Tag: Fukushima

Cognitive Dissonance and Low-Dose Radiation

Germany has more radon baths than any other country. Yet they fear nuclear power plants. They closed them down and opened up coal mines knocking down ancient forests in the process. Medical benefit payments are paid out to people who attend the radon spas for relief of muscular-skeletal ailments. The medical fraternity warns of the dangers of radon yet people in pain still seek relief.

People have been using radon baths for thousands of years.  Low dose radiation seems to lessen the pain and immobility of osteoarthritis. But not every patient benefits.

https://www.fau.eu/2019/01/17/news/research/the-healing-effect-of-radon/#:~:text=Thermal%20water%20that%20contains%20radon,Steben%20Health%20Spa%20Research%20Association).

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2477705/#:~:text=Radon%20Via%20Bath%20or%20Steam,for%20three%20or%20more%20weeks.

Many studies have shown that the more low dose radiation a population receives, the less cancer there is in the population. This effect is known as hormesis. I can also find studies that state that low dose radiation causes cancer.

 Is anything black or white or just shades of grey? Is anybody totally truthful? We all have our biases. To get a message across about cognitive dissonance I wrote “Low Dose Radiation is not Harmful and May Even Be Good for Us! Nobody Died from Radiation at Fukushima”

But panic and fear of radiation caused the unnecessary deaths of over a thousand Japanese people following the evacuation.

Every decision we make in life rests on our perception of the risk involved versus the benefits. That balancing act changes with circumstances. For example, the amount of radiation used for cancer treatment is huge. None of us would want to receive that much in ordinary circumstances. A medical specialist tells us it is our best chance of beating deadly cancer and we accept the treatment for 2 reasons. Firstly, the radiation will be applied under very controlled conditions to a limited area. Secondly, the whole balance of the situation has changed.

A few years ago, I didn’t agree that Australia should have a nuclear power industry. Did we plan long term enough? Did we plan carefully? Were we just too Gung-ho?

I am now watching the destruction of Australia’s wonderful unique biodiversity as we lose forest and mountain ridges to wind turbine projects in Queensland in the “fight against climate change”. Is the balance, right? Do we have to destroy nature to save the planet?

Ecologists, Barry W. Brook and Corey J. A. Bradshaw ranked 7 major electricity-generation sources (coal, gas, nuclear, biomass, hydro, wind, and solar) based on costs and benefits. They published a paper in 2014 called:  Key role for nuclear energy in global biodiversity conservation. https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.12433.

This study still stands out. It used multicriteria decision-making analysis and ranked 7 major electricity-generation sources based on costs and benefits. It then tested the sensitivity of the rankings to biases stemming from contrasting philosophical ideals. Irrespective of weightings, nuclear and wind energy had the highest benefit-to-cost ratio.

The Integrated Life-cycle Assessment of Electricity Sources undertaken by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe which concentrated on Carbon Neutrality in the UNECE Region has been extensively quoted by Oscar Martin on LinkedIn. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4020227?ln=en&v=pdf

Nuclear scored far better than wind power (and all other electricity generation types) on nearly all rankings with the exception of water use and of course radiation. Public and occupational exposures to radiation from electricity generation was far higher from coal and even geothermal systems than from conventional nuclear power plants. Likewise, every other of 22 assessed electricity generation types were more carcinogenic than conventional nuclear power.

Potential impacts such as specific biodiversity-related impacts, noise or aesthetic disturbance were not assessed under the land use analysis. Nuclear had the lowest lifecycle impacts on ecosystems, followed by various forms of wind and solar power. Under the land use assessment, renewable technologies were assumed to be readily built on various land types without heavy modifications such as land sealing, mountaintop removal, and flooding.

The assessment of land use which was used in the assessment of ecological impact for wind projects only considered the directly disturbed land (turbine pads, access roads) and assumed the surrounding land could be used for other purposes such as agriculture. For disturbed forests this leads to massive underestimation of the impact. Research in far northern Queensland is finding that impacts from wind turbines on some species in forests can extend 3 km or more from a turbine.

Nature is doing over half the work of reducing carbon dioxide levels worldwide. We can save nature and the planet. With a carefully planned mix of nuclear and other energy sources, we can preserve our biodiversity.

Yes, nuclear power is not 100% safe and clean. Nothing ever is. The benefits to humanity and nature are too great to ignore and far greater than the risk.

