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A man undergoes a radiation test at a screening center in Kiriyama in Japan's Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.
Radiation experts are painting a sobering picture of the Fukushima nuclear disaster's long-term impact on Japan in a series of reports published today by the journal Nature. At best, the country faces more than a decade of expensive cleanup, including the decommissioning of the reactor complex and the disposal of contaminated debris. At worst, wide areas of land around the complex will have to be abandoned, as they were in Ukraine after Chernobyl.
"On the basis of the Fukushima data so far, it seems likely that in some areas, food restrictions could hold for decades, particularly for wild foodstuffs such as mushrooms, berries and freshwater fish," the University of Portsmouth's Jim Smith, co-editor and lead author of "Chernobyl: Catastrophe and Consequences," wrote in a Nature commentary.
Smith says the levels of radioactive cesium-137, with a radioactive half-life of 30 years, "will determine the long-term impact on the contaminated region and its residents."
"The extent of cesium-137 contamination at Fukushima is not yet clear, but available data indicate very high levels in some areas," he wrote. Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency sounded the alarm about high radiation readings in the village of Iitate, 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex. The readings ranged as high as 3.7 megabecquerels per square meter. Such readings led the IAEA to suggest an expansion of the current 12-mile-radius (20-kilometer) evacuation zone.
Since then, the reported readings outside the evacuation zone have not been as high. But Smith said that if large areas are contaminated with 0.5 megabecquerels per square meter or more, "evacuation could be for the long term."
One long-term strategy could be to bring in "liquidators" to decontaminate the towns and villages, remove topsoil and resurface roads, "although this approach met with varying success at Chernobyl," Smith wrote.
He said "the long-term response to Fukushima will have to be pragmatic." Radiation exposure limits for the general public might have to be relaxed, for example, going from 1 millisievert per year to 5 to 10 millisieverts per year. Smith noted that millions of people living in areas of high natural radioactivity are exposed to more than 10 millisieverts per year.
"A turning point in my understanding of Chernobyl's impacts came while studying lakes in Belarus during the mid-1990s," Smith wrote. "In an evacuated area, lake fish contained tens of thousands of becquerrels per kilogram. A couple in their early 70s lived near the lake, eating the fish and growing vegetables. They were living off contaminated land, but leading the life they had chosen to lead. This wouldn't by any means be the right choice for everybody, but I am convinced they had made the right decision for them: They were Chernobyl survivors, not victims."
Other reports in Nature's roundup hint at the uncertainties still hanging in the air three and a half weeks after the earthquake and tsunami that led to the Fukushima crisis:
- David Brenner of Columbia University's Center for Radiological Research explains why experts "really don't know" that much about the long-term health consequences of Fukushima's radiation releases. He said authorities should start assessing "whether it would be reasonable to undertake large-scale population studies among the exposed populations in Japan." Meanwhile, researchers should focus more study on the basic mechanisms by which low doses of radiation cause cancer.
- The Japan-based Radiation Effects Research Foundation is calling on authorities to start collecting baseline data for a study of Fukushima's effects as soon as possible. Some of the basic measurements are already being collected, but the effort is "scattered and uncoordinated," researchers at the foundation say. In a separate report, Nature says researchers "are finding that making any sense of the data is proving very difficult."
- Japanese authorities have been monitoring the effects of radioactive iodine-131 on the thyroids of children in the most contaminated areas around Fukushima, and Nature says the first results show minimal thyroid doses in 946 children living in the areas northwest of the plant. The results "seem reassuring that not much iodine-131 has got into children," Richard Wakeford, an epidemiologist at the University of Manchester's Dalton Nuclear Institute, told the journal.
Are you reassured? Feel free to weigh in with your own thoughts about the long-term impact of the Fukushima crisis.
More about Japan's nuclear crisis:
- Radiation in ocean could hurt Japan fish industry
- Japan nuke firm offers 'condolence money'
- Cosmic Log archive on Japan's disaster
- Full coverage of the disaster on msnbc.com
Nature is presenting a live Q&A with the University of Portsmouth's Jim Smith and Nature's Geoff Brumfiel at 11 a.m. ET (4 p.m. London time) on Wednesday.
Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about my book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."
