US sailors sue Japan's TEPCO for post-quake radiation exposure

[caraher]

11. Strange

First, let me get this out of the way: TEPCO behaved reprehensibly throughout, from the planning they did for the site taking inadequate account of the true earthquake/tsunami hazards to almost every element of the disaster response. I won't weep for them is they get their butts kicked in court.

But the lawsuit and the lawyer's remarks are way over the top with respect to the severity of any exposures, the degree to which the US Navy was at the mercy of TEPCO for data on hazard levels, and the details of the carrier's deployment. Starting with the last part, the says, attorney Paul Garner says,

"The carrier was less than two football fields away from the Fukushima Daiichi when it released a cloud of radiation," said Garner, speaking to NBC News on Thursday.

I think this is physically impossible considering that the carrier itself is greater than "two football fields" in length, and contemporaneous news reports place the Reagan 100 miles offshore when radiation alarms sounded and led the Navy to move the ship. It's unlikely that the waters so close offshore would be deep enough to accommodate safe operations, and such an unusual way of operating a carrier could neither be concealed from the crew nor kept from being leaked in the media. I have no idea why Garner would say something so transparently foolish; it only detracts from his own credibility.

Clearly the Navy was capable of assessing the hazards associated with Fukushima's radioactive emissions - it was their own equipment that sounded the alarm in the first place, and TEPCO had no capability to monitor the plume out to sea. TEPCO is certainly responsible for the accident and deserves any blame attached to downplaying the hazards during the period in question, but the Navy knew that its mission of tsunami relief was complicated by the developing disaster at Fukushima, had the technical means to assess and respond to risks, and is chiefly responsible for the safety of the crew. If sailors were overexposed to radiation the Navy is more culpable (but may be harder to sue).

Finally, many of the specific health impacts to the plaintiffs claimed, apart from an elevation in long-term cancer risk, are not plausibly traceable to Fukushima radiation exposure. The lawsuit includes a grab bag of serious health consequences of radiation exposure that only occur at levels nobody in the plant itself experienced, let alone those experienced by someone tens of miles (or even a few hundred yards) away. There are about 5000 sailors on the Reagan (and more on other ships in its group); I don't think there's anything that particularly needs explaining if a handful of people out of a group that size, at some point over the course of any given 1.5 year period, develop the symptoms described. I'm sure their health problems are real, but none of them, as described, are plausible consequences of Fukushima radiation exposure, even if one accepts that radiation exposures were much higher than the Navy acknowledges and sufficient to cause radiation sickness. Taking them one by one:

rectal bleeding - This can accompany radiation exposure; apparently this can accompany radiation therapy for prostate cancer. But it isn't caused by radiation except at very high doses and it would be accompanied by many other symptoms. The person exposed would be very ill and quite likely not be alive today.

thyroid problems - Taking in iodine 131 can cause thyroid cancer, but there's a significant latency period, and the fact that they say "thyroid problems" rather than cancer suggests that they're talking about a different health issue

persistent migraine headaches - Acute radiation exposure at high levels can cause severe headaches, but these occur right away.

A few isolated symptoms experienced long after the exposure do not make a believable case for a causal relationship between the crew's exposure to Fukushima radiation and those symptoms, even if one accepts the unlikely claim that exposures were high enough to induce the acute radiation sickness with which those symptoms are associated. Had these sailors suffered such severe exposures they'd have experienced many other symptoms as well and needed immediate medical attention. Like the people of Japan, the Navy personnel do face an elevation of cancer risk, and the magnitude of that risk increase is hard to calculate precisely. It's not likely to be anything like a doubled risk of cancer but some fraction of a percent.

For that TEPCO surely deserves blame. But I also have the strong impression that this lawyer is mainly trying to make a buck off antipathy toward an admittedly repulsive company.