How many people were harmed by the Fukushima nuclear disaster?

In an article in Counterpunch titled article Fukushima Nuclear Casualties  Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health Project writes that researchers must challenge proponents of the nuclear industry who deliberately minimize the harm to humans from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which he suggests is the worst or second worst nuclear disaster in human history. 

Mangano writes:

 The full tally won’t be known for years, after many scientific studies. But some have rushed to judgment, proclaiming exposures were so small that there will be virtually no harm from Fukushima fallout.

Exactly two years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, perhaps the most crucial issue to be addressed is how many people were harmed by radioactive emissions.

On the responsibility of researchers Mangano writes: 

It is crucial that researchers don’t wait years before analyzing and presenting data, even though the amount of available information is still modest. To remain silent while allowing the “no harm” mantra to spread would repeat the experiences after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and allow perpetration of the myth that meltdowns are harmless. Researchers must be vigilant in pursuing an understanding of what Fukushima did to people – so that all-too-common meltdown will be a thing of the past.

Mangano and Sherwin estimate that in the 14 weeks after  Fukishima there were a 21,851 deaths in US from fallout from the disaster.  Fukushima fallout arrived in the U.S. on March 16, 2011. They calculated the increase in deaths in 122 US cities for the period March  20 to June 25 2011 to be + 3.99 vs +  0.73 for the rest of the year. They used data from the US Centre for Disease Control data on deaths in the 122 cities.

In a recent article  titled Is the Increase in baby Deaths in the US a result of Fukushima Fallout Mangano and Janette Sherwin document the rise in infant deaths  on the West Coast of the USA immediately following the Fukushima disaster. They  document a “bump” in U.S. deaths in the 3-4 months after Fukushima, especially among infants – the same “bump” that occurred after Chernobyl. 

Mangano cites another recent study  in the Open Journal of Pediatrics which showed rising numbers of infants born with an under-active thyroid gland – which is highly sensitive to radiation – on the US West Coast, where Fukushima fallout was greatest.

A previous post on this blog here cited Mangano's earlier article on human casualties in Japan in which he concluded that  even though it will take years before the true extent of casualties are known an early estimate of 38,700 additional unexplained deaths in Japan in just one year must be taken seriously.   

10 lessons from the nuclear disasters at Fukishima and Chernobyl

Excellent article from the Miami Herald by David Krieger who is a councilor on the World Future Council and the chair of the executive committee of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility.

Here are 10 lessons from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster 25 years ago and the Fukushima disaster this year.

1. Nuclear power is a highly complex, expensive and dangerous way to boil water to create steam to turn turbines.

2. Accidents happen, and the worst-case scenario often turns out to be worse than imagined or planned for.

3. The nuclear industry and its experts cannot plan for every contingency or prevent every disaster.

4. Governments do not effectively regulate the nuclear industry to assure the safety of the public. Regulators of the nuclear industry often come from the nuclear industry itself and tend to be too close to it to regulate it effectively.

5. Hubris, complacency and high-level radiation are a deadly mix. Hubris on the part of the nuclear industry and its government regulators — along with complacency on the part of the public — has led to the creation of vast amounts of high-level radiation that must be guarded from release to the environment for tens of thousands of years.

6. The corporations that run the nuclear power plants are protected from catastrophic economic failure by government limits on liability. If the corporations that own nuclear power plants had to bear the burden of potential financial losses in the event of a catastrophic accident, they would not build the plants because they know the risks are unacceptable. It is only when government limits the liability, as the Price-Anderson Act does in the United States, that companies go ahead and build nuclear power plants. No other private industry is given such liability protection, which leaves the taxpayers on the hook.

7. Radiation releases from nuclear accidents cannot be contained in space and will not stop at national borders.

8. Radiation releases from nuclear accidents cannot be contained in time and will adversely affect countless future generations.

9. Nuclear energy — as well as nuclear weapons — and human beings cannot coexist without the risk of future catastrophes. The survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have long known that nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist. Fukushima, like Chernobyl before it, makes clear that human beings and nuclear power plants also cannot coexist.

