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How overdiagnosis produced a nonexistent “epidemic” of thyroid cancer in Fukushima

One of my favorite topics to blog about over the last six or seven years has been the topic of overdiagnosis and overtreatment. These are two interrelated phenomena that most people are blissfully unaware of. Unfortunately, I’d also say that the majority of physicians are only marginally more aware than the public about these confounders of screening programs, if even that.

Overdiagnosis has long been appreciated to be a major impediment to translating programs to screen for disease into better outcomes in a number of diseases but has only recently really seeped into the public consciousness, beginning in particular in 2009 when the United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) issued mammography recommendations that pushed back the recommended age to start screening to 50. Certainly, the concept of overdiagnosis is counterintuitive. After all, why do we screen for disease in asymptomatic people? The reason is simple—and maddeningly intuitive. We screen for disease based on the belief that catching potentially deadly diseases like cancer early, before they produce clinical symptoms, will allow earlier intervention and save lives. It seems blindingly obvious that this should be the case, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, real life biology and pathophysiology aren’t quite so neat and tidy, and the relationship between early detection and improved survival is muddied by phenomena such as lead time bias and the Will Rogers effect, in addition to overdiagnosis.

What is overdiagnosis? In brief, it is the detection of pathology or disease that, if left untreated, would never endanger the life of a patient or even harm him. Note that overdiagnosis is not the same thing as a false positive. A false positive occurs when a test detects disease that isn’t really there; in contrast with overdiagnosis there is definite pathology. The disease being screened for is there, at least in an early form. It’s just that, at the very early stage detected, it’s either not progressive or so indolent that the patient will grow old and die of something else before it would ever cause a problem. Indeed, it’s been estimated that as many as one in three breast cancers detected by mammography in asymptomatic women might be overdiagnosed and that one in five might spontaneously regress. However, because we don’t know which ones are unlikely to cause harm and haven’t worked out a safe method of observing them and intervening if they look as though they are progressing, we are obligated to treat them all when discovered. The problem of overdiagnosis has led to multiple alterations in what once were considered definitive recommendations for screening mammography, first by the USPSTF and most recently by the American Cancer Society.

You can see how this might be the case if you consider two examples I discussed in an old post. First, in autopsy series, foci of prostate cancer can be found in at least 75% of men over the age of 80; yet the vast majority of men who die after age 80 die of something other than prostate cancer. Second, in autopsy series, thyroid cancer can easily be found in 36% of adults, and investigators have estimated that if the slices were made thinly enough for microscopic examination they could have “found” thyroid cancer in close to 100% of adults between 50-70, even though clinically apparent thyroid cancer receiving treatment only had a prevalence in the population studied of around 0.1%.

Speaking of thyroid cancer…

Fukushima and the “epidemic” of thyroid cancer in children

If there were ever a better example of the adage, oft-stated by yours truly, that the more intensively you look for a disease the more of it you will find, it’s hard to find a better example of this than the aftermath of the March 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan as a result of damage sustained a tsunami that hit Japan. It was the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, and its effects are still being felt.

Now here’s where overdiagnosis is illustrated. An article in Science from earlier this month reported:

Months after the disaster, Fukushima Prefecture set about examining the thyroids of hundreds of thousands of children and teens for signs of radiation-related cancers. The screening effort was unprecedented, and no one knew what to expect. So when the first round of exams started turning up thyroid abnormalities in nearly half of the kids, of whom more than 100 were later diagnosed with thyroid cancer, a firestorm erupted.

Does this sound familiar? First, consider that the amount of radiation emitted by the Fukushima reactors was one-tenth that emitted by Chernobyl and that, as reported in this article, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that the 12 to 25 mSv of exposure in the first year after the accident in the hardest hit areas might result in tiny increases in cancer incidence. By way of comparison, people receive around 2.4 mSv of background radiation per year and a chest X-ray delivers around 0.1 mSv (here is a a handy visual comparison from xkcd). So why did the Fukushima Prefecture undertake this screening program? Here’s why:

Memories of Chernobyl got Japanese authorities worrying about thyroid cancer. The fallout from that April 1986 accident included radioactive iodine, which settled across swathes of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, contaminating pastures grazed by dairy cows. Children who drank the tainted milk accumulated the radioactive iodine in their thyroids. (Adult thyroids absorb less iodine.) A 2006 World Health Organization (WHO) study found that in the most contaminated areas, there had been about 5000 thyroid cancer cases among those who were under 18 at the time of the accident, though the report noted that more cases could emerge over time. The United Nations in 2006 attributed 15 childhood thyroid cancer deaths to Chernobyl. Caught early, the cancer is almost always cured by removal of the thyroid gland.

