Japan:Gov't may expand scope of evacuation order in Fukushima(too late)

The government is considering expanding the scope of its evacuation order to include people from certain spots that are emitting high levels of radiation as a result of the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in March, government officials said Monday.

The government will be discussing with municipalities these so-called ‘‘hot spots’’ suffering from radiation exposure that would exceed the yardstick of 20 millisieverts during the course of a year.

A hot spot refers to an area that has a high level of radiation following rain or as a result of landscape or wind conditions that affect the direction in which radioactive materials travel after being released into the air.

Normally, radiation spreads concentrically but under such conditions, radioactive materials spread randomly to various spots.

Quantify the costs of this delay?

Another 80k early deaths, several hundred thousand stricken by radiation diseases, reduced overall population fertility, multiple generations of reduced fertility and increased birth defects? More or less?

A huge swath of Japan is no longer arable, how is the country going to feed itself going forward?

That area was already a rust belt with a very high median age, the survivors are the descendants of a distinguishable independent culture and nation in the region, and the local culture will be washed away as evacuee refugees and disperse within my lifetime.

I mean geesh, when it happened he/she was all over freerepublic arguing how it wasn’t a danger at all, among others

What got me was that I never even argued danger. It is just to avoid the danger you need to spend money for equipment, crew rotations (to keep exposure hours down) and evacuations. So I always argued that the cleanup was going to be extremely expensive and take a long time. Hardly a radical assertion, but it was enough to get me called a DU troll.

The article says the hot spots exceed 20 milliseverts a year. 100-250 milliseverts a year is the range they are using for safe exposure for workers; 1000 ms a year is the number where they look for actual measurable harm.

according to this site, 20 millisevierts a year is the exposure they allow airline workers, over a 5-year period, with 50 milliseverts in the worst year.

A pregnant woman flying 100 hours between the U.S. and Britain would exceed the recommended yearly dose for a fetus.

“The limit for radiation workers in the United States is 50 millisieverts per year, but we try to keep them to less than 5 millisieverts per year.”
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-18/world/japan.nuclear.reactors_1_radiation-millisieverts-japan-s-nuclear?_s=PM:WORLD

From that same article:
“For work involving recovery and restoration in an emergency operation, the International Commission on Radiological Protection recommends no more than 50 millisieverts in any given year.”

Airline travel (exposure to external sources of radiation) does not compare with living in contaminated regions where you are likely to inhale and ingest radioactive isotopes in addition to receiving external exposure. Internal (ingestion, inhalation) is much more damaging and supplies a continuing dose from particles lodged in body tissues.

FWIW, I found a study of airline stewards that found 30% higher levels of breast cancer and about twice as much skin cancer for those attendants flying for several years and accumulating higher doses. http://kuneman.smokersclub.com/PDF/58000flightattendants.pdf
From the study, it’s not clear how other contaminants, say, dry cleaning of airline uniforms or exposure to cabin smoke (when smoking was still allowed in flight)or exposure to jet exhaust on the tarmac contributed to these rates. Also - sleep disruption resulting from red eye flight schedules could also contribute to breast cancer rates. But the data is in keeping with the general idea that higher doses of radiation result in higher rates of cancer - even if not at the rates of ‘twice the skin cancer rate’ or ‘30% higher breast cancer rate’.

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