10. The accidents at Fukushima and Chernobyl are a bracing reminder to phase out nuclear energy. We need to move as rapidly as possible to a global energy plan based upon conservation and various forms of renewable energy: solar cells, wind, geothermal, and energy that is extracted from the oceans and the tides and the currents.

Poet Maya Angelou once said, “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage doesn’t need to be lived again.” We need the courage to abandon nuclear power. No one should have to experience the wrenching pain of another Chernobyl or another Fukushima.

Thinking the unthinkable: nuclear catastrophe

"Fukushima is trying to tell us something. We must heed its warning."
Christian Parenti

How many disasters -- either of the ecological or economic varieties -- will it take before people actively seek to reclaim their lost power?
Randall Amster

The worsening nuclear crises in Japan confronts us with the unthinkable- nuclear catastrophe.

The response of the Japanese Government, the private companies that own and run Japan's nuclear plants, the mainstream media around the world and the governments and corporate elite who support and profit from the nuclear industry and nuclear energy have consistently tried to downplay the seriousness of the crises and lied about the risks involved.

But the Japanese people well know the seriousness of the crises they face. They are fleeing as radiation spreads over large parts of the country. They are fleeing Tokyo and the country. The demand for passports is overwhelming.

Listen to them talk and they are angry and terrified. They no longer believe their government or the corporate spokespersons and spin masters who try to downplay the seriousness of the crises at Japan's nuclear plants.

As nuclear radiation reaches the West Coast of the USA Americans are having to confront the implications of  a nuclear catastrophe in light of their long history of nuclear energy.

Randall Amster asks a profound question How many disasters -- either of the ecological or economic varieties -- will it take before people actively seek to reclaim their lost power?

And now, for our troubles, we have a potentially runaway disaster in the making (yet again), which threatens to spread its misery over the hemisphere, conjuring those “ominous clouds” of nuclear toxification in the process. The powers that be will assure us that all is well, but of course the same thing was said about the Gulf oil spill, just to take one recent example. On the question of nuclear dangers in particular, the government has a sordid history of knowingly exposing the populace to grave risks in the name of “national security” or some other oxymoronic invocation.. ....

Despite repeated official declarations that the levels of radiation expected to reach the U.S. are perfectly safe, Physicians for Social Responsibility cautions that “no threshold exists for a ‘safe’ level of exposure to radioactive particles.”

Clearly there is cause for concern about the possible effects of a large-scale nuclear disaster such as the one emerging in Japan, even when the brunt of it is borne thousands of miles away. Radiation can dissipate over time and distance, yet its effects can also linger and become embedded in food and water supplies as well.


Obviously the dangers ahead are real, and that’s true regardless of how the situation in Japan plays out. Those nascent “ominous clouds” wafting in from the west are merely the tangible blowback of lifestyles that have been increasingly out of balance with the life-sustaining capacities of the biosphere. We can only cheat this inherent logic of interconnectivity for so long before the net products of our consumptive ways return the burdens back to us. Someone, somewhere makes those gilded cages for us, and whatever they are exposed to will ultimately become part of our ecology as well. We simply cannot outsource misery and treat toxicity as an externality any longer. How many disasters -- either of the ecological or economic varieties -- will it take before people actively seek to reclaim their lost power?

Christian Parenti has also written about the implications of the catastrophe, particularly for the US.

At press time, the nuclear crisis in Japan is out of control: three reactors are in partial meltdown, two are leaking radiation, at least one pool full of eighty tons of “spent” uranium fuel rods may be burning, two other such pools are getting very hot. Three major explosions have destroyed much of the Fukushima plant’s basic infrastructure, like cranes, monitors and mechanical controls.

Japanese officials have prevaricated, fumbled and have now largely retreated; the distressed plant is just too hot. Their understanding of the crisis is fragmentary. What they tell the public is even more limited. In total desperation they bombed the site with water dropped from helicopters but aborted that plan when radiation exposure proved too dangerous. Radioactive fallout is already sickening people. And this is just the beginning. Fukushima is a grave warning.

