Nuclear Risk Assessment Closed

This is encouraging – a very critical letter from a distinguished group of scientists. Excerpt:

17 March 2012

A group of scientists involved in public discussions about nuclear power have written an open letter to David Willetts protesting about the European commissioner for energy’s “bizarre” talk of an apocalypse in relation to last year’s Fukushima disaster.

The letter to Mr Willetts, the universities and science minister, criticises Günther Oettinger for using the phrase four days after the tsunami that caused the meltdowns at the Japanese nuclear plant.

“I think the word is particularly well chosen. Practically everything is out of control. I cannot exclude the worst in the hours and days to come,” the former head of the German province of Baden-Württemberg said.

The 10 signatories to the letter, who include Jim Al-Khalili, professor of public engagement in science at the University of Surrey, David Spiegelhalter, Winton professor of the public understanding of risk at the University of Cambridge, and Gerry Thomas, chair in molecular pathology at Imperial College London, say that Mr Oettinger’s words were “based on interpretation of international press reports and not on any scientific analysis”.

“Unsurprisingly, the words were reported around the globe and were cited in reports of several countries’ plans to drop nuclear energy programmes, again before a proper scientific analysis was conducted,” they write.

…

The commission had “repeatedly refused to address the question, referring flippantly to ‘semantic details’ before refusing to discuss the matter any further”, the letter claims.

“We are deeply worried by the bizarre approach to risk communication…which has now reached such a position of obstruction and irresponsibility that we would ask you to intervene,” it adds.

“Would you establish that evidence-based and responsible risk communication is taken seriously and that the commission will adopt higher standards with respect to future public communication about energy, nuclear and otherwise?”

Please comment if you have a link to the referenced letter.

US NRC intervention increased Japanese public fear factor

Published March 19, 2012 Nuclear Power , Nuclear Risk Assessment Closed
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Barry Brook’s BraveNewClimate.com offers a wealth of information and commentary on climate and energy policy issues. The value of comments is enhanced by contributors who make their living in various energy-related professions. Today we have a perfect example of such informed commentary:

The Japanese reaction to shutdown most of their reactors following the Fukushima event was caused in part by the US NRC intervention to expand the exclusion zone to fifty miles. This greatly increased the public fear factor and made the Japanese officials appear more inept in dealing with the crisis. Japan cannot afford to keep the nuclear plants shutdown without suffering an economic meltdown. What is needed now is an indepth review by an international expert panel to provide Japan with the basis to safely restart their plants. The US should lead this panel since the Japanese nuclear program is a mirror of the US program in all respects but crisis management.

Ray A. Hunter
Former Deputy Director,
Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology
United States Department of Energy.

What does he know about reactor safety and management of nuclear accidents? Here’s some relevant bits of his resume:

(…) Mr. Hunter was selected to serve on numerous working groups in developing DOE Orders for Radiological Protection, Safeguards and Security, Occurrence Reporting, Safety Analyses, Conduct of Operations, and restart of Nuclear Facilities following shutdown for safety reasons. At the request of the Manager of the Savannah River Operations Office, he recommended corrective actions for restart of the tritium production plants. He was assigned the leadership role in resolving contamination events at several of the national laboratories and he was responsible for the action plan to address suspect parts in the DOE complex.

Mr. Hunter also served as the Department of Energy’s senior technical advisor to the Department of State on nuclear technology matters. He accompanied State Department Officials to South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia to develop support for addressing proliferation concerns with North Korea’s nuclear program. He visited Chernobyl multiple times to develop specific technical recommendations for the Shelter Stabilization Project for damaged Unit 4. His recommendations were accepted by the State Department and the international group sponsoring the project. In discussion between State Department Officials and Chinese Officials on nonproliferation, China requested a nuclear technology cooperation agreement with the U.S. Mr. Hunter prepared an agreement and presented it to the Chinese delegation. He received the Pride Award from Secretary Federico Pena for the nuclear cooperation agreement between U.S. and China.

Mr. Hunter, the former #2 nuclear guy at DOE, retired from DOE in 1998. Today Mr. Hunter is a member of the Science Council for Global Initiatives, the powerhouse energy policy group which includes such as James Hansen, Barry Brook, and the IFR honchos Yoon Chang and Charles Till (and many others – read the details at the Science Council website).

