Fukushima Nuclear Accident – What Really Happened?

This is a sample chapter from our recent book The Dark Horse – Nuclear Power and Climate Change (link to Amazon store). The book was published in 2020, and this article came out on the 10th anniversary of the Fukushima accident. It is our effort to counter the misinformation out there regarding the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and its victims that have been all but forgotten, and the Fukushima nuclear accident that took most of the attention, even though it’s direct public health impacts have been rather small.

Fukushima

The most recent, and our second-worst nuclear accident is likely the one which currently affects our public nuclear discussion the most. A giant tsunami, which resulted from a record-breaking earthquake near the eastern Japanese coast, destroyed the back-up power sources of Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power stations. As a result, three reactors that were online at the time were badly damaged and released large amounts of radioactive matter to the surroundings. As is often the case with large-scale accidents, the reasons for the accident can be traced back to actions that were or were not taken long before the tsunami rolled over the insufficient sea walls and hit the plant.

It is hard to imagine a more challenging place to build nuclear power plants than the Pacific coast of Japan. The whole region is geologically unstable and is under a constant threat of earthquakes and tsunamis. But there are 127 million people living in the densely populated and wealthy Japan, and the country has an enormous appetite for energy. When this is combined with almost non-existent fossil energy reserves and the dense population (making renewable energy sources challenging as well), most of that energy has been imported. Japan is the world’s largest LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) importer, second largest coal importer and third largest oil importer. Japan also remembers that during the Second World War, the allied forces cut most energy imports to the country with dire results.

If safety is given proper attention, it is not in itself that dangerous to build nuclear power plants even in geologically unstable areas such as Japan. The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission of the U.S.) pointed out risks regarding earthquakes and tsunamis back in 1991.^[i] The NRC study concluded that if a nuclear power plant lost its backup power during a massive power failure, the reactors could overheat.^[ii]

The Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station had six reactors with a total capacity of 4.7 gigawatts. All of them used sea water for cooling and had no independent cooling towers. Since the accident, this type of “extra” cooling towers have been built on the Loviisa nuclear power plant in Finland, for example. Since there is little chance for tsunamis in the Baltic sea, this is mainly in preparation for a major oil accident. The first of the Fukushima reactors was brought online in 1971. The Mark I containment building it had was criticized as too weak in the 1970s, so the designer, General Electric, made some design improvements for them in the 1980s. Their operation required that the decay heat from shut down reactors could be removed with active back-up cooling systems using water-circulating pumps. In the U.S. the NRC required that back-up generators would be placed in earthquake and tsunami-proof locations at least one hundred meters away from other buildings. It also required extra mobile generators to be placed nearby.

IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) had recognized NRC’s recommendations as reasonable already in the early 1990s and recommended implementing them for its member states. But IAEA does not have power over national nuclear safety agencies.

The Japanese government had ensured everyone, including itself, that Japanese reactors were already completely safe. This led to the perverse situation in which the government would lose face if, despite claims of safety, additional safety improvements were implemented. The country had at least five different organizations that had their hand at least somewhat in civilian nuclear power, but before 2001, none of them had the power to mandate safety improvements to be made on nuclear power plants. This multitude of overlapping officials and agencies also caused inner struggles and paralyzed quick decision-making. To top it all, NISA (Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency), which was the empowered agency in 2001, was not an independent actor as is the NRC. It was a subsidiary of the Japanese ministry of industry and commerce.

As the IAEA tsunami recommendation landed on their desk in the early 2000s, NISA had to compare it with another, cheaper recommendation seen as good enough by their parent organization. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the latter won on the basis that the nuclear safety commission had already reviewed how Japanese reactors would handle total power failure and the destruction of back-up generators. The study concluded that such an event was so unlikely that it was not worth the effort of preparation.

