Exposed workers okay

[FBaggins]

Three men exposed to high levels of radiation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have left the hospital with a clean bill of health. The 3 workers left the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba Prefecture on Monday.

...snip...

Two of the men stood in radioactive water for about 2 hours. They were due to receive treatment for burns, but doctors at the institute found that this was not necessary.

...snip...

The 2 men reportedly show no symptoms of burns, and their internal organs were exposed to very low levels of radiation. The institute says the third man also has no symptoms. The 3 men will undergo checks at the institute in several days' time.

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/28_33.html

[dbackjon]

1. Great news!

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Nihil]

4. Obviously someone ^^^ didn't think so ...

Isn't it a shame that for all of their faux "concern",
the thing that some people are desperate for is a huge
number of radiation deaths?

They're obviously not concerned about the thousands
who died in the earthquake & tsunami but given the
opportunity to report a "nuclear injury" ...

Sad. :-(

[Yo_Mama]

9. I don't think anyone does

desire a huge number of radiation deaths.

It's more that a lot of people have an unreasonable fear of radiation and don't have the knowledge to properly index exposure risks. So they believe it's all a conspiracy when they see news like this.

[FBaggins]

10. What they really want...

... is the ability argue as if a large number of people died... without having people actually die.

Come to think of it... they succeed at that fairly regularly. :)

[Turbineguy]

3. This

is good news.

And it's fact open to very little interpretation in the translation and re-writing.

[kristopher]

5. That is interesting - googling the text turns up nothing from NHK

Just blog entries...

Even when you go to the NHK site and do an internal search for "workers" you get nothing.

Are you guys making bogus websites?

[FBaggins]

6. Sorry if (once again) the facts are inconvenient for you...

...but the link takes you right to their page.

[jschurchin]

7. I am glad that the men are OK

I don't know about any of you but 3 Sieverts of radiation over a 2 hour time period cannot bode well for them over time. From your link

Two of the men stood in radioactive water for about 2 hours. They were due to receive treatment for burns, but doctors at the institute found that this was not necessary.

The institute says the level of their exposure was up to 3,000 millisieverts, less than initially thought.

3,000 millisieverts=3 Sieverts



I truly hope these men are OK long term. We shall see.

[FBaggins]

8. The reporting wasn't very solid.

There's no way you're going to leave the hospital without treatment after 3Sv. Your table is accurate... They would have serious radiation sickness if that were true.

It's more likely that it was 3 Gray... And the reporters just didn't understand the difference.

Their effective/adjusted whole-body dose was reported as closer to 180 mSv... Which is consistent with both a 3Gy external dose to feet AND consistent with the reported prognosis.

[jschurchin]

17. Reported by who?

Do you have a link? Thanks.

[FBaggins]

18. The reporting that said they received a 3Sv dose.

Plus any time you see activity levels quoted in Sv. "Radiation levels of 55 mSv were detected in..." is impossible, becase Sv is not a unit of radiation.

[Yo_Mama]

11. Their dosimeters read 170 - 180 millisieverts

Not 3,000 millisieverts (3 sieverts).

If they had been exposed to 3 sieverts, they would NOT be out of the hospital. If they survived, they'd be quite sick for some time. The fact that none of them have shown signs of illness is proof that they were not exposed to 3 sieverts. Above 2 they'd at least have some effect on the bone marrow.

[FBaggins]

12. You forgot the 3rd soon-to-be-speculated possibility.

They're already dead and these "workers" are really doubles who "went home" only to disappear from the public eye.

That way the Big Lie^TM can continue.

[Yo_Mama]

13. Funny but unfair

The poster is really concerned about their health, which is only humane.

And based on the premise (false, but not the poster's fault), the concern was valid.

They are going to follow the workers for quite a long time. Beta burns can appear several weeks later.

[FBaggins]

14. Oh, I didn't mean this particular poster.

I meant others who would find nothing unusual in a government/corporation doing such a thing to cover up their complicity.

They're already pretty sure that the mistaken I-134 readings were the Truth (proving that there's active fission going on in the core of at least one reactor) and now it's being covered up.

See 9/11 Truth for more examples.

[Yo_Mama]

15. Understood

Yes, there are people who seem to confuse the news with horror movies.

Personally, I find the chemtrails fanatics the most entertaining. Whenever I get depressed and feel I just cannot go on (a lot illness and death in the family) I google up a few sites and in less then 10 minutes my eyes are streaming with tears of laughter.

