Radioactive fireworks!

Last weekend, organizers of a festival in Aichi canceled a plan to use fireworks made in Fukushima Prefecture, even though the event was staged in support of regions devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.  In what must have come as a humiliation to people who actually come from Fukushima, local residents successfully protested the use of the fireworks, fearing they could be contaminated with radioactive materials.  Given that radiation levels in Fukushima are too low to affect human health, and that there is no known way for radioactive materials to enter into...fireworks, the incident might be portrayed as an example of how not to support earthquake affected regions.  This is the kind of irrational fear that will perpetuate and worsen the discrimination that residents of Fukushima already face.

Some people in Japan don't need radiation detectors.  They need irony detectors.

Radioactive Hot Springs in Japan

I wasn't aware of this but Japan actually has many onsens (hot springs) that are naturally radioactive and well-known for it.  In fact Japan has something of a reputation for them.  They are visited by locals and tourists for their supposedly health-inducing and even cancer-preventative properties.  The most common source of the radioactivity is radon, a naturally occurring element that results from the breakdown of uranium or thorium. 

 Here's an ad for Misasa Hot Springs, which promotes its 'health-promoting radium', and a newspaper article about the cancer-fighting action of the radiation at Yawaragi onsen, located, ironically enough, in the mountains of Fukushima.  Wouldn't it be extraordinary if nearby residents had been suddenly evacuated from there because of something they had been enjoying for generations?

Radiation levels at these onsens are certainly low, low enough for radiation hormesis (if it exists) to be responsible for the health benefits, but they certainly raise eyebrows when compared to the kind of radiation that has caused widespread fear since March 11.  According to wikipedia, these kind of hot springs must have a concentration of a minimum of 74 Bq/cubic meter to qualify, and certain hot springs in Italy have concentrations of 4,000 kBq/cubic meter, while I found one Japanese site that states that Masatomi hot spring has a radiation level of 11,000 Bq/liter, and people bathe there and even drink the water for their health.  Those kinds of figures tend to put into perspective the panic that resulted when radiation levels in contaminated beef topped 500 Bq/kilogram. 

I even came across this by accident last week while on holiday in Kagoshima:

"This leg bath is a radon onsen.  For the full body bath please come inside the onsen building."

Where plenty of families (including my own) were happily bathing.

At first I found it odd that there has been no mention of these onsens in the media the last few months.  Upon reflection, it was not surprising, because the media would suffer a kind of cognitive dissonance if forced to confront the contradictions inherent in such coverage.  On one hand the public is encouraged to panic when levels of radiation are over 500 Bq/kilo of beef, but on the other hand people are known to bathe in and drink water that is much much more radioactive than that - for their health...

I wonder how many people in Japan visit their local onsen weekly, unknowingly or uncaringly luxuriating in significant levels of radon-induced radiation, only to fearfully cringe away from Fukushima produce at the supermarket

The Reality of Radiation in Japan

Before March 11, like everybody, I had only the vaguest ideas about nuclear power and radiation. 

But I have to tell you, it has been a revelation since then. I have been reading and reading. The net is extraordinary. I have searched for and read mainstream scientific views, and have been bombarded with alarmist articles and videos by well-meaning friends.  The amount of unsubstantiated fear-grounded media out there is extraordinary.  But if you read the science objectively, in my view it is impossible to not come to the conclusion that 99% of the fear Japan is experiencing is unnecessary.

Half the battle is to be careful about your sources.   This site is an example.  Here, they have just decided to include everything they could find that was anti-nuclear, seemingly on principle, and have thrown in massive numbers that are meaningless without context. Then there are the youtube videos like this one by Arnold Gundersen.  He comes across as a credible speaker and looks the part; then he starts talking about 'black rain', something no reputable media source would mention, and then you know you're in trouble. 

