Eohiguma linked to a “dog bites man” story, of sorts. Some people who lived close to Fukushima now have elevated amounts of radioactive material in their bodies. That’s not good, of course. But how bad is it?
“Out of 10,000 people with a dose of 1 millisievert, the radiation would cause two to get cancer during their lifetimes, but about 3,500 would get cancer also without any radiation,”
How do the Japanese assign dose based on body burden? Frankly, I don’t really care. Plus the moron’s name is Roy Shore. That’s Nipponese, right? I knew it. Can even translate from the Japanese: Assumeth Out Of Butthole.
Thanks for this head’s-up, edo. But, as always, “journalism” gives more questions than answers. “One millisievert” (100 millirem). Roy “Assumeth” Shore neglected the time variable. Is that important? Not to Roy, evidently. Picosecond, aeon, what’s the diff?
To us? The generic “you” picks up about 3.5 millisieverts per year. Now, when professionals assign body burden due to ingested Cs-137 (or any other isotope), we don’t assign it year-by-year. We calculate your dose from that burden for a 50-year period…then assign you the whole dose immediately. Because it’s the most conservative assumption.
Is that what Assumeth is doing? If so, 100/50 works out to an additional 2 millirem per year…or flying one-way from LA to NY every year, then driving back because of radiophobia.
Or maybe, incompetent that he his, Roy meant about one mSv (100 millirem) per year for fifty years. Neat trick, though, when Cs-137’s half-life is about 29 years.
Did I mention that this expert is an idiot? Because it’s important to your understanding that this expert is an idiot.
And of course thousands of flight attendants get three to four times more additional radiation than these victims. Apparently this radio-retard believes that people in Denver get cancer at the rate of exactly 3,514 per 10,000, as apart from the precise cancer rate of 3,507 for Generic Persons and 3,502 for the lucky people who get the very least dose on Earth.
Gaaah. It’s past bedtime. Do you know when human beings will have sufficient understanding of biology to equate one millisievert of radiation to an exact risk?
Never. Whatever can do that, isn’t human. And guess what? Assumeth is actually aware that other factors exist. To his shame.
But he said radiation is not the only health risk after the accident. “The psychological impact has been very great and has caused a lot of anxiety,” he said.
Yeah. The Placebo Effect is a lot better quantified than environmental-level fluctuations in ionizing radiation. So congrats, Butthole.
You’ve just killed more people than Fukushima ever will.
World's Only Rational Man 
The sad thing is, this is pretty much the only stuff they throw out there, amidst all the whining about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how Japan was a victim, and the other usual crying.
We technicians aren’t permitted by our employers to “weigh in” with media on stuff like this. Apparently “civilization” means “allergic to truth”.
Yep, it does. You know, I’m not surprised the applied sciences crowd is so silent. The amount of ridiculous nonsense floating around… You can really just shake your head at it.
Btw, this is also funny: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nb20120816a2.html Those output numbers. OMG! They’re literally piddling around with kWs…
Ha ha! That’s got some real Dr. Evil flavor, all right…”one thousand kilowatts.”
50 kW in case of blackout!
It took me a while to find, but I finally did it. My home district, where I grew up, requires 200 GWh per year, about 36,000 kW. And that’s not really so many inhabitants. Only 62,000, and a few. That’s the entire district with all the homes and industry.
That’s provincial Austria, with many small villages in between, where people don’t use electricity for everything.
Vienna in comparison likes to eat almost 40,000 GWh per year. And it’s a small city compared to others, with only 1.5 million inhabitants. Btw, for Vienna gas is the #1 source for energy.
There is simply no way in hell we can feed this with wind and solar. It’s simply not possible.
Yes. As a young 20-something I started working at Brown’s Ferry Nuclear Plant. Each unit: 1,000 megawatts. A million dollars a day of electricity. And then, looking at cities’ power consumption, surprisingly tiny contributions.
Probably this fracking thing is better, public relations factored in. But it isn’t better.
Nukes are better.
And for another good laugh: wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/16/climate-craziness-of-the-week-global-warming-causing-helium-shortage/
I’m in the wrong job.
As usual, Wormme- great facts. I am so tired of trying to explain things using facts because for some, ignorance is bliss and frankly, pisses me off!