An Open Letter to The Radiation Safety Professionals of the World
March 11th, 2012
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My appeal to those who have the authority and credentials to refute some of the idiocy and harmful policies that have followed the incident at the Fukushima Dachi nuclear power plant nearly a year ago.
To the health physicists, radiation safety officers, radiologists, reactor operators and other radiation safety professionals of the world:
In most circumstances professionalism and a desire to remain impartial to political matters dictates that those who art part of highly scientific professions exercise a great deal of restraint while addressing pressing policy concerns. Research scientists especially tend to be very tight lipped about policy matters and are not prone to engaging the media directly. In many circumstances, there is no direct response from professionals, or if there is, it comes in the form of highly moderated and subdued official statements from organizations.
There is certainly good reason for this. Science professionals must remain impartial and not risk having their loyalties called into question. Strong statements about pressing issues of policy can result in criticism which degenerates to mudslinging. Some experts would simply rather not have to engage non-professionals who are likely to respond with a frustrating lack of understanding of their fields and believe their talents are better utilized in the world of scholarly journals and professional research. There is, of course, some risk to ones reputation and to the integrity of ones work that can come from becoming heavily involved in issues of advocacy and direct engagement of the government, media and public.
That said, there exists a humanitarian crisis that is only getting worse due to a combination of unjustified fear of ionizing radiation and pressure to exploit this fear to advance a political or social agenda. The result has been a enormous unnecessary human suffering. Those with professional credentials and credibility in the field of radiation safety are in a unique position to help bring this crisis to an end, and, as such, have an ethical duty to do so.
Since the tragic earthquake and tsunami struck Japan almost a year ago, hundreds of thousands of Japanese remain in limbo due to unnecessary evacuations and continued restrictions on habitation or even visitation to the area around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The earthquake and tsunami killed tens of thousands and left whole communities devastated. In such circumstances, the survivors want nothing more than to recover what property they can and begin to rebuild their lives. Yet this has not been allowed to happen. Despite the fact that the radiation exposure in the exclusion zone is well within any reasonable safety limits, many have been bared from even visiting their homes. In the time after the disaster, domestic animals needlessly starved, property that could have been recovered was lost and serious chemical and biological hazards were allowed to fester. This continues to happen even as the reactors have been stabilized and the most worrisome isotopes have long decayed away.
In addition to this tragedy, the Japanese government continues to spend enormous amounts of money in the cleanup of areas where radiation “hot spots” would result in only the most minimal of exposure and in a policy of idling most of the country’s nuclear power plants, resulting in huge economic losses. What the people of Japan sorely need is to have the damaged regions of their nation rebuilt. Every Yen spent on the unnecessary removal of soil is one more Yen that cannot be spent on the necessary rehabilitation of the areas effected by the quake and tsunami. The message being given to citizens is that they are in grave danger, especially their children. Inconsistent information, panic and confusion have resulted in enormous psychological stresses to those who have already suffered from the terrible natural disaster.
I therefore ask all radiation safety professionals of the world to stop biting your tongues and speak out loudly and in no uncertain terms, engaging the public, the media and the Japanese government as directly and candidly as possible. The Japanese people need to be told the truth, without the fear-based spin that politicians often use to try to scare their way into office or special interest groups try to exploit. The Japanese government must be urged to begin a far more measured and scientifically consistent approach to resettlement and repair that is based on the anual exposure from living in a region as compared with normal background in locations around the world. Resources should not be wasted in the removal of small “hot spots” which are no more radioactive than clusters of uranium-bearing rock. All areas should be made accessible to visitation and most to resettlement. Repairs to local infrastructure and economic assets must take precedent over concerns of radioactivity that have little or no basis in science.
As experts in this field, you are the only ones who can challenge these policies and overrule them by virtue of the authority you have gained through education and experience. Doing so may well open you to the mud-slinging of certain groups, who would rather not face the truth. Yet in the face of such suffering, caving to the fear of being attacked by dishonorable interests is the height of cowardice.