The craziest video is the one called 'Japanese government killing its own people', which you can see here.   You might call it the 'piss video'.  It's an exercise in clumsy propaganda. We don't see the calm, measured presentation from the bureaucrat simply stating that the local radiation is not dangerous. Instead, the original video has been cut and we see this aggressive (and irrelevant) questioning: they don't bother to include anything as boring or prosaic as actual radiation measurements.  I guess people would rather see bottles of urine being thrust around. Oh well. And yes, that Japanese bureacrat does come across as a heartless. But I have to tell you: the man with the urine trying to block the elevator is getting 10 times the sympathy I got last year at the Yokohama immigration office when my visa was unceremoniously cut for no reason from 3 years to 1.   But if I had tried the same shit as the urine guy, I would have been detained, interrogated, and deported before you could say 'discrimination'. My point is: that Japanese bureacrat is being heartless not because of radiation, but because he is a Japanese bureaucrat. And did you ever think why it is THIS video that goes around the net, and not some calm NHK presentation? Well, people love to feed their fears; and this video tells me a lot more about human paranoia (quite a bit) than it does about radiation in Fukushima (nothing).

That's enough of the fear-mongering for the moment.  If you are really interested in finding out the facts, you need to go to trustworthy sources. Wikipedia is one. In fact, it's the best source of information on the planet; because it's free, nobody gets paid, and it is beholden to noone. All it is is people slogging it out with facts and sources. Start with the article on the Fukushima accident

In fact, read the discussion page behind it; it is truly a wonder and I am in awe of it. For example, on the main page there is a quote from a man (I just looked it up, and, low and behold, it is Arnold Gundersen, the 'black rain' guy!), saying that Fukushima was the biggest industrial catastrophe in history.   I thought, that's a bit rough, especially in comparison with genuine disasters like Bhopal in India. So I go to the discussion page and there is a huge discussion about whether to remove the quote. Or not. You should read it yourself and make up your own mind. I also just noticed that above the quote there is a little wikipedia note: neutrality disputed. What other news source will take that much care?  For impartiality, go to wikipedia. 

As for actual radiation measurements in Fukushima (or Tokyo, or anywhere in Japan), they are freely available, in Japanese at least: e.g. an independent company or the more official NHK site. 

To interprest the figures, you have to know about the sievert, which is how radiation is usually measured when it affects humans affects bodies.  Included in this one unit is all the different types of radiation.  10 of these sieverts will kills you, and 1 will make you sick.  When thinking about how much radiation is dangerous, you can start by comparing the dose to natural background radiation, and that's where it starts to get interesting.   This natural radiation can vary a lot from place to place, anywhere from about 0.3 to 2 or 3 millisieverts a year  (a millisievert is 1/1000th of a sievert.)   Well, according to the Naver site Tokyo today has 0.056 microsieverts an hour, 0.49 millisieverts a year, on the lower end of the natural background radiation range.   Obviously nothing to worry about.   Up in Fukushima itself it is a little more interesting. People in Fukushima city are getting 10.6 millisieverts a year, some 20 times what people in Tokyo are getting.   But, in different places in the world the natural background radiation is substantially higher than even this, up to 20 or 50 or more millisieverts, or even more in certain areas in Iran or India. Those areas do not have higher cancer rates than other areas. In fact, no negative health impacts on humans have been observed for doses less than 50 millisieverts a year (according to who you read, it could be higher). In fact according to wikipedia, some areas in Iran have high natural radioactivity of more than 200 times normal background level, higher than safety levels for nuclear workers, and hot springs there are visited by locals and tourists!

Which brings me to radiation hormesis. Never heard of it? Neither had I, before all this happened. Radiation hormesis is the theory that very low doses of radiation are...good for you! It's not accepted by the mainstream of nuclear science, but there seems to be substantial evidence for it, and scientists are at least taking the idea seriously.  The very lack of widespread knowledge of the existence of this theory should tell you how much the media is disposed to negativity on the subject.  Now, I am not a supporter of radiation hormesis.   I don't have a degree in nuclear science, I have not published on the issue in academic peer-reviewed journals. But the issue demonstrates there is some evidence that low level radiation is good for you, just not enough evidence to overturn the dominant paradigm. Science is very conservative; you need a lot of evidence to overturn an existing theory.  And that's probably a good thing.

Now there a lot of people, strident activists, who are firmly against nuclear power. Arnold Gundersen is one. Helen Caldicott, an Australian woman, is another. You can see an interesting debate between her and George Manbiot, a British journalist and environomentalist.  I've spent hours watching debates like this, and much longer chasing up the substance of what the people say, a much less interesting but rather more illuminating pursuit.  As an example, George Manbiot wrote a detailed reply to issues Ms Caldicott raised in the debate, detailing her inadequacies at some length.  The comments after his article are themselves amazing.