The Making of a Radiation Panic

Published March 18, 2012 Nuclear Power , Nuclear Risk Assessment 1 Comment
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Breakthrough Institute founders Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus examine some of the range of journalism on Fukushima. Of particular interest is background on Japanese politics – why has the government reaction been so weak?

(…) Despite the over-reaction in Japan and Europe, Fukushima has not slowed the pace of new nuclear plant construction globally (something we predicted last year). Against claims made in this week’s Economist, the number of reactors planned and under construction is virtually unchanged. In the US, the main obstacle to the expansion of nuclear has not been fear of radiation but rather the abundance of cheap natural gas from shale — a reality which similarly challenges the expansion of renewables.

There was nothing inevitable or natural about Japan’s panicked reaction to Fukushima. Growing mistrust of the government long pre-dates the tsunami. “The hysteria about radiation reflects a breakdown in trust, as witnessed by endless media accounts quoting people who doubt the government’s monitoring of food and soil,” wrote former Tokyo correspondent for the Washington Post, Paul Blustein. “Tokyo’s political class, which was eager to appear unified after the disaster, is consumed anew with score-settling and power maneuvers of the sort that have given the country six prime ministers in the past five years.”

Perhaps the most important lesson to be drawn from Japan’s radiation scare is the need for new, credible sources — independent of both electric utilities and governments — able to soberly put the risks and benefits of energy technologies in context. Alas, if the Natural Resource Defense Council’s slickly demagogic “nuclear fallout crisis” map is any indication, such credible sources won’t likely come from the traditional environmental movement.

See NPR’s coverage, which cites Breakthrough analysis by Jesse Jenkins, here: Nuclear Woes Push Japan Into A New Energy Future.

You can find our full collection of nuclear analyses and coverage here.

[From The Making of a Radiation Panic]

Risks and Effects of Radiation: Putting Fukushima in Context

Published March 15, 2012 Nuclear Power , Nuclear Risk Assessment 1 Comment
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The Health Physics Society panel held 1 March 2012 should be an excellent source of objective Fukushima risk assessment. The proceedings have not yet been published — meanwhile here is the HPS announcement:

As the world remembers the one-year anniversary of the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan and set off a tragic chain of events that included the nuclear reactor incident in Fukushima, the panel of leading scientific and medical experts reported on the risks and effects of radiation on the Japanese and other populations. A first-hand account of the impacts on the Fukushima population was provided by two members of the distinguished panel. The discussions included the health effects of radiation immediately following the event to present day and an analysis of future risks for the population.

The panel consisted of John Boice, ScD; Robert Emery, DrPH, CHP, CIH; Robert Peter Gale, MD, PhD, DS. (Hon); Kathryn Higley, PhD, CHP; and Richard Vetter, PhD, CHP. It was moderated by Howard Dickson, CHP, CSP, and CIH.

Members of the Washington panel agreed that while they considered the physical health risks from the exposure too small to measure, the accident would still have an impact. Psychological trauma from the evacuation and months away from home could end up being the biggest health risk from the accident.

Dr. Gale said he believed the exaggerated environmental and health risk claims from alarmists could backfire by making it harder for people in Fukushima Prefecture to resume their normal lives and businesses. “Already we see a stigmatization of people from that area or products from that area,” he said. “It’s very hard for them to survive. It’s quite unfortunate.”

While the quake and tsunami killed an estimated 20,000 people, radiation has not killed anyone so far, and members of the Health Physics Society, drawn from academia, medicine, and the nuclear industry, suggested that the doses were too small to have much effect. “There’s no opportunity for conducting epidemiological studies that have any chance of success,” said Dr. Boice. “The doses are just too low. If you were to do a proposal, it would not pass a scientific review.”

Members of the press asked several questions of the panel during the press conference and visited individually with panel members after the event.

A video of all the proceedings will be available in a few days. Watch for it on the HPS website (hps.org).

Nuclear Energy Overview summarized some of the presentations here:

(…) Dr. Robert Gale, visiting professor at Imperial College London, pointed out that although approximately 20,000 people died from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami, none of those deaths are attributable to radiation from the Fukushima accident.

However, Gale said, “The fact that everyone is here today, shows that the public’s focus is really on Fukushima. You hear very few things about the earthquake and tsunami.”