In conclusion, I once again ask that all professionals in this field take individual initiative to take a stand against these harmful policies and messages and that groups like the Health Physics Society and others step up to the plate and pull no punches in defense of the well being of the people of Japan. Your field stands for the furtherance of human understanding and for improved human safety and health. These ideals demand that you step up to the plate and fight for the refugees of fear who continue to suffer in Japan.
Respectfully,
Stephen M. Packard
depletedcranium.com
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 11th, 2012 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Enviornment, Good Science, Nuclear, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 12th, 2012 at 12:24 am
Kudos for your open letter to radiation safety professionals. Just want to bring your attention to two typos.
anal should be annual.
asserts should be asset.
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March 12th, 2012 at 1:34 am
Richard Gilligan said:
Thanks. Wow. The anal one was actually kinda funny
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March 12th, 2012 at 2:26 am
I hope you are listened to. The one thing that’s a problem is that there are “pro’s” who have their PhD’s and all the other credentials on paper and who know the facts, but who have realized they make more money with scaring people telling lies. They are already the ones who are talking because they left the idea of professionalism behind a long time ago. Yes, the mainstream ones need to take the gloves off, because this is not academic. People are really suffering.
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March 12th, 2012 at 3:26 am
I second that letter!
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March 12th, 2012 at 7:38 am
Nitpick: you forgot the plural “s” on the end of the word “Professionals” in your title line.
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March 12th, 2012 at 8:36 am
The letter is somewhat misguided. Evacuations were originally carried out on the basis of IAEA (the international organization which PROMOTES NUCLEAR POWER GROWTH) recommendation limits. Due to concerns of the majority of Japanese citizens the Japanese government has implemented even more restrictive radiological limits. Most of the citizens’ feedback has been mistrust of the government, mistrust of the nuclear industry, etc. Yes, they would like to return to normality, but not normality in a contaminated area.
Having oversold the improbability of a nucear accident to begin with, it will be very difficult for anyone associated with the nuclear industry (including radiation health professionals) to convince the majority of citizens that they are safe to return to contaminated areas. People in the nuclear industry need to acknowledge that there is a non-zero risk of a nuclear accident and a non-zero risk from radiation, but those risks are very small. But small risks do manifest themselves eventually. My open letter to nuclear power professionals would be to stop downplaying the risks, rather put them in context.
And let’s remember that the U.S. NRC was recommending U.S. citizen evacuations within 50 miles.
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March 12th, 2012 at 9:45 am
Point by point.
There is no shortage of nuclear professionals and professional organization that are speaking out. I am having no trouble getting information.
There is not ‘humanitarian crisis’. Especially in poor countries, it is normal to expect a ‘humanitarian crisis’ including cholera and other epidemics after a natural disaster. Contrary to the drama that the news media reports, Japan appears to be a well organized society handling the situation well. Irrational fear does not constitute a ‘humanitarian crisis’. Furthermore, I am not seeing an epidemic of irrational fear except at news outlets.
How unnecessary are the ‘hundreds of thousands of Japanese remain in limbo due to unnecessary evacuations’? It would appear to me that the reason most people can not go back home is because their homes are destroyed. A small fraction of the displaced people are displaced because of contamination from the nuke plants. In any case, why would I think that I have any business telling people in Japan what to do after all I am not the commissioner of the NRC.
The reason for evacuations is that natural disaster and industrial accidents create unknown conditions. In the nuclear industry, we certainly know how to prevent children from getting thyroid cancer. By evacuations, we did not expose children to I-131. Before letting a family return, I would have to review a radiological survey of the home.
As for Bob, as an engineer I know what zero is. If the lifetime risk of getting cancer is 33.0 and exposure to radiation from a severe accident at a nuke plant changes it to 33.000001; tell me how I can possible down play the the risk.