Australians for Nature and Nuclear!

The Effect of False Fear of Low-Dose Radiation – Fake Graph of Fukushima

Japanese Tsunami March 2011

A magnitude 9.0 earthquake, centred to the east of Sendai caused  a wave 10m high travelling at 800 kph .  The highest wave hitting the coast of Japan was 23m. It travelled inland for 10 km in some places. The Hawaiian Islands had waves over 3 metres high. As many as 19,500 lives were lost from both the earthquake and tsunami.

Misinformation

The following figure, with the added title “FUKISHIMA RADIATION HAS CONTAMINATED THE ENTIRE PACIFIC OCEAN AND ITS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE!” was repeated over and over again on the web by various “green” groups.

Yes, the figure was produced by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the US Government). BUT it is a graph of WAVE HEIGHTS after the tsunami. NOAA does not measure radiation levels.

A similar graph has been used for years by Helen Caldicott including during a presentation to Teals before the last election. Helen’s graph had a logo from a company in Australia that does undertake radiological measurements. The company stated on their website that it was not their work and that their logo was falsely included. She must have known for nearly ten years that the graph was false. I am also horrified by nuclear war and nuclear bombs and admire her work in this area but not at the cost of truth about low dose radiation.

Nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs are very different. I hate nuclear weapons. However, the use of falsified information when advocating for the banning of nuclear weapons or nuclear power is not OK. It is particularly abhorrent when scientific data is used in a way that the author knows to be untrue. I was told to use this technique in an environmental campaigning course by a famous international “Green” organisation.

These types of fear peddling are totally unethical, particularly when they pretend to be scientific in nature.

Why Do the Media call the Tsunami, the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster?

How many deaths could have been avoided if suggestions for evacuation or shelter in place standards suggested by the IAEA had been used. But Fear and Panicked Evacuation of about 100,000 people was responsible for 2313 disaster-related deaths among evacuees from Fukushima prefecture.

An old nuclear power plant overdue for decommissioning was damaged at Fukushima Daiichi by a wave 13-15m high. The placing and tsunami protection of the Daiichi plant assumed a 3m wave.

Eleven reactors at four nuclear power plants in the region were operating at the time and all shut down automatically when the earthquake hit. Subsequent inspection showed no significant damage to any from the earthquake itself.

The residual heat cooling systems worked for 8 out of the 11 power plants. At Fukushima Daiichi, electrical power from all 6 external sources stopped and the generators turned on until the tsunami flooding disabled 12 0f 13 backup generators running the cooling systems. Switching gear was also damaged.

Heat built up causing steam in the cooling systems. Hydrogen was produced by the steam reacting with exposed Zircaloy cladding. The containments were filled with inert nitrogen, which prevented hydrogen from burning in the containment. However, the hydrogen leaked from the containment into the reactor buildings, where it mixed with air and exploded. 3 of the 4 reactor buildings were damaged by hydrogen explosions. This was not a nuclear explosion. It was simple chemistry. To prevent further explosions, vent holes were opened in the top of the remaining reactor buildings. All reactors were stable within 2 weeks.

Three Tepco employees at the Daiichi and Daini plants were killed directly by the earthquake and tsunami. There have been no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from the nuclear power plant incident. One man from the plant died of cancer died soon afterwards but it is thought to be unrelated.

But in contrast there were 2,300 deaths caused by fear of radiation that triggered the evacuation.

Government nervousness to this day has delayed the return of many evacuees to their homes. Concerns about radiation in the sea caused panic even in the USA and some people made themselves sick with overdoses of iodine.

Tritium.

About 18 months ago, South Korea and China advised their citizens to stop eating seafood. Water used to cool the Fukushima reactors had been decontaminated and stored in large tanks and was finally to be released to the sea by Japan. The IAEA carefully monitored the releases. Korean fishermen were suffering loss of income as a result of the bans. After Korea monitored the sea water, they reversed their advice. China has only recently lifted their ban as they could not detect any contaminants. I followed the data for a while. Sometimes the tritium levels were so low in the discharge, the discharge water was diluting the tritium levels in the the sea water.

Tritium is created every day in our atmosphere and comes down in the rain, ending up in the sea. This natural process is the overwhelming source of tritium in the ocean.

