Fukushima – Nothing to fear but fear itself

It has been 10 years since a huge earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed thousands of Japanese. However, the focus was on the nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, where a number of reactors melted down. In the collective memory, Fukushima is remembered as a nuclear disaster, rather than a natural disaster, although no one died from radioactive radiation. So what exactly are proportions?

On March 11, 2011, Japan was hit by the fourth-largest earthquake in world history. The earthquake, which was 9.1 on the Richter scale, was so powerful that the main island of Honshū was moved 2.4 meters to the east. When the earth stood still again, a huge tidal wave followed. In some areas, the water reached a height of up to 40 meters, and it continued 10 kilometers inland.

It was an almost unimaginable natural disaster, but in the media, the focus was elsewhere: on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The plant’s operating reactors shut down automatically and survived the huge earthquake. The plant was prepared for an earthquake of 8.0 on the Richter scale – this was 45 times more powerful.

When the water came, problems arose. The emergency power generators were flooded and, as a result, it was not possible to cool down the reactors sufficiently. The countdown to the accident had begun. A united world held its breath in horror as the hydrogen explosions were followed on live television.

Figure 1: For rolling cameras, the world watched in horror as reactors 1, 2, and 3 melted down

and hydrogen explosions blew the roofs off the reactor buildings. Photo: Reuters.

How much of Japan would now turn into a radioactive wasteland? According to the media’s doomsday headlines and the scary images we were all presented with, things looked really bleak for the Japanese people. Science does not support the dramatic narrative we remember from the media.

Today, there is more radioactive in City Hall Square in Copenhagen than there is in Fukushima City. No one died from radiation, and neither fish nor fruit mutated. But how can this now be reconciled with the horrific images we saw 10 years ago and with the story of the worst possible nuclear accident since Chernobyl?

Now, 10 years later, stories are still pouring out from Fukushima, but what is fact and what is fiction? What were the consequences of the accident in Japan and the rest of the world? Together we review facts and proportions, the wave of misinformation, and finally its consequences.

Part 1: Facts and proportions

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) possesses the world’s largest interdisciplinary expertise in the field. UNSCEAR concludes unequivocally that no one died from radiation in the Fukushima accident, as relatively little radiation escaped from the nuclear power plant.

UNSCEAR writes:

“No radiation-related deaths or acute diseases have been observed among the workers and general public exposed to radiation from the accident”.

Figure 2: Media headlines were of no help to a sorely tried population.

This conclusion is in stark contrast to the media headlines surrounding the accident:

But how much radiation were the residents of the area actually exposed to? For us to understand that, we need a crash course in radiation.

The radiation dose is given in the unit Sievert (Sv). It takes into account the type of radiation and the type of tissue exposed to radiation. A Sievert is an expression of the biological effect of radiation in tissues.

The average radiation to which we are all exposed is about 2.4 mSv (millisievert) per year. Eating a banana gives a dose of 0.0001 mSv, a flight across the Atlantic gives 0.08 mSv, and a CT scan of the spine gives a dose of about 10 mSv. We need to get up to about 100 mSv before we can observe the negative health effects of radiation.

We now return to the residents of Fukushima. One study found that the individual dose for 423,394 residents in the first 4 months after the accident was distributed as follows: 62.0% under 1 mSv, 94.0% under 2 mSv, and 99.4% under 3 mSv.

Figure 3 shows the total amount of radiation, i.e. the amount of radiation to which the residents were exposed, added to the annual amount of radiation from natural sources.

Figure 3: Total amount of radiation the residents were exposed to compared to a CT scan and the amount needed before negative effects of radiation can be observed.

The levels of radiation they were exposed to were so low that we will not see any negative health effects as a result of the radiation.