Gale presented preliminary data on the 10,000 inhabitants near the Fukushima plant thought to have received the highest doses of radiation showing that:

  • 5,800 received doses less than 1 millisievert (mSv).
  • 4,100 received doses between 1 and 10 mSv.
  • 71 received doses between 10 mSv and 20 mSv.
  • 2 received doses between 20 mSv and 23 mSv.

By comparison, each year a resident of the United States receives an average total dose from background radiation of about 3.1 mSv.

Gale said it was important to translate these doses into something the general public could easily understand. These radiation doses indicate an “incredibly small” increase in risk of death from cancer of only 0.001 percent for a member of the Japanese public, he said. The increased risk of cancer incidence would be only 0.002 percent for a member of the Japanese public.

Such a small increase in the cancer rate would make it very hard to scientifically verify an increase in cancers that could be directly linked to the Fukushima accident.

“The exposures to the population are very, very low,” said John Boice, professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and President Nominee of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. “As such, there is no opportunity to conduct epidemiological studies that have any chance of detecting excess [cancer] risk. The doses are just too low.”

Assessing Fukushima, one year later

Published March 15, 2012 Nuclear Power , Nuclear Risk Assessment Closed
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Despite worries, radiation exposure from the Japanese nuclear plant damaged by the tsunami is unlikely to cause an increase in cancers. (…) This doesn’t mean there will be no future radiation-caused cancers, as some claim. But because there may be so few cancers, it is unlikely any epidemiological investigations will detect an increase in Japan or elsewhere that can be directly attributed to Fukushima.

(…) What do the Fukushima exposures really mean? A rough estimate is that for a 50-year-old male working at the Fukushima nuclear facility, his lifetime risk of cancer might increase from 42% to 42.2%. The magnitude of this increased risk is comparable to the added risk of living in Denver (where background radiation is higher because of the altitude and radionuclides in the Rocky Mountains) versus New York City for 10 to 15 years, or smoking one pack of cigarettes a day for one to two years. The Japanese public will, of course, get far less radiation.

Don’t miss Measuring the Fukushima radiation risks by radiation risk assessment experts Robert Peter Gale and F. Owen Hoffman.

(…) we think the public deserves an estimate of likely outcomes of radiation released when the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami caused multiple meltdowns of nuclear fuel at the plant.

Fukushima has understandably reignited debate and concern regarding cancer risks from radiation. A year after the accident, many people still won’t travel to Japan. Sushi sales have taken a hit. And yet the Japanese government says that even those who lived near the reactor have little to worry about. Who’s right?

(…) In general, we don’t think much about the inherent risks of such exposures. For example, if your doctor sends you for a CT scan, you may get a radiation dose about seven times greater than you would in a year from most natural or man-made sources. However, few people decline a CT scan because of the risk of radiation-induced cancer. But when we read of a spike in the amount of radiation in the water in Tokyo, we get scared.

One important element that we have to consider to assess cancer risks associated with an accident like Fukushima is our baseline risk for developing cancer. All of us, unfortunately, have a substantial risk of developing cancer in our lifetime. For example, a 50-year-old male has a 42% risk of developing cancer during his remaining life; it’s almost the same for a 10-year-old. This risk only decreases when we get much older and only because we are dying of other causes.

It’s true that excess radiation exposure can increase our cancer risk above baseline levels; it’s clear from studies of the survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of people exposed to radiation in medical and occupational settings, and of people exposed to radon decay products in mines and home basements. When it comes to exposures like that of Fukushima, the question is: What is the relative magnitude of the increased risk from Fukushima compared to our baseline cancer risk? Despite our fears, it is quite small.

(…) Now for Fukushima. The kind of radiation was similar to Chernobyl, but about four to 10 times less was released. And there are other important differences. Most of the radiation released (about 80%) was blown offshore by winds, where it was diluted by air and sea. Consequently, exposures received by Fukushima workers and the public are quite low, including among the 20,000 or more workers decommissioning the facility and the approximately 100,000 evacuees. This doesn’t mean there will be no future radiation-caused cancers, as some claim. But because there may be so few cancers, it is unlikely any epidemiological investigations will detect an increase in Japan or elsewhere that can be directly attributed to Fukushima.

