The Making of a Radiation Panic: Overreaction to Fukushima Will Prove Costly
One year after Fukushima, independent scientists working for the UN say bluntly that irrational fears of radiation poisoning will cause far more harm than the radiation itself. Not a single individual from the Japanese public received a dangerous dose, according to the early and informal analyses by the scientists. (Conspiracy theories cannot survive against the constant independent radiation measurements uploaded on Twitter.) Even the 70 altruistic plant workers who stayed behind gained an additional cancer risk of just 0.002% -- effectively zero in a country where four out of ten people get cancer
The insane reaction to the problems at Fukushima are going to haunt Japan for a very long time. The country cannot afford to go without the power, and it cannot afford to make the switch to another form of power:
Bending to a panicked public, Japan shut down its nuclear plants, and has had to spend the eye-popping sum of $100 million more every day to import and burn fossil fuels. Cancer-causing pollution fumes are up, as are greenhouse gases (four percent despite reduced overall energy use, according to a Breakthrough analysis). The turn back to fossil energy has turned Japan's decades-long trade surplus into a trade deficit. Higher energy costs exacerbate the nation's ability to deal with its $12 trillion debt, which at 212% of its GDP is far higher than even that of Greece (165%) or Italy (128%).
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