Monday, October 3, 2011

#Radiation in Japan: Those Who Fled Fukushima in Panic Made a "Rational Decision", Says Government

The Ministry of Education's committee to discuss the compensation for Fukushima residents who evacuated from Fukushima on their own has decided to compensate those who fled Fukushima right after the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident because "to flee in a panic is rational". The committee has postponed the decision on the compensation for those who evacuated much later.

Never mind that it was the national government and the Fukushima prefectural government who were spreading baseless rumors of safety right after the accident. Too bad for the residents who were lulled by the soothing words of Dr. "Damashita" (deceitful) Yamashita and did not get the hell out. Or those who thought they were acting rationally by not panicking.

Well, as I say in my blog graphics above, never trust the government, never rely on the government.

From Mainichi Shinbun (10/4/2011):

東京電力福島第1原発事故のため自主避難した人たちの間で、賠償への「線引き」に困惑が広がっている。文部科学省の原子力損害賠償紛争審査会が先月、事故後1カ月程度の間に避難したケースには賠償を認める方針を固め、その後避難した人は「検討課題」と先送りにしたためだ。「避難は早い者勝ちだったの?」「汚染の実態が分かったのは最近なのに」。3日東京都内で開かれた集会には避難者ら約120人が集まり、線引きをなくすよう訴えた。

People who voluntarily evacuated from Fukushima are confused with the government's compensation scheme. Last month, the Ministry of Education's committee on nuclear accident damage arbitration decided to compensate people who evacuated within a month of the accident but delayed the decision on compensating people who evacuated afterward. "So are you now telling us we should have evacuated as soon as possible?" "It is only recently that we knew how bad the contamination was." About 120 people gathered in a meeting held in Tokyo on October 3, and appealed for the equal treatment.

「事故直後から不安で仕方がなかった。でも国や東電が『大丈夫』と言い続けてきたのを信じて残ったのに……」。福島市の主婦、菅野千景さん(46)は悔やむ。中1(13)と小2(7)の娘2人を連れて京都市の公務員住宅に自主避難したのは、8月末になってからだ。

"I was worried right from the beginning. But the national government and TEPCO kept saying "It's alright" and I believed them." Chikage Sugano, 46-year-old housewife from Fukushima City regrets. It was only at the end of August that she took two daughters, aged 13 and 7 to Kyoto City.

 自宅は原発から約60キロ。すぐに避難することも考えたが、マイホームのローンを抱え、夫と離れ離れの生活になることはためらわれた。中学入学を控える長女の心情も考えた。生まれ育った故郷・福島への愛着もあった。

Her home was about 60 kilometers from the plant. She thought of evacuating right away, but was hesitant because of the home loan and the uncertainty of being separated from her husband. She also did not want to hurt the feelings of her older daughter who was starting her junior high school. She had a strong attachment to Fukushima, where she was born and grew up.

 住んでいる地区の放射線量が比較的高いと知ったのは6月になってから。講演会や市民団体の集会に参加した。線量の数値や評価がこれまで聞いていた話とは違っていた。

In June, she learned that the district that she lived had a relatively high radiation level. She attended the lectures and gatherings by the citizens' groups. The radiation level and the evaluation of that level were different from what she had heard.

 自宅の線量を測ると、2階の子供部屋が毎時0・95マイクロシーベルト。平常時の屋外の20倍で、水ぶきしても数値は下がらない。娘たちには長袖にマスク姿で通学させる日々。「この状態が続くなら」と2学期の始まりに合わせた避難を決めた。

She measured the radiation level of her own home. The children's room on the second floor measured 0.95 microsievert/hour. It was 20 times as high as the normal [before the accident] outdoor radiation level. She cleaned the house with moistened cloth but the radiation level didn't go down. She made her daughters wear long-sleeved shirts and masks to go to school. They decided to evacuate before the 2nd semester at school.

 審査会は先月21日、自主避難者への賠償に関し、避難時期を「事故当初」と「一定期間後」の二つに区切って議論することを決めた。「事故当初」は「恐怖心から避難するのは合理的」として賠償対象とすることで一致。区切りについては、政府が計画的避難区域などの指定を発表した4月11日か、指定日の同22日が検討されている。

On September 21, the committee decided to categorize the voluntary evacuees into two groups - those who evacuated "right after the accident", and those who evacuated "after certain period of time". The committee was unanimous in deciding to compensate those who evacuate "right after the accident" because "it was rational [or it made sense] to evacuate out of fear". As to what time period would be considered "right after the accident", the committee is considering either up till April 11 when the national government announced the planned evacuation zone, or April 22 when the planned evacuation zone was implemented.