About the radiation, UNSCEAR writes:

”The doses to the general public, both those incurred during the first year and estimated for their lifetimes, are generally low or very low. No discernible increased incidence of radiation-related health effects are expected among exposed members of the public or their descendants”

Figure 4 shows that the radiation level immediately after the accident in Fukushima City was 2.74 μSv/h (microsievert per hour) and decreased rapidly thereafter. In comparison, radiation levels on Guarapari Beach in Brazil, a popular tourist destination, are as high as 52.64 μSv/h in some places. It is about 19 times higher. The reason for this is that the beach is rich in the mineral monazite, which contains uranium and thorium.

Figure 4: The radiation level immediately after the accident in Fukushima City was 2.74 μSv/h, and it decreased rapidly thereafter.

In certain parts of the world, the level of background radiation is very high. In Ramsar in Iran, the level is in areas up to 260 mSv per year (29.7 μSv/h). This is over 10 times higher than the radiation level in Fukushima City immediately after the accident. It is also well above the 100 mSv, which is generally said to increase the likelihood of getting cancer, but people have lived here for many generations who have not had adverse health effects from the radiation ^[13],^[14]^.

The low level of radiation in Fukushima was underlined by a group of French students who, on a study trip from Paris to Fukushima, measured the radiation with dosimeters throughout their journey ^[15].

Figure 5 shows the result of their measurements. Where are the greatest fluctuations in the level of radiation observed?

Figure 5: The first major fluctuation in radiation levels is the security check at Charles De Gaulles airport. The next thing that blows the scale is the flight to Japan. Next up are security checks at the French embassy in Tokyo, after which the tour goes to Iwaki, Tomioka, Miyakoji, Aizu, and Kunimi in Fukushima Prefecture. The levels of radiation are seen to be roughly identical in Paris and in most of Fukushima.

As mentioned earlier, there are inhabited areas of the world where the level of radiation is higher than around Fukushima. For example, at City Hall Square in Copenhagen: The Japanese government’s live measurements from the city of Fukushima show a radiation level of 0.05 μSv/h (measured on February 6, 2021). In comparison, the level at City Hall Square in Copenhagen is 0.09 μSv/h (measured on 4 February 2021). The level is almost twice as high in Copenhagen as seen in Figure 6.

Figure 6: The radiation level in Fukushima City is 0.05 μSv/h ^[16]. At Rådhuspladsen in Copenhagen, it is 0.09 μSv/h (photo and measurement: Mads Glahder).

The deadly fear

Despite the small amount of radiation emitted by the Fukushima accident, measures were nevertheless taken which, unlike radiation, cost human lives, many thousands of lives: we take it chronologically.

First, politicians launched a hasty evacuation in a country devastated by the natural disaster. The evacuation claimed the lives of over 2000 people ^[17]. Infrastructure and roads were destroyed, and the few passable thoroughfares were packed to the brim with people fleeing. Elderly, sick, bedridden and severely requiring treatment were hastily evacuated from hospitals and transported away in buses. Without access to food, water, life-saving medical treatment, or help from medical workers who had fled. Many died of stress, cold, and thirst, and a large proportion of those who reached the evaluation centers alive subsequently died due to inadequate resettlement ^[18]^.

In the Japanese government’s defense, it must be said that the extent of the accident was not initially clear why the evacuation was carried out. But the execution was beneath all criticism. Had the medical staff and patients remained on site, and had they simply closed the doors and windows, they could have waited for an evacuation to take place in good order. If necessary.

But not only the evacuation cost human lives. After the accident, Japan shut down all of its 54 reactors, causing imports of coal, oil, and gas to increase dramatically. The burning of fossil fuels created deadly air pollution that killed 23,300 people. The price of electricity skyrocketed, and high electricity prices, cold winters, and increased air pollution are now estimated to have more lives in their consciences than the earthquake and tsunami combined ^[19]^.

The number and cause of death are shown in Figure 7 and broken down as follows:

Radiation: 0 ^[20]^.
Unnecessary extended evacuation: 2,259 ^[21]^.
Due to high electricity prices: 2,880 (2011-2020) ^[22].
The earthquake and tsunami: about 20,000 ^[23].
Increased air pollution due to burning fossil fuels: 23,300 (2011-2017) ^[24]^.