.............The message is clear: systems fail; the unthinkable happens.

"The endless scream in the breaking news"

Just heard that my step daughter's best mate in Sendai is alive. Nothing had been heard from him since Friday when the earthquake and tsunami destroyed much of the city. But he has just been sighted in a shelter in Sendai. 

Through the power of email and Facebook my step daughter, who is on a boat in the middle of the Caribbean, found about his sighting from friends in Japan and then she alerted me.

I pray for my step daughter's mate and all the people who have suffered so much in Japan at such terrible times. 

Like people the world over I have been overwhelmed by the terrible tragedy in Japan and the destructive power of the forces of nature and the earth on which we live.

So many terrible stories and images are emerging from the multiple catastrophes in Japan, and now, a few days later,  the full extent of the unfolding crises in the nuclear reactors and the realization of the scale of the devastation are becoming obvious.

Yet also emerging are stories of human endurance and survival, human compassion and solidarity, and ultimately the power of the human spirit. 

But it is hard to do anything but feel complete and utter despair at the horror of it all. And the terrible realization and question that has dogged me since Friday- is this an apocalyptic vision of how the world will end?- humankind and human civilization overwhelmed by the forces of nature and the earth, and our own hubris, in the form of forces we have unleashed- climate change and nuclear power.

This poem by Mahmoud Darwish, perhaps my favourite poet, was bought to my attention by Charandev Singh.

"Her voice carries her higher and further than
the seashore. She screams at night over the land
The echo has no echo
...so she becomes the endless scream in the breaking news
which was no longer breaking news"
...- Mahmoud Darwish

The earthquake in Japan and the arithmetic of compassion

This evening I have been watching footage from Japan and thinking of the terrible loss of life and destruction. Predictions of tens of thousands dead and missing. Now a nuclear catastrophe. 

I am deeply affected by the unfolding events. My step daughter lived in and around Sendai  and talking to her today via Face book (she is in the Caribbean) she tells me she is profoundly worried about friends still there. I cannot stop thinking about the terrible tragedy facing the people of Japan.

And  now a country that suffered the horrific destruction inflicted by the nuclear age faces the serious possibility of another nuclear catastrophe. This is apocalyptic. I fear this a forerunner of the future- humankind and human civilization overwhelmed by the forces of nature and the earth. 

The Polish Poet Zbigniew Herbert urges us to meditate on the "arithmetic of compassion". I feel the need to do that tonight.  

 The extract below is from a piece  I wrote that first appeared on this blog September 2009 and was influenced by the poetry of the great Polish Poet Zbigniew Herbert.

I have been thinking a lot lately about what I call radical compassion which is a way of seeing the world and seeing events and experiences from someone else's perspective, with a perspective that encompasses their views of the situation, past, present and future. Radical compassion is not feigned or manufactured and must involve the imperative to act, to take action for social change, in the face of injustice and suffering.
But most people, particularly in this country, want to avoid thinking about social injustice, suffering and evil. The Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert is not one of those people. I read a reviewer once who described his poems as a continuous alchemy of despair and desolation. Herbert is a poet with a powerful sense of right and wrong.
The line from Zbigniew Herbert's poem Mr Cogito Reads the Newspaper is:

A subject for meditation:
the arithmetic of compassion

here is the full poem from the Zbigniew Herbert The Collected Poems 1956-1998

Mr. Cogito Reads the Newspaper
By Zbigniew Herbert


On the first page
a report of the killing of 120 soldiers
the war lasted a long time
you could get used to it


close alongside
the news of a sensational crime
with a portrait of the murderer


the eye of Mr Cogito
slips indifferently
over the soldiers’ hecatomb
to plunge with delight
into the description of everyday horror


a thirty-year-old farm labourer
under the stress of nervous depression
killed his wife
and two small children


it is described with precision
the course of the murder
the position of the bodies
and other details


for 120 dead
you search on a map in vain
too great a distance
covers them like a jungle


they don’t speak to the imagination
there are too many of them
the numeral zero at the end
changes them into an abstraction


a subject for meditation:
the arithmetic of compassion