If Japan had followed the recommendations of the NRC 20 years earlier, the Fukushima accident would most likely have been avoided, or at least it would have been limited to a much smaller scale, similar to Three Mile Island. But even this negligence did not ensure that the accident would happen. The last straw was likely the order that evacuations from two-kilometre radius need be completed before any emergency pressure release could be done. This order was well-meaning, since pressure release like this always releases radioisotopes into the surroundings which would be higher than the limits normally allowed. But releasing the pressure could also prevent much larger damages and consequences.

Fukushima – What happened?

On March 11th in 2011, the seabed near the east coast of Japan shook like never before, during measured history at least.^[iii] During the following three minutes, the east coast of Japan moved over two metres closer to California and sank almost a metre. Global daytime shortened by 1.8 microseconds and the rotational axis shifted by roughly 25 centimetres (10 inches).

All Japanese reactors did what they were supposed to do in such a situation: they shut down immediately. In Fukushima Dai-Ichi, the three operating reactors also went to a shut down and back-up generators started up, running the water pumps for cooling as planned. One of the operators of reactor 1 thought that its isolation condenser^[iv] was working even too efficiently, as the temperature was dropping fast. He decided to bypass the automatic system and shut down this passive cooling mechanism. According to some sources^[v], this was one of the key mistakes that later led to the accident.

The earthquake, which happened on the sea floor around 100 km to the east of Miyagi prefecture, had sent a massive tsunami on its way. Around one hour after the earthquake (15:35), the tsunami, which was in some places as high as 15 metres, hit the east coast of Japan. It flooded and flushed whole towns to the sea and entered deep inland. In just a few minutes, 21,377 people died or went missing in the rubble and the sea. More than 6,000 people were injured, and hundreds of thousands were left homeless. Some 250,000 buildings were destroyed wholly or partially, and a further 750,000 buildings were damaged.^[vi]

Another nuclear power station in Fukushima prefecture, Fukushima Dai-ni, survived the tsunami with relatively small damages. In fact, it was used as shelter for local folks, because it is such a robust, safe structure. In Fukushima Dai-ichi, the destruction was much heavier. The tsunami ripped apart the diesel fuel tanks of the generators and flooded the turbine halls, which had the back-up generators running in their basements, producing the essential electricity to keep the cooling pumps and control rooms running. Only one of the generators, which was placed at a higher location and which was cooling reactors 5 and 6, survived intact. Both these reactors, along with number 4, were offline due to fuel loading.

Reactors 3 and 4 shifted from generators to battery power. Control rooms still had power, so the operator’s job was to make sure that all valves and electrical devices that had to do with cooling reactor 3 down were left in optimal position when the batteries would run out of power.

Reactors 1 and 2 had shared batteries, which had been flooded and had lost most of their charge. They were emptied in a few minutes, and total darkness took over the reactor building and the control rooms. There was no way to control emergency cooling any more, and it was impossible to know how much water was left in the reactor pressure vessel. When the accident occurred, there had been 4.5 metres of cooling water mixed with steam above the fuel assemblies. If the fuel assemblies were to surface above the water level so early after the shutdown, they would overheat and eventually melt.

Reactors 1, 2 and 3, which were running when the accident happened, were the most immediate threat. Of these, reactor 1 was the biggest worry, as its fuel had been in the reactor the longest, which meant that it would also produce the most decay heat. In addition, its isolation condenser had been manually switched off a few minutes earlier. Reactor 2 had its emergency cooling (RCIC) on, so that would help at least for some time. Back-up power to reactor 3 had been cut off, but it still had batteries feeding power to the most critical systems.^[vii] TEPCO, the operator, notified the Japanese government that reactor 1 had an emergency.

The cooling water circulating in reactors 2 and 3 kept getting hotter, and at some point it would boil and turn to steam. All electrical connections between the reactors had been destroyed. All roads leading to the site had been flooded and were filled with debris, collapsed buildings and people running away, so it was hard to get to the site. Big enough generators were too heavy for helicopters. Electrical cables needed to be hooked up to the reactor buildings but moving cables 10 cm (4 inches) thick and weighing a ton amidst fallen buildings and rubble was not easy to do with manpower only.