The WHO had also estimated that the thyroid-equivalent doses in 2011 were between 100 and 200 mSv in the worst-hit areas and 10-100 mSv elsewhere in the Fukushima Prefecture as delivered by inhalation, external exposure from groundshine (radiation emitted from isotopes that land on the ground), and ingestion. So it was not unreasonable that there might be an increase in thyroid cancer among people who were under 18 at the time of the disaster. However, the WHO also noted in 2013 that intensive screening for thyroid cancer was likely to increase the prevalence of thyroid cancer solely through a screening effect, which is basically another term for overdiagnosis.

The results of the screening program thus far were reported in an October 2015 article published in Epidemiology by an environmental epidemiologist at Okayama University named Toshihide Tsuda, entitled “Thyroid Cancer Detection by Ultrasound Among Residents Ages 18 Years and Younger in Fukushima, Japan: 2011 to 2014.” In it, Tsuda et al examined data from the screening program. Basically, all residents 18 years old and younger in March 2011 were screened by ultrasound during the 2011-2013 fiscal years according to the nearest area first, in 2011; the “middle area” second in 2012; and the “least contaminated area” in 2013. “Nearest area” denotes the area closest to the plant which was the most contaminated, while “middle area” and “least contaminated” area denote the areas further away with decreasing levels of contamination. A second round of screening began in April 2014 and is scheduled to be completed this month.

Positive findings were handled thusly:

Subjects with positive findings received a secondary examination, and if necessary, underwent fine needle aspiration. When cancer cells were detected, the patient was followed and operated on at an appropriate time. The excised thyroid tissue was examined histologically. Explanations about medical decisions, such as timing of fine needle aspiration and surgery, were not made publicly available by the prefecture. In addition to the progressive course of the disease, a patient’s school schedule was also considered in the timing of procedures because of the need for hospitalization. Based on information from Fukushima Prefecture, most fine needle aspirations and surgeries were performed by doctors from Fukushima Medical University.

Overall, of 367,687 residents were screened in 2011, 298,577 (81%) underwent the first round screening by the end of December 2014, with the proportion of residents of the respective areas who had undergone screening being 88% in 2011; 87% in 2012; and 74% in 2013. Basically, Tsuda et al found between 0 and 605 cases per million in the various areas

Further results:

Among 2,251 ultrasound screen-positive cases by the end of December 2014, 2,067 cases were examined in secondary examinations, which detected 110 thyroid cancer cases, as indicated by the presence of cancer cells by cytology after fine needle aspiration. Among the 110 cases, 87 cases were operated by the end of December 2014: 86 cases were histologically confirmed (83 papillary carcinomas and three poorly differentiated carcinomas), and one case was diagnosed as a benign tumor.

Overall, according to Tsuda et al, this finding represents an approximately 30-fold increase in the number of thyroid cancer cases among children and adolescents in the Fukushima Prefecture. Not surprisingly, there was considerable alarm after the publication of these results that still persists until today. Just last month, for instance, The Telegraph published the alarming headline “Fukushima disaster: Children cancer rates rise with 16 new cases.” Back around the time this study was first published online, it wasn’t uncommon to see articles and posts with titles like ‘Fukushima: “Alarming” Rise in Child Thyroid Cancer Rates‘ and “Researcher: Children’s cancer linked to Fukushima radiation.” Even the occasional medical site fell for the hype.

There is almost certainly no “thyroid cancer epidemic” in Fukushima

This study is, not surprisingly, being held up as evidence that there is a radiation-induced “epidemic” of thyroid cancer in Fukushima Prefecture, all due to the meltdown of the nuclear reactor. But is there? The authors of the study itself acknowledge that at least some of the increase could be due to the “screening effect” (or, as I call it, overdiagnosis) detecting silent thyroid cancers in children but blithely dismiss this possibility as unlikely “magnitude of the IRRs was too large to be explained only by this bias.” This, of course, leads to the question, “How could Tsuda know this?” The answer to that question is obviously, “He can’t.” First, he doesn’t compare his results to the known prevalence of small, subclinical thyroid cancer in children, which, admittedly, is difficult to know because autopsy series of children are hard to carry out. Second, he doesn’t know that the apparent prevalence of a disease can’t be increased by 30-fold by vigorous screening. We know, for instance, that the prevalence of ductal carcinoma in situ has increased at least 16-fold since mammographic screening began in the 1980s, all due to mammographic screening, as I have discussed on several occasions before.