One thing that comes out clearly in these debates is that anti-nuclear activists always maintain the mainstream of nuclear scientific opinion is wrong.   Not only do they question the scientific consensus, they charge that there is a conspiracy, a cover-up, to hide the much more dangerous and sinister truth.  Well, my take on that is this: it stretches credulity to suggest there is a huge international conspiracy, involving not only thousands of respected scientists, but including the organisations of the United Nations.  But this is what you have to believe if you believe that the paranoia and fear-mongering in the media is justified.

For the official, authoritative view of the dangers of low-level radiation, see this publication by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiation.  Their FAQ is particularly readable.  In these documents you can see the moderate, rigorously scientific viewpoint.  You might summarize this view by saying that the tiny releases of radiation from Fukushima will have a negligible effect upon human health.  Not only that, but the response of the Japanese government and TEPCO to the nuclear accident, derided in both Japanese and foreign media as shambolic and ineffective, is revealed by the relevant agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, as both effective and appropriate.

But be aware, now we're getting into the actual science; but it's where you have to be if you want to think about this issue with any authority. It's the kind of authority that Arnold Gundersen and Helen Caldicott have to deny. In fact, it was clear in the debate that she hadn't even read the documents.

For me, personally, I became suspicious of the 'dangers' of radioactivity when I saw how the media was treating it. There seemed to be a lot of panic and precious little data. As an example of the fear of radiation versus radiation, consider the current beef scare. When it broke out NHK featured an hour-long news report focusing on this issue. There was a lengthy introduction, footage from cattle farms in Fukushima, an examination of flaws in the inpection system, repeated shrill announcements of becquerels in the hundreds and thousands, interviews with crying supermarket managers who had inadvertently sold the meat, on-the-street interviews with young mothers fearfully clutching babies and wailing about the safety of their family etc etc. Finally, there was a 10-second clip from an actual nuclear scientist at Tokyo university, calmly stating that you would have to eat a kilogram of the beef every day for several years in order for it to have any measurable effect upon your health.

And that contrast- between 45 minutes of fear-mongering and 10 seconds of reality – tells you all you need to know about the nuclear ‘crisis’ in Japan.

And now, if you haven't before, you are now obliged to read some unashamedly pro-nuclear opinion to balance it up all the negativity. You can start with this site, The Hiroshima Syndrome, which has an excellent chronology of the actual accident, among other things. There is also Rod Adams, who has an interesting take on Arnold Gundersen.  Read it yourself and make your own judgement about him!

For one view of why the media is full of disaster, watch this British documentary.

And here is a link where you can compare fatalities from different energy-related accidents in history. As you can see, nuclear energy is much much safer than fossil fuels such as coal, and even safer than hydro.

Finally, and very sadly, the Fukushima accident will have a long-term and substantial detrimental impact upon the planet, in terms of contributing very significantly to global warming.  Germany may be the first of several countries who regrettably roll back nuclear power because of the irrational fear of radiation.

Risk vs Perception of Risk

Back in March, in the days after the nuclear accident, there was panicked talk of evacuating Tokyo.

Well, risk is a funny thing.  It is quite extraordinary that we are allowed to live in large cities, with the associated vehicle emissions and other pollutions, shortening our lives by a very measureable amount.  Given that the radiation levels in Fukushima are far lower than those that could adversely affect human health, it is absolutely clear that there was an argument for evacuating Tokyo.  If the people of Tokyo had been evacuated into the Fukushima evacuation zone, they would be living longer than if they stayed in Tokyo city.

Kan goes, Noda becomes PM

Yoshihiko Noda became the new prime minister of Japan today, ending months of speculation about the successor to Naoto Kan. Kan had been a lame duck prime minister since the March earthquake and tsunami, as, despite an overall superb effort of rescue and reconstruction, he was forced to take responsibility for the disaster and especially the 'crisis' at the Fukushima nuclear plant. He finally resigned on Friday, and the Democratic Party of Japan chose their new leader today.

Noda's triumph was not easy; the contest became a battle between Ichiro Ozawa and his enemies. Ozawa himself could not run, as his very membership of the party is suspended due to a funding scandal, but his personal favourite Kaeda Banri stepped in for him. In this light, Noda's victory represents a victory for the anti-Ozawa faction. We shall have to see how he performs. He is said to be a fiscal conservative. Look for a rise in the consumption tax.