For more of my blogs about tritium, see https://onewomanjourney.com.au/2023/08/25/tritium-trivia/

https://onewomanjourney.com.au/2023/08/31/its-raining-i-might-get-tritium-in-my-hair/

https://onewomanjourney.com.au/2023/09/06/the-iaea-and-fukushima-water-release/

https://onewomanjourney.com.au/2023/09/09/south-korea-monitors-fukushima-release/

South Korea Monitors Fukushima Release

Decades ago, I worked as an environmental scientist based in Hong Kong. I still stay in touch with some of my staff, who now are very experienced in their careers. I had heard that Hong Kong people were being warned about buying seafood, particularly seafood from Japan due to the release of water from Fukushima. I received an interesting article yesterday and quote from a section of it in the original Chinese together with the translation. I have omitted the first paragraphs. The references vary in their language but Note 2 is in English.

I jump to the last paragraphs examining the above 7:30 report.

當然，你依然可以反駁，日方的數據是假的。那麼你也可以看看韓國新聞。根據昨日韓聯社的消息，上周四日本排放核廢水後，韓國政府已在該海域30個點位進行緊急輻射測試，所有樣本均符合安全標準，而截至目前為止，韓國內的海鮮或進口海產尚未測到輻射。 （注2）

事實上，韓國從來不信日本，甚至不信國際原子能總署，所以7月以來，韓國已在200個海洋點位自己做水質監測，日本也無任歡迎。但奇怪的是，中国居然沒有像韓國般，實事求是加入監測行列，只堅持嚇鬼不動搖地在大陸、香港做「大內宣」，讓「財經作家」那種寫手散播假資訊，唯恐天下不亂地製造恐慌。

「因此我們可以假定」，中央政府正在下一盤很大的棋，旨在「給中国人民上一課科普」，引導民眾搶購可測試核輻射的蓋格計數器，之後驀然回首，才發現自己家的輻射原來比東京強900多倍（注3）——也許是中国建材問題——背後的理由實在太令人暖心了。

“Of course, you can still argue that the Japanese figures are fake. Then you can also check out Korean news. According to Yonhap news yesterday, the South Korean government has conducted emergency radiation tests at 30 points in the sea after Japan discharged nuclear waste water last Thursday, all samples met safety standards, and so far no radiation has been detected in seafood or imported seafood in South Korea. (Note 2)

In fact, South Korea has never believed in Japan, or even the International Atomic Energy Agency, so since July, South Korea has done its own water quality monitoring at 200 ocean points, and Japan is not welcome. But strangely enough, China has not joined the monitoring ranks like South Korea, just insist on scaring ghosts and doing “big internal propaganda” in mainland China and Hong Kong, letting writers like “financial writers” spread false information, lest the world will cause panic.

“So we can assume” that the central government is playing a big game of chess, aimed at “teaching the Chinese people a lesson in popular science”, guiding the public to snatch up Geiger counters that test nuclear radiation, and then looking back to discover that their own home’s radiation is more than 900 times stronger than Tokyo (note 3) – perhaps China’s building materials problem – the reason behind it is too heartening.”

Notes (References):

1 https://t.ly/Vdvih

2 https://t.ly/BjuD4

3 https://t .ly/g7arY

As expected, the South Koreans have not been able to find fault with seafood or seawater. One has to question the motives of countries who spread fear about radiation when these same countries build and sell nuclear power plants. Is it a question answered as it so often is “Just follow the money trail”?

The IAEA and Fukushima Water Release

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was created in 1957 in response to the deep fears and expectations generated by the discoveries and diverse uses of nuclear technology. The Agency was set up as the world’s “Atoms for Peace” organization within the United Nations family. From the beginning, it was given the mandate to work with its Member States and multiple partners worldwide to promote safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies.

The IAEA’s headquarters are in Vienna, Austria. It also has two regional offices located in Toronto, Canada (since 1979) and Tokyo, Japan (since 1984). The Agency runs laboratories specialized in nuclear technology in Vienna and Seibersdorf, Austria, and in Monaco.

Due to the involvement of both my husband and I in the regulation of uranium mining in Australia, we have a few friends who have worked for the IAEA in the laboratories and in the cleanup of mining areas in parts of the old Soviet Union. One of them had his office across the corridor from the man most responsible for the data on Chernobyl. David did a short consultancy in the Vienna offices. The scientists of the IAEA take their responsibility for nuclear safety very seriously and come from dozens of nations.