“small risks do manifest themselves eventually ”
Of course that is not true. In fact it is 100% BS as is the theory that low levels of radiation is good for you. While I can not disprove either theory, that is not how science works. As an engineers without a proven theory, we add conservatism to the process. Every limit has at least two orders of magnitude of
conservatism. So you eat beef at the limit for 40 years, the risks will not ‘manifest themselves eventually’.
What is Bob plan? Is he going to melt down a reactor every year for 40 years to keep the level of contamination up in beef.
Both the letter and Bob are misguided. Far and balanced is just a good way to avoid getting it right.
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March 12th, 2012 at 10:06 am
Bob Applebaum said:
The government is not helping and radiation pros need to step up and engage the people if they are the problem. The IAEA’s standards are absurd for the area in question. Evacuation may well have been worthwhile, especially given the devastation to the area, but only in the short term.
I remember when this happened the big concern was iodine-131 and there’s pretty good reason for this. The debate was how much of the I-131 had to be allowed to decay away before the population returned. Well, the iodine-131 is long gone and the people still can’t return home.
Even in the most heavily contaminated areas there is absolutely no scientific justification for not allowing people to at least make extended visits to recover property and survey the damage. The risk is zero.
If the people of Japan will not trust their own government, they will hopefully trust an international chorus of well qualified experts.
I do understand that the average Japanese citizen, like anyone, is not an expert on these things and can easily be left confused and unsure whether or not it is safe. It is the duty of those who are experts to inform them properly.
Bob Applebaum said:
I don’t think anyone would call the risks zero. I’ve said before that accidents can and do happen. The question also has to be the effects of the accident. We’ve had a few in the US. We had a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island. It didn’t kill anyone, but it happened. We had an experimental military reactor malfunction in the early 1960’s and kill three operators.
Accidents happen. They happen less in the nuclear industry and result in less deaths in the nuclear industry than almost any other industry. In the same time period where nuclear power did not kill one member of the public, hundreds died from gas explosions, chlorine leaks and other industrial mishaps.
This accident killed noone.
If we apply your logic to the airline industry, we could conclude that airlines are dishonest when they assure their passengers that the method of travel is perfectly safe because every so often a plane skids off the runway or an engine catches fire. Of course, this would be a logical fallacy because, in fact, air travel is indeed very safe and nobody would say the risks are zero, only that they are very very small.
Of course, the reality is that this wasn’t really an “accident” but a natural disaster. The plants were inundated by a tsunami after enduring a massive quake. All power systems were destroyed. Primary and auxiliary cooling was compromised. Containment was partially breached. Yet again, no deaths and very little risk to health.
You could have posed the question of this happening to a seismologist as well. If you asked a seismologist what the likelihood of a massive quake occurring just off the coast, with enough force to cause severe ground movement on land and then produce an extreme tsunami, they would have told you it is vanishingly small. They would have said quakes of that magnitude only strike every couple hundred years on average and that when they do, the likelihood they’ll be in such an inopportune location is small. They would probably tell you that it’s not worth going around worrying about such things happening.
Of course, the seismologist would have been correct in saying this, not withstanding the fact that it did indeed happen. It might happen again tomorrow. It probably won’t, but it might.
Bob Applebaum said:
Boneheaded policy in the US is not an excuse for implementing it anywhere.
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March 12th, 2012 at 10:14 am
No, they are not speaking out as loudly and directly as they should. Time for Japan to rebuild and stop wasting money scraping topsoil down.
An important consideration should have been that a heavily damaged structure will get worse if it is left on its own. If you have a building and it’s all closed up and in good condition it can withstand the elements for a very long time. Once something breaches the roof or a window breaks its all down hill. Weather gets in and rots and corrodes it from the inside out. That’s why one way to destroy a building is just to destroy the roof and wait a year or two and the whole thing will be in ruins.
Sadly nobody was allowed back in to board up the broken windows and put tarps over the buildings that were damaged but otherwise recoverable. Much has surely been lost because of this.