Figure 7: Number and cause of deaths.

Radiation rarely kills, but the fear of radiation can kill an incredible number of people. The irrational fear of radiation we need to address, as radiophobia is the real big killer ^[25]^.

New research indicates that it was not necessary to evacuate anyone from the area. A resident of the most contaminated areas of Fukushima Prefecture, if they had remained there, would have a life expectancy loss as a result of the accident that is less than that of a London resident due to air pollution ^[26].

LNT – the model that should protect us

But if the release of radioactivity was relatively limited, why were more than 100,000 people evacuated? The answer lies in an irrational fear of radiation based on the speculative LNT model (Linear No-Threshold model). It assumes that even extremely small amounts of radiation are harmful. This is despite the fact that man has always been surrounded by small amounts of radiation by nature, and has therefore achieved natural protection against small radiation doses.

The LNT model says that it is the total amount of radiation, rather than the intensity of radiation, that is harmful – it sounds convoluted, so think of it with Panodiles rather than radiation:

The LNT model assumes that eating one Panodil every day for 100 days is just as harmful as eating 100 Panodiles in one day. Our liver can easily handle 1 Panodil a day, even though it kills a few liver cells. The damage is so small that the liver can repair itself. 100 Panodiles, on the other hand, destroy so many cells at once that the liver cannot repair the damage again.

The LNT model ignores the fact that the body has a self-protective and self-repairing biological response to radiation that is so effective that small doses of radiation are as harmless as eating a Panodil every now and then. The LNT model ignores the widely differing effects of low and high radiation doses and the body’s own ability to repair minor radiation damage on an ongoing basis ^[27].

In recent decades, there has been growing resistance to the LNT model among researchers because it overestimates the risks of low radiation levels ^[28].Even the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), which is one of the main bodies for applying the LNT model, concludes in a memorandum published after the Fukushima accident that the LNT model’s predictions of radiation damage for a low radiation dose are “speculative, unproven and unmeasurable” ^[29]^.Several researchers believe that an alternative model is very much needed ^[30].

The very conservative LNT model caused people to be put at risk during the evacuation at the time of the Fukushima accident, even though they were not in danger of being harmed by radiation. We’ll go into more depth in a future article on the LNT model.

Part 2 – Japan was hit by a tsunami of misinformation

Most people today remember Fukushima as a nuclear accident, although the real accident was a natural disaster ^[31]. A Google search for “Tohoku earthquake” returns 1,630 million results, while a search for “Fukushima disaster” returns 5,570 million results.

In the newscasts, the cameras panned over the huge devastated lands while the story of the nuclear plant rolled. This had the unfortunate effect that the devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami was attributed to the accident at the nuclear power plant.

The spread of misinformation also accelerated on the internet and social media. The image in Figure 8 was often shared with a text about the spread of radioactivity from the crashed plant into the Pacific Ocean. A poisonous purple tongue is seen protruding into the Pacific Ocean, branching into menacing dark red colors. Eventually, the radioactive spread reaches the west coast of North and South America and all the way down to Antarctica.

Figure 8: Dispersion of radioactivity from the Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean… Or is it? From: NOAA.

It was just that the card has absolutely nothing to do with radioactive transmission. Made by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it is a simulation of wave height immediately after the 2011 earthquake (the height is seen in centimeters on the right side of the image) ^[32].

On the Internet, after the accident, photos of fish with tumors or other “radiation diseases” were also shared. For example, the picture in Figure 9, claimed that salmon got cancerous tumors from the radiation from Fukushima. In fact, the fish was caught in 2009, 2 years before the accident, off Haida Gwaii on the west coast of Canada. The fish is also infested by the parasite Henneguya salminicola, and the picture was taken from Wikipedia. The fact-checking site Snopes has debunked piles of fake images of “Fukushima fish” ^[33].

