Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire

Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

TEPCO corrections

By now some of you on this list distribution have seen the following recent video released by Discovery News, attempting to correcting some of the false information in circulation regarding the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi site, and then it was shared around social media, including being posted to the ANS Facebook page:
http://news.discovery.com/tech/videos/fukushima-radiation-what-youve-heard-are-lies-video.htm

The video speaker makes the following statement at around the 2:30 mark:
"The bottom line is, the Fukushima disaster was not good.  It was pretty bad, but it was not the worst ever, and it severely affected people around the plant - killing a dozen right away, but should we be afraid here in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and other places?  We should not."

I believe this point of “killing a dozen right away” to be a false assertion.

So far I have this, verified by a TEPCO employee with direct knowledge of the Japan events: 2 workers died onsite during the accident (their bodies were found in the basement of the turbine building of the Unit 4 at the end of March, 2011), and 1 or 2 workers died 6 months or a year after the accident due to heart attack as well.

There was this BBC article released in 2011 which contained the TEPCO released information:

2 deaths during and possibly 2 after the event, does not equal a dozen people killed.

Please circulate this around as necessary, and correct or provide any additional information you may find.

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