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Witchking - Really??? I would love to know how this would work and how you are waaayy smarter than all of the scientists in the world that still havent come up with a viable answer because i am sure the rest of the world is holding their breathe waiting for you to give them the key to my generations energy crisis (I am 28)... The simple truth and the fact that we must look at RIGHT NOW until we find an alternative to replace these unlikely but potentially dangerous power sites is that there is nothing right now that can sustain the worlds needs. If you're cool with paying for it then fine go solar or renewable for yourself but as a whole, as a nation, we cannot at this time switch over to renewables as it costs too much for the small benefit it would have... I am with you and i am sure almsot the whole world would agree to get rid of Nuclear power if there were to be an alternative but the simple fact is there is not a cheap, viable, or working alternative that would replace the 20 to 30% of our energy that comes from nuclear...and for 200 acres of land with wind you get 1 Megawatt of energy, not really effecient in my book...Also, if you were to equate our daily needs of energy into oil consumption by barrel, it would be equivelant to about 76,000 barrels per day output for solar and wind combined, the average daily CONSUMPTION is 47.4 million barrels a day (IF ENERGY USAGE WERE EQUATED TO ALL OIL).
Witchking - Really??? I would love to know how this would work and how you are waaayy smarter than all of the scientists in the world that still havent come up with a viable answer because i am sure the rest of the world is holding their breathe waiting for you to give them the key to my generations energy crisis (I am 28)... The simple truth and the fact that we must look at RIGHT NOW until we find an alternative to replace these unlikely but potentially dangerous power sites is that there is nothing right now that can sustain the worlds needs. If you're cool with paying for it then fine go solar or renewable for yourself but as a whole, as a nation, we cannot at this time switch over to renewables as it costs too much for the small benefit it would have... I am with you and i am sure almsot the whole world would agree to get rid of Nuclear power if there were to be an alternative but the simple fact is there is not a cheap, viable, or working alternative that would replace the 20 to 30% of our energy that comes from nuclear...and for 200 acres of land with wind you get 1 Megawatt of energy, not really effecient in my book...Also, if you were to equate our daily needs of energy into oil consumption by barrel, it would be equivelant to about 76,000 barrels per day output for solar and wind combined, the average daily CONSUMPTION is 47.4 million barrels a day (IF ENERGY USAGE WERE EQUATED TO ALL OIL).
Witchking - Really??? I would love to know how this would work and how you are waaayy smarter than all of the scientists in the world that still havent come up with a viable answer because i am sure the rest of the world is holding their breathe waiting for you to give them the key to my generations energy crisis (I am 28)... The simple truth and the fact that we must look at RIGHT NOW until we find an alternative to replace these unlikely but potentially dangerous power sites is that there is nothing right now that can sustain the worlds needs. If you're cool with paying for it then fine go solar or renewable for yourself but as a whole, as a nation, we cannot at this time switch over to renewables as it costs too much for the small benefit it would have... I am with you and i am sure almsot the whole world would agree to get rid of Nuclear power if there were to be an alternative but the simple fact is there is not a cheap, viable, or working alternative that would replace the 20 to 30% of our energy that comes from nuclear...and for 200 acres of land with wind you get 1 Megawatt of energy, not really effecient in my book...Also, if you were to equate our daily needs of energy into oil consumption by barrel, it would be equivelant to about 76,000 barrels per day output for solar and wind combined, the average daily CONSUMPTION is 47.4 million barrels a day (IF ENERGY USAGE WERE EQUATED TO ALL OIL).
