Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster had an impact on every single person on Earth, according to scientists. The meltdown hit everyone on the planet with a dose of radiation, but fortunately, not enough to have a real impact.
The disaster dosed everyone on Earth with radiation equivalent to that of a single x-ray, according to the first global survey of the radiation’s effect. In other words, a negligible amount.
“We don’t need to worry,” said Nikolas Evangeliou, according to New Scientist. He is part of the team at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research that conducted the survey.
The average person was dosed with 0.5 millisieverts of radiation from the accident. For those in the immediate vicinity of Fukushima, the amount was much higher, at about one to five millisieverts. It takes about 1000 millisieverts to cause radiation sickness. The World Nuclear Association holds that no deaths or cases of radiation sickness were caused by the accident.
“More than 80 percent of the radiation was deposited in the ocean and poles, so I think the global population got the least exposure,” he said. “What I found was that we got one extra x-ray each.”

For comparison, the average American receives about 6.2 millisieverts per year, according to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That radiation comes partly from natural background radiation, or sources naturally occurring on earth like radon in the air and cosmic rays. The other half comes from man-made sources like medical procedures and industrial sources.
The team noted that while the effect on humans was minimal, plants and animals were likely impacted much more significantly. Bird populations in areas around Fukushima showed a decline between 2011 and 2014. The team also said the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear accident in history, had a far worse impact on humans because the fallout was larger and hit areas that were much more populated.
While the amount of radiation received by the overall population was negligible, that’s not to say the disaster didn’t have direct effects on health. There have been ongoing disputes over whether increased cases of thyroid cancer were a direct result of radiation or just a result of overdiagnosis. Thyroid cancer is, however, known to be caused in some cases by radioactive iodine released during nuclear accidents like the one at Fukushima.
“The evidence suggests that the great majority and perhaps all of the cases discovered so far are not due to radiation,” said Dillwyn Williams, a thyroid cancer specialist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, according to the journal Science.
The prefectural government of Fukushima also denied the cases are linked to radiation. But a support group for children with thyroid cancer contends otherwise. The 3.11 Children’s Fund for Thyroid Cancer discovered after auditing medical bills that a 4-year-old had a thyroid operation at a state-run university despite the university saying it had never treated a person under five for thyroid cancer
In any case, Fukushima and Japan as a whole are still dealing with the after-effects of the disaster. The company responsible for decommissioning the plant, known as Tepco, said that while they’ve made significant progress, the multibillion-dollar process could likely take decades.
“We have caused it,” Daisuke Hirose, a spokesperson for Tepco, told the Japan Times in April. “We have to make every effort to create a place to which people want to return.”



Apneaman on Fri, 12th May 2017 12:33 pm
Tunnel collapses at Hanford nuclear waste site in Washington state
“Hundreds of workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford nuclear site in Washington state had to “take cover” Tuesday morning after the collapse of 20-foot-long portion of a tunnel used to store contaminated radioactive materials.
The Energy Department said it activated its emergency operations protocol after reports of a “cave-in” at the 200 East Area in Hanford, a sprawling complex about 200 miles from Seattle where the government has been working to clean up radioactive materials left over from the country’s nuclear weapons program.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/05/09/tunnel-collapses-at-hanford-nuclear-waste-site-in-washington-state-reports-say/?utm_term=.91c5c55915aa
Industrial civilization
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNtjksCUMIA
penury on Fri, 12th May 2017 4:16 pm
As long as you can average the dose to include ALL people we are fine. Rememer when the bomb goes off, if you are with acr5owd you will on average be much better off.
Anonymouse on Fri, 12th May 2017 5:18 pm
I dont know about IB and the experts they consulted, but I feel a single accident in Japan that managed to give all 7+ billion of us the ~ the a chest x-ray, is hardly a ‘negligible’ achievement. I think it needs an upgrade to ‘significant’ myself, but I didnt write this bit so….
Hubert on Fri, 12th May 2017 5:21 pm
This will never end. This is the greatest crime again man and nature in human history.
onlooker on Fri, 12th May 2017 5:25 pm
As always the slime balls cover the full extent of the disaster
Kenz300 on Sat, 13th May 2017 12:47 am
Nuclear energy — too costly and too dangerous
They once said it “would be too cheap to meter” What a lie.
Who will pay to store “SAFELY” all the worlds nuclear waste FOREVER?
Go Speed Racer on Sat, 13th May 2017 1:56 am
Why people bitching about Fukushima.
Tuna fish cans double as night lights nowadays.
No more stumbles in the kitchen at night.
makati1 on Sat, 13th May 2017 2:48 am
GSR, that is almost funny. lol
twocats on Sat, 13th May 2017 12:00 pm
where it whitewashes the event is the ongoing meltdown and untold becquerels into the environment. It might not be quite as bad as I thought it would be, but still, we are only 10 years into the catastrophe and so its hard to tell if there will be an uptick in cancers on West Coast of US, etc. a terrible way to do population control.
Jim Hopf on Sat, 13th May 2017 1:10 pm
So, the title says that everyone on earth was “affected”. Then the first sentence says that while everyone got some dose, it’s far to small to have any impact. I dunno, perhaps other people have a different definition of the word “affected”. Based on what the first sentence said, it appears that nobody was affected by the accident.
Anyone with any scientific background knows that the fact that the dose was not literally zero, for anyone, is meaningless. They understand the concept of “insignificant”, and that nothing is ever truly zero. But hey, it makes for a catchy, provocative title!
The real truth is that expert consensus is that this “disaster” caused no deaths and will never have any measurable public health impact, even in the local area.
Meanwhile, fossil power generation (like that which Japan is now indefensibly using in place of nuclear) causes several hundred thousand deaths *annually* and is a leading cause of global warming.
The undue level of concern about tiny nuclear events/releases, combined with an inexplicable lack of concern about the infinitely greater impacts of fossil fuels, demonstrated by everyone posting here, disgusts me.
Go Speed Racer on Sat, 13th May 2017 10:17 pm
Hi Makita, trying hard.
Nobody notices me anymore.
Hey what does BMW stand for?
Brings Me Women.
Breaks Most Wrenches.
Bavarian Murder Weapon.
Born Moderately Wealthy.
Catalyzt on Sun, 14th May 2017 12:40 am
Oh, man, will we ever stop with absurd chest x-ray comparison? The blather on this topic is relentless; good science is harder to do, more expensive, and nearly absent.
The difference between an INTERNAL emitter– one you consume or breathe discharged into air or water from a meltdown– and an EXTERNAL emitter like Radon is well known to anyone who has taken a decent high school physics course.
I guess if you repeat false equivalencies again and again, people eventually start believing them.