Eventually, the operators working with flashlights managed to get some of the emergency cooling systems back online, at least partly. Fire trucks were driven beside the reactor buildings, and by hooking up their hoses to the emergency cooling system, the pressure increased, and more water was pumped to the reactor pressure vessels. But the pumps in the fire trucks were not strong enough to push much water into the over-pressurized vessels which were getting hotter. There would need to be a pressure release, which would also release radioactivity to the surroundings.

Reactor 1 was completely dark, so it was impossible to get any information on what was going on in the reactor. A few hours after the tsunami (8:49 PM), operators managed to get some electricity back to the control rooms of reactors 1 and 2. The indicators showed that the situation in reactor 1 was serious, and the operators notified the local authorities that evacuation plans must be started immediately as there might be need for emergency pressure release directly to the atmosphere. This was only done as a precaution, and preparations for the pressure release were not started.

A bit later, at 9:30 PM, the prime minister of Japan announced that the evacuation zone was to be expanded from two to three kilometres, which effectively doubled the number of people that needed to be evacuated. In hindsight, this was a serious mistake, as this new plan was not properly communicated to all local officials due to the general chaos.

Around midnight, the radiation levels in reactor 1 rose as a sign that the water level had fallen to the level of the fuel assemblies and preparations for the emergency pressure release were finally started. Releasing pressure without electricity was something that had not been practiced, so the preparations proceeded slowly.

What happened inside reactor 1 during this time? In three hours, the cooling water had boiled away. An hour and a half later the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods had become so hot that steam dissociated into hydrogen and oxygen. The fuel started to melt, and the pressure inside the reactor vessel increased rapidly. Without pressure release valves (which needed electricity), this pressure was hard to release. The containment vessel, made of inch-thick steel, ruptured and the hydrogen along with some radioactive fission products inside the reactor leaked into the reactor building. If passive hydrogen removal systems – a safety feature required in many countries – had been installed to the reactor building, this hydrogen would have been burned back into water, and nothing more serious would probably have happened. These systems were not a requirement in Japan, and had not been installed, so the reactor building started to turn into a bomb, just waiting for a spark.

The preparations for the pressure release continued through the night and morning, as did the evacuations which needed to be finished before permission for the pressure release would be granted. Damage inside the reactors kept getting worse, and around 5 AM radiation detectors noticed that radioactivity was leaking from the reactor buildings. Evacuation was still underway. Finally, around 9 AM, information was received that the evacuations had been finished. One of the operators went into the reactor building to manually open the pressure release valve. He only had time to open it partially when his dosimeter told him that the maximum allowed dose of 100 mSv had been received and he had to return. This limit was increased to 250 mSv a few days later, but then it was too late. At 10:40 AM pressure was finally released, but it was much too late.

At 15:36, with the pressure release still underway, reactor 1 ran out of time. A huge hydrogen explosion blew the top of the reactor building off, sending debris and pieces high into the air and around the compound. This debris broke the power connection, which had been established just a few minutes earlier, between the reactor buildings and the newly arrived high-voltage generators. The explosion also spread the radioactive fission products that had been gathering in the reactor building all over the area, slowing down any further repairs. Five emergency workers were injured. 

On the next day, 13^th March, the emergency cooling of reactor 3 finally stopped. It had been operating on the steam produced by the decay heat from the reactor, but eventually the pressure had decreased too much. The preparations for emergency pressure release were started, but it was already too late. A couple hours later, the fuel started melting and the red-hot zirconium started splitting steam into hydrogen and oxygen. A fire truck arrived a few hours later and started to pump seawater into the reactor, and by some miracle, the pressure was lowered by releasing some steam and gases to the atmosphere, along with radioactive elements. But the designers of the pressure release systems had forgotten the possible hydrogen problem. A day later at 11:01 AM, there was an explosion in reactor 3 building.