That's Japan's sixth prime minister in five years.

Radiation vs Fear of Radiation: The Body Count

Japanese TV and public opinion continues to be dominated by the faux crisis at the damaged nuclear power plant in Fukushima.

There's no doubt that the accident has had a huge negative impact upon the economy and psychology of Japan. But not for the reason you may think. That is, not because of the radiation (there's hasn't been enough to adversely affect anybody), but because of the Fear of radiation. Putting aside for the moment the direct and indirect financial costs this Fear has incurred, a simple body count can be quite revealing.

The Body Count: Fear of Radiation

You can be absolutely sure that if people had been killed by the radiation, we would be hearing about it constantly and numbers would be updated daily. On the other hand, no media source that I can find has attempted to calculate the number of people who have died as a result of the fear of radiation from Fukushima. It's difficult but not impossible to make an estimate. I can think of at least 4 sources of injuries or fatalities:

1. Iodine idiocy: In the first few day after the accident occurred, iodine sales around the world skyrocketed, in the false belief that just taking iodine can protect you from radiation. This happened despite government warnings that iodine was both ineffective and unnecessary. Although I couldn't find any news about people dying, some people appear to have been hospitalized due to overdose. The insanity was particularly spectacular in China, where people rushed supermarkets to buy salt in the false belief that iodised salt could provide protection from Fukushima radiation:

2: Unnecessary evacuation. According to Wikipedia, no less than 45 people died at a hospital in Futaba, Fukushima when the order came to evacuate immediately. Apparently the staff were not equipped to evacuate hundreds of patients and many elderly or bedridden were...left to die of dehydration or inattention. A terible death. And entirely avoidable as radiation levels were never high enough to require such a swift and heedless flight.

3. Suicide. On Google you can find news articles reporting on the 'plague of suicides' as the Japanese supposedly off themselves in droves because of depression caused by radiation. Not surprisingly, the truth is a bit more prosaic. It's true that there was a 20% rise in the suicide rate in May this year- 499 more people killed themselves than in May last year. However, it's impossible to say for certain that these suicides were related to Fear of Radiation as opposed to stress in general resulting from the earthquake and tsunami- loss of family, PTSD etc. As far as I can tell only two suicides can definitely be put down to the nuclear accident: an organic cabbage farmer worried about his soil and a dairy farmer who was forced to slaughter all his cows after the milk became unsaleable.

4. Heatstroke. Since the accident in Fukushima 35 out of Japan's 54 nuclear plants have been shut down for 'renovations' or 'safety checks'. An extraordinarily unnecessary move unless you are expecting another 14 metre tsunami in the near future. And these shutdowns have resulted in this summer's major government appeal to the populace: power saving. And it works: stores have dim lighting, escalators are turned off, even my wife refuses to turn on the air conditioning to below 30 degrees. In fact, she reports from online gossip that in some areas 'neighborhood watch' groups are patrolling the backstreets to find houses with the airconditioning putting out too much exhaust, so they can knock on the doors and harass people (every Japanese neighbourhood has a bunch of middle aged ladies who love to do this). Well, heatstroke this year is up by three-fold. More than 13,000 people were hospitalized in June alone, and 35 have died. Some people will die every year from heatstroke in Japan, but if there is a three-fold rise something is going on. If deaths have also risen three-fold, that works out at maybe 23 people who died unnecessarily because they were attempting to save electricity by not using air conditioning. A phenomenon which I find entirely believable, if very sad.

Summary:

Iodine overdose: ?

Evacuation: 45

Suicide: at least 2

Heatstroke: 23

Total: 70 plus.

The Body Count: Radiation.

None. And not likely to be any either, as nobody apart from a few workers has received a dose equivalent to the lowest dose that could possibly be associated with an increase risk of cancer or other adverse health effects. And the number of those workers is very small, and statistically they are unlikely to suffer any health effects. At least, not from radiation. The Fear on the other hand...

Hiroshima does not equal Fukushima

Today is the 66th anniversary of the atom bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. In Hiroshima today, a speech by prime minister Naoto Kan, a 'peace declaration' by the mayor, and comments from bystanders all sketched a similarity and connection between the 1945 atom bomb attack and the nuclear accident at Fukushima in March.

