I suspect the “failures” of the Japanese nuclear reactors after the March 2011 earthquake will present less of a health problem than the media is reporting (see postscript at the end – I could be wrong)
In normal operations, a nuclear power station is likely to produce a much smaller release of isotopes than a coal fired power station. Isotopes are released that are locked up in the coal.
Our local newspaper reported today:
Japan’s nuclear safety agency rated the incident at four on the international scale of zero to seven. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States was rated five, while the 1986 Chernobyl disaster was a seven.
A total of 22 people have been hospitalised after being exposed to radioactivity, although it was not immediately clear to what degree they were exposed and what condition they were in.
I would be surprised if the people received a significant radiation dose. I doubt they showed any syptoms of “radiation poisoning”, but are just being kept in for observation and perhaps being given iodine prophylaxis. It appears the main reactor core is intact.
I’m not sure what the ratings mean, but after proper figures are released, it should be possible to compare the radiation release and population dose from the Japanese reactors with the release from similar power production from a coal powered station over say, 20 years.
Two things are certain – its going to be expensive and confidence with nuclear power worldwide will take a nosedive.
Postscript:
I hope I am wrong, but things do not look that good, as containment of the rector cores now seems a lot less certain. The level of redundancy in the cooling circuits is a lot less than I expected. See
- Scientific American – details of the Fukushima reactors and possible routes of failure
- Science Risk Blog at University of Michigan – good initial radiation data and background information.
It does not seem that long ago I was doing some nuclear spectroscopy on some herbal remedies from bark samples from a tree near Kiev, a few years after the Chernobyl disaster. I found traces of Cs-137, but the herbs were for the dying grandmother of a Russian student, so I saw a net benefit to her from using the herbs. Physicists in Scotland were having a great time, as an ordinary Geiger Counter gave a decent reading when held near the thyroid of a sheep – bioconcentated I-131 from the Chernobyl fallout. I calculated the total amount of I-131 from Chernobyl to be 70 g – just a handful.
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