 菅野さんはやるせない。「冷静に行動しようと思い、事故直後は踏みとどまってしまった。影響が出るかもしれない子供たちに申し訳ない上に、補償も出ないなんて」。引っ越し代や二重生活の費用がかさむ。

Mrs. Sugano feels disconsolate. "We thought we were acting rationally right after the accident, and stayed. We are sorry for our children who may be affected by the radiation. And no compensation on top of that". It cost a lot of money to move, and still does as they have to maintain two households. [Her husband apparently remains in Fukushima City.]

(The article continues with another such example.)

Regardless, some sort of a new propaganda using Twitter seems to be on. Tweets are supposedly written by a concerned housewife and mother who lives in Fukushima, and through her interactions with "scientists" and "experts" on Twitter she has been transformed from someone who was afraid of radiation contamination in Fukushima and wanted to leave into someone who has decided to stay and not to worry about radiation any more. (If it is not a propaganda then I lose hope for the country.) If you read Japanese you can read the whole exchange at Togetter.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Its Minamata all over again....

Anonymous said...

"Regardless, some sort of a new propaganda using Twitter seems to be on."

I read part of the tweetlog and it seems they were just comparing evacuation criteria and food contamination limits after Chernobyl. Since the limits established by the Soviets during the first years were much higher than the ones being used by the Japanese government now, the situation in Japan, even within Fukushima Prefecture, looks much better. Reason why people trying to put pressure on the politicians to achieve stricter contamination limits and broader evacuations should stop comparing with Chernobyl, cause compared with Chernobyl we are peachy.

Anonymous said...

^^^^^ so you'd eat Fukushima peaches obviously :)

Anonymous said...

I have lost hope in the country the first week after the accident. Seeing the reactions of the government, the amount of censorship and the way most Japanese people reacted, criticizing foreigners and foreign media and their "evil" propaganda, while believing a government that has lied to them so many times in the past....sorry, but I rest my case.

Anonymous said...

"^^^^^ so you'd eat Fukushima peaches obviously :)"

lol no :) I'm not eating anything from Kanto in general, Fukushima or Iwate (waiting for the map on that one). I mean, I'm not buying produce labeled as such (in restaurants who knows what's on the menu).

I just know that I prefer the limit of 500 Bq/Kg of cesium 134 and Cesium 137 to the one the soviets established, which was 3,700 Bq/Kg only of Cs-137 (at least for the first year).

For evacuation, kind of the same picture. 20 mSv/year Vs 100 mSv/year,etc. Not that I would let my kids be exposed to any of those, but if I had to choose...

jmdesp said...

Ha, ha, so you ex-skf consider yourself as, by definition, qualifying more as a "scientist" and "expert" than the people who convinced this woman ?
And what you say can itself never be propaganda ?

So what if we first talked about facts ?

Like that 0.95 µSv /hour means 8,3 mSv a year, which is extremely near the average irradiation dose received by Americans receive every years ? (average is at 6.2 mSv, heightened by the fact American receive many X-ray)

Should we evacuate all of Denver immediately, since the average received by it's inhabitants, including kids, is more than 8 mSv ? But despite Americans having the most sophisticated medical system in the world, no increase of cancer or leukemia mortality has ever been detected in Denver ?
They are more than 3 millions people living in that area, even if the effect was very small, on the long term, they are enough people subject to it to detect it.

So are you still trying to inform people, or just selling fear based on a manipulation of facts ?

At one point, you might have success observing an increase in mortality if you can get people to be completely stressed out by worrying about a level of radiation that is not different from the one many millions of people are submitted to, without any negative consequence.

I can follow you when you are skeptical of the information released by Tepco and the Japanese government which have obviously been willing to hide many things, but certainly not when you are making irrational efforts to spread fear about a minute level of radioactivity.

Anonymous said...

oh god here we go, the pro nuke pricks and Jap government propaganda machine finally land on EXSKFs page to spew their shit.... the prick posting above here ranting shit and misinformation and the dood earlier saying its all peachy and saying "I prefer the limit of 500 Bq/Kg of cesium 134 and Cesium 137 to the one the soviets established" .... please fuck right off, both of you

Anonymous said...

jmdesp ...what the fuck? .. "Like that 0.95 µSv /hour means 8,3 mSv a year, which is extremely near the average irradiation dose received by Americans receive every years ?"... so there is no problem in fukushima? lets all carry on as normal eh? fool

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

@jmdesp, if you think it's only the government and TEPCO's information that's suspect, good luck to you.

8.3 millisieverts per year will be external radiation only, and without counting medically administered radiation. The US natural external radiation (cosmic rays and from the ground) is nowhere near that level.