Figure 9: The salmon in the picture is infested by the parasite Henneguya salminicola. It was captured in 2009 and has nothing to do with the Fukushima accident. Photo: Wikipedia ^[34].

According to the internet, not only wildlife was hit hard. A photo series called “Fukushima Fruit” spread with images of mutated fruit and vegetables from Fukushima prefecture after the accident, as seen in Figure 10 ^[35].

Figure 10: Alternative appearance of fruit and vegetables in the photo series “Fukushima fruit”. From: Dailymail.co.uk.

The majority of the images just weren’t taken near Fukushima; one was from 2004, and the deformities are naturally occurring and far more frequent than most of us realize ^[36].

The radioactive water

Misinformation and the fear of radiation were spread primarily by the old-fashioned environmental organizations, which are still stuck in ideological opposition to nuclear power.

Many have read about “The radioactive cooling water from Fukushima that Japan will discharge into the Pacific”. The cooling water contains, after filtration, the radioactive isotope tritium ^[37]. Environmental organizations such as Greenpeace criticize the Japanese government’s decision to discharge this heavily polluted water into the Pacific Ocean ^[38]. The water is stored in tanks, as seen in Figure 11.

Figure 11: In the tanks in the picture, purified cooling water is stored, which in the long term must be diluted in the sea.

But what exactly is tritium? Most people are familiar with the fact that quite ordinary water_{(H 2O)}consists of 2 hydrogen atoms (H) and 1 oxygen atom (O). Tritium is a hydrogen atom with 2 extra neutrons: a so-called isotope of hydrogen. This means that water with tritium in it is chemically similar to normal water. Water with tritium is just water that is mildly radioactive.

But is it a problem that there is tritium in the water, as Greenpeace points out?

Tritium is one of the least harmful radioactive elements, and it is formed naturally in the upper atmosphere without human intervention. The radiation from tritium is so weak that it cannot cause damage to the body. It cannot penetrate even the outer dead layer of skin ^[39]. Even if you drink water with tritium in it, it is harmless and does not accumulate anywhere in the food chain ^[40].

Maybe tritium in the purified cooling water isn’t a big problem after all, but if you’re an “environmental organization”, what do you do? Well, then you can try to invent a new problem.

Greenpeace also states that the water contains radioactive carbon-14, which “can damage human DNA and is concentrated in fish at a level over 1000 times higher than tritium” ^[41]. That doesn’t sound nice.

But what is not mentioned is that in the 1,230,000 tons of water, there are 0.4 grams of carbon-14, and that the same amount is formed naturally in the outer layers of the atmosphere in about 40 minutes as a result of cosmic radiation from the sun ^[42],^[43]. The atmospheric carbon-14 isotopes are then included in CO2 molecules, which are absorbed into plants and thus into the food chain, which is why all biological life, including humans, contains carbon-14.

The radioactive human body

By that logic, according to Greenpeace, we should fear something as natural as the human body. But it gets even crazier if we examine how radioactive the carbon-14 in the water really is.

Is this at a level we should be worried about?

Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Germany states: “… that there can be as much as 63.6 GBq (63,600,000,000 Bq) of carbon-14 in the tanks with water” ^[44].

63,600,000,000 Bq undeniably sounds like a lot. That’s over 63 billion decays per second. The unit Becquerel (Bq), which is used here, is often calculated in numbers so large that they are difficult to understand. That’s exactly why the device is good at spreading concern. However, we must bear in mind that the amount of carbon-14 is dissolved in 1,230,000 tons of water, so the activity per kg of water is 51.7 Bq.

But how much is 51.7 Bq/kg of water really?

We can start by comparing with the human body, which contains, among other things, the radioactive isotopes potassium-40, carbon-14, uranium-238, thorium-232, rubidium-87, polonium-210, and lead-210 ^[45].