Perhaps his strongest argument is that 40 of 54 cases operated on in the Fukushima Prefecture had positive lymph nodes. However, looking at the report cited by Tsuda and using a bit of the old Google Translate (the document is in Japanese), I see that 52 of the 54 cases showed papillary carcinoma, which is the most common (and least aggressive) form, and it’s not clear to me, due to the limitations of Google Translate, exactly what was found in all these cases. On the other hand, it strains credulity to believe that the relatively small dose of radiation to which the children of these areas were exposed could result in thyroid cancers, including node-positive thyroid cancers, in such a short period of time. Remember, these are primarily the results of the first screening, some of which occurred less than a year after the meltdowns. In cancer biology, that’s a short period of time.

It turns out that the reaction to Tsuda’s paper among epidemiologists wasn’t so favorable, though. For example:

Scientists emphatically disagree. “The evidence suggests that the great majority and perhaps all of the cases so far discovered are not due to radiation,” says Dillwyn Williams, a thyroid cancer specialist at University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. In journal papers and in a series of letters published last month in Epidemiology, scientists have attacked the alarmist interpretations. Many acknowledge that baseline data from noncontaminated areas were needed from the outset and that the public should have been better educated to understand results and, perhaps, to accept watchful waiting as an alternative to immediate surgery. But most also say the findings hint at a medical puzzle: Why are thyroid abnormalities so common in children? The “surprising” results of the screening, Williams says, show that “many more thyroid carcinomas than were previously realized must originate in early life.”

Indeed, at the time Tsuda’s report was published, there was even an accompanying editorial by Scott Davis, who noted:

As stated at the beginning, this commentary is intended to broaden the context or perspective from which the report by Tsuda and colleagues can be evaluated. I have highlighted some of the major challenges faced in a large-scale disaster of the kind experienced in Fukushima, particularly regarding the collection of data from individuals. In this respect, it was not possible to collect the detailed data needed to estimate an individual radiation dose. Therefore, the findings cannot contribute to the two most urgent scientific questions: the characteristics of the dose response curve at low doses, and the details of the role of other factors that might modify the risk of thyroid cancer associated with radiation exposure. Similarly, these findings do not add anything new regarding radiation-induced (or related) thyroid cancer.

Davis further noted that, “given the preliminary geographic dose estimates, any excess of cases due to radiation from the Fukushima plant would be too small to detect using epidemiologic methods,” and that the primary usefulness of Tsuda’s work is to help the Japanese government decide how to allocate health care resources for the victims of Fukushima.

The letters received by Epidemiology from radiation biologists, physicists, and epidemiologists were scathing. For instance, it was noted that the authors used an unvalidated method to estimate IRRs, that the study design was not clearly labeled as an ecological study (for more on ecological studies and the ecological fallacy that vastly overestimates correlations, go here), and, of course, that there could indeed be a massive increase in prevalence due solely to a screening effect, as Richard Wakeford and colleagues point out:

Thyroid disease screening with ultrasound can have a dramatic effect on the detection of thyroid nodules. A 15-fold increase in the incidence of thyroid cancer occurred in South Korea after the introduction of a national cancer screening program in 1999, with the incidence rate in regions increasing in direct proportion to the proportion of screened people. Consequently, it is inappropriate to compare the data from the Fukushima screening program with cancer registry data from the rest of Japan where there is, in general, no such large-scale screening. The proper comparison is between different screened areas within Fukushima Prefecture, since significant radioactive contamination from the accident was confined to a relatively small part of the prefecture.

There is no statistically discernible difference in thyroid cancer prevalence between the low, intermediate and high contamination areas of Fukushima Prefecture. The prevalence ratio (PR) for the highest to lowest contamination areas was 1.08 (95% CI: 0.60, 1.96), and the highest prevalence was seen in the area with an intermediate level of contamination (PR= 1.21 (95% CI: 0.80, 1.82)). Further, the measured levels of radioactivity in thyroids in Fukushima Prefecture were far lower4 than would be needed to elevate cancer rates as much as Tsuda et al.1 claim.