A very regrettable and inaccurate conflation for many reasons. But also a very revealing one.

Conflating the bombing of Hiroshima with the nuclear power accident in Fukushima is like blaming iron mining for gun deaths because guns are made of iron. You may as well accuse the Beatles of murder because Charles Manson liked 'Helter Skelter'. Hey, some people do. But in reality, there is no connection between the peaceful use of atomic power and nuclear warfare except that they happen to use some of the same material. Uranium. Of course, the processes used in the production of energy from nuclear power and the chain reaction used for a nuclear explosion are very different. And if you compare the body count of the Hiroshima bombing to the Fukushima accident (140,000 to zero), you get a snapshot of the absurdity of the comparison.

Nevertheless the fact that the comparison is being made is revealing; for in the public mind atom bombs are connected to nuclear power. Fallout is the same as radiation release; a nuclear reaction is like an atomic bomb; and the unspoken message is that nuclear power can kill us all just like nuclear war can, leave us all in a radioactive Biohazard desert fighting zombies and giving birth to mutant babies with 3 heads and 7 eyes.

Don't laugh this is the secret that lies behind the public's distrust of nuclear power. It explains why it is so hated and feared, and why despite its obvious advantages it is not the main source of energy for human society.

It's also the unspoken rationale for otherwise environmentally sound political groups (like Australia's Greens) who oppose the peaceful use of nuclear power. The older membership of the Greens are veterans of the anti-nuclear protests of the 70's. They can't see the science: in their eyes nuclear power equals the danger of nuclear war. This is a genuine tragedy, for a movement that otherwise has many progressive and life-affirming policies is trapped by this anti-science and irrational fear of the only truly green energy source that can deliver the vast amounts of energy that the world craves.

On Japan and China's high speed rail

Since the high speed rail crash in China two days ago that killed 35 people and injured 200, the accident has received wide coverage on Japanese television.

It's a shame that the coverage has been so ... smug.

The Japanese consider themselves the world leaders in high speed rail. It is true that they have some things to boast about: the shinkansen, Japan's bullet train, is fast, efficient, safe and reliable.

But for some time Japan has, let us say, been a bit perturbed at the rapid spread of high-speed rail in their traditional rival, China. Chinese high speed rail is cheaper, faster, and built at a fraction of the cost. It also has 3 times the rail length of the shinkansen system in Japan.

And for the last two days the avalanche of smug has been overwhelming. The accident has led the nightly news both nights. The lack of safety measures that led to the accident in the Chinese rail system has been emphasised repeatedly. Experts have appeared to express dismay at the poor quality of the Chinese rail system. And tonight there was an extensive review of the Japanese shinkansen safety measures - the meticulousness, the complexity, the multiple layers of redundancy. The implication was obvious: Japanese high speed rail is safe, good and reliable; Chinese rail is dangerous.

I have also heard several times that the Chinese have built their high-speed rail system using German, Canadian and Japanese technology. The subtext here is that the Chinese have to steal technology from others, and that all the success of the Chinese system is due, at least in part, to Japan.

There was also widespread reporting of the 'investigation' into the Chinese accident, which has included burying derailed train carriages in the ground right next to the rails so that trains could run the next day, an action so unlikely in the Japanese context that upon hearing about it, several officials in the Japanese shinkansen department immediately died because their brains exploded.

Of course, the elephant in the room in terms of the history of rail safety in the two countries is the Amagasaki rail crash of 2005 when 106 passengers were killed and 555 were injured when a Japanese local train derailed. Not that this accident has been ignored in the nightly report: it was used to contrast the quality of post-crash investigation. Whereas with the Chinese crash there has been little or no effort to explain the crash or improve safety so far, after the Amagasaki derailment investigators closed the crash site for 25 days while they investigated everything they could, and the rail line itself wasn't opened for 55 days.

To me, however, this tells us more about the faults of the Japanese system that its strong points: the actual cause of the crash was known by the end of the day it happened. Congestion on the Fukichiyama line had reduced the leeway in the train's schedule to just 28 seconds. The train driver had overshot the platform in the previous station, losing valuable time, and in an effort to catch up had accelerated the train far past the safety margin of the curve it was on when it was derailed. This was known almost immediately, yet the line was closed for the next month as engineers took measurements...