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March 12th, 2012 at 10:58 am
Kit P said:
That’s not entirely true. There are a few who have homes that survived the quake pretty well and are far enough inland to not have been flooded and yet still can’t return. MAybe it is a small fraction, but they exist none the less. For them, it definitely sucks being stuck in high scrool gyms on bunks and that kind of thing.
Even those who had their homes completely destroyed or nearly completely. They should have been allowed to go back and salvage what they could. I’m sure there is much lost that didn’t have to be. Probably precious family photos and computr hard drives that were intact but aren’t after a year out in the elements.
I think the money angle is important too. The government spends billions on an unnecessary cleanup of radiation when they could spend that money on more important things like rebuilding rail, water, sewer and so on.
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March 12th, 2012 at 12:04 pm
I have respect for what you have written and echo most of what you say. However, things are never simple and let me explain by way of a couple of examples.
I was asked to speak out by my UK Society for Radiological Protection last March / April. I was not top of their list, but believe I was game because I am independent (rather than work for a single employer). However, that did not help much since I have many clients – whilst I wanted to say many things in the open media you have to weigh this up against risk to client confidentiality / bring them (or their work into disrepute etc). It raises the profile and some clients just do not want that. I have had to make do with comments on these blogs, forums, twitter etc.
A second issue comes down to ‘practicing what you preach’ (of sorts). I am not a big fan of LNT – I think it’s an over simplification and there probably is a threshold effect at low doses of ionising radiation. However, regardless of my views, part of my role is to ensure clients keep within the law with respect to dose limits, and perhaps more importantly ALARA (or as low as reasonably practicable in the UK). Therefore, you will find many like me who have a certain frustration with the current regime, but who have to work within it.
What I still do is argue that even if LNT were correct and valid, then a risk balance approach would put radiation issues way down the list of priorities.
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March 12th, 2012 at 12:07 pm
Sorry – I should have added that most of my work is for users of ionising radiation outside the nuclear industry. That said, it is interesting to note that many of my clients have workers receiving far higher occupational doses than those who work within the nuclear industry.
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March 12th, 2012 at 12:19 pm
I somewhat agree with Bob Applebaum. Justified or not, the nuclear industry lost a lot of credibility after Fukushima and human nature is to apply a judgementally broad brush to the (un)safety of all nuclear plants and to the veracity of anyone who works within spitting distance. You can’t fight fear of a technology most people don’t understand with testimony from experts. It simply doesn’t work that way. People operate on heuristics, not reason. Although capable of logical thinking, our natural instincts are often irrational. To be effective, the message would have to come from someone who is not necessarily an expert in radiation or nuclear power but from somebody the public knows and likes (read “trusts”). That is why you see atheletes getting shoe endorsements rather than orthopedists. If someone like Neil deGrasse Tyson came forward the message would actually be more effective, but I would not expect him to step in the cow pie that is Fukushima.
The only alternative will be to wait a few decades (with no newsworth incidents in between) to let the sharpest fears fade. That is what happened after TMI. It is what happened after Chernobyl.
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March 12th, 2012 at 12:24 pm
Bob Applebaum said:
drbuzz0 said:
Be fair. That was not boneheaded policy of the US, but the boneheaded actions of just one man. It wasn’t the NRC who recommended the 50-mile evacuation — four of the commissioners were never consulted and did not agree to that — rather it was the current NRC Chairman alone who made that call.
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March 12th, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Let’s review some facts. LNT is not a product of science, it is a product of policy. It was a handy rule of thumb, based on the Precautionary Principle, from a time when real world data was lacking that wound up enshrined in regulation. In a perfect world this would not be a serious matter if most people were able to evaluate risk, however this is not the case, and as a result low-dose ionizing radiation is seen as far more dangerous than it really is.