Anonymous said...

Those Who Fled Fukushima in Panic Made a "Rational Decision", Says Government
Those Who Fled Japan,
Those Who Fled Bankst0rs
#occupyXXXXXX

Anonymous said...

JMdesp. Do you expect anyone to believe that several runaway nuclear reactors hasn't increased the radioactivity in the environment? What are you selling? Lies all lies. It's not just going away because you say it is, or because lairs told you it was in cold shutdown, only your brain is in cold shutdown my friend. Settle in for the long haul. Idiots are running the show.

Anonymous said...

jmdesp, you compare external radiation in Denver to eating, drinking, and inhaling cesium in Fukushima? That's pretty scientifically ignorant. Don't you know anything about science at all? You pro nuke types always love to compare medical x-rays to nuclear disaster going on right now in Fukushima when there is no medically relevant comparison. Classic misdirection, lies and contempt on display in your posts - no one takes you seriously.

Anonymous said...

@jmdesp
Well, in Denver you have a high Radon exposure and Radon is known to cause cancer. Here is a nice overview of the radiation exposure in Denver based on the BEIR V report (http://isis-online.org/risk/tab7). [As with all sources, be careful]

1. In Denver the cosmic (0.057 uSv/h) / natural background (without Radon) (0.0525 uSv/h) sum up to 0.96 mSv/y [=0.110 uSv/h]

2. 0.110 uSv/h carries a lifttime risk per million people of 5400 cancer deaths [again care has to be taken, since this data just gives the 'deaths' , we should actually have a risk estimate for the number of cancer cases]

3. Radon exposure (in Denver) is 10.4 mSv/year [=1.12 uSv/h] which results in a lifetime risk per million people of 22000 [again, the number of cancer cases should be the one we compare to]

4. The average Radon exposure of an American is 2.28 mSv/year [=0.26 uSv/h]. So Denver has 4.3 times higher exposure.

4. Fukushima is a much lower (height) than Denver so natural cosmic radiation should be 1/2 [Denver has 2x cosmic radiation compared to sea level]

5. The mother measure 0.95 uSv/h in the kids room [= 8.3 mSv/year] - this includes the previous natural background and the cosmic rays

6. So the radiation exposure form these two sources is by a factor of 8.6 higher than the value from these sources in Denver. This means, if the kid stays in her room all her life, her lifetime risk per million will now be 46636 cancer deaths [not cases] (excluding internal, medical, travel exposure)

7. Even including Radon exposure (excluding internal exposure) the total liftime risk per million is 27400 deaths from radiation caused cancer [not cases - deaths] in Denver (excluding internal, medical, travel exposure)

8. The risk of that girl by just staying in her room will be 1.7 times the risk of a person living in Denver.

9. And we did not even start talking about
* the increased internal radiation of that kid
* the multiple hotspots this kid is passing every day on the way to her radiating school
* the radiative dust she is inhaling during sports on the dusty school grounds (in Japan they are all sand covered)
* the additional medical exposure

10. So Mr 'lets talk about facts' jmdesp is comparing a single sub-part of the exposure of this poor kid with the total annual exposure in Denver.... wow, I am blinded by your FACTS

11. By the way, the average internal exposure in the US is 0.39 mSv/year [=0.0445 uSv/h] - just to give you most of the numbers


!! Most importantly, as I pointed out in my whole post, we are talking here about risks of death due to cancer. But each cured cancer is not counted here. Definitely, not every detected cancer is leading to death, due to our developments in Medicine. This is extremely misleading in the discussion about the danger of radiation. We have to talk about the risk of cancer cases to really see the danger of radiation and especially to see the enormous costs for the society (in terms of increased medical care to treated all these cancer cases) caused by the spreading of radiative material.

Anonymous said...

Where did he compare Denver to eating, drinking, and inhaling cesium in Fukushima? For fuck's sake he was talking about ambient radiation levels as mentioned in the article. Immediately people start talking about eating cesium, when even the workers at Fukushima (where, it has been insinuated, must be eating highly radioactive food produced locally) are not showing any internal radiation even when tested with full-body counters.

jmdesp, unfortunately you've learned the first lesson of ex-skf: if you do not share in the groupthink here, you will be beaten mercilessly.

Anonymous said...

save the whales

Anonymous said...

Lets compare ex-skf Klout to the "twitter scientists" and well just see who has more #Klout.
Klout is the measure of influence.
http://klout.com/

Anonymous said...

Denver is the home of Rocky Mountain Arsenal plutonium heaven! Now since the comparison, Japan must be the new plutonium promised land! I fully agree.