Just an hour later, 70 hours after power was cut, the emergency cooling of reactor 2 overheated and the turbine which had been powering it stopped. The water boiled away, and in under four hours the fuel started melting and flowing to the bottom of the reactor vessel. Hydrogen started forming there as well, but someone had opened a panel on the wall to let the hydrogen and lighter radioactive elements out from the reactor building.

Reactor 4 had been in shut-down during the accident, so there was no immediate danger even though there was no power. But it shared a ventilation duct with reactor 3, and with no electricity available, the valves had been left open. Part of the hydrogen forming in reactor 3 found its way to the reactor 4 building and started gathering there, waiting for a spark. On 15^th March, to everyone’s surprise, there was an explosion in reactor 4 building. The reason for it was confirmed only six months later, and so fear and rumours spread far and wide that the spent fuel that had been removed from the reactor had overheated and was the cause for the explosion.

All three of the operating reactors had melted down. Yet nobody died in this nuclear accident. Further studies by WHO and UNSCEAR have concluded that it is unlikely that anyone involved in the emergency work would die prematurely due to the radiation doses they received. Reactor 4 was basically still fixable, but it would be hard and expensive due to the radioactivity in the area. Reactors 5 and 6 did not suffer damages.

Significant amounts of radioactive elements were released to the surroundings during those few days. Mainly this consisted of iodine-131 and isotopes of cesium. Some radioactive isotopes also dissolved into the overflowing cooling water, and some of these ended up leaking into the Pacific Ocean. Small leaks have continued for a long time. None of these leaks will have significant health impacts or impacts on the environment.

If preparations for the emergency pressure release had been started right after operators realized that it might be needed (around 9 PM on 11^th March), and if the pressure release had been started as soon as it was possible, resulting damages might have been much less. Hydrogen explosions could have been avoided, and the damages could have been limited to the reactors themselves being destroyed. Some radioactivity would have been released with the pressurized steam, but it would have been a small fraction of what was released.

Reasons for the accident have also been found in the actions of TEPCO (the operator) and nuclear safety officials before the accident. Many recommended safety improvements had been ignored, as had the possibility of an earthquake and tsunami of this magnitude. Proper preparations would likely have prevented the whole nuclear accident from happening. Onagawa nuclear power station, which was much closer to the centre of the earthquake, survived almost without any damages, and Fukushima Dai-ni, just 10 km away from Fukushima Dai-ichi, was also spared from serious problems.

Fukushima in the media

Rumours and conspiracy theories still abound that the true scale of the accident was hidden from the public by officials and the nuclear industry.^[viii] Even a cursory glance at the news articles from that time proves the opposite. A nuclear accident in which nobody died got far more coverage than did the tsunami and its more than 20,000 victims. The global media, for the most part, forgot journalism and went after click-bait headlines, fearmongering and very poor fact-checking. One example of this is the news that started circulating about a year after the accident. We were told about the supposedly enormous amounts of radioactivity leaking into the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima. In fact, this was 300 tons of water that was slightly contaminated with radioactive tritium, totalling 20-40 terabecquerel (trillion becquerel).

Practically none of the articles brought that seemingly huge amount of radioactivity into context, and people were horrified. Had they done journalism instead of click-baiting, the readers would have learned that this “enormous release” was equivalent to 20-40 tritium-based self-illuminating EXIT-signs. The rumour mill kept on growing. Today, there are articles available that give straight citations saying 300 tons of water is leaking each day (instead of one year).^[ix] The tritium in the water has also somehow turned into caesium and strontium along the way, which is a fundamental shift as tritium is not actually dangerous.^[x]

Another news article that started circulating in spring of 2014 reported that the Fukushima accident was connected with thyroid cancers found in children.^[xi] Signs of tumours were found after careful screenings of children in the area, which anti-nuclear activists saw as a sign that the accident caused a significant increase in thyroid cancer cases.