We must also understand that it is not the role of those tasked with applying regulation to speak out against it. When I worked in aviation maintenance I was forced to apply several regulations and standards that I knew to be overkill, and I did so because that was my job, and forcing change was not within my power (or my job description.) Most of these were leftovers from the past, and I knew that they would be reviewed in time, but as it stood it was the law, and I followed it. Thus we must be sensitive to the fact that it is not the place of radiation professionals per se to challenge this – it is the responsibly of those working in the science of radiation to do so.
Secondly, there is no real ‘nuclear industry;’ there is an energy industry in which players are not committed to one form of energy to the exclusion of others. In other words there are very few pure nuclear plays out there, and as a consequence there is no strong industry voice. To the extent that there is, however, I have never seen anyone that could be considered as an industry spokesperson making any claims that could be interpreted as suggesting that nuclear energy was without risk. What I have seen is antinuclear demagoguery that uses this supposed claim as a strawman, not unlike they misquote the phrase “too cheap to meter” and attribute it to the nuclear industry. In fact nuclear power has probably been the most honest of all the major energy technologies in clearly stating the risks of their mode of power generation. The same cannot be said of Big Carbon.
However having said all this, Steve is correct that those individuals that work in nuclear related fields have not been as proactive as individuals in challenging the way nuclear energy is treated by the media. In not acting they are in fact acquiescing to the treatment the field is getting by their silence.
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March 12th, 2012 at 3:59 pm
I’m normally not a fan of “stunts” but one thing that has been pointed out to me is that the standard for having a patch of earth declared a hazard and necessitating that it remedied (which may involve anything from digging out soil to power-washing concrete to jackhammering the top layer away) is low enough that you could create a “radiation hazard” of equal magnitude by putting about a dozen or so old radium-painted clocks together.
I’ve considered getting together that many radium clocks (which would not be too difficult and would not actually present much hazard or be illegal) and putting them in a box right next to my bed, which is the single place I spend more time than any other. Just to make the damn point!
Of course this standard is based on the presumption that someone is right next to that patch of earth for an entire year and would never stray to less radioactive areas. That’s what the total dose is computed on, which is ridiculous.
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March 12th, 2012 at 4:50 pm
Hey Blubba can you give me the name of a car manufacture that will guarantee that you will not be killed in a car accident? All 104 reactors in the US come with a guarantee that no one will be killed from radiation in a reactor accident. While we can not guarantee there will not be an accident, we guarantee no one would be hurt let alone killed.
Time was you actually had to produce a dead body to say you killed someone.
Nuclear power plants were the first industrial facilities to have to consider killing people nearby if there was an accident. At the time, cars did not come with seat belts. Nuke plants are different, you can kill lots of people.
However, Bob Applebaum plays this clever game of ignoring how we actually design reactors. Yes, the risk of core damage is very small but we do not stop there like they did in the USSR accepting a small number of increased cancers to children. We have added many design features so that we do not hurt people.
All Bob Applebaum has to do if he thinks I am wrong is submit that evidence to the NRC. Show that offsite doses are higher than permitted then that plant will be shut down.
So I will not debate LNT with anyone because it so easy to avoid exposing children to I-131. This was just demonstrated in Japan. If you do not expose people to radiation you can not kill them, hurt them, or even increase their risk of cancer.
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March 12th, 2012 at 11:23 pm
Kit P said:
In what delusional world of yours do you think anyone wants to debate any subject with you?
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March 13th, 2012 at 9:06 am
DV82XL is just debated the ultimate in trivia, how well known James Randi. Therefore, DV82XL debates me. Clearly I am not delusional.
We design system so that normal release of I-131 is zero from a nuke plant. The risk of zero exposure is zero. Yes there is zero risk when the measured exposure is zero.
The game people play is talking about hypothetical models of emissions and assuming things that are physically impossible to actually do. When calculating the offsite dose, we make very conservative assumptions because it makes the math easier. If the results are acceptable we stop. If not, we sharpen our pencils and start taking credit for the physical process that reduces the release of fission products.