When Japan proposed the water discharge from the Fukushima nuclear plant, the IAEA examined the strategy very closely and gave its blessing but insisted that the discharge be monitored very carefully.  Japan gave itself a tough standard of 1500 Bq/L knowing that the WHO standard for drinking water was 10,000Bq/L. A lot of data is available online which I have viewed.  It is possible to see the data for every tank on site. Some of the tanks containing water cleaned up early in the process contain a fraction too much caesium isotopes.  This water will be cleaned up again before release. The IAEA has a website that shows the monitoring data during the discharge in real time.

https://www.iaea.org/topics/response/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-accident/fukushima-daiichi-alps-treated-water-discharge/tepco-data

A snapshot in time (as I am writing) is shown below:

Green dots show that the data indicates that everything is OK. A red dot would indicate that the nuclear company, Tepco, should take action. A grey dot shows that a pump is not operating.

The water after dilution is shown as 207 Bq/L, way below the level Japan set for itself and only 2% of the WHO drinking water standard. It is about this amount each time I looked at the data.

What fascinated me was that seawater has slightly more radiation than the treated water as measured in cps. Although details are not given, Geiger type counters probably do not pick up tritium as the beta rays are so weak.  These measurements are used to ensure other radioactive elements such as caesium are not being discharged. As the data shows, the levels in both the treated water and the seawater are very low.

When Quick Decisions Lead to Wrong Conclusions

The final step: making sure to put numbers in their right context. Are we looking at the whole picture? What works for some people may not work so well for others.

There is a tremendous amount of excellent technical information about radioactivity on the web, but it is often hard for anyone without that specific training to understand. There are also a lot of misleading statements and conclusions on the web. These even appear in peer-reviewed scientific journal articles such as the Chinese paper given as a link in my blog Tritium Trivia. This paper showed the results of modelling various releases of tritium water from Fukushima. Unfortunately, the last step was forgotten. Showing great expanses of red all over the Pacific Ocean would lead nearly everybody to say “How terrible! Japan is polluting the Pacific Ocean with radioactive material.” However, at the end of the document the background levels of tritium in the Pacific Ocean are quoted and this puts the release data into perspective. But nowhere in the paper was the context of the data given, that is that the levels of tritium were so low compared to normal background levels that they would be impossible to distinguish from the background variability.

I have made the decision that I will try to make my blogs as easy to read as I can so that they are suitable for most users of the web. This is not easy with technical information and my background of writing technical reports. Word has an editor function that allows you to calculate the readability of the document. Yesterday, for the very first time I managed to achieve my goal.

I was so excited that I quickly finished the blog and published it only to realize within minutes that I had forgotten a crucial step. I had jumped to the conclusion too quickly and not fully put the information into context. I rapidly edited the post and republished it. However, my subscribers received a set of comments that were not quite right. In my joy of finding a way to explain just how low tritium levels can be, I forgot just how many hydrogen atoms are in a little water. 18 g of water (one mole for the technocrats) contains 6*1023 molecules of water, 12*1023 hydrogen atoms and about a million tritium atoms.  This is still just as teeny in radiation terms but the numbers 1 and a million sound so different. 1TU is only 0.118 Bq/L. I will explain what this means in future blogs.

I apologize to my subscribers. At my age you are allowed to call it a senior moment. However, I suspect that in our current haste over climate change mitigation, we are all making similar mistakes. We do the first part of the work but then forget to really look at the big picture and put everything into context.

Tritium Trivia

Before I write about the mechanisms all life on Earth uses to repair itself from any harm caused by low dose radiation, I feel I must present some information about tritium and the current political uproar about release of water at Fukushima in Japan.

Japan’s biggest seafood customer, China, has decided to ban seafood from Japan, followed by South Korea. New Caledonia has decided to ban swimming in the ocean.

Japan has been storing treated water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plants in large tanks. There are about a thousand tanks containing 1.2 million tonnes of water.

Japan has begun releasing treated wastewater used to cool down the nuclear reactors damaged by the tsunami in March 2011.  The water has been treated to remove radioactive material, but small quantities remain. Tritium is hard to remove as it forms part of a few of the water molecules.  There are very small quantities of carbon 14 and there may be even smaller quantities of strontium and iodine isotopes.  Most of the latter were dispersed by May 2011.