Most of the activity in the body comes from potassium-40 and carbon-14. The activity of the two isotopes in a human being of 70 kg corresponds to 4,260 Bq for potassium-40 and 3,080 Bq for carbon-14. Overall, about 7,340 radioactive decays occur in the body every second from these two isotopes ^[46].

This means that in a human being of 70 kg there is an activity of 104.9 Bq per kg. human. This is more than twice as radioactive as the Fukushima water from carbon-14, which was 51.7 Bq/kg. In comparison, the activity in bananas is 130 Bq per kg, in Brazil nuts the activity is 207 Bq per kg, and 1 kilogram of coffee has an activity of 1,000 Bq ^[47]. An overview of this is shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12: If, according to Greenpeace, we are to be concerned about carbon-14 in cooling water, it looks pretty bleak for many people for whom coffee is an important part of life.

Neither to the detriment of humans nor the environment

The plan is to discharge the harmless cooling water into the ocean over time – initially into the Pacific Ocean, which is the largest body of water on the planet. The Pacific Ocean is also enormous, covering over 30% of the Earth’s surface. It is larger than the land area of all continents put together, the average depth being 4,000 meters, and in some places deeper than 11,000 meters ^[48].

Radioactive elements such as potassium-40 and uranium already exist in the sea. If we fill a 1-liter bottle with ordinary seawater, the water will have an activity of 12.1 Bq. Overall, the activity in the world’s oceans is around 16 Zetta Bq (ZBq) or 16 with as many as 21 zeros behind it ^[49].

In the waters of Fukushima, most of the activity comes from tritium and carbon-14. Combined, it is just under 900 Tera Bq (TBq) ^[50]. If we compare the amount of activity already in the ocean, it quickly becomes clear that it is indeed a drop in the ocean. The activity in the world’s oceans is 17.7 million times greater.

Figure 13 shows the ratio of activity in tanks to activity in the oceans. The line of radioactivity in the waters of Fukushima is so thin that it is less than a pixel on even the sharpest screen in the world. If the water in the tanks from Fukushima is discharged slowly as planned, a vanishingly small fraction of extra activity will be added to the oceans. It’s not going to affect humans or wildlife.

Figure 13: Radioactivity in the waters of Fukushima against total radioactivity in the oceans.

A world of radiation

If an organization such as Greenpeace is allowed to spread fear almost unquestionably with phrases such as ‘heavily polluted water’, it is firstly because most of us do not have much insight into the subject. This is also because we humans have a psychological problem with radiation:

Radiation cannot be seen, heard, smelled, or tasted. There is a good reason for this.

The world in which we find ourselves is full of radiation, and the human body is created to live in it. From an evolutionary perspective, radiation is an unnecessary sensory impression, as we are biologically adapted to living in environments with low and moderate amounts of radiation. This is in contrast to, for example, smoke, which we can quickly smell and instinctively perceive as a possible danger (fire!). It makes sense since fire is a real threat to us humans. It is impossible to isolate oneself from the radiation, as it comes from the earth below us and the space above us. It is called background radiation, and the level is determined by geography. Radiation also comes from the food we eat, from treatments in the healthcare sector, and, as mentioned earlier, also from our own bodies ^[51].

We consume about 0.9-1.5 micrograms of dietary uranium daily ^[52]. If we swim in the sea and swallow a mouthful of water, we also drink uranium. There are over 4 billion tons of uranium in the world’s oceans ^[53]. The body also does not distinguish between whether the radiation comes from nature, from treatments in the health care system, or from an accident at a nuclear power plant ^[54].

In addition, radiation is incredibly easy to measure compared to all other potential threats to our health. Where toxins have a lower dose where we can no longer measure them, radiation can be measured down to decay from a single atom. But the fact that we can measure something does not mean that it is dangerous – Greenpeace just does not tell us that.

Part 3: The consequences of the misinformation

The fear-driven overreaction to the accident had far greater consequences than radiation could ever cause. As a result of the evacuation, people lost their homes, and their jobs, and their entire livelihoods were uprooted. It has left deep marks. We repeat Figure 7 from earlier:

Figure 7: Number and cause of deaths.