Mutant beef invades safety-conscious Japan!

The number of contaminated cattle whose meat was distributed to the poor trusting and innocent residents of Japan has reached 578, and may rise further.

Tonight the news was full of the continuing scandal, brought on by farmers in Fukushima who unknowingly fed their cattle hay that was contaminated with radioactive caesium.

In some cases the contamination was somewhat above the government-set safety levels of 500 becquerels/ kg., e.g. up to 700 becquerels. In a few cases the detected level was much higher, even up to 3,000 becquerels/kg.

But what does that actually mean? Well, if you have spent 45 minutes browsing the net as I have, you will know that it means...not much.

The government-set safety levels are based on the idea that there is 'no safe level' of radiation. Now, nobody has actually shown any negative effects from very low doses of radiation, but what scientists did in the 1950s was extrapolate downwards from the very high doses received in Hiroshima that did kill people or damage their health. It's an exercise akin to observing 50 shots of alcohol in a day will kill 50 % of people (for example), and extapolating linearly downwards and claiming 1 shot will kill 1%. This is obviously wrong for alchohol (hey, I can attest to the benefits of a beer a day), and with radiation it's an unproven idea, but the result is you get things like Japan's very strict safety limits that cause undue panic when they are violated.

This can be demonstrated very easily when you consider naturally occurring radiation. The Japanese are stocking up on brown-coloured underwear right now because beef with levels of radiation of over 500 becquerels per kilo may be in their supermarket. However, even a humble banana contains about 15 becquerels. Eat ten and you already have 150. Eating a hundred bananas at one time (unlikely I grant you) will give you 1,500 becquerels, enough to unleash pandemonium and put you on the nightly news. Coffee has 1000 bq/kg. Half a cup of kidney beans has 30 bequerels. 100 sqm of air in an average Aussie home will give you 3000 bequerels!

Yet again, reality was only given a brief 5 second snippet tonight, when a university professor bluntly stated that you would have to eat a kilogram of this beef every day for a year to have even a barely measurable impact on your health. Of course, if we are considering that level of danger, you may as well take the beef off the market on the grounds that eating much less than that will kill you a lot faster...from arteriosclerosis, colon cancer or gout.

Radioactive Mutant Contaminated Cows!!

Over the last couple of days the media in Japan has been wracked by another nuclear contamination scandal. It turns out that radioactive caesium levels some four times higher than government-set safety levels have been found in the meat from 6 cows from a single farm in Fukushima. Not only that, but some of the meat had already entered the distribution chain when this was found out. Some has been sold and efforts are being made to track down the rest.

Well, how much of a disaster is this really?

Not much, it turns out. Sure, the meat has levels of contamination 4 times the safety limit, but that is starting from a very low base. The safety limits for these things are set at the very bottom of a very large range of possible safety levels. This is done because governments (especially the Japanese government) are concerned about being 'on the safe side'. The 'safe side' is in fact very very very safe, because there is actually very little reliable data (read nil) on the long-term effects of very low-dose radiation in food supplies, leading to very conservative or even paranoid safety levels. In fact you will not be able to find a respectable scientific or medical source that says eating this meat is unsafe. This was reflected in tonight's news. It featured 30 minutes of reports on the 'fear' aspects of the incident: criticism of the inspection system that let the beef slip through; footage of 'contaminated' farms; interviews with concerned mothers; speculations on how much meat may have already been sold; and lengthy reports of government efforts to track down the remainder. In contrast, there was a mere 10-second clip of a medical scientist, who stated bluntly that the eating the beef could not harm human health, and that eating kilos of it would give you no more radiation that you would receive during a chest x-ray.

That contrast, between 30 minutes of fear and 10 seconds of reality should be very instructive.

It tells you all you need to know about the nuclear 'crisis' in Japan.

In a nicely ironic aside, in the last five minutes of tonight's news viewers were given a little glimpse of the real negative effects of the accident at Fukushim. In parliament today Prime Minister Naoto Kan stated that the set goal of a 25% reduction in carbon dioxide levels by 2020 'would need to be revised' as due to the effects of the accident in Fukushima Japan would be unable to rely on nuclear power to the extent it has until now.

Yet another example of how the real problem here is not radiation, but fear of radiation.