tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5056599210263969567.post96418883999931655..comments2024-01-23T03:52:54.149+09:00Comments on Anne Kaneko's Fukushima Blog: 1st April - All ChangeAnne Kanekohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09520490908508371344noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5056599210263969567.post-66061449255921256922012-04-04T23:04:37.729+09:002012-04-04T23:04:37.729+09:00Hi,
Thank you for your interest and all the inform...Hi,<br />Thank you for your interest and all the information (most of it reassuring) which I shall certainly refer to and direct people towards, perhaps in a later blog?<br />It's hard to stay level headed and unbiased (especially regarding nuclear power) when you're here in the thick of it day in and day out,so information (especially clear information in English) is very welcome.<br />Thanks a lot.<br />AnneAnne Kanekohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09520490908508371344noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5056599210263969567.post-32656037705356020562012-04-04T22:18:58.008+09:002012-04-04T22:18:58.008+09:00I discovered this blog while searching for local i...I discovered this blog while searching for local information which didn't have an obviously biased viewpoint. Thank you for such clear and detailed writing!<br />In one of your earlier posts, you said the people needed to hear more positive news. You might like this presentation from a certified Health Physicist at a major US university, from about 3 months after the accident:<br /><br /> http://www.ans.org/misc/FukushimaSpecialSession-Caracappa.pdf<br /><br />The key point comes in slide 25, where the excess cancer risk to the general population around Fukushima is estimated at ~0.001% (one-thousandth of one percent). Very small.<br /><br />The new limits on Cs-137 levels in food seem quite conservative to me, perhaps overly so. Here is a previous discussion following an article in the Vancouver Sun, which at least had the journalistic integrity to label the source as an "anti-nuclear group" in the headline:<br /><br /> http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Fukushima+radiation+worse+than+expected+poses+threat+Canadian+fish/5997414/story.html<br /><br />Mine is the third comment. I calculated the dose from eating 400g a day of fish contaminated at twice the new limit to be 0.4 mSv, about 1/6 of average annual background radiation. So I think the new limit mainly serves to hurt farmers and fishermen without really improving protection.<br /><br />The other piece of relevant new research on the risks of low-level radiation exposure is here:<br /><br /> http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2011/12/20/low-dose-radiation/<br /><br />“Our data show that at lower doses of ionizing radiation, DNA repair mechanisms work much better than at higher doses,” says Mina Bissell, a world-renowned breast cancer researcher with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division. “This non-linear DNA damage response casts doubt on the general assumption that any amount of ionizing radiation is harmful and additive.”<br /><br />This research was done not by statistical methods, but by directly imaging cellular repair processes in living cells after radiation exposure. All the very large estimates for cancer from Chernobyl, for example, were derived by applying the Linear No-Threshold theory at very low doses to enormous populations. The work cited above essentially proves that to be invalid.<br /><br />This is not to say 50 mSv/year is perfectly safe. It may not be. But the US NRC allows that much for workers in radiation-related fields:<br /><br /> http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part020/part020-1201.html<br /><br />so perhaps "uninhabitable" is pitching it a bit strong. I hope this info is useful to you.DiogenesNJnoreply@blogger.com