Tritium is formed naturally every day in our atmosphere and added to the oceans and land as rainwater. Any taken into our bodies comes out fairly quickly in our urine. Radiation from tritium is weak beta rays. These rays do not travel far and are stopped by skin. Unless the dosage is extremely high, our bodies quickly repair any damage caused.

The release from Japan into the Pacific Ocean can be made to sound bad and scary. “But it actually isn’t. Similar releases have occurred around the world for six decades, and nothing bad has ever happened.

“The radioactivity in the Fukushima water is almost entirely tritium, a type of hydrogen. For scale, the Pacific Ocean contains 8,400 grams of pure tritium, while Japan will release 0.06 grams of tritium every year. The minuscule amount of extra radiation won’t make the tiniest jot of difference. A lifetime’s worth of seafood caught a few kilometres from the ocean outlet has the tritium radiation equivalent of one bite of a banana.” according to Nigel Marks is a Professor in Physics at Curtin University

Tony Hooker, Director of the Centre for Radiation Research, Education and Innovation at The University of Adelaide says: “I would like to reiterate that the release of tritium from nuclear facilities into waterways has and is undertaken world-wide with no evidence of environmental or human health implications. “

Tony Irwin, an Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University is also Technical Director of SMR Nuclear Technology Pty Ltd and Chair of Engineers Australia Sydney Division Nuclear Engineering Panel: “There is an understandable perception that all radioactive materials are always and everywhere dangerous, particularly liquid waste, but not all radioactive materials are dangerous. The Fukushima water discharge will contain only harmless tritium and is not a unique event. Nuclear power plants worldwide have routinely discharged water containing tritium for over 60 years without harm to people or the environment, most at higher levels than the 22 TBq per year planned for Fukushima.

“For comparison the Kori nuclear plant in South Korea discharged 91 TBq in 2019, more than four times the planned Fukushima discharge and the French reprocessing plant at La Hague discharged 11,400 TBq in 2018 into the English Channel, more than twelve times the total contents of all the tanks at Fukushima, again without harm to people or the environment.

“It is important that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has carried out an independent and transparent review of the procedures and equipment for discharges and its comprehensive report issued in July 2023 confirms that the release will have a negligible radiological effect on people and the environment. The IAEA will maintain a continuous on-site presence on site to independently monitor discharges.

“More tritium is created in the atmosphere than is produced by nuclear power reactors, and it then falls as rain. Ten times more tritium falls as rain on Japan every year than will be discharged. The discharge limit for release of radioactive water at Fukushima is 1/7th of the World Health Organisation standard for drinking water. The discharge is ultra-conservative.”

Thanks to https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-comment-on-release-of-waste-water-from-fukushima-into-the-pacific/ 

A paper was published in August 2021 by seven Chinese authors with assistance from authors in the Netherlands, Ukraine, South Korea, and Spain with scary looking figures of their modelling of potential release scenarios by Japan. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X2100549X

On closer examination problematic zones were about 0.1 Becquerel(Bq)/m3 of sea water. These scenarios were all assuming much faster dumping of the water than Japan actually plans. The paper itself gives the background concentration of tritium in the surface water of the North Pacific Ocean as around 50 Bq/m3 (0.2% increase, less than natural variation). Good luck monitoring any difference during the release except at the actual release point.

Japan plans to dilute the water in the tanks before release  with a maximum concentration of tritium in the release of 1,500 Bq/l. The WHO drinking water standard is 10,000 Bq/l.

The IAEA will monitor the release at various points in the dilution and release system. The data is available at

https://www.iaea.org/topics/response/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-accident/fukushima-daiichi-alps-treated-water-discharge/tepco-data

To understand the monitoring system watch https://twitter.com/iaeaorg/status/1694605862621380652

As I write, the tritium concentration of the discharge is 207 Bq/l. This is way less than the tough standard Japan set itself of 1,500Bq/l. The gamma ray monitoring ensures the water does not contain other radioactive contaminants.

1f Nuclear Accidents

The first nuclear power plants were built during a period when safety was not considered as it is now.

