More radiation phobia ands anti-nuclear scare mongering. How ridiculous

Why do these anti-nuclear arguments never provide context. For example could have said:

Let's use a quantitative measure to compare consequences; e.g. fatalities:

- caused by Fukushima related radiation doses = 0

- caused by Tsunami = 20,000 to 28,000

- caused by dam failure = 12

- caused by cut back in electricity = hundreds to thousands but no measure available

- caused by oil fires due to the earthquake = ?

- Fatalities that would have occurred if the power was generated by fossil fuels instead of nuclear = ? (rough guess 5000 per year for say 20 years = 100,000)

Get some perspective!

Peter Lang - you're the one that needs some perspective.
It's becoming increasingly obvious that you pro nuclear lobbyists just trot out the same old irrelevant platitudes about illnessa and death caused by radiation. Namely - that these don't exist.

I am reminded of the tobacco lobby. How long they fought, and still fight their illogical (but profitable) campaign that the only deaths from tobacco resulted from fires started by a careless smoker.

They just didn't want people to understand the longer term results of lung, throat, and bladder cancer.

Thyroid abnormalities in children are just a vey early sign of the ill effects of ionising radiation. But they are a portent of what is to come later - thyroid cancers, and then other cancers. Sure, these deaths will not come in the immediate future - just the same as the deaths caused by cigarette smoking.

What they should use is the data from Chernobyl which had about 30x the radiation output.

Here there were an additional 4000 cases of thyroid cancer, which because of regular screening achieved a nearly complete success rate in treatment. The area around Chernobyl showed an incidence of deaths from cancer no different to similar areas.

With careful monitoring it is unlikely that the area near the Fukushima reactors will have serious consequences from the fall out.

Please, Shadow Minister, this is serious.

>>What they should use is the data from Chernobyl which had about 30x the radiation output.<<

There is no place in the nuclear argument for either facts or logic. What is required is a call to our deepest emotions and fears, supported by extrapolations of the most expansive sort.

A basic need that this article fulfils, in spades: the gut-wrenching plea to "think of the children".

Classic.

Pericles
no its you who should be serious.
jimbonic
it is you who should get some perspective.

Go back and look at the article. 35.5 per cent of children with abnormal thyroid growths.. what? Thyroid cancer certainly is a problem in children with radiation exposure.. the one, verified problem after Chernobyl concerned an excess of thyroid cancers in children in the district. But I was under the impression they took some time to turn up and wasn't a third of all children, for what was a far more serious incident. You will note that the article doesn't give any indication of what incidence of abnormal growths you'd expect in any given group of children, and the report linked to the story is in Japanese.

Further down the story you will see a claim that 60 per cent of children in the area under 12 tested positive for diabetes.. again what? Since when has diabetes been a major result of comparatively small doses of radiation and affecting more than half of a given population? Someone's got their figures mixed up..

I'm beginning to suspect that the article is sraight hysteria.

Curmudgeon has it spot on. There is just so much in this article that is unsaid.

The reason this story has any play at all is that earlier (2001) studies in Nagasaki children found thyroid nodules at a rate of only about 1%.

Here is the study. http://1am.sakura.ne.jp/Nuclear/kou131attach2.pdf

So 36% in Fukushima... wow, that's bad, right? Let's see. Quoting this article:

"The Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey revealed that 13,460 children, or 35.3 percent, had thyroid cysts or nodules up to 0.197 inches long growing on their thyroids and 0.5 percent of the children had growths larger than 0.197 inches".

You may be interested to know that 0.197 inches = 5.0 mm.

You may be interested to know this too: The Nagasaki study ONLY recorded a positive finding for thyroid nodules GREATER than 5.0 mm.

From which we can infer several things.

Firstly, thyroid nodules of less than 5.0 mm are more than likely entirely normal, which is why they were excluded from the Nagasaki study.

Secondly, these two groups of children are, at present, almost exactly the same for nodules of greater than 5.0 mm.

Thirdly, we DO in fact know that the dose it too small and the time frame too short to see thyroid cancer development

Fourthly, more subjectively, this article is total scaremongering bollocks that deliberately obscures essential context by someone who writes for a site (www.oilprice.com) whose "analysis focuses on Oil and Gas". Oil and gas imports to Japan have skyrocketed with the shuttering of the nuclear plants.

Said it before, say it again. We are entitled to our own opinions, not our own facts. This website is seriously slipping.