In truth, this was not at all what was found. Small tumours in thyroid glands are quite common, and most of them are not dangerous or aggressive and will go away on their own. Some estimate that perhaps a third of us has such a tumour in us any given day. This means that whenever a population is screened for signs of tumours, we will find plenty. The problem with the screening is when to count a shadow found in the scan as a tumour and when not. In the study in question, much smaller signs were counted as tumours than normally. With this method and criteria, any given population would show a significant increase in tumours.

In addition, it takes time for the tumours to grow and start showing up. If thyroid cancers were to increase due to the accident, they would not show up so soon anyway. The study was done merely to establish a baseline for further reference.^[xii]  Experts have criticized the study in the medical journal The Lancet for using too small a control group, saying this method of counting smaller signs as tumour will lead to unnecessary treatments and anxiety for people, when harmless tumours that would likely go away on their own are removed surgically.^[xiii]

Every mid-March we also get a steady stream of stories that tell us ”something is still ticking in Fukushima.” Many reporters have visited the Fukushima evacuation area with Geiger counters, and found that indeed, 0.4 microsieverts (or so) of radiation is present in some homes of elder people who would love to move back but are not allowed by the government. The context is usually missing. The said level of radiation (found in a story by Helsingin Sanomat, the biggest newspaper in Scandinavia^[xiv]) is just a bit higher than is the normal background level in Finland. Someone living in Pispala gets a dose ten times larger.

If the nuclear radiation limits enforced by the Japanese government, which are based on international recommendations, were applied to Finland, most of the country would need to be evacuated immediately. This tells us something about the stringency of radiation limits we use around the world. It also tells us why cleaning up Fukushima is bound to cost tremendously and unnecessarily: they are cleaning the place to be less radioactive than most of Finland is naturally. While people are shocked about these costs, they silently accept the tremendous health costs that burning fossil fuels in Japan, due to the closures of their reactor fleet, will cause there.

Health impacts of Fukushima

The first peer-reviewed study on the Fukushima health effects was done by professor John Ten Hoeve and professor Mark Z. Jacobson from Stanford University.^[xv] The study was based mainly on theoretical models, and it found that the radiation would cause around 130 extra cancer fatalities in the next 40 years, around the world. This amount is too small to be seen in health statistics. The study used the LNT model in the non-recommended way, which likely overestimates the amount of fatalities, since it assumes that even tiny doses of radiation will cause cancer at the population level. Mark Jacobson is commonly known to be very anti-nuclear, and he is also a rather shameless booster for 100% renewable energy systems. It is therefore slightly surprising to find the article stating that the evacuation likely caused more harm to health than the radiation would have, had the people stayed at home. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) did a more comprehensive hands-on study on the effects of Fukushima. It concluded that it might increase the statistical risk for cancer slightly, but the increase will be so small as to be impossible to detect. ^[xvi] The media again forgot journalism and went after the headlines. The headlines told us that the risk for small girls to get thyroid cancer went up by as much as 70 percent. Behind the outrage and shock caused by this sort of headline, nobody paid much attention to the meaning when placed in proper context. First, it only applied to a small group that got the largest amount of radiation. Second, in practice it meant that the lifetime risk of these girls getting thyroid cancer went from 0.75 percent to 1.25 percent (an increase of 70 percent, or 0.5 percentage points).^[xvii]

The report by UNSCEAR came to similar conclusions. They estimate that 167 emergency workers received radiation doses that will slightly increase their lifetime risk of developing cancer. When we acknowledge that statistically 60 of them will get cancer for other reasons anyway, and the fact that their health will likely be closely monitored for the rest of their lives because of the Fukushima accident, it might be that their actual risk of dying of cancer has gone down. This is because the fact that any cancer is much more treatable if it is noticed at an early phase.