Since no need to increase limits, there is not reason to debate LNT.
Of course the debate now that we have prevented children from being exposed, do we let them return to a area that is contaminated because the exposure would be low. This is clearly a local issue.
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March 13th, 2012 at 11:26 am
Kit P said:
Except that it isn’t.
See: Germany
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March 13th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Always a pleasure Joel but you have not provided enough info for me not to think that running nuke plants in Germany is not a local matter. Consider the situation in Japan.
After a 9.0 earthquake there is likely to me significant structural damage even if there is not apparent damage. Electricity and gas systems may be damaged in ways that are not apparent. Systems that ensure public sanitation are not working because they were not designed to work after a 9.0 earthquake.
When a large fraction of people who can not return home are outside contaminated areas, I think it is reasonable to assume that many areas of Japan are not safe then and it has nothing to do with radiation.
I do not qualify as an expert on Japan but I do know that that very few Americans have the knowledge to do something other than mind their own business. We have our own culture of stupid. Every time there is a flood, we see some fool on a roof demanding to be rescued. If the helicopter does not arrive fast enough blame it on POTUS.
When it comes to Germany I have no idea what kind of natural disaster they face and if evacuations make sense. In the US, emergency response is a local matter on the county level. A county sheriff from some Podunkville was being interviewed the wake of a major industrial accident with enough smoke a flames to make national news. He said his county was well prepared because they had just practice a drill at the Podunk county nuke plant.
I think Japan is doing fine without our help. If Germany has lost the ability to handle an emergency like the USSR, closing the nuke plants and depending on a friendly Russia may be a better idea. After all I just saw tears in Putin’s eyes.
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March 14th, 2012 at 6:54 pm
Any response from anyone who fits the address line yet?
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March 16th, 2012 at 2:54 am
MikeC said:
Officially I am under a gag order from my employer, sorry…
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March 27th, 2012 at 2:17 am
I am appalled by this letter.
If the author feels the “hot spots” are so safe, let him build a house on one.
They are called “hot spots” for a reason.
Subjecting anyone to increased radiation is dangerous.
There is no safe dose of radiation. Period.
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April 2nd, 2012 at 12:35 am
>There is no safe dose of radiation. Period.
Bob? Is that you?
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May 1st, 2012 at 3:09 am
Hi Buzzo! Sorry I have been away from your site for so long – it is a long story. Hey, I’m pleased to see you running for office – good luck!
I have to comment to A.D.
>”There is no safe dose of radiation. Period.”
Bwaaah-Haaha bwaa, Bwaah haha! Don’t know much about radiation, do you? Come on, show me what you’ve got. I’m a retired Health Physicist and would love to have a serious discussion with you. But I doubt you will respond, as anyone who spouts such ignorant phrases is unlikely to want an education. Re your belief that there is no safe dose of radiation
1. Do not live in a house or cave or under a rock – Radon will accummulate in these areas which you will breathe in and you will get a radiation dose.
2. Do not eat anything, especially fruits and vegatables as you are ingesting radioactive material from almost all foodstuff.
3. Do not sleep next to anyone – everyone, including you, gives off a little radiation.
4. Never go above sea level – you could get twice as much radiation from outer space like we do here in Colorado.
5. Only drink/use filtered, bottled water, but check out the brand because some are not very good at filtering out radioactive material.
6. Given that all life forms are dosed every second of existence, it defies any kind of logic to think there is no safe* dose of radiation. Otherwise there would be no life at all. * Safe = highly unlikely to cause harm.
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May 1st, 2012 at 11:40 pm
Leg said:
But if I don’t, what will protect me from the cosmic rays?
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May 2nd, 2012 at 1:10 am
drbuzz0 said:
Good to see your sense of humor hasn’t changed. Doesn’t it amaze you that there are still folks like A.D. out there? (rhetorical question) I see he hasn’t come back – big surprise.
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