But here’s the letter that really demonstrates that Tsuda’s study does not identify that there is any sort of thyroid cancer “epidemic.” It’s by Noboru Takamura at the Department of Global Health, Medicine and Welfare, Atomic Bomb Disease Institute, Nagasaki University:

We recently conducted thyroid ultrasound screening, using the same procedures as the Fukushima Health Management Survey, in 4,365 children aged 3–18 years from three Japanese prefectures, and confirmed one patient with papillary thyroid cancer (prevalence, 230 per million). Furthermore, we recently reviewed findings of thyroid ultrasound screening conducted in Japan.3 In one survey, 9,988 students underwent thyroid screening and four students (including one foreign student) were subsequently diagnosed with thyroid cancer (prevalence, 300 per million). In another study at Okayama University that examined 2,307 students, three patients with thyroid cancer were found (prevalence, 1,300 per million), while at Keio High School, of 2,868 female students examined, one was found to have thyroid cancer (prevalence, 350 per million). These results show that the prevalence of thyroid cancer detected by advanced ultrasound techniques in other areas of Japan does not differ meaningfully from that in Fukushima Prefecture.

In other words, putting it all together, when advanced ultrasound techniques are used to screen for thyroid cancer in children in Japan, there is no detectable difference between the prevalence of thyroid cancer in children in the three areas Tsuda et al surveyed, and there is no detectable difference between the prevalence of thyroid cancer detected this way in the Fukushima Prefecture and that observed in other studies examining students in other parts of Japan. Tsuda’s study is not good evidence that radiation from Fukushima has created an “epidemic” of thyroid cancer.

Overdiagnosis again

The health authorities in the Fukushima Prefecture were well-intentioned, and, in reality, I can’t really fault them for wanting to determine whether the nuclear accident at Fukushima would result in a detectable increase in thyroid cancer in children, given that there is good evidence that radiation to the neck during childhood can increase the risk of this particular cancer. However, it’s clear that many of the doctors involved, although they recognized the issue of overdiagnosis as a potential confounder, didn’t understand just how much overdiagnosis (or, if you prefer, the screening effect) can increase the apparent prevalence of the disease being screened for. If you don’t go into such a massive population screening effort with your eyes wide open, you can easily be fooled into thinking a disease has become a lot more common when in fact all that’s happened is that you’re finding more of it because you’re looking for it a lot harder.

Unfortunately, such findings can cause harm. Besides the anxiety finding such lesions causes patients and their families, virtually all of the children in whom small cancers were found underwent total thyroidectomy, some with removal of the lymph nodes in their central neck. Thyroidectomy is a safe operation, but nonetheless carries the risk of damage to the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which can cause hoarseness due to paralysis of one of the vocal cords, or to the superior thyroid nerve, which can cause permanent changes to the voice. There is also a risk of damage to the parathyroids and permanent hypoparathyroidism. These risks are small but real. Finally, a guaranteed outcome of a total thyroidectomy is the life-long need to take thyroid hormone supplements. Given how uncommon thyroid cancer is throughout life, it’s highly likely that the vast majority of these children did not need to have their thyroids removed.

Dillwyn Williams is quoted near the end of the article as saying that the “surprising” result of Tsuda’s study is that “many more thyroid carcinomas than were previously realized must originate in early life.” I’m not sure why Williams considers that finding so surprising. I suppose it could be considered a surprise that so many more children have small cancers in their thyroid glands than expected, but it shouldn’t be as big a surprise as Tsuda, Williams, and many others view it. When you look for disease carefully and aggressively, you will always find a lot more of it. Then you’re confronted with the dilemma of what to do with it, given that it is subclinical and you don’t know if it will ever progress to cause harm to the patient.

None of this is to say that screening programs don’t save lives. Clearly they do. It’s just that it’s rarely as many lives saved as people assume, because the relationship between early detection and saving lives is nowhere near as clear as people view it. The thyroid screening program launched in the wake of the Fukushima disaster illustrates that very starkly.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

32 replies on “How overdiagnosis produced a nonexistent “epidemic” of thyroid cancer in Fukushima”

There is no statistically discernible difference in thyroid cancer prevalence between the low, intermediate and high contamination areas of Fukushima Prefecture. The prevalence ratio (PR) for the highest to lowest contamination areas was 1.08 (95% CI: 0.60, 1.96), and the highest prevalence was seen in the area with an intermediate level of contamination (PR= 1.21 (95% CI: 0.80, 1.82)).