There is also a group of people that think conspiracy is the most logical explanation for the discrepancy between the expert statements and peer-reviewed studies and their own anti-nuclear preconceptions. The most common of these conspiracy theories goes roughly as follows: WHO and IAEA have signed a contract that forbids WHO from publishing anything that the IAEA does not want them to.^[xviii] So whenever WHO publishes something that anti-nuclear advocates disagree with, they cry conspiracy. Is there such a contract? Of course not. The ”proof” of this conspiracy is a passage, taken completely out of context, which says:

“Whenever either organization proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement.”

As is often the method of conspiracy theorists, the whole contract, or the context, is ignored. Even a glance at the paragraph just above the one quoted would destroy the theory. It says basically that the IAEA has no power to order WHO to do or say (or leave out) anything that would hinder its mission.^[xix] Indeed, such a clause as cited above is quite common between international organizations that have some overlapping interests and areas of expertise. Its main purpose is to ensure that one organization does not publish data or results it has obtained from another organization without making sure the data and results are accurate and up to date. WHO has also made a statement back in 2001, where it specifically addresses this worry and says it is unfounded. ^[xx]

But if there are such conspiracies of hiding real data and making up new results, why has nobody leaked these from the WHO? Publicity and fame would have been guaranteed. And why has all other peer-reviewed research on the matter – even that done by rather anti-nuclear researchers – achieved a similar result? Are they also in on the alleged WHO-IAEA conspiracy?

The initial estimates of the amount of radionuclides released from the accident varied greatly. Nobody knew if the spent fuel pools were intact (they were) and nobody knew the extent of meltdown and other damage sustained in each reactor, and how much radioactive material might be leaking.^[xxi] The largest initial estimates by some were more than seven times larger, at 17,846 terabecquerels, PBq) than was the total amount present in reactors 1-3 (2,453 PBq), and only a part of this total amount was released.

TEPCO has since estimated that around 500 PBq of iodine-131, 10 PBq of caesium-137 and 10 PBq of caesium-134 were released to the atmosphere. Measured as “iodine-131 equivalent”, they totalled at 500 + 400 + 40 = 940 PBq. A total of 169 PBq of iodine-131 equivalent of radioactive elements leaked to the Pacific Ocean in addition to 500 PBq of the mostly harmless xenon-133. For comparison, Chernobyl leaked a total of 5,200 PBq of iodine-131 equivalent.

With all the outrage about the radioactivity leaking to the Pacific Ocean, the actual amount is good to put in context.^[xxii]

Sources of radioactivity in the oceans
Nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s	950 PBq
Chernobyl	100 PBq
Fukushima total	14–90 PBq
Biggest natural sources of radioactivity in oceans
Uranium-238	37,000 PBq
Potassium-40	15,000,000 PBq

It is a fact that the Fukushima accident has demanded and will keep demanding more victims. At least 1,600 have died directly and indirectly because of the evacuation. Some have committed suicide, some have died of drug abuse, and some elderly and sick have died because of the strain and complications involved in the evacuation itself. The damages due to anxiety, drugs and alcoholism and mental problems will keep growing for decades to come.

Fukushima is an enormous tragedy which should never have happened, but not for the reasons we often think. People living in the evacuation area lost their homes, and many did so permanently, for one reason or another. The local communities will likely never be the same, as even with reasonably low radiation levels, many people will be wondering if it is worth moving back, and if there is a community to which they can return. Will there be jobs, where will old friends and neighbours be, will the social network exist anymore, and how can it be built again?

From this perspective, the risks associated with nuclear are rather unique in comparison with most other energy sources. The risks and damages due to accidents hit whole communities. Even if coal kills hundreds, even thousands of times more people per unit of energy produced, coal is often a silent killer that can only be seen in statistics – although mining accidents can and do affect whole communities. Nuclear accidents and the evacuations they cause can destroy whole communities, even if the people will go on living somewhere else. Another similar community-breaking energy source is hydropower, which has literally wiped out whole towns and villages, and seen millions moved from their communities to make way for enormous hydro dam projects.

