[Peace-discuss] Fear and nuclear radiation

[Brussel, Morton K]

I append part of an informative article from this source:

https://thebulletin.org/how-unlucky-lucky-dragon-birthed-era-nuclear-fear11546

Those worried about the effects of Fukushima should be interested.

The Japanese word for fear is kyoufu. Ironically, while the modern world’s kyoufu of radiation essentially began with the Lucky Dragon incident and Kuboyama’s death, another Japanese experience—the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—has taught us that radiation is nowhere near as dangerous as we have come to assume. A total of 86,600 hibakusha have been followed with regular medical examinations for 71 years and compared to 23,000 Japanese who were not exposed to radiation. It stuns most people to learn this (it sure stunned me), but the overall increased radiation-induced cancer death rate among atomic bomb survivors—thousands of whom instantly received high doses of radiation from the bombs themselves, then experienced extended exposure to fallout in their air, water, and food—is less than one percent. “Atomic bomb disease” has killed a total of only 586 of those 86,600 survivors. At lower but still substantial doses –doses far higher than those caused to the public by the nuclear accidents at Chernobyl in 1986 or Fukushima in 2011—radiation has caused no change in disease rates compared to the normal rates among the control population. The children of the hibakusha have also been followed and studied, and show no multi-generational genetic damage passed down from their parents, though children born to pregnant women among the hibakusha did suffer a higher rate of birth defects. (The 70-plus year-long study of the atomic bomb survivors continues, conducted by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation<https://rerf.or.jp> in Hiroshima.)

Based on this hard-won knowledge, experts can say with confidence that the increased lifetime cancer mortality rate from Chernobyl will be just 3 to 4 percent above normal cancer death rates for the affected population, according to a 2006 World Health Organization study<http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/ >. The Fukushima nuclear accident is unlikely to raise the rate of any disease associated with radiation above normal. The doses to which people were exposed at Fukushima were nothing near those experienced by the hibakusha closest to the blast in 1945, and nothing like the intense doses received by the crew of the Lucky Dragon.

But though the information from health experts is reassuring, fear of radiation from Fukushima persists. It persists in the tens of thousands of people evacuated as a precaution when no one knew what was going to happen, who now won’t move back even though radiation doses are low enough in most areas to allow them to safely do so. Families and entire communities have been decimated. Rates of unemployment, alcoholism, depression, and stress-related illnesses are elevated compared to other areas of Japan. As was sadly true for the hibakusha before them, some children from Fukushima prefecture are shunned and stigmatized when they travel.

The fear persists across Japan, where sales of agricultural products from the Fukushima prefecture are lagging, echoing past fears of contaminated tuna from the Lucky Dragon, even though we now know that the actual risk from the infinitesimal doses around Fukushima is practically zero.

It persists with the hundreds of billions of yen being spent to collect water running through the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant site. The water picks up a radioactive molecule called tritium, which the world’s top experts all agree causes such a low dose to anyone exposed that it poses no threat to human health. (Some of the red and green exit lights in theaters, designed to stay on when the power fails, are filled with tritium.) Japanese authorities will probably release all that tritium-tainted water into the ocean. Though this would pose no threat to the environment, the very idea is facing fierce resistance, fed by excessive fear of anything connected to the word “radiation.”

Finally, kyoufu of radiation persists across Japan and elsewhere in the form of opposition to nuclear energy. Nuclear power produces neither greenhouse gasses, which contribute to climate change, nor particulate pollution, which sickens or kills tens of millions of people around the world every year. Having shut down its nuclear power fleet because of fear of radiation following Fukushima, Japan is now burning more fossil fuels to produce electricity, contributing to short- and long-term health threats that are vastly greater than those posed by radiation. (So is Germany, and so are several US states.) Due to fear of radiation, some Japanese don’t want to allow TEPCO, the electric company, to restart their Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear complex, where millions have been spent upgrading safety since Fukushima. Without revenue from that plant, TEPCO has to continue to borrow Japanese taxpayer money to pay for the clean-up at Fukushima, a multibillion-dollar effort to capture radioactive material that experts agree poses no threat to public or environmental health.

The fact that deep nuclear fear has persisted for so long, despite solid evidence that the risk isn’t as great as we thought it was back in 1954, is perhaps the Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall’s most profound lesson. The museum helps us understand the events and historic context that gave birth to our fear of radiation, and why it is so deeply engrained. It helps us realize how fear with such deep emotional roots is not readily overcome by objective consideration of the facts alone. It helps us see how easily fear can overpower reason, even when fear of a risk does more harm than the risk itself.
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