Seems like this should have been a dead giveaway. The basics of radiation poisoning is dose and time. Even I know you would expect that dose would be positively correlated to prevalence. I guess maybe the sensationalism does more to garner funding or something.

Totally not related to this entry, but are you planning on reblogging your post from SBM.org about John Ioannidis onto R.I, Orac?

Although it is clear that a sensitive detection of thyroid cancer leads to overdiagnosis, the case is not clear for breast cancer. Lead-time bias can account for early breast cancer detection, but breast cancers occurring after three years of mammography screening implementation can be favored by x-rays. In the following comments, I explain that mammography is responsible for a doubling of breast cancer incidence in BRCA mutation carriers, with the consequence that half of the carriers can be spared if they have no mammography, whereas almost all of them will have cancer if they have mammography screening.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25082516#cm25082516_14368
It is time to exclude these women from mammography screening.

I imagine the quacks will be latching onto this study to sell more “cancer preventing” supplements to their marks and generally “vindicate” their paranoid, apocalyptic worldview. I seem to remember Mike Adams making a big stink shortly after the Fukushima disaster, as if people on the west coast of North America were in danger of radiation poisoning and cancer.

I’m rather surprised that the comments haven’t been swarmed by various hysterics yet. Like JP, I’ve seen comments from folks who are sure that we’re all gonna die from Fukushima’s contamination, despite the fact that it’s barely detectable (Chernobyl was quite a lot worse).

Meanwhile, we’ve had the warmest month ever, and coal-fired plants continue to spew CO2 into the air all around the world.

JP is correct: the quacks have certainly squawked about Fukushima’s radiation and cancer ever since the disaster occurred:
it’s been 5 years – they scrounge around looking for anything vaguely related in order to frighten people – especially those who live on the west coast of North America who might be vulnerable ( especially in their fevered imaginations) to its effects.

Usually, checking their stories doesn’t go beyond alt med websites and tabloid stories but they still continue.
Mikey has gone to great lengths to develop products that will counteract radiation whilst the other loon focuses upon ‘healthy living’ options ( ingesting vegetables/ green powders which he produces) and avoidance of products from Japan ( especially seaweeds and seafood). Occasionally, the warnings extend to products from coastal California as well – which apparently are contaminated but not reported by governmental agencies ( who lie in order to protect business or suchlike).

Mikey ( Natural News/ store) is still selling ‘Cesium Eliminator’ and ‘Nascent Iodine’. You are to take the former if you suspect that you’ve ingested cesium- but not every day. I seem to recall that it contained various seaweeds but not the contaminated Pacific types.

So be careful of that sushi and California roll.

I agree with capnkrunch that the lack of a dose response is strong evidence that this is a screening effect, but I imagine some people (particularly those who profit from fear-mongering) are going to say something like “see, even the lowest level of contamination is so dangerous that it’s just as dangerous as the highest level!” Was there no way to include a control population with no exposure at all? Did the entire nation of Japan experience elevated radiation levels due to Fukushima, or is “low contamination” just a very conservative way of saying “for all practical purposes, these people weren’t exposed.”

So basically a single-arm trial with a post-hoc endpoint conducted on children then. Something-something-IRB.

I wonder if there is the possibility of comparing the Fukushima rates with the Korean ones after they introduced their intense screening? I’m not qualified enough with epidemiological statistics to do so myself.

It may provide a better way to interpret this in therms of overdiagnosis.

“Meanwhile, we’ve had the warmest month ever, and coal-fired plants continue to spew CO2 into the air all around the world.”

That’s the thing that makes me bang my head against the wall. Coal-powered plants do more damage (IMO) functioning as they’re supposed to than many nuclear plants do when Something Goes Wrong, and it’s the latter everyone is paranoid about.