Both Fukushima and Chernobyl raise an important question that rarely gets asked and even less frequently answered. We know by now that the psychological health damages far exceed those caused by radiation from nuclear accidents. And we know that those damages are largely due to fear, social stigma and anxiety. These, in turn, are born of nuclear regulation that fails to acknowledge the larger public health while concentrating on minimizing the radiation exposure at any cost, and the anti-nuclear campaigning that often uses misinformation, fear and doubt as their tools for collecting donations to fund their activities. Can these campaigners somehow be held to account for the psychological damage they cause by their actions, at least morally and ethically if not legally? What about the responsibility of the nuclear industry regulators, and laws that both effectively prevent us from building nuclear (which is then replaced with other more harmful energy production) and fail to recognize the detrimental effects these laws and regulations can have on overall public health?

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^[i] See Corrice (2012). Fukushima: The First Five Days. The text here is largely based on this book, which is based on the original logs.

^[ii] NUREG-1150, NRC (1991). http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1150/

^[iii] The book Atomic Accidents offers a thorough tour of the Fukushima accident. This chapter is based on that and on the wikipedia article on the accident.

^[iv] Isolation condenser had been installed on the oldest reactor #1.

^[v] Mahaffey, James (2014-02-04). Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima (Kindle Locations 7451-7452). Pegasus Books. Kindle Edition.

^[vi] Numbers are from UNSCEAR 2013 Report Volume I: Report to the General Assembly, Scientific Annex A: Levels and effects of radiation exposure due to the nuclear accident after the 2011 great east-Japan earthquake and tsunami, page 25. http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2013/13-85418_Report_2013_Annex_A.pdf

^[vii] Numbers are from UNSCEAR 2013 Report Volume I: Report to the General Assembly, Scientific Annex A: Levels and effects of radiation exposure due to the nuclear accident after the 2011 east-Japan earthquake and tsunami, page 33. http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2013/13-85418_Report_2013_Annex_A.pdf

^[viii] There are even books on this, such as the one from a Greenpeace-activist, nutrition therapist Kimberly Roberson’s Silence Deafening, Fukushima Fallout … A Mother’s Response.

^[ix] Fukushima leaking radioactive water for ‘2 years, 300 tons flowing into Pacific daily’, RT (2013). http://rt.com/news/japan-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-164/.

^[x] New Radioactive Water Leak Found at Fukushima Plant, Nation of Change (2014). http://tinyurl.com/onwunt4. Read 23rd March 2020.

^[xi] http://ecowatch.com/2014/06/14/fukushima-children-dying/. Read 23rd March 2020.

^[xii] Why the Cancer Cases in Fukushima Aren’t Likely Linked to the Nuclear Disaster, National Geographic (2014). http://tinyurl.com/nj55csx. Read 23rd March 2020.

^[xiii] Shibuya, K., Gilmour, S., Oshima, A. (2014). Time to reconsider thyroid cancer screening in Fukushima. The Lancet 383(9932), 1883-1884. http://tinyurl.com/jy2xntr

^[xiv] Fukushima tikittää yhä uhkaavasti, HS (2013). https://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000002691354.html. In Finnish.

^[xv] Worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, DOI: 10.1039/c2ee22019a http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/TenHoeveEES12.pdf

^[xvi] World Health Organization weighs in on Fukushima, Nature News Blog (2012). http://tinyurl.com/jthbt7l

^[xvii] Global report on Fukushima nuclear accident details health risks, WHO (2013). http://tinyurl.com/pf5dcq8

^[xviii] The contract can be read at Wikisource.org: http://tinyurl.com/qhl3mqu. Read 23rd March 2020.

^[xix] See http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/WHO-IAEA_conspiracy

^[xx] http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/pub_meet/statement-iaea/en/. Read 23rd March 2020.

^[xxi] http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=11668. Read 23rd March 2020.

^[xxii] Buesseler, Ken O. (2014). Fukushima and ocean radioactivity. Oceanography 27(1):92-105. Read here: http://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/27-1_buesseler.pdf