All deaths, other than the earthquake and tsunami, are the result of a conscious or unconscious spread of radiation misinformation.

Large parts of the relocated population today suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), have depression and feel a radiation stigma. The latter is particularly true for women who fear being rejected as a partner by being stigmatized as genetically damaged by radiation ^[55].

They feel harmed by radiation, marked for life by a quantity of radiation that, according to leading experts in the field, is comparable to natural background radiation. Radiation at a level where no physical health effects will be observed.

For this very reason, fair and easily understandable communication in relation to radiation and its risks is of the utmost necessity. Noise from non-scientific sources, the tabloid press, and “environmental organizations” is often allowed to drown out any scientific rationale with fear propaganda.

Greenpeace was ready to capitalize on the misfortune of others

As early as 1991, Greenpeace developed a strategy to take full advantage of the next nuclear accident and, at the same time, a strategy to reject any compromise in this area, as evidenced by a leaked internal memo ^[56]. The ruthless spread of misinformation has caused enormous damage. Not only psychological damage to the people of Japan but also globally, where the fear of nuclear power means increased burning of fossil fuels.

When Japan shut down all its nuclear power plants, it had to import huge amounts of fossil gas as a substitute. From 2010 to 2012, imports of fossil gas increased by approximately 900 petajoules, equivalent to 23 billion cubic meters. In the following years, Japan’s balance of payments deteriorated dramatically as all gas had to be imported from the Arabian Gulf ^[57].

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), fossil fuel burns to pump millions of tonnes of CO₂into the atmosphere and particulate matter emissions cost 4,200,000 lives each year ^[58]. New research even suggests that this figure is far too low and that the fine particles emitted by burning fossil fuels kill 8,700,000 people every year ^[59].

The use of nuclear power has globally prevented 1,840,000 deaths (between 1971 and 2009) by reducing the burning of fossil fuels and has also prevented 64,000,000,000 (64 billion) tons of CO_{2 from}not being emitted into the atmosphere during the same period ^[60].

Conservative limit values – to more harm than good

At Fukushima, the clean-up work is still ongoing, and it is a laborious process. Not least complicated by the Japanese government’s choice to set an extremely conservative limit at 1 mSv, as the limit value for how much extra radiation in addition to background radiation residents may be exposed to per year ^[61].

It is also the reason why the top layer of fertile soil is being removed from large areas of land in a region that lives high on agriculture. It is expensive and cumbersome, and if we were to follow the same radiation limits here in our part of the world, then all areas with brown and black colors in Figure 14 are not suitable for human habitation ^[62]. Such areas include Stockholm, Madrid, and Zurich.

Figure 14: Everything in brown and black colors is an uninhabitable area if we follow the Japanese authorities’ radiation limit values.

A fight against clean air

The accident also had consequences outside Japan’s borders and actually also close to Denmark. In our German neighbors, a decision was taken that cost more than 1,000 lives a year. In Germany, an overwhelming majority in parliament voted in favor of a rapid phase-out of German nuclear power, and the deadline was brought forward from 2036 to 2022 ^[63].

About half of the country’s nuclear power plants were ordered to close immediately, and the remaining 9 must be shut down by 2022. Until March 2011, Germany received about 25 % of its electricity from nuclear power ^[64].

Most of the CO _2-free power from nuclear power plants was replaced by coal – the most dangerous way to produce electricity. Each terawatt-hour (TWh) produced with lignite is estimated to cost about 33 lives as a result of accidents and air pollution ^[65]. That is 3300 times as deadly as nuclear power. Nuclear power costs 0.01 lives per year. TWh, and is thus safer than both solar and wind ^[66].

How Germany celebrated the opening of 2 more lignite-burning units is shown in Figure 14.

