So
Japan has been awarded the 2020 Olympics, and Shinzo Abe says he is more
delighted than when he became prime minister. Nice for him. He spoke almost as
if it were all about him. I could be annoyed by this turn of events, but I have
to admit that it will make for good drama over the next few years in a mixed
genre combining comedy, horror and organized crime, better than any of those
surrealistic dream sequences Tony Soprano ever went through.
The
essence of all good narrative fiction is that the audience knows what the
protagonist does not, and this gap in knowledge is what creates the dramatic
tension as they watch him walking blindly toward his tragic ending or
comeuppance. We watch him move through the plot thinking, “no, don’t open that
door” but we know he will. He must. In the next episode it’s a door he should
open, but doesn’t, and he passes up his last chance at salvation. In this
sense, Shinzo Abe is the perfect hapless antihero. He’s haunted by the ghost of
his grandfather (a post-war prime minister), he’s got a big heart and all that
sad ambition to restore his nation’s lost glory, but when there is a mistake to
be made, he will make it.
If
the Fukushima Daiichi disaster were a cable TV drama, the writers would sit
around a table hashing out ideas about how to stretch and build up the suspense
for another season. It would be too boring if the characters just plodded ahead
with logical, cautious solutions like turning away from nuclear power. At some
point, some young genius writer would say, “OK, get this. The country is broke.
They borrow half the national budget every year. Government debt is 230% of GDP
– totally un-repayable without a national default. A nuclear disaster in the hinterland
is unresolved and threatens to become a global catastrophe. So what do they do?
They double down on bread and circuses! Get this: they decide they want to host
the Olympics – no one thinks they’ll get it, but the IOC actually lets them
have it! With this, we’ve got enough for seven more seasons before we have to
wind it down in a grand finale.” The idea might be a hard sell at first. The
show runner wouldn’t be convinced easily that the audience could accept the plausibility
of it. But they go with it, and it’s a hit!
Alas,
too bad it’s not fiction. Nonetheless, it’s going to be interesting to watch
this story unfold between now and 2020. Shinzo Abe has set the stage well. All
his ducks are in a row. His country awaits either his promised Disneyesque
happy ending or a run-up to a Shakespearean downfall punctuated with much awesome
hubris and comic relief.
While
the country was rejoicing the IOC announcement on September 8, youtube user Birdhairjp had been kind enough to
remind us of what life is like on the ground in the still very-inhabited
Fukushima City. This drama doesn’t have high ratings. On the ground, literally,
there are 20 microsieverts per hour hitting the Geiger counter – 400 times
above those safe levels in Tokyo that Shinzo Abe described to the IOC last
week. Birdhairjp has shared a video
demonstrating the radiation hazard outside the Abukuma
Incinerator in Fukushima City.
He is to be commended for producing this video and sharing it with the world,
and also for demonstrating to other Japanese citizens that they need not be shy
about getting their message to the world in other languages. As he proves in
this case, simple English can be enough to get the point across.
I
thought it would be helpful to put the data from his video in context of
international norms for radiological protection.
For conversion:
1
Sievert = 1,000 millisieverts, 1 millisievert = 1,000 microsieverts
There
are 8,760 hours in a year, so in the
tables below the risk of the radiation levels at the incinerator are shown as the
accumulated annual doses to someone who is exposed to these levels of
microSv/hr for a whole year. Note that at ground level the feet get a much
higher dose than the chest:
Table 1. Outside the Abukuma
incinerator, Fukushima City
(55km from Fukushima Dai-ichi Power
Plant)
microSv/hour
|
mSv/year
|
|
at
chest level
|
varies
from 0.82 ~1.27
|
7.18 ~
11.13
|
at
feet
|
20.46
|
179.23
|
Table 2. For comparison, other times
and places in Japan
natural
background level in Japan before 2011
|
about
0.05 microSv/hour
|
present
background level in Narita, Chiba
(200 km
from Fukushima Dai-ichi Power Plant)
|
0.12 microSv/hour
=
1
mSv/year
|
Table 3 and Table 4,
showing international norms in effect in 2007, are from data compiled from Nucleonica Wiki.
