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Posted 12th April 2011 Published 12th April
Uranium and Plutonium missing from spent fuel ponds
Early signs of health damage: We have received information from people in the Tokyo region stating that they have swollen lymph nodes and sores in their nostrils. These are indicators that they have probably inhaled particles of Plutonium and Uranium
www.llrc.org has been updated with advice and information on how people can calculate their additional cancer risk at various levels of reported fallout.
"Dose" data published by the Japanese government are not a measure of risk. The data are for Caesium 137 which is easy to monitor because it is a strong gamma emitter. The data are a signal for the very likely presence of alpha emitting radionuclides like Uranium and beta emitters like Strontium-90 which are very hard to detect. These contaminants are the real threat to health. No official sources are saying anything about this hazard although hundreds of tonnes of Uranium and Plutonium are missing from the spent fuel ponds. High resolution aerial photos linked from the LLRC site show fuel ponds are absent, following explosions.
Food advice: Vegetables and other foodstuffs showing more than 50 Bq/Kg Caesium indicate airborne contamination with other radionuclides. LLRC advises food with more than 50 Becquerels per Kg should not be eaten unless there's absolutely no choice.
We recommend that the Japanese government should ask for international food aid supplies to prevent its people eating contaminated food.
Early signs of health damage: We have received information from people in the Tokyo region stating that they have swollen lymph nodes and sores in their nostrils. These are indicators that they have probably inhaled particles of Plutonium and Uranium.
LLRC advice: unless it is absolutely impossible to leave, evacuate to areas where there has been no fallout. We link to Japanese government sites with local data.
To evacuate or not? We suggest a novel scientific approach to the problem of quantifying the health effects of radioactive pollution.
Put simply, in an area now contaminated to a level of 1 microsievert per hour the fallout raises every individual person's risk of getting cancer in the next 10 years by 11%.
How we know this
The Japanese authorities are publishing data on contamination levels in the form of hourly dose rates from Caesium137. It is therefore possible to calculate the cancer yield using the same criteria as used by Tondel and colleagues in a robust but conservative study of cancer in Sweden after Chernobyl. Sweden is known to have been contaminated with Uranium fuel although fallout mapping generally used data for Caesium, just as in Japan now, exactly 25 years later. Tondel and colleagues found an 11% increase in cancer incidence for each 100 kiloBecquerels Caesium137 on each square metre of ground. The cancers were expressed (diagnosed) in a ten year period; cancers appearing later than 10 years are of course possible but were not included in Tondel's study. The detailed method has been published on the LLRC site.
The site has simple instructions for calculating the additional risk from fallout.
We recommend you to download (free) the book on Chernobyl's effect on human, animal and plant life published last year by the New York Academy of Sciences. This book tells the facts as scientists have seen, measured and counted them, free of the dogma of "dose". This means they have not ignored the evidence of their own eyes just because it isn't predicted by the ICRP model.
The Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk are a free download linked from the site. They provide scientific material to allow the authorities in Japan to regulate industry discharges on a rational scientific basis and to take precautionary action to protect the public. Unlike the recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection the ECRR advice is specifically intended to apply to post-accident scenarios.
Earlier material from the home page has been removed and will be archived on a separate part of the site. For a few hours it will not be visible. We apologise for the delay - the emergency in Japan has placed demands on LLRC at levels we have never before experienced. For the same reason we are not able to answer all emails. We read them all, but there isn't enough time in the day to answer them all.
The site links to a video showing radiation levels on a dangerous journey approaching from the south.