Anonymous said...

I must stress this point thoroughly I'm afraid, since asshat has no clue. Denver's Rocky Mountain Arsenal SUPERFUND site has been given up on it's so badly polluted, it is an old massive nuclear bomb factory, the most polluted place on the planet. Is this what you compare Fukushima and surrounding areas too? The most polluted and toxic environment imaginable?

Anonymous said...

@Anon 2:23

jmdesp said "Should we evacuate all of Denver immediately, since the average received by it's inhabitants, including kids, is more than 8 mSv"

October 4, 2011 8:23 AM"

WTF do you think he is comparing Denver to? Does Denver have the entire range of reactor inventory released into the environment that Japan has? NO, so STFU about it they aren't the same. Don't keep bring up all the same retarded industry BS and expect to be patted on the back. All your industry approved obfuscation has been soundly refuted before and people get tired of having to refute bananas, plane rides and x-rays. Do you think you're the first people that have been "beaten mercilessly"?

Look plenty of websites holding your "everything is fine" position why are you here being beat up? Are you a masochist or a shill?

BTW, as for the FBC's BS you're spouting where do you get your information? This story was months ago did it slip you mind or did you just ignore it?

"The man, an employee of a company that works with TEPCO, installed power cables near a reactor building at the plant for a month beginning at the end of March. The test is conducted by a device called a "whole-body counter. While a normal internal radiation level would range from several hundred cpm to 1,000 cpm, he was told his level was 30,000 cpm."

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110518006065.htm

According to this article you are full of crap too. They have only tested a micro minor percentage of the population and some of those people are showing "excessive internal radiation".

"Preliminary checks of 122 people in the prefecture from June 27 to mid-July found excessive internal radiation levels in some of the residents. The prefectural government disclosed the results of 109 people who underwent the checkup by July 10, and 58 of them had internal exposure exceeding the minimum detectable level — 320 becquerels of radioactive cesium- 134 and 570 becquerels of radioactive cesium-137.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110911f2.html

Now drink your glass of SHUT UP! and try to pay attention while the grown ups are berating you.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous 8:44 AM: What the fuck? Why would I prefer a higher "safety" limit as opposed to a lower one? The situation is not "peachy" by any extent of the imagination, but comparing to Chernobyl or the measures taken by the Soviets after that accident is not the way to demand anything from the politicians.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous @October 4, 2011 2:23 PM

"Where did he compare Denver to eating, drinking, and inhaling cesium in Fukushima? "

He, and other pro nuke pimps was careful to imply that citizens in Fukushima need only concern themselves with ambient and then compared that ambient level favorably with Denver and then asked if Denver should be evacuated. This is deceptive - people living in Fukushima have MUCH MORE to worry about ambient even if pro nuke pimps like to isolate the discussion this way. Do you recall the power plant workers who visited the town of Fukushima in the month following the disaster were evaluated and found to have significant amounts of radiation in their bodies? Just from visiting? Are you aware that Fukushima offers residents high values of both ambient and ingestion, inhalation and that no full consideration of the hazards in Fukushima can legitimately overlook internal radiation? Do you realize that internal radiation is generally more hazardous and that doctors have been forbidden by the Japanese government from assessing Fukushima resident health 'without permission'? No real discussion of Fukushima is limited to ambient radiation - although the pro nuke people would like that very much.

Anonymous said...

Ok, you made me look at this Rocky Mountain Arsenal.

I found this .. for a start..

http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/full_text_search/AllCRCDocs/94-58.htm


That's a dangerous bit of territory. TPTB reckon it's now 80% cleaned up.. mmm.. I'm going to keep looking

Anonymous said...

"Where did he compare Denver to eating, drinking, and inhaling cesium in Fukushima? "

He, and other pro nuke pimps was careful to imply that citizens in Fukushima need only concern themselves with ambient and then compared that ambient level favorably with Denver and then asked if Denver should be evacuated. This is deceptive - people living in Fukushima have MUCH MORE to worry about ambient even if pro nuke pimps like to isolate the discussion this way. Do you recall the power plant workers who visited the town of Fukushima in the month following the disaster were evaluated and found to have significant amounts of radiation in their bodies? Just from visiting? Are you aware that Fukushima offers residents high values of both ambient and ingestion, inhalation and that no full consideration of the hazards in Fukushima can legitimately overlook internal radiation? Do you realize that internal radiation is generally more hazardous and that doctors have been forbidden by the Japanese government from assessing Fukushima resident health 'without permission'? No real discussion of Fukushima is limited to ambient radiation - although the pro nuke people would like that very much.

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