For occupational
exposures, the 1990 recommendations
of the ICRP limit the effective dose to 100 mSv in a 5 year period (giving an
annual value of 20 mSv).
Table 3
Euratom
|
ICRP
|
IAEA
|
Germany
|
Japan after its nuclear disaster
|
|
Dose
limits for members of public,
for
whole body exposure
|
1 mSv/y
|
1 mSv/y
|
1 mSv/y
|
1 mSv/y
|
changed from 1 mSv/y to
20 mSv/y
|
Table 4
Euratom
|
ICRP
|
IAEA
|
Germany
|
|
Dose
limits for exposed nuclear industry workers, for whole body exposure
|
100 mSv/y
|
20 mSv/y
|
20 mSv/y
|
20 mSv/y
|
Limit
on effective dose for exposed workers in a consecutive 5-year period:
|
100 mSv/y
|
20 mSv/y
|
20 mSv/y
|
20 mSv/y
|
Maximum
effective dose in any single year:
|
50 mSv/y
|
50 mSv/y
|
50 mSv/y
|
50 mSv/y
|
Equivalent dose limit to the fetus,
accumulated during the
pregnancy
|
1 mSv
|
2 mSv
|
1 mSv
|
|
pregnant woman
|
2mSv/mo.
|
|||
total work life
(50 years)
|
400 mSv
|
Of
course, no one stays all the time in one spot like the one outside the Abukuma incinerator.
Some places have higher or lower radiation, and levels are lower indoors. It is
impossible to know the accumulated annual dose people receive as they move
about Fukushima City over a year. Officials don’t seem to be collecting this
data, for obvious reasons. This video shows that the radiation level is high
around this incinerator, and probably others, so this implies also that people
are being further exposed to internal contamination as they breathe in the
emissions from such facilities.
Although
there are variations in exposure levels, it is clear that residents of
Fukushima City are being exposed to levels far above the international
standards for the public. They are more likely to get exposures equivalent to
those which are allowed for nuclear industry workers, and in some cases even
more. This applies to adults, children, pregnant women and fetuses. Exposing a
child to 20 mSv is the equivalent of two adult full body CT scans. Adults are
advised not to have even one of these without a compelling medical reason for
it.
Japanese
officials simply decided that the economic and social impacts of evacuation
outweigh the risks to health, which the WHO claims to be only a small percentage
increase in lifetime risk of getting cancer. All other health effects are
ignored, and they would be difficult to link definitively to radiation
exposure. The global nuclear industry says now, in retrospect, the exposure
limits for the public and for nuclear workers were overly conservative and
established with normal operations in mind. They say that actually there are only
very minimal risks at levels up to 100 mSv, so in an emergency we should all
relax and just live with the higher levels. Would you abandon your home and
livelihood just because of a sudden small increase in the risk of getting
cancer twenty years or more in the future?
Only
time will tell the result of this human experiment, but before the IOC vote
last week Shinzo Abe said the radiation released by the Fukushima Daiichi
disaster has harmed no one. This was a shamelessly false claim that cannot be
supported by any evidence. It may be equally difficult to prove harm, but
scientific knowledge is developed enough to let us know that the amount of
radiation released had to have done some harm. Just ask the
sailors on the US Ronald Reagan who were stationed offshore assisting with
disaster relief. Because Abe made this statement to the IOC, he showed that he
is either a shameless liar or shamelessly (willfully?) ignorant about the grave
dangers that Fukushima Daiichi still poses to his country.
As
much as this is a dramatic illustration of a population suddenly being put at
risk for the convenience of the majority, it is not much different from other
atrocious situations advanced civilizations impose on the unfortunate
minorities who live in the shadow of the energy industry. Just two examples:
native people in Northern Alberta have been poisoned by the exploitation of the
tar sands, and the people in the coal mining regions of West Virginia have been
horribly poisoned for over a century. The majority living in big cities ignores
them, but they too live in their own toxic clouds. This is what we do. Bring on
the games.
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