Your conclusion that the apparent cancer epidemic is a result of over-diagnosis may be scientifically correct but I am afraid that the people it concerns will not buy your story. This is because of an epidemic of disinformation, by Tepco and by the Japanese government. For months after the accident the official message was that the reactors had suffered minor core damage and that everything was under control, although it was fully clear to physicists like myself that these claims were based on nothing. Meanwhile the “experts” have found out that indeed the cores in three reactors have fully melted. How on earth are the people involve going to believe the other stories they are told, like that the amount of radiation set free is minimal or that nobody so far got sick? Even if the observed incidence of cancer is still low, what is the predictive value of this observation for what will happen over the next 50 years (which is of utmost importance for the people involved when they are to decide whether to return home or stay away forever)?

scan @15: There’s also the issue that Japan has had nuclear-related cancer epidemics in the past *cough*bomb*cough*.
So it is not at all unreasonable that parents are afraid and want their children tested and treated. And it is unlikely that those feelings will be overturned with logic.

(I am basing my understanding of post-bomb leukemia on several children’s books I read decades ago, so please correct me if I am wrong!)

Coal-powered plants do more damage (IMO) functioning as they’re supposed to than many nuclear plants do when Something Goes Wrong, and it’s the latter everyone is paranoid about.

At least you didn’t qualify that it’s because they “spew CO2”, Roadstergal #14.

There’s also the issue that Japan has had nuclear-related cancer epidemics in the past *cough*bomb*cough*.

I probably heard it on NN but wasn’t it the relative *lack* of particular expected cancers in Japan after The Bomb that lead to use of potassium iodine as prophylactic (or at least sales thereof to prevent certain cancers outside of just the thyroid? — Interestingly, nascient iodine is probably very toxic compared to KI; They were forced to switch because the DEA restricted access to KI shortly after Fukushima. Now a bottle of povadone that was $4.00 a pint is now $10.00 an ounce.

A bomb would have been cleaner. A bomb is designed to use its fuel efficiently. As it stands, the raw mixed Uranium and Plutonium (mox) was blown thousands of feet into the air to rain down upon Fukushima — They’re not ever going home.

What’s good for DuPont is… We have the damn, dirty Uranium plants today precisely for the dual use of manufacturing bombs. The technology could have just as well been developed for small, decentralized Thorium reactors but that would have led to DuPont charging the U.S. government way more than a dollar for that enrichment plant in Tennessee.

I always applaud Orac for bringing up this issue. It might be worth noting that it illustrates that much of what we do is not “scientific” even if we incorporate information that is obtained using the tools of science in the process.

The practice of medicine isn’t “scientific”.
The practice of supplying electricity isn’t “scientific”.

There are all these economic, social, psychological, and political factors that ultimately determine things.

As scan at 15 points out, it is not unreasonable for people to mistrust those with a vested interest in some outcome, particularly when past claims have proved untrustworthy. So the flip side of what Orac does is both unrealistic and problematic; likewise the “but Nuclear is safe you idiots” meme.

In this case, action was taken to reassure people (and prevent future lawsuits, I expect.) Sometimes, woo is just the ticket.

likewise the “but Nuclear is safe you idiots” meme.

One notes that building a nuclear power plant in an area at a known risk for earthquakes and tsunamis is not a terribly bright idea.

Chernobyl was the fault of super-outdated technology, and horribly incompetent (by way of apathy, mostly) Soviet administration.

I’m not exactly sure what the excuse for Fukushima is.

JP 19,

I don’t know for sure but as I understand it, there isn’t much of Japan that is going to be completely immune to earthquakes.

Which illustrates my point. These people certainly had scientific expertise available when they did the design, but as in medicine, the end result follows from multiple factors/inputs.

I don’t know for sure but as I understand it, there isn’t much of Japan that is going to be completely immune to earthquakes.

No, but there isn’t a very good excuse for building a nuclear power plant on a fault line.

I wouldn’t recommend building a reactor on top of the San Andreas, either.

JP, Zebra,

My understanding of what went wrong at the Fukushima power plant was that the back up generators were destroyed. Once the system lost power there was no way to control the reactor. Luckily, the design of the plants are actually fairly good. If the plant had been designed like Chernobyl, events would have been much different.

Ah, but JP (@21) there *is* a nuclear power plant on the San Andreas! The Diablo Canyon Power Plant.

I thought part of the problem at Fukushima was that the earthquake caused the sea walls to fall about 10 feet, so they were too short to protect the generators from the ensuing tsunami.

rich bly 22,

The “design of the plants” included the poorly situated generators.

Which again demonstrates my point; the fact that we incorporate science in things doesn’t make the things science– it’s about engineering, which is about economics and politics in the end. As is medicine.