Born in 1941 in times bc (before computers) I was raised to believe in atomic energy. It was a key ingredient in the cultural times of the '50s, along with the Cold War, fallout shelters, tailfins and sockhops. We were sold a huge snowjob by the old AEC and its hi-priests Vannevar Bush, Glen Seaborg etal and their cult clique of insiders who all knew full well that nuclear reactors were dangerous, costly and created very long term problems. The reality was totally classified! They sold the nation and the modern world on constructing these monstrosities anyway touting nuclear energy as "clean, safe, cheap" The litany was repeated fifty thousand times over on tv, radio, in print. Over and over,and over and over the same three little words "clean, safe, cheap". In fact they knew the exact opposite was true. In order make a nuclear reactor produce "cheap energy" the initial cost of construction and the tail-end costs of lethal by-product storage were completely erased from the total equation. The dangers to the health of uranium miners and those who worked the processing mills was discounted as negligible. The tailings from mines and mills were simply dumped where ever no one was looking. The huge radioactive tailings pile just N of Moab, Utah sits right on a bend in the Colorado River, water supply to more than 30 million people! Scientific? The refuse was dumped there with the claim that it was a "clean, safe, cheap" way to dispose of the stuff... just basically dirt, they lied through their teeth. Not harmful. Today the cost of removing those trailings is costing billions! And taking years to accomplish. A special railroad had to be built inorder to move the gross tonnage! That cost was never factored in to the "clean, safe, cheap" equation. Taxpayers now pay for the clean up. The profits were made long ago, the company execs and directors drove off in their Cadillacs and Lincolns, the corporation was deliberately bankrupted and dissolved. (That's Republicanism for ya!) Do we as a civilization truly need these things here on Earth? There is enough thermal energy beneath the Rocky Mts to power the USA and Canada basically forever! The start-up cost of a nuker is currently pegged at $5billion. Do we spend an equal amount engineering technology to tap the tremendous heat source mother Earth produces right under our feet? Duh? And let us just forget shall we that Nicola Tesla drew electical power right out of the sky! The Earth is not only a hot body but is a huge magneto generating electricity constantly as it turns on its axis. Just how many gazigavolts are discharged by what we call lightning every day? No one can calculate the power and apparently only Ben Franklin ever tried to harness it! Nuclear reactors are currently (no pun intended) useful but let us be clear about the dangers, the costs the long term indemnity. In the coming future those on Earth will ALL be decommisioned, the land they sit upon and places where the by-products are stored will be off limits to living creatures on into the next geologic epoch. We as a civilization will need nuclear reactors... On The Moon! On Mars and in our explorations of the outer Solar System. But there is no biosphere to contaminate in those places. Here on Earth we have many other power sources, solar, thermal, wave, wind, electromagnetic. We don't in fact need nuclear reactors. Put the eqivalent $$$ into other energy sources and we really will have unlimited electrical power that is in fact "clean, safe, cheap"!
Everyone would be happy with clean, renewable energy sources, but they simply do not exist right now. In fewer than two months, it will be necessary to use far more energy (primarily for cooling of foods and for hospitals) in Japan than is being used now, and the need will only become more acute in the coming years. The country does not have enough room for wind farms and (I think) not enough for sufficient solar power collectors, and things like tidal power, collecting from asteroids or scooping power sources from Jupiter, etc., are simply prohibitively expensive and, again, not ready. Japan and other countries are more or less stuck with nuclear power. We hope more care will be taken with it, but we do have to live with it.
I'm not sure that nuclear regulation is really possible... over decades, let alone a century. Regulators and operators eventually get lax and take shortcuts.
At the risk of being the odd man out, this is also an interesting situation, as we'll be able to study the effects of such radiation (on a wide scale), on an unprecedented level...
Now, yes, I know, I'm horrible, blah blah blah. Yes, I do care about the lives of the people, yes, I do feel sorry for the dead and dying. But it could prove a very effective manner of research, to ensure the possibility of avoiding such a situation in the future, in addition to field-testing equipment designed for such a purpose, that previously could never be field-tested because...? Nobody's stupid enough to nuke themselves deliberately, in addition to the UN ban on Nuclear Weapons.
Karl13621: You're not being horrible at all, and people here in Japan began talking about this and planning for research on the same day that problems at the plant were first mentioned. The research and monitoring has already begun, and it would be irresponsible to not have thought of studying the effects.
The Oceanographers say the artic current is flowing south past the east side of Japan almost to Tokyo with dilluted millions of times normal radionuclide water. This same current is full of billions-billions of photoplankton and diatribes. These contaminated little animals are the base food chain. As the current arrives near Tokyo it meets up with the northeastern current from the tropics of the Pacific. This is much like the Gulf Stream current. This current carries all the food source towards Alaskan waters. Experts will be watching to see if the dilluted radionuclides have dangerously contaminated fish and wildlife. The contamination will be moving up the food chain from mollecular size to large size slowly. It may be years before the true damage to the environment is estimated, and many will try to change the true estimate to a much lesser one. Much like BP saying it only spilt 1.5 million barrels of oil last year. An example of downplaying facts to meet an agenda.
If any country can rebound from such a disaster, I'd say it is japan. They seem to have an uncanny ability to shrug off problems and get on with things. Eventually they'll be stronger than before, and I'm not talking X-man stuff.