[jschurchin]

16. Did you read my post?

The excerpt is from NHK, they said the employees recieved 3,000 millisieverts. Where is your data from, and could you please post a link. Thanks.

[Yo_Mama]

19. Yes, NHK got it wrong

I read the number at NISA, at TEPCO, and in a bunch of other articles. Here's one:
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110325004911.htm

There have been a number of similar errors in the press.

They originally weren't even going to hospitalize all three of these guys, just run standard decontamination and send the two who seemed to have been directly exposed to the water to the special radiology hospital for an overnight checkup. But rightly, they reconsidered (probably after squalling from outside entities).

I don't think there has ever been an industrial accident before when persons were exposed to such highly radioactive water. It's very unusual at the least. Caution was certainly indicated.

The thing is, most of the radiation was sort of captured in the water. That is why the water reading was so high and the dosimeter readings were so low. But the question was whether the workers could possibly have absorbed more than their dosimeters showed. They were wearing respirators and protective gear, but they weren't all that well trained in their usage.

The clue that tells you that NHK just got this one wrong is the "less than originally" bit, because originally they published the dosimeter readings. Also, it is impossible to get 3 sieverts and not have very significant radiation sickness. Just literally impossible.

Probably the radiological hospital did a bunch of tests and came up with a real exposure of 3000 microsieverts, and NHK just got the unit wrong. Sievert is an effective dose - there are a number of ways in which the dosimeter reading could be higher than the real dose to the workers. For example, if the dosimeter got any water on it, even a drop, the reading would be much higher than the actual exposure.

There was nothing stupid about your concern at all given what you were reading. And you are not the first person to be baffled and amazed by the unit confusion that has been prevalent in this accident. Several times I have seen the units stated wrongly even in press conferences (or by translation).

[jschurchin]

21. Thank you very much.

It is very important to get the proper information. I don't jump to conclusions but I can only base my opinion on data that's available. Thanks again for the link and let's continue to keep up good thoughts for all the people of Japan.

[Yo_Mama]

20. Wait, I found something in a NISA report

The 2-3 sieverts was estimated for external direct exposure.

This is kind of a long document by now. It's external page 23, sort of at the bottom:

As for the workers conducting operations in Fukushima Dai-ichi NPS,
the total number of people who were at the level of exposure more than
100mSv becomes 19, as the three workers (All the people were the
subcontractor’s employees.) who were laying cables in the turbine
building of Unit 3 of the NPS were confirmed to be at the level of exposure
more than 170mSv on March 24.

For two out of the three workers, the attachment of radioactive
material on the skin of both legs was confirmed. As the two workers were
judged to have a possibility of beta ray burn, they were transferred to the
Fukushima Medical University Hospital, and after that, on March 25th,
all of the three workers arrived at the National Institute of Radiological
Sciences in the Chiba Prefecture. As the result of examination, the level
of exposure of their legs was estimated to be from 2 to 3 Sv. The level of
exposure of both legs and internal did not require medical treatment, but
they decided to monitor the progress of all three workers in the hospital.
All the three workers have been discharged from the hospital around the
noon on 28 March.

So that's where the number came from. The issue was, how much was absorbed? If they have no burns and they let them out, not very much.

But if their whole bodies had been exposed to 2-3 sieverts, their immune systems and mucous membranes would be affected. The would be SICK!!!

[jschurchin]

22. Thanks.

That's what I didn't understand. How could someone absorb the amount quoted in the NHK piece and walk out of hospital 4 days later. That made no sense.

[Yo_Mama]

23. It doesn't - very bad reporting and wrong units

Grays are the units used for absorbed radiation.

If you are looking at whole-body penetrating radiation, sieverts=grays. But ingesting changes the Gray units considerably (you could have outside exposure of microSieverts and much higher internal exposures if you ingested some types of radioactive particles).

The wild card here is that no one has ever been in this radioactive of a swimming pool before, so they had no idea how much radiation these workers really might have gotten. But they can tell by testing.

The initial plan to just decontaminate them and send them off didn't make sense!!! And I note nobody's released the calculated grays on the two with documented water contact. I did read some updates from the doctors that were reassuring; they said there had been minimal skin penetration.

You know what's even more special? Another three contract workers got doused with water when they were trying to change a fitting outside Reactor 3:

When removing the flange of pipes of Residual Heat Removal Seawater System outside the building of Unit 3, three subcontractor’s employees were wetted by the water remaining in the pipe. However, as the result of wiping the water off, no radioactive materials were attached to their bodies.