Figure 15: The inauguration of units F and G at the Neurath coal power plant in Germany (2012) is celebrated by pressing a large green button ^[67]. The two units use lignite: the type of coal that emits the most CO₂and air pollution. The Neurath coal power plant is the 2nd largest emitter of CO2 in _{Europe, with 32,100,000 tonnes of CO}2 _{in 2018}[68]. Photo: Beissel.

The switch from nuclear to coal power is estimated to kill 1,100 people a year in Germany as a result of local air pollution, and CO_{2 emissions}in Germany also increased by 36 million tonnes per year ^[69].

The lives lost just don’t make the front pages of newspapers. Particle pollution also knows no national borders, and even in Denmark, German emissions of particle pollution reach us and cost lives. A coal-fired power station in normal operation is far more dangerous than a nuclear power station that melts down. But not many people think about that.

Figure 15: The fine particles emitted by burning lignite at the Neurath power plant in North-West Germany also end up in Danish lungs ^[70]. Photo: Wolfgang Rattay.

Ironically, a coal-fired power plant also emits more radioactivity than a nuclear power plant. The reason for this is that when coal is burned, the naturally occurring radioactive elements of uranium and thorium are concentrated in the ash and fly ash, and a coal-fired power plant emits over 100 times more radioactivity into the environment than a nuclear power plant ^[71].

If you live less than 80 kilometers from a coal-fired power station, the average amount of radiation you are exposed to is 0.003 mSv per year. In comparison, it is 0.0009 mSv from a nuclear power plant or the equivalent of eating 9 bananas ^[72].

Should coal-fired power stations meet the same environmental requirements as nuclear power plants, they would all be shut down immediately.

A renaissance of clean energy was derailed

The Fukushima accident became a handbrake pull for a burgeoning interest in nuclear power. For example, in Italy, where an ambitious plan to build 10 nuclear power plants was presented in 2008. These could have covered 25% of electricity needs in Italy, but the proposal was defeated in June 2011 ^[73]. Today, Italy’s power comes primarily from fossil gas ^[74].

Fukushima became a perfect storm in a glass of water: uncritical as well as the proven spread of misinformation cost dearly lives and money. A nuclear accident without loss of life stole the limelight of an almost unimaginable natural disaster and ended up making the national tragedy many times greater.

The apocalyptic headlines of the media and the fake news of ‘cancerous fish’, ‘mutated fruit’, and ‘toxic radioactive water’ had enormous consequences. This includes the unnecessary evacuation of more than 100,000 people and the decommissioning of well-functioning nuclear power plants in Japan and Germany. The last great misfortune of the climate fight, when fossils took the place of nuclear energy.

The accident represents the absolute upper limit of how wrong things can go at a Western nuclear power plant, as many as 3 reactors melted down with some of the oldest reactor technology in operation today.

The real damage was not caused by the release of radiation, but the panicked overreaction killed tens of thousands of people in Japan. The consequences of a radioactive spill are far less than air pollution from burning fossil fuels, not to mention the challenges we face with global climate change.

Japan today – the indispensable nuclear power

In Japan, 9 reactors are back in operation and Takahama-1 and 2, shown in Figure 16, have been given the green light to start up ^[75]. The ambition is to achieve CO2 emissions to zero by 2050_,but after a harsh winter in which solar and wind did not deliver and electricity prices rose up to 50 times normal, it is clear that the goal cannot be achieved without nuclear power. In a country where there are no favorable conditions for weather-dependent energy sources, the Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Hiroshi Kajiyama, is convinced that nuclear power is indispensable ^[76],^[77]^.

Figure 16: Takahama-1 and 2 can again be allowed to provide clean and stable electricity. Photo: Jiji Press.

Nothing of fear – except fear

When it comes to nuclear power, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. We have to face fear. We need to bury the myths. If we can do that, we may have a chance in the fight against the enormous challenges we face with climate, the environment, and energy poverty.

Nuclear power is one of the safest ways of generating electricity at all. It delivers CO2-free power regardless of the weather with one of the least impacts on nature, and we need it now more than ever.