(…) Robert Peter Gale, a visiting professor of hematology at Imperial College London, is involved with the aftermath of the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. F. Owen Hoffman is an expert in radiation risk assessment working in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Read the whole thing.

From his CV, some background on leukemia specialist Robert Peter Gale, particularly his relevant experience with the medical effects of radiation:

In 1986, he was asked by the government Soviet Union to coordinate medical relief efforts for victims of the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident. In 1987, he was asked by the government of Brazil to coordinate medical relief efforts for a radiation accident in Goiania. In 1988, he was part of the U.S. medical emergency team sent in the aftermath of the earthquake in Armenia. In 1999 he was asked by the government of Japan to help treat victims of the nuclear criticality accident near Tokyo. In 2011 Gale was called to Japan to deal with medical consequences of the Fukushima nuclear power station accident.

Dr. Gale is the author of Final Warning: The Legacy of Chernobyl, his personal account of the aftermath of Chernobyl.

Dr. F. Owen Hoffman is the president and director of SENES Oak Ridge, Inc. Center for Risk Analysis.

He has more than 30 years experience on the evaluation of the dose to humans from the release and transport of radionuclides and chemicals in terrestrial and aquatic systems. He is recognized nationally and internationally for his contributions to the development and evaluation of mathematical models for environmental transfer and human risk assessment.

The world has forgotten the real victims of Fukushima

Published March 13, 2012 Nuclear Power , Nuclear Risk Assessment 1 Comment
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A natural disaster that cost the lives of thousands of people was ignored in favour of a nuclear ‘disaster’ that never was…

Michael Hanlon counts himself amongst the journalists guilty of ignoring the real Tohoku earthquake/tsunami disaster story. I was sufficiently impressed by Michael’s short Telegraph piece that I have created a Google Alert to track his dispatches.

(…) Hundreds, thousands of people were being killed before my eyes, some in the most horrible way. And on that first day, like all journalists, I began writing about the disaster much as I had written about the 2004 earthquake and tsunamis which had devastated the coasts of the Indian Ocean.

But then something odd happened. When it became clear the waves had struck a nuclear power plant, Fukushima Dai-ichi, 100 or so miles north of Tokyo, it was almost as if the great disaster we had witnessed had been erased from view. Suddenly, all the reports concentrated on the possibility of a reactor meltdown, the overheating fuel rods, and the design flaws in this ancient plant.

I too found the nuclear angle compelling. The forces of nature meet human hubris and the terror of the unchained atom. There was human drama, the whiff of cover-ups, institutional incompetence, heroism (the famous Fukushima 50), and pretty soon an international angle as “deadly clouds of radiation” formed (which turned out to be nothing of the sort).
Soon we journalists became versed in the terminology of nuclear disaster – sieverts and millisieverts, the difference between pressurised and boiling water reactors, the half-lives of various isotopes of caesium and iodine.
It was at this point, at around day three, that I realised that something had gone seriously wrong with the reporting of the biggest natural disaster to hit a major industrialised nation for a century. We had forgotten the real victims, the 20,000-and-counting Japanese people killed, in favour of a nuclear scare story.
Yesterday, together with the rationalist campaign group Sense About Science, I attempted to put the record straight at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver. We argued that not only was the global media’s reaction to the Tohoku earthquake skewed in favour of a nuclear “disaster” that never was, but that this reporting had profound economic and even environmental implications.
(…) There are bitter ironies in all of this. The panic caused a minor evacuation of Tokyo, which almost certainly resulted in more road deaths than will ever be attributable to radiation leaks. At one point, governments in Europe, including ours, were offering to fly expats home from places where the radiation levels were lower than the natural background count in Aberdeen or Cornwall.
As Wade Allison, emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, says: “The reporting of Fukushima was guided by the Cold War reflex that matched radiation with fear and mortal danger. Reactors have been destroyed, but the radiation at Fukushima has caused no loss of life and is unlikely to do so, even in the next 50 years. The voices of science and common sense on which the future of mankind depends were drowned out and remain to be heard, even today. The result has been unnecessary suffering and great socio-economic damage.”

You will need a strong constitution to read the comments to Michael’s report. The global anti-nuclear forces mobilize instantly to inundate any open-comment site. There are a few science-based comments, but they are overwhelmed by the anti-science posters. Sigh…

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