It’s about evaluating risk and reward. A judgement call, always. There was a very low probability of a tsunami being that high, according to the science.

Zebra (22) wrote: Luckily, the design of the plants are actually fairly good. If the plant had been designed like Chernobyl, events would have been much different. Well, the greatest elements of luck in this sad story are that the brave technicians of the plant were able, with McGiver style ingenuity, to open a relief valve before a reactor really exploded and the fact that the wind blew towards the sea most of the time, so that only a couple of unlucky US sailors really got the brunt of the radiation. It did not go well “by design”, not at all. But this discussion is straying off from how it started, how to interpret the epidemological results. It will take decades before we know for sure that this story will have a happy end.

scan #25,

No I didn’t write that. Rich bly did. See my #24… more in line with your view.

I don’t think the real issue is the epidemiology study though, if you are saying there will be some negative outcome from that particular type of exposure.

This is one of those unfortunate areas where people set up a false argument and ignore the underlying problem. It isn’t about mortality from the event– it’s that the cores are a hot, stinking, deadly, mess. Even if none of the cleanup workers slips up and suffers exposure, the economic fallout (heh) is taking resources away from potential productive applications– including those that would save people’s lives.

And apparently some would say that it is worth it so Tokyo can have all those neon lights going every night.

the greatest elements of luck in this sad story are that the brave technicians of the plant were able, with McGiver style ingenuity, to open a relief valve before a reactor really exploded and the fact that the wind blew towards the sea

Umm,

Oh yeah, the reactor buildings did blow up in a most spectacular way, but these were “just” the hydrogen explosions in the spaces surrounding the pressure vessels. If the pressure relief I referred to had not been opened manually, the result would have been a rupture of an enclosure of the core, with a Chernobyl-like blow-out of most of the radioactive content, and compared to this event, which was just barely avoided, the explosions that actually occurred were relatively harmless. Still they were bad enough that tens of thousands had to be evacuated. The scientists who designed this reactor (and it is one of a series) had simply not considered it necessary to install a pressure relief that opens by itself before the pressure vessel blows itself up.

If the pressure relief I referred to had not been opened manually, the result would have been a rupture of an enclosure of the core

Ahh. But the lids were already venting due to stretched bolts before the valve was opened.

how could it be that the pressure in the afternoon was lower than the pressure in the early morning? Remember, there is a violent chemical reaction going on inside the nuclear reactor where all sorts of hydrogen gas is being generated.

One possible reason for the lower containment pressure is that the containment vent was open. But that had not happened yet. So what made the pressure drop down? One possibility I believe to be the case, is something that happened 40 years ago at a plant called the Brunswick Plant in North Carolina. Now the nuclear industry in the U.S., the IAEA, the Japanese, are all aware of this, but they are all ignoring this test and pretending that it did not happen.

http://enenews.com/fairewinds-nuclear-expert-believes-top-lifted-off-reactor-no-1-containment-before-explosion-video

I live a few miles downwind of one of those particular 40 year old MARK I reactors. The thing vents tritium on such a regular basis that nobody is warned anymore.

In one of the Tepco reactors, the ‘lid’ blew completely off the containment vessel. But no matter, there is far more nasty stuff in the spent feul rods outside the reactor but in the aforementioned reactor buildings.

https://vermont4evolution.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/nrc-making-changes-to-safety-standards-on-us-reactors/

> “many more thyroid carcinomas than were
> previously realized must originate in early life.”

Well, alternatively, could it be that one or some combination of the umpty-zillion new artificial organic chemicals being flushed into the environment is breaking down the mutual agreements among various kinds of cells that has let them cooperate in ways that let us complicated life forms work?

People have the oddest way of looking at things and coming up with the wrong explanations.

If it’s true that the more we look the more early-age cancers appear — thyroid, prostate, what else? — is there no chance we’re seeing an actual change?

The science-fiction stories imaginging epidemic worldwide cancer are out there.

Anyone looking hard?

Radiation could be just a rodeo clown distracting our attention from more urgent and less controllable new factors affecting health.

Serious question above; is there an epidemiologist in the house?
I know attribution is damned difficult, and the question — figuring out how many discoveries come from added scrutiny, and whether there’s anything left that could suggest an actual increase in the underlying cancer rate — is not an ‘internet opinion’ grade question.

I’d hope someone’s wrestling with the question. It’s the same sort of question that comes up in many sciences.

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