Amardeo Sarma and Anna Veronika Wendland publish an article in Skeptical Inquirer (July/August 2021) on the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and the consequent Fukushima nuclear accident, but before reading on, try to remember the number of deaths resultant of the radiation of Fukushima. Tens? Hundreds? Worse?
Myths Surrounding Casualties and Their Causes
The molten fuel mass in units 1 to 3 of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant dripped in whole or in part from the damaged reactor pressure vessels onto the floor of the primary containment. There, it ate into the concrete structures and solidified. Thus most of the reactor inventory was held inside the containments, but leakage could no longer be prevented due to the earthquake and explosion damage and the late initiation of pressure relief. Controlled but unfiltered ventings also released large quantities of volatile radionuclides.
The full release of iodine-131, caesium-137, and cesium-134 is estimated at 3.7 x 1017 becquerels (Bq) of iodine equivalent, about one-tenth of the release in the Chernobyl accident. Nevertheless, like Chernobyl, Fukushima was classified at Level 7 (release >5 x 1016 Bq) on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). Unlike with Chernobyl, no one at the power plant died from radiation over-exposure. As of October 2011, a total of 388 people received radiation doses above the 20 millisieverts (mSv) permitted annually for occupationally exposed persons. Fourteen people received more than 100 mSv. To date, there is one case of fatal lung cancer that has been officially recognized as an occupational disease, but it is implausible to have resulted from the accident itself (GRS 2016).
The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) estimated that the expected number of premature deaths from cancer among nuclear workers would be so small as to be statistically insignificant. No casualties were expected among the civilian population that was evacuated in time (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation 2014).
The nuclear accident itself did not cause any direct radiation-related deaths. Instead, the fatalities at and close to the nuclear power plant’s site are due to the earthquake and tsunami and the evacuation measures taken after the nuclear accident.
Of course, there are disagreements:
After the accident, a publication by Mark Z. Jacobson, a renewable energy researcher and staunch opponent of nuclear power, caused a stir. He claimed that there were about 130 (between fifteen and 1,100) cancer-related deaths and 180 (between twenty-four and 1,800) cancer-related illnesses due to Fukushima (Hoeve and Jacobson 2012). His paper is also based on the controversial LNT [linear no-threshold, a mathematical risk model that has been used since the 1920s to predict the effects of radiation] model. Even the smallest increases in radiation dose in remote regions of the world, such as the west coast of the United States, were included in the calculations.
But even those numbers pale compared to deaths from just about all other uses of technology by humans. Mark Lynas calls the publication “junk science”:
In this deeply flawed paper, he succeeds only in illustrating some of the absurdities in current radiological protection models, and that one thing we know for sure—even if those absurdities are ignored—is that the evacuation killed more people than the accident. (Lynas 2012)
Mark Lynas appears to be a journalist and environmentalist.
It’s an interesting investigation into possible hysterical overreaction to what might be characterized as a design mostly resilient to disaster, a reaction which eventually led to Germany shutting down its nuclear energy industry – contributing a great deal more CO2 and other climate warming gases to the atmosphere.
