Japan Widens Evacuation Zone Around Fukushima

mdsolar writes "Japan has started the first evacuations of homes outside a government exclusion zone after the earthquake and tsunami crippled one of the country's nuclear power plants. 5100 people are being relocated to public housing, hotels and other facilities in nearby cities."

Re:Nuke power

[thermopile]

I'm really not trying to get into a debate on semantics, but releasing a few TBq of radiation counts as "significant" in my mind. At the very least, it's way more than background.

This article by some nuclear engineers at NC State [blogspot.com] is an excellent, fact-based breakdown of what the effects are of the Fukushima accident, with known numbers to date.

Bottom line: Three cancers.

Three cases of cancer that would not otherwise have occurred, and this is using the (very conservative) linear-no-threshold assumption.

Others in this thread have been bleating about how bad nuclear power accidents have been. The following quote from the UN's final report on the Chernobyl accident (a summary can be found here [21stcentur...cetech.com] ) doesn't support their claims:

"Apart from the increase in thyroid cancer after childhood exposure, no increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality have been observed that could be attributed to ionizing radiation. The risk of leukemia, one of the main concerns (leukemia is the first cancer to appear after radiation exposure, because of its short latency time of 2 to 10 years), does not appear to be elevated, even among the recovery operation workers. Neither is there any proof of other non-malignant disorders that are related to ionizing radiation. However, there were widespread psychological reactions to the accident, which were due to fear of the radiation, not to actual radiation doses."

People's fear is very real and important. But it's not substantiated by facts.