There were no deaths attributable to radiation. Severe potential hazards did exist on the reactor sites because of high levels of radiation, but health controls were mainly effective. The reactor containments were partially effective, although they were damaged by hydrogen explosions and possibly by molten fuel.Īgain, the casualty figures tell their own story. Radioactive fission products were released and hydrogen was generated by chemical reaction. This caused the loss of all power on the site so that cooling systems failed and some of the reactor cores overheated.

But problems arose after they were inundated by a much larger tsunami than had been anticipated when the nuclear plant was designed. About 4000 cases of thyroid cancer, which typically kills about 5 per cent of people who get it, have been attributed to inhalation and ingestion of radioactive iodine by children.Īt Fukushima Daiichi, the reactors shut down safely when struck by the magnitude-9 Tohoku earthquake, the fourth largest ever recorded. On top of that, it has been estimated that about 4000 people will die (or may already have died) from radiation-induced cancer, including workers exposed directly to radiation, and members of the public exposed to the huge release of radioactive material from the reactor. The figures tell a story: 237 Chernobyl workers were taken to hospital with suspected acute radiation sickness 134 of these cases were confirmed 28 were fatal about 20 other workers have since died from illnesses considered to have been caused or aggravated by radiation exposure two workers died from other causes at the time of the accident and another disappeared – presumed dead. In the “defence in depth” of nuclear power plants outside the former USSR, containment is an essential engineered safety feature. Safety and protection systems failed and there was a full core meltdown in a reactor that had no containment. Before Fukushima Daiichi, only one accident – Chernobyl – had been rated level 7.Ĭhernobyl was the worst that could happen. It is based on off-site and on-site effects, and on the degradation of the nuclear plant’s “defence in depth”. The INES, introduced by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1990, rates nuclear incidents and accidents on a scale that runs from 0 to 7. “There is no possibility that the health consequences will be anywhere near those of Chernobyl”Īs far as anyone knows, no member of the public received a significant dose of radiation attributable to the Fukushima Daiichi reactor emergency and no physical health effects of radiation should be expected. This helped to create the misleading impression that the event was as bad as Chernobyl, and has since been exploited in anti-nuclear propaganda despite the fact that there is no possibility that the physical health consequences of Fukushima Daiichi will be anywhere near as bad as those of Chernobyl. On 12 April 2011, a month after the tsunami struck, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency announced that it was raising the grading of the Fukushima Daiichi event from 5 to 7 – the highest level on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). This would be entirely understandable but will have no basis in science. This will probably be the case for many other diseases too, ranging from heart failure to nose bleeds – as happened after the catastrophic explosion in 1986 at Chernobyl, a Soviet nuclear power station in Ukraine. EVERYBODY who gets cancer in Japan over the next 40 years will no doubt blame their misfortune on radiation from Fukushima Daiichi.

Japan nuclear reactor meltdown 2012