When I did my undergraduate degree in chemistry in the 1960s, most of the organic chemistry department personnel were missing an eye. We were not considered true organic chemists until we had at least one labelled mark on the ceiling from an accidental explosion. We used Bunsen burners, naked gas flames, to distill off flammable and often carcinogenic solvents. I knew just what to do when my hair, lab coat and books erupted in flame from burning ether. Big drums were used for the storage of solvents and when the lab finally burnt down, the explosions from each of the solvent drums sent up spectacular columns of black smoke. The Research Laboratory of ICIANZ where I had a holiday job burnt down a year or so after I was there despite the training we received to prevent and extinguish solvent fires.

When I went to the dentist as a child, the dentist gave me mercury to take home for play. I first held a big bar of uranium metal in my bare hands in 1962.

The first safety features for nuclear power plants were just tacked on as an afterthought. I will describe current safety features for nuclear power plants later in my series of blogs. Safety is now designed and built in, made triply redundant and checked and cross-checked by regulators.

Three nuclear power plant accidents are well known. Using some of my slides from my presentations, the basic facts as best I can ascertain them are given below.

Fear caused all the health effects.

Chernobyl was a terrible happening. So many things were wrong including dreadful design with just a thin concrete cover and international coverup following the explosion. Documents are still being written about the details.

Recorded interviews with Babushkas are enlightening. “My friends who stayed away are all dead now and we are still alive.” 

Ukraine, the site of the Chernobyl disaster obtained almost half of its electricity from nuclear power plants in 2021. It was planning to build more. I have been presenting detailed updates about the happenings and safety of nuclear facilities in Ukraine during each presentation I do.

In 2008, My husband and I attended an International Mining Water Association conference in Karlovy Vary within the Czech Republic. The U.S.S.R. had pillaged its surrounding countries leaving massive legacies. One of the remediation projects we visited was a uranium mine with contaminated ground water. The rehabilitation scientists presented the chemical data and then took us out to view the works which were in their last stages. In one area there were beautiful, ripe, wild strawberries. I picked a strawberry and illogical fear erupted around me. I said, “You have seen the data, these are perfectly healthy to eat, and I am not worried.”  Suddenly, the men around me were trying the strawberries too and they were wonderful.

A friend who worked at the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, told me in 2005 that the IAEA had learnt many lessons about how to manage a disaster at Chernobyl. A whole generation of rural farming children grew up without sufficient protein in their diets, eggs and milk being their traditional sources. Fear caused a lot of unnecessary damage. However, these lessons were forgotten or not learnt by Government authorities when a tsunami hit Japan.

Many studies have been published about the incidence of thyroid cancer in children following Chernobyl. A very large collection of thyroid tissue samples was collected from thyroid cancer sufferers. A very recent genetic study has shown that children receiving high doses of Iodine 131 soon after the disaster do have quite distinct genetic damage from that of children diagnosed with thyroid cancer since that time. (References:

  1. Yeager M, Machiela MJ, Kothiyal P, et al. Lack of transgenerational effects of ionizing radiation exposure from the Chernobyl accident. April 22, 2021. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abg2365.
  2. Morton LM, Karyadi DM, Stewart C, et al. Radiation-related genomic profile of papillary thyroid cancer after the Chernobyl accident. April 22, 2021. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abg2538.)

Iodine 131 breaks down very quickly. The following graph shows its decay curve. Half of it has decayed in 8 days and 99.9% in 80days.

Japan shut down many of its nuclear power plants. After very extensive safety testing and refurbishment, many of these power plants are now back in operation.

Antinuclear campaigners used the following picture with the heading shown on it to frighten people around the world. Yes, it is a graph produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association of the US (NOAA), but it is not a graph of radiation but of wave heights. It had no relation to radiation levels in sea water.

There is a tendency when people become sick, particularly with cancer, to blame nuclear radiation as the culprit. When I was head of the technical division for environmental regulation in mining in the Northern Territory the outcome of an investigation near Ranger Uranium Mine illustrated this point. Members of the Jawoyn people were becoming sick. They gathered food in a billabong downstream of the mine. The Jawoyn blamed the mine. Extensive monitoring of the food and water showed only very low background levels of radioactivity.  The investigations detected dangerous levels of raw sewage contamination. Bacteria were causing the sickness and the situation was soon rectified.

There are other concerns voiced about nuclear energy, and these will be discussed in later blogs.