Research confirms Fukushima radiation danger less than feared.

15 months since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, and new research is being published about the impact of its radiation leaks. As you might expect, studies are finding that the dangers are far less than what we were told by anti-nuclear activists and sensational media reporting.

Over at NPR, an article (“Nuclear Tuna Is Hot News, But Not Because It’s Going To Make You Sick“) notes that trace amounts of cesium were found in tuna:

[link to www.npr.org]

So the question is, how much more radiation did these particular tuna fish contain? The answer is: A trivial amount. In fact, radiation from the cesium is 30 times less than the radiation that’s already in the fish naturally in the form of potassium-40, according to the research paper. And the natural polonium-210 packs a radiation dose 200 times larger than the dose from the cesium.

Another study has found radiation levels at sea will not cuase any harm,

[link to www.marklynas.org]

Fukushima-derived radiation doses experienced by marine organisms throughout the food chain are well below levels which could cause harm to ocean biodiversity, and even in the most part below levels experienced due to naturally-occurring radionuclides.

Unfortunately, given that fish caught offshore from Fukushima are entirely safe for human consumption (measured levels in fish are 150-fold less than the legal limit on average), there is little prospect of a no-fishing zone which might provide great marine wildlife benefit as the Chernobyl exclusion zone currently does for land-based rare species.

Opponents of nuclear power often make out that the consequences of a serious accident are some variant of Armageddon (sterilising large areas for generations, etc). Fukushima shows that this is absolutely not the case. The environmental effects of an accident are transient, and virtually non-existent compared to other human impacts on biodiversity.

There has also been research on radiation exposure in general A new study from MIT scientists, which found that mice exposed to 400 times normal levels of background radiation suffered from no DNA damage:

“There are no data that say that’s a dangerous level,” says Yanch, a senior lecturer in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. “This paper shows that you could go 400 times higher than average background levels and you’re still not detecting genetic damage. It could potentially have a big impact on tens if not hundreds of thousands of people in the vicinity of a nuclear powerplant accident or a nuclear bomb detonation, if we figure out just when we should evacuate and when it’s OK to stay where we are.”

Ive just gathered this info freely available on the internet, i think this side of the story should be highlighted too.

No doubt, anti-nuclear activists will simply react as they have done in the past: by pretending that this research does not exist, or by labeling these scientists liars/shills.