That is right, my friends, to spew the same amount of radioactive cesium into the environment as the disaster at Fukushima has done, you would have to set off 168 Hiroshima sized bombs. This measured, scientific fact reported in the title comes from this week's report from the Japanese government's nuclear regulatory agency to the Japanese Diet on the amounts of radiation, by isotope, released by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in comparison to the releases of the same isotopes from the August 6, 1945 American uranium bomb air blast over Hiroshima, Japan. The Japanese government, TEPCO, and all the other apologists for nuclear power will quickly point out that considering the blast effects and neutron bombardment from the explosion in 1945, that event cannot be relevantly compared to gradual release and spread of some of the same isotopes from the Fukushima disaster.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency provided the estimate at the request of a Diet panel but noted that making a simple comparison between an instantaneous bomb blast and a long-term accidental leak is problematic and could lead to "irrelevant" results.
OK. Let's not make a simple comparison. Let's keep it real.
There is no question that those who received the greatest doses of radiation but survived the blast effects at Hiroshima suffered the most severe risk of cancer death in later years, but follow up studies also showed high cancer risk for persons who initially received much lower radiation doses. More informative is the experience of Chernobyl, where the radioactive iodine release caused a short period of exposure that rained thyroid cancer on a generation of Ukrainian children; the government later estimated that the long term excess cancer death rate from the cesium 137 exposure would be nine times worse.
Cesium-137 and Cancer
Cell damage and the presence of free radicals lead to various cancers in injured areas where cesium-137 is concentrated. The story in Chernobyl was the more than 2,000 cases of thyroid cancer from radioactive iodine, but in 1986, the Soviet government estimated that cesium-137 would have an effect on long-term cancer deaths nine times greater than that of radioactive iodine. Read more: Health Risks of Cesium 137 | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/...
One Hundred Sixty-eight times more Ce 137 has already been released by Fukushima than at Hiroshima. There could be more yet to come, but let's not speculate. One Hundred Sixty-eight is the number the Japanese government will admit to when reporting to its people. Even if Fukushima turns out to result in a radioactive cesium exposure to its environs at levels 1/2 or 1/4 or 1/6 that of Chernobyl, thousands of Japanese will eventually die unnecessarily from cancer.
In a way, the industry apologists are correct that this isn't like Hiroshima at all. It is much worse, dammit! Prior to Hiroshima the U.S. government was fire-bombing Japan relentlessly creating hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties and hammering the Japanese people's lives and the country's economy as a matter of war policy. I don't recall that being TEPCO's policy prior to Fukushima.
Anyway, Fukushima is way worse in terms of long term cesium exposure. Ninety percent of what the Enola Gay delivered to Hiroshima that fine August day in 1945 blew straight into the stratosphere and dissipation in the atmosphere, the lighter the isotope, the more so. Cesium is relatively light. Remember the mushroom cloud?
One hundred percent of the cesium released at Fukushima has gone either into the air, the earth or the water in the vicinity. Though much of it has gone to sea, many measurements have confirmed Cs 137 in widespread dispersal in Fukushima Provence and elsewhere. The cesium in the sea, and the stronium and the cobalt, are a complete crap shoot. Nobody really knows what will happen to those isotopes and everybody hopes dispersal works and dilutes them to where they don't do much damage. How about a nice three headed salmon, hmmm?
Cesium dispersed over the surface of Japan and its people are a different matter.
Cesium readily collects in human tissue and muscles. It can be breathed in dust and enter the body through the lungs, or eaten or drunk in the water supply. Most of us who have a few years on us spent decades of our lives ingesting excess radioactive cesium during the aftereffects of decades of atmospheric nuclear testing. That exposure recedes as the isotope decays but the environment contains widely dispersed radioactive cesium at levels far greater today, still, than the planet inhabited by our great-grandparents. Any exposure to radiation reduces one's tolerance to future exposures which means we have to be more careful.
Fukushima makes that impossible for millions of Japanese who will find no way to avoid repeated and prolonged internal and external exposures to radioactive cesium far higher than the background that you and I experience. Thousands will die, unnecessarily, unless you count TEPCO's bottom line. Tell that to any joker who